Howling:Trenzalore, Silence, Cracks clarification

So there are three things that I'm trying to clarify:

1.) Where did the name "Time Field" come from in-narrative?

2.) Should The Silence be merged with Papal Mainframe and with The Church?

3.) Does Trenzalore really have an alternate timeline now?

1. I know this has been talked about before on the Time Field/discussion page, but I cannot find a clear answer. It seems it was left unanswered. My only reason for bringing this back up is the fact that "time field" seems to be a phenomenon that, like time track and time stream, is used to apply to different things; it's been mentioned in The Time Monster and The World Shapers, amongst other sources. They've been called "cracks", "cracks in time", "cracks in the skin of the universe": maybe "cracks in the universe" would be okay? Also, was it specifically stated in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang that the cracks were erased and not simply closed? I figured they'd just closed, that way the majority of Series 5 still happened.

2. So with The Time of the Doctor, it's revealed that the Church's full title is "the Church of the Papal Mainframe" and that "the Silence" was created by the Kovarian Chapter breaking away. I remember there was talk about the difference between the creatures Silents and the organization Silence, but I wonder if they should be separate. Were the creatures ever called "the Silents"? We now know they are Confessional Priests. So in The Wedding of River Song when Gantok says he works for the Silence, he would be working for the Kovarian Chapter which is part of the Papal Mainframe which is now calling itself the "Church of Silence", which is synonymous with "the Silence".

3. We're under the impression time has been changed so that The Name of the Doctor is an alternate timeline now, but it could be that the Doctor wasn't going to die at that time and they'll be another battle some day. My only problem with this, it it's true, is that the Great Intelligence created an alternate timeline where it killed the Doctor from the alternate timeline where it accessed the Doctor's tomb. Which is clever, I guess, but it seems unnecessarily confusing.

What does everyone think? Steed ☎  03:44, December 28, 2013 (UTC)