scarfman | What I Should Have Said: casting news (Reply)

Somehow today I was thinking of a few months ago when I asked in doctorwho about the upcoming, then-not-yet-aired reappearance of former regular character Sarah Jane Smith, and another writer objected (halfway down the page ...) that I ought to have put any allusion to the reappearance behind a spoiler cut. I replied:

I don't mean to be insensitive. On the other hand, the Doctor Who fan community has got oversensitive about spoilers since 2003, and I'm disinclined to examine any unexamined assumptions of my own on that account. Doctor Who cast lists were teasers in 1986 and I continue to treat them as teasers. Hell, Doctor Who cast lists are news.

The other person wrote:

I love when people say that: "I don't mean to be insensitive." That translates to "I don't LIKE to be insensitive, but I'm going to be."
And you can rationalize it however you want. A simple LJ cut is not a hard thing to do.

I only responded:

I stand by my comment above as my position on the issue.

but in retrospect I might have been clearer if I'd said, "I misphrased myself: I'm already as sensitive as I believe is appropriate. There's a reasonable limit to sensitivity and I say it's the same place it was twenty years ago; and cast news is on the near side of it rather than the far side." But then, that might have prolonged the argument instead of ending it, so who's to say.

Please, nobody who reads this journal object that that's a spoiler now to U.S. Sci-Fi viewers because the Doctor Who episode in question will be airing a week from today. 1) See above re: cast news. 2) If you read this journal you've already had it spoiled.