We try and err very much on the side of caution when putting together material for the site, and we're aware that we've come in for some criticism over spoiler-free reviews that are basically our opinion of an episode, and little more than that. This is a firm policy decision we took: we take spoiler-free as literally as we can, at most trying not to mention things that happen past the first credits, unless they're heavily in the public domain. The consequence of that, for us, is that some of our reviews aren't always the most detailed you'll read – although in our defence, they're an honest appraisal of what we've seen.
If you read beyond this point, please be aware that we're going to discuss both Doctor Who series seven, The Sixth Sense and The Dark Knight Rises. If you don't want any of those spoiled, then it's best to click on something else right about now.
Which of these, then - and we ask this with genuine interest in the answer - do you class as something that would spoil The Dark Knight Rises (and these are all examples we saw around the time of the review):
There's a big twist at the end
There's not much Batman in it
"There's more to Joseph Gordon Levitt's character than meets the eye"
Then, here's the question for Doctor Who series seven, specifically regarding the big surprise in Asylum Of The Daleks:
The Doctor visits Skaro (that bit was pre-credits)
Steven Moffat asked everyone at the press launch to keep a massive surprise a secret
The plot takes the story to a planet where the Daleks have gone mad, and the Doctor needs to save them
We ask these questions simply because we're trying to work out exactly where to draw the line. If something, in your view, is labelled spoiler-free, how much of it is fair game to reveal? Do you want to know whether something is good or bad, or do you want more detail than that?
Then, where is the statute of limitations for spoilers? There's an excellent piece over at The Shiznit on this. It talks about when Alan Sugar, in a Radio Times piece, spoiled a big moment in A Beautiful Mind. The Shiznit's views, as always, are well worth a read.
It does beg the question, though: at what stage are we allowed to say there's a big twist in something like The Sixth Sense, even if we don't say what the ending is? The film was released back in 1999 after all. The vast majority of people who read this site will know very well what happened in that particular film - but out of fairness to those who don't, how far should we go, beyond a standard spoiler warning, to keep things under wraps?
