Can We Trust Spoilers Ever Again?

SPOILER WARNING FOR STARGATE UNIVERSE EPISODE “LIFE”

We here at Solutions have had a pretty good history of reporting spoilers concerning the episodes in production with some degree of accuracy, but it’s always a good thing that we publish a disclaimer in the report just to make sure that our tail end is covered. The one we’re using this year goes something like this: ALL SPOILERS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WHILE THE EPISODE IS IN PRODUCTION.

Yes, it’s in bold and in all caps: a sure sign that you need to proceed with caution.

Recently, spoilers have been published for Carl Binder’s “Life” in two separate articles here at Solutions (check them out HERE and HERE as a foundation for the “rant” that is to follow). These articles were based on two sources of information: character breakdowns from Spoiler TV and audition sides for actors that we’ve actually purchased with our own hard-earned money, just like struggling actors do.

So when we got this breakdown recently from Spoiler TV for the same character that we just read the audition sides for, SHARON—”[SHARON] 35 years old, Camille Wray’s (Ming-Na’s.) long term partner. Sensitive, soulful. Strong emotional scenes. Possibly recurring. GUEST LEAD. Please submit all ethnicities. NAMES ONLY”—we had to combine it with what we already published to arrive at a new conclusion: SHARON is WRAY’s long-time lesbian lover, not MUNROE’s.

It appears that the production office is now using a big Find-and-Replace-All on character names! So, WRAY is easily replaced with MUNROE. And, unfortunately, the changes don’t stop there for this particular script. Find-and-Replace-All MARY with SHARON and RUSH with BENTON (but make sure you verify that all occurrences of “rush” replaced with “benton” make sense).

So, now we need to revise our spoilers because we weren’t in the loop when it came to this new approach taken by the production office to “leak” spoilers. We’re just a small group of fans trying to do a service to the fan community, so when something doesn’t feel right, there’s definitely reason to believe it isn’t and we can comfortably say so. And since we are merely a fan site, we probably can get away with this revision with a little more grace and acceptance by the fans than for-real professional media outlets. Lucky us (and we indeed hope so).

So, is SHARON (aka MARY) Camille Wray’s lesbian lover? Probably. And BENTON is really RUSH who makes a great discovery in the database about the seeder ships that planted Stargates on planets long before Destiny reached them. Is LT. GARY MICHAELS most likely another regular character, perhaps Lt. Matthew Scott, who got a girl pregnant (ANNIE BALIC, or is it JEAN?) and thought she got an abortion when actually she didn’t and he went on his merry way by joining the Air Force about eight years ago? Probably. But who knows for sure?

And it doesn’t stop there, sadly. Is MICHELLE really MICHELLE and WARREN really WARREN and BAKER really BAKER, or are they Find-and-Replace-All substitutes for other regular and semi-regular characters?

Joseph Mallozzi has long complained about spoilers coming from sources such as those for actors’ audition sides. They’re not something that can be faked; actors must study them and go to the audition prepared with something authentic. Mallozzi said they’ve looked into ways to fix the situation, and it looks like substituting character names is one way to go. Clever that.

So, can we trust spoilers from these sources ever again? To be honest, the nature of spoilers has always made the disclaimer necessary because scripts can change quickly and easily. The production office even has a system of colored pages to show these updates. They start off with white pages and then when a change is made, they issue the changes on blue pages. Each and every change thereafter gets a different color until it’s possible for an actor’s script to look like it was printed using a variety pack from a nearby office supply store.

It’s a new twist for us fan sites to maneuver through. Certainly, with enough of a variety of sources, we may succeed in revealing the “truth behind the myth,” but from now on, there will always be doubt. Spoiler reporting may never be the same again and that’s exactly what the production wanted.