BBC forced to issue apology after livid Doctor Who fans complain about episode being 'spoiled'
The BBC issued a statement after livid Doctor Who fans complained about an episode being 'spoiled'.
Doctor Who's 15th season wrapped up last month and saw Ncuti Gatwa depart as the Time Lord in the series' finale.
Ncuti's character regenerated into Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in scenes that sent viewers into a meltdown.
However, some fans voiced concerns that the episode was ruined because the BBC News site published an article with the headline: 'Ncuti Gatwa regenerates into Billie Piper as he leaves Doctor Who'.
A spoiler warning was then written underneath, but many felt the headline spoiled the ending.
Since then, the broadcaster has acknowledged the complaints and explained the reasoning behind the story.
The statement read: 'Some people contacted us to complain that the headline gave away the ending, spoiling this Doctor Who episode for them.
'Others requested that the BBC be more conscious of spoilers going forward, particularly in the use of headlines.
'Ncuti Gatwa's departure from the series had been widely speculated and many fans will have been aware that this was a possibility.
'The headline on the news homepage that evening referred to Ncuti Gatwa's departure because this was a legitimate entertainment news story in its own right, and it is not unusual that we would carry this type of story once a programme has been broadcast and the details in the public domain.'
It went on to reveal details of the regeneration was added in later on in the evening.
The statement continued: 'While we cannot account for everyone's viewing habits, we initially held back from headlining the announcement of Ncuti Gatwa's regeneration into Billie Piper.
'This extra detail was added later in the evening and our approach was consistent across the BBC site.
'BBC journalists are of course entitled to use their judgement to decide which stories to cover and the manner in which they are reported. We also want our headlines to be as informative as possible.
'Although every story is different, we have discussed your concerns on this occasion with senior editors and we will be mindful of your views for future coverage.'
When the episode aired, devout Whovians were not expecting the huge twist at the end when Ncuti's character regenerated into Rose amid his departure after just two series as woke storylines saw ratings for the much-loved show plunge.
Billie first starred as the companion to the ninth Doctor in 2005, playing Rose Tyler alongside Christopher Eccleston's Time Lord. She went onto star alongside David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor in the second series.
Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, fans were quick to share their reaction to Billie's shock comeback, with one even asking: ''Did my eyes actually deceive me?!'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
9 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Charli xcx at Glastonbury review – a thrilling hostile takeover by a pop star at the peak of her powers
For my money, one of the best pop tours of the 21st century was Kanye West's Yeezus tour. Like the album it was supporting, the Yeezus tour was abrasive and minimal and totally spectacular: West stood in front of gigantic bright-red screens and blasted arenas with some of the harshest, most acidic sounds ever considered mainstream. That tour was unrelenting and uncompromising and, as a result, totally compelling. Charli xcx's Brat tour may be the only clear successor. It is a show whose main components are a curtain, a few stadium strobe light rigs, and one star whose vision is so specific and so well realised that the 'necessities' of an A-list pop show – dancers, set pieces, etc – suddenly seem like crutches for anyone less in tune with themselves. This makes sense, given that Charli is also our clearest successor to West himself: despite being a prodigiously talented mainstream songwriter, she has dedicated her career to exploring the most caustic, hallucinatory sounds of the underground, and working out how best to synthesise them with the pleasures of pure pop music. With the release of last year's Brat, an album that became a cultural moment without ever diluting Charli's ingenuity, mainstream culture finally caught up to Charli. So it's fitting that she's here at Worthy Farm headlining, by some metrics, the biggest music festival in the world. Of course, she's not really headlining – Charli's Saturday night set closing the Other stage is, on a purely technical level, second billed to Neil Young, who is headlining the Pyramid at the same time. But ask anyone here, and the headliner of the entire weekend is Charli. Her audience at the Other stage is dizzyingly huge, surely at least 60,000 people – a surreal sight for the many gay men who saw her perform in 200-capacity clubs as recently as 2019. And from the very first moments of her set, when she intones, gravely, 'Glastonbury, don't fucking play with me', it's clear that she is at the height of her powers, totally capable of holding the attention of a stadium's worth of people. After all – who else could warrant a general expanding of the Other stage and the addition of more screens and speakers? Even if Charli wasn't first billed, everyone at Glastonbury knew she was headlining. This was made clear with an intense, totally uncompromising set in which Charli performed totally alone, not even with collaborators such as Lorde, who was also at Glastonbury. The Brat tour is at its most effective when the viewer has to submit to Charli's world, and this show, loud and bawdy and sometimes very unnerving in its intensity, was practically Charli-led hostile takeover. Her skill is in welding sophistication on to brute force – consider a song like Club Classics, which deftly stitches together at least four different styles of dance music in barely four minutes, but also brandishes a chorus of simply 'me, me, me, me' – and even when she breaks script, you see that skill in action. 'I'm known to have a heart of stone,' she tells the crowd, 'But this is very fucking emotional.' She should save her tears – with an audition so memorable, so fun, so spectacular, the Pyramid has to be next.
BBC News
26 minutes ago
- BBC News
Charli, Neil Young and Scissor Sisters give Glastonbury goosebumps
Saturday was a night of four headliners at Glastonbury, with fans facing the cruel choice between pop queen Charli XCX, rock legend Neil Young, disco scamps Scissor Sisters and Doechii - rap's hottest new voice. Charli XCX won the biggest audience, closing down The Other Stage and turning it into a sweat-drenched, laser lit club topping the bill on the Pyramid Stage, also delivered an all-time hits set, with gnarly, ragged versions of hits like Cinnamon Girl and Like A who only played for 45 minutes, still managed to mark herself out as a future headliner; while Scissor Sisters brought out actual Gandalf Sir Ian McKellen to perform Invisible Light. There was a lot to take in, then, thanks to one of the most crammed line-ups in the festival's start with Charli XCX. Using up the festival's entire smoke machine budget, she was alone on stage all night, but in constant motion - a mesmerising blur of hip-rolls, hair tosses, stomach crunches and opened her set with a mash-up of 360 and Von Dutch, two of the the standout track from last summer's culture-swallowing Brat album, as the record's logo burst into flames behind her - indicating that she's slowly coming to terms with leaving it rumours that she'd bring out a host of special guests, Lorde doesn't appear to duet on Girl, So Confusing, and Billie Eilish is missing from the number one smash, Guess. The only famous face we got was Gracie Abrams, who appeared on the big screens to perform the "Apple dance" that went viral on TikTok last year. Fans were momentarily disappointed, but nothing could detract from the insolent, messy glory of tracks like Club Classics or Sympathy Is A Knife. At the end of her set, she reclaimed I Love It - the bubblegum pop anthem she donated to Icona Pop in 2012, before reassuring fans that she wasn't really ready to let go of her breakthrough album, after all."I think you have all proven to me that Brat is forever," flashed a message on the video screens as the music disintegrated into glitched siren sounds and pyrotechnics exploded. "And honestly, I don't know who I am if it's over."So that's settled: Charli can come back and headline again after Glastonbury's fallow year in 2026. Neil Young's set was a very different, but equally gnarly, proposition. The rocker walked on stage alone, hunched over with his face obscured by a corduroy cap, to play a hushed acoustic version of the classic Sugar that was a cunning misdirect. His new band, The Chrome Hearts, joined him immediately afterwards, launching into a furious flurry of guitar anthems - Be The Rain, Cinnamon Girl and Hey Hey, My My - full of jagged chords and intense crowd swooned when they switched back to acoustic mode for The Needle and The Damage Done and Harvest Moon; and cheered when Young announced he was playing Hank Williams' old guitar (a battered and worn acoustic) on the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song Looking star might be 79 years old, but his voice is still unusually supple and youthful; buoyed up by The Chrome Hearts' close-knit they were at their best on the heavier material - in particular Like A Hurricane, whose time-bending guitar solo felt like a revelation. Young always seems to get great pleasure from playing that particular song, and it was mesmerising to ended the set with Tear Your Hatred Down, a savage takedown of politicians and the war machine, that contrasts the idealism of the 1960s with the cruelties of the modern world. Both as a protest song and a lament for human nature, it was a powerful way to end a peerless set. Doechii drew a huge crowd to the West Holts Stage - including pop star Harry Styles, who danced away to her brief set in the middle of the field, unbothered by Florida-born rapper, known to fans as the Swamp Princess, sang, rapped, danced and changed outfits multiple times, in a show that was themed as a lesson in the history of flow was flawless on breakout tracks like Persuasive, Anxiety, Denial Is A River and Alter Ego - and she even made fun of herself, recreating a popular social media clip from this year's Met Gala, where she was overhead demanding "more umbrellas" to cover her body as she changed was aided by her eight dancers, who climbed over props, twerked and even vogued while descending a rise over the past year has been nothing short of phenomenal and, while fans await her debut album, this slick, bespoke Glastonbury performance felt like a new feather in her Sisters, meanwhile, continued their reunion by packing out the Woodsies tent for a set that reminded everyone how many classics they'd written - from I Don't Feel Like Dancing and Laura to the ever so sleazy Filthy/ Ware joined them on stage for a celebratory strut through I Don't Feel Like Dancin', while Ian McKellen recreated his monologue from the 2010 single Invisible he stood in the wings, fans started chanting "Oh, Ian McKellen" to the tune of The White Stripes Seven Nation Army, at which the actor clasped his hands to his face in shock. What happened earlier? Although the clash between acts was tough, none of them suffered the ignominy of a small crowd. Charli definitively had the biggest audience and while Young's set started with a thinner-than-usual crowd at the Pyramid Stage, people drifted in during the first 15 minutes - and most of those who did stuck with him. Earlier in the day, Kaiser Chiefs opened up the main stage, striding out to the strains of the Was (Not Was) classic, Walk The it a self-deprecating reference to their advancing age? Who knows. But after 20 years, songs like Every Day I Love You Less And Less and I Predict A Riot sounded as fresh as country singer Brandi Carlile was also a revelation to much of the audience. A huge star at home, she'd never had a Top 40 album in this country until she released the Elton John collaboration Who Believes In Angels this her early afternoon slot, she won the crowd over with a gorgeous cover of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees, and prompted a few tears with the acoustic ballad You Without Me, which depicts her daughter's rocky teenage the end of the set, she was on the receiving end of a supportive chant of "olé, olé, olé"."It's official," Carlile beamed. "I have now played the greatest festival on earth… And it only took me to 44 years old to do it." Jade drew a huge crowd to the Woodsies stage, displaying her 17 years of pop experience with a slick, high concept set full of pop bangers; including a thrilling medley of songs from her old band, Little Raye got one of the day's biggest audiences at the Pyramid Stage. Backed by a miniature orchestra, she put a jazzy spin on hits like You Don't Know Me, Oscar Winning Tears and her award-winning psychodrama singer played the same stage just two years ago, near the bottom of the bill, before her career enjoyed a remarkable turnaround that culminated in a record haul of six Brit Awards."When I came out here I was so nervous," said the singer, who'd earlier admitted her voice was "a bit croaky"."Now I feel so up home at here and I don't want to leave." Raye inherited her audience from a "secret" set by Pulp, who'd been billed as Patchwork, fooling band were there to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their career-making headline performance in 1995, when they were booked at the last minute to replace The Stone Roses."We only had 10 days notice," said frontman Jarvis Cocker, "so consequently we were the most nervous we've ever been."But today I feel very relaxed."Patchwork were Pulp, after allHaim were the special guests on The Park stage, drawing a humungous crowd for their rhythmic take on classic rock. Highlights included set opener The Wire (a song they wrote in 2008!), the sleazy groove of Gasoline and the party-jam R&B of Relationships. The day had a share of controversy, courtesy of rap trio Kneecap and punk-rap band Bob Vylan, after their performances on the West Holts say they are assessing videos of comments made by both acts, who criticised the UK government and Israel's actions in Gaza during consecutive, politically-charged hit back at Kier Starmer in politically-charged setGovernment condemns Glastonbury chants aired live on BBC There was drama on The Other Stage - the festival's second-biggest arena - after Deftones had to pull out due to illness.A quick ring around the site fixed the gap in the schedule, with UK rap supremo Skepta putting on an impromptu performance. "No crew, no production but I am ready to shut Glastonbury down," he posted on social media, ahead of the show. "Victory lap time." He was preceded by Mercury Prize winners Ezra Collective, whose life-affirming jazz and Afrobeat grooves got a helping hand from special guests including Loyle Carner and Sasha by drummer Femi Koleoso, they brought a carnival atmosphere to the field, with the audience making space for each other to sway, shake and generally flail their limbs as the sun set over Worthy Farm."You practice your whole life for just one second that might feel like that," beamed Koleoso as he came off stage. "Sometimes we're in these really negative bubbles where it's like, we all hate each other, we're all divided. But sometimes you just need to go to Glastonbury and see that that's a myth."Love for one another and respect for each other and our neighbours, it does exist, and it's a special thing to be the soundtrack to that."The festival continues on Sunday with performances from Rod Stewart, Chic, Wolf Alice, Joy Crookes and Pyramid Stage headliner Olivia Rodrigo.
Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Neil Young, Glastonbury Festival, review: A reverent display of classic rock
To no one's great surprise, there were no explosions, fireworks, articulated platforms, interactive screens, confetti or special effects at Neil Young's Glastonbury headline set. Nor, to give credit to the 79-year-old rocker, were there any of the pre-recorded backing tracks and fake vocals so ubiquitous in modern live productions. There was just an old man and his accomplished four-piece band The Chrome Hearts alternately making a heck of a grungy distorted racket, or playing acoustic campfire ballads with sweet, shaky harmonies. His first song, Sugar Mountain, contained a lovely, wheezy harmonica solo and tender vocals. His second song, Be The Rain, went on for 10 minutes raging about the environment and contained a wildly distorting guitar solo that no one in the band seemed to have any idea where it was headed, including Young who was playing it. The stocky old star in the raggy check shirt and trucker cap switched between these two poles all night, and didn't seem to give much of a damn what anyone made of it. He looked like he was enjoying himself, in any case. This is what all rock festivals used to be like, before modern day screens and blockbuster productions, and it was kind of refreshing: five men (it was usually men back in the day) who've barely dressed for the occasion stirring up an electric storm of distorted guitar stomps, revelling in their ability to conjure wild solos on the spot. 'Rock and roll will never die,' Young wailed during a long, feedbacky version of Hey Hey, My My, but the evidence was very much against him. This is like a last gasp of a fading art form, played to a receptive crowd but not a massive one. The youngsters had dispersed around the festival to see new generation pop heroes. Charli XCX drew a bigger crowd than Young at the overpacked Other Stage, breakout US rap singer Doechi was killing it on the West Holts stage and they were turning people away from camp disco pop entertainers the Scissor Sisters at the Woodsies marquee. Young entertained the faithful but when he was tuning his guitar between songs you could have heard a pin drop. In a rare production moment they summoned a keyboard that descended from overhead to play Like A Hurricane, and acted like they had just broken the fourth wall in an act of outrageous showcraft. It was kind of silly but who cares when you are listening to a band of supreme musicians find their way through one of the all time great rock songs as if they are discovering it for the first time. The staging may have been plain, but the playing was fantastic. Harvest Moon was gorgeous. The Needle and the Damage Done was moving. Rockin In The Free World was an absolute blast. It was a genuinely great Neil Young set, filled with classic songs, played and sung with passion and panache. And lots of distortion. Give me that over Charli XCX miming or the 1975 posturing on stage every time.
