Howling:The Silent's Memory power

The silent memory power seems to have changed. Back in series 6, even Madame Kovarian had to wear an eye drive even though the time of the doctor implies she was the leader or at least important since the renegade group was called the Kovarian chapter. As well as Gantok and Gideon Vandaleur. However, in the Time of the Doctor, the Doctor walks past them and can tell Clara what they are. Also, the whole church seem to be able to remember them. None of them have eye drives but surely they would have to have some way of remembering them since they are in close contact with the silents.

Also, don't ya just love what Moffat did with them? He must have known that's what they were from the start. Who woulda guessed? They were evil priests back in series 6!--176.250.15.155talk to me 12:27, December 26, 2013 (UTC)


 * Perhaps a combination of being members of the Church and being within that ship structure combine to allow those people to retain their memories of the Silents, or some internal brain implant. —BioniclesaurKing4t2 - "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically, . . . run." 02:47, December 27, 2013 (UTC)


 * In response to the original post, the `Silents` of "Time..." aren't evil. They ally themselves with the Doctor at the end because they serve Tasha Lem. There are a fair few problems with the presentation of the silents in this episode tough which I hope to return to presently.DCT ☎  16:31, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought it was clever how they were confessional priests, because it makes perfect sense. I hope we see them again sometime. One question still bothers me though: why did one of the Silents kill Joy? It might seem like it was just the Silent's way of showing Amy that it meant business but we now know that the Silent's were only interested in getting rid of the Doctor. 87.102.91.126talk to me 23:31, December 27, 2013 (UTC)

I personally think that Kovarian was evil and so the ones that obeyed her were evil too, or at least became evil. Joy wasn't the only one they killed. What about all the soldiers in area 52? Gantok even said that the silence would kill him if he helped the doctor. Although when I think about the fact that the silence was just kovarian and a load of priests, did they decide that they would rejoin the main branch when they were done or did they decide to remain separate and so expanded their membership? Back to Joy, at the time the silent said it killed her because her name was joy. I think this was just to make them more villainous as they metaphorically killed joy, as well as the person.

On another note, I personally preferred the silents in time and the doctor, both for clothing and personality. Their black clothes seem better than they suits and the fact that they were good. Just saying, don't mean to be rambling. --176.252.248.115talk to me 23:58, December 27, 2013 (UTC)


 * The "Silent" did not kill Joy because that was her name. Steven Moffat was playing with the audience, including Amy. When Amy asks why she was killed the answer given is "Joy", suggesting the Silent killed her for the sheer pleasure of it. When challenged on this by Amy the Silent says "her name was Joy." suggesting it has ignored the question as if it's offended that Amy didn't know the name of the woman she's defending.DCT ☎  16:37, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

Another thing that bothers me - how many priests were there? There were four at once to see clara which seems odd as why would all of them be needed for her to confess, one would have been plenty. But they more confusing part is that in the alternate timeline in area 52, there were over 100 silents. How did kovarian get that many on her side? Also, why would the papal mainframe need that many? Surely they wouldn't need a large number because A) You could just get people to wait to confess their sins and B)Even if it was to fight at trenzalore, that is still to many. At least three helped the doctor and that seemed enough. --176.252.248.115talk to me 00:10, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

The Silence killed most of the Area 52 personnel because it was necessary to do so. The Area 52 personnel were trying to stop them from reaching The Doctor. The "appearing more villainous" reason doesn't make much sense because the Silents aren't villainous. They are just trying to stop the question being answered. 87.102.91.126talk to me 11:13, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

The 100 Silents in Area 52 had been captured and imprisoned there (well, had pretended to, because it was actually their plan all along). I don't remember it being said that the four Silents encountered by Clara were getting her to confess, so maybe they were just walking around the place. I don't see what's bothering you. 87.102.91.126talk to me 11:30, December 28, 2013 (UTC)

So I get that the idea of the Silents being confessional priests is entertaining on some level, but am I the only one who thinks their ability is the exact opposite of what it should be in that case? Usually the idea of confession in a church is to seek forgiveness, and accept your mistakes. In which case it would be ideal if the priests then forgot what you confessed. The way the Silents operate, all they do is convince you to tell them all of your secrets, and then forget that you told them. That's incredibly shady, and honestly it's kind of diabolical. On top of that, it would still backfire even when you walk away. We were shown that they can subliminally coerce you to do things even after you've looked away, and since all they seem to do now is walk around saying "confess", you'd be spilling your guts to anyone else around every single time you looked away from them. --Saghan ☎  18:38, December 28, 2013 (UTC)


 * The more menacing Silents/Silence of the Kovarian faction have demonstrated the ability to plant suggestions in the mind of a victim (like the ultimate one, "You should kill us all on sight"). Perhaps the confessors (the Silents/Silents who hear confessions) also plant suggestions, either for penance or to grant forgetfulness and a clean conscience.  It's possible that the Kovarian faction has manipulated or augmented their Silents' powers somehow. 68.10.6.202talk to me 03:43, December 29, 2013 (UTC)

Again, DCT, please put your comments at the bottom of the page instead of halfway up it. How can anyone respond to you if they don't see waht you've written. 87.102.91.126talk to me 01:19, December 29, 2013 (UTC)

I think I've got it. You confess to them about your sins, they either tell you to forget these sins or just implant some kind of acceptance so that they feel better and don't dwell on the sins and maybe also to convince them not to do it again e.g. murder. Although this then brings up the point of why not just implant every child when they are just born with some kind of command to not break any laws. Also, with such a power, surely it was inevitable that there would be a rogue bunch eventually. --Coop3 ☎  20:58, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

I was trying to avoid causing confusion by putting my post beneath the person I was responding to. Sometimes these forums can move quite quickly and it can be hard to tell who's being addressed. It's what I've been doing since I joined. I'd say it's never been a problem in the past but as it could be the reason why even one of my posts wasn't responded to I can't know that to be true. I can know however up until now no-one has objected to me or anyone else doing it. Now on to my concerns alluded to earlier.

1. In The Eleventh Hour there is a crack in time which turns out to be caused by the Silence attempting to prevent the Doctor giving his name and releasing the Time Lords leading to war. Is the destruction of the universe less of a disaster than this implending war?

2. In The Pandorica Opens many of the species gathered here form an alliance to prevent the destruction of the universe, but the aren't remotely concerned that this war might not be in their interests?

3. What was a Silent ship doing abandoned in Aickman Road?

4. The "Silents" presented here appear little more than drones or slaves, they certainly don't display the intellect, imagination or many of the gifts possessed on the so-called "Kovarian faction" nor does there seem to be any need for them to. Then again it also doesn't explain why they need to shoot lightning from there hands either.

5. The fact that this episode didn't deliver all it promised was disappointing but it wasn't surprising, Steven Moffat had quite clearly written himself into a corner with the nature of his "first question" whatever the answer was it was liable to fail to meet the required crisis it was supposed to, because it meant revealing something about the mystery of the Doctor, Steven Moffat sidestepped it completely.

6. However this meant that the continuing theme on which the drama was built that mystery of what the Doctor had been running from all his life (meaning since he stole the TARDIS and fled Gallifrey) remained unanswered.

7. Thus we don't know why the Doctor reacted the way he did when he learned what the question was. Dorium seemed to understand the crisis that was at hand, but what happens here doesn't seem consistent with the nature of that crisis because most importantly...

8. The Doctor still failed to answer the question in circumstances we were clearly told he would not be able to fail to answer the question. That was the crisis and the fact he still managed not to answer was a cheat.DCT ☎  15:22, December 31, 2013 (UTC)


 * 1. The Silence destroyed the TARDIS to stop the Doctor reaching Trenzalore and saying his name to release the Time Lords and cause a war. They had no idea that destroying the TARDIS would cause the cracks and be the thing that let the Time Lords communicate their continued existence to this Universe, setting up the whole situation in the first place.
 * 2. Those Daleks remembered the Doctor, so the Pandorica thing happened before the fleet gathering at Trenzalore in Universal Standard Time.
 * 4. What do you mean it "doesn't explain why they need to shoot lightning from their hands"? They do. It's a natural ability of theirs. Why does this fact need a "why"? It just is. And the non-Kovarian Silents aren't intended to be soldiers, they're meant to be priests, so of course they're not going to do much more than standing around unless they need to fight.
 * 8. But the Time Lords interfered and changed time, presumably undoing the Trenzalore scenario seen in The Name of the Doctor, so if the thing the prophecy was talking about was altered, of course it won't hold perfectly true anymore. —BioniclesaurKing4t2 - "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically, . . . run." 20:05, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

DCT: You could just put the users name/ip and then a colon like I did there. If needs be you could put the time of the comment to make it clear which of the person's posts you are referring to. 87.102.91.126talk to me 14:14, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

BioniclesaurKing4t2:

1. Series 5 revealed that the destruction of the TARDIS on Amy's weddding day was an intentional attack on a weak point in the time field and not some random accident. The chances against it were too high to be otherwise.

2. The point is it suggest all these species are capable of being sensible. A quality they seem to lack here.

4. The "Silents" are revealed to be artificially created beings engineered to serve the church; they don't have "natural" abilities.

8. It still means that many questions are unresolved and is so a cheat.DCT ☎  13:32, January 2, 2014 (UTC)


 * 1. The Silence knew they were destroying the TARDIS, but they didn't realize that that event would cause the cracks in time, or at least not that it would set up the mess they were trying to avoid.
 * 2. Antagonistic species act as the narrative requires them to act to maintain their being antagonistic species.
 * 4. If Silents are artificially engineered, then Kovarian could have engineered her batch differently, and then those helping the Doctor defend Trenzalore could have been engineered based on Kovarians ideas. Also, they draw in electricity from around them before shooting it out, so their conducting abilities might be an exploitation of the materials of their synthetic forms.
 * 8. Then hopefully that's what next season's for. —BioniclesaurKing4t2 - "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically, . . . run." 18:26, January 2, 2014 (UTC)


 * 1.When the Doctor discovered the cracks in The Eleventh Hour his diagnosis was that they were the product of two parts of space and time that should never have touched "pressed together." That's pressed not pressing which is different.
 * In Flesh And Stone he repeats is diagnosis and speculates the cause as an explosion so big it cause every point in history to crack. How this relates to the forbidden contact or indeed how even a TARDIS explosion could do this is unexplained and unclear. The date of the explosion is also identified. These details about the explosion the cracks and the date are revisited throughout the series whenever it is felt the audience needs their memory jogging until, while River is flying the Tardis in The Pandorica opens the following events occur: a crack appears in the TARDIS console, an unidentified member of the Silence declares "Silence Will Fall" and the TARDIS explodes - in that order. The implication is that the crack causes the TARDIS explosion rather then the TARDIS explosion causing the crack. The TARDIS explosion then spreads the crack though time. There is also the suggestion that the crack is what lets the Silence enter to detonate the TARDIS. This is currently a theory, but the series has to resolve the point so naturally revisits it in The Big Bang.
 * The Big Bang doesn't actually contain anything new on the cause of the crack. It's main detail is to tell us that although the universe is erased Amy has basically had a blueprint of it all downloaded into her head while she slept. The Doctor says all Amy has to do is remember in order to use it. I suspect there's a bit more to it than that, Amy apparently brings back something she naturally can't remember. She presumably also "brings back" all the things we just watched. Obviously though the Silence got erased, they can't know that they failed when they get restored. So what's keeping them from a repeating cycle of trying to blow up the TARDIS? Well, nothing. Except the Doctor at the end of series 5 made something very clear:


 * Rory: You just saved the whole of space and time? Take the evening off. Maybe a bit of tomorrow.
 * The Doctor: Space and time isn't safe yet. The Tardis exploded for a reason. Something drew the Tardis to this particular date, and blew it up. Why? And why now?
 * (The phone starts ringing.)
 * The Doctor: The Silence, whatever it is, is still out there, and I have to....


 * Willful attack at a strategically selected weak point. Not an accident.


 * 4.Kovarian isn't actually in charge of the Kovarian faction, it's probably just a term used for identification. The use of language in The Wedding Of River Song makes this perfectly clear. Those "Silents just seem a cut above in every way, they just demonstrate so much more independance than these.


 * 8.Unfortunately I should now be excited about Series 8 and I'm really not, three years and then this? It just makes the whole arc feel banal.DCT ☎  16:58, January 3, 2014 (UTC)

113.216.126.216talk to me 04:31, February 1, 2014 (UTC)A Confused Fan, February 1st, 2014: If the Kovarian faction wanted to prevent another Time War in the name of peace and preventing bloodshed, why would they then kill and abduct babies and be generally as evil as any of the monsters who killed in the Time War???

Did they actually want the Papal Mainframe and Tasha Lem to show more teeth in the Trenzalore standoff? Were they aggressive and pro-military, and bored of the Papal Mainframe not taking a more 'shoot 'em up' attitude? That would explain their nastiness during 1969 and beyond.


 * That's a big part of the problem. To me, the Silents observed in The Time Of The Doctor seem to behave differently and possess a different mandate to the series six Silents. They appear to have next to nothing in common except what they look like and being slightly memory proof.DCT ☎  16:52, February 3, 2014 (UTC)


 * The Silents in The Time Of The Doctor were different from the series six Silents. That was explicitly stated in a conversation between the Doctor & Tasha Lem. However, it was very briefly stated & would be quite easy to miss, particularly with everything else that was going on. The series six Silents were renegades (schismatics might be a better description) & very definitely did have a conflicting objective. Since it was the series six faction that engineered Melody/River, it's highly likely that they'd earlier engineered themselves to modify their memory-proofing &c. Tasha Lem said that the original Silents (which we first saw in The Time Of The Doctor) had been created by genetic engineering, anyway, so the knowledge of that initial project -- including especially their genome & the engineering techniques used -- would have been available (even if the renegade Silents had to buy or steal it). --89.241.219.171talk to me 21:24, February 3, 2014 (UTC)

A Confused Fan: But what did the series 6 Silents actually want? Peace in the universe? If so, why kill innocents? They didn't act like people with the pure intentions of staving off another Time War. It's bad writing. Kovarian seemed to behave out of malice or revenge if anything. Again, it's bad writing not explained by the wave of a hand as was attempted in Time of the Doctor.


 * Indeed. It's not so much that the Silents of the Papal Mainframe are different, it's that they're unrecognizable different. All they do is blunder round the place trying to extract confessions. They seem to have no awareness that there is any other way they could live their lives. Now since they're revealed to be genetically engineered beings, they simply wouldn't be given any attributes that were extraneous to their purpose. All that is fine but there seems to be no path by which they could become the Silents from Series 6. Which suggests that they were engineered differently for a different purpose. Which means they can't speak to the questions that, that particular brand of Silents raise. The questions of the true purpose of those Silents and why the behaved as they did remain unanswered. As do may other questions this episode was supposed to answer.DCT ☎  17:30, February 4, 2014 (UTC)

I seem to recall them chasing Clara around shouting "Confess!" When the Doctor said they were just confessional priests, I thought he had to be joking. As mentioned above, rather than being perfect for the role, they are quite incompatible. First because if you can't remember them, you wouldn't be able to intentionally approach one to confess. Secondly, the purpose of confessing includes appreciation of forgiveness, which is incompatible with forgetting you confessed. It includes recognizing why what one did was wrong, so one does not repeat it, which is also incompatible with forgetting. It is not intended as a way to prevent one having the ability to repeat, as the hypnotic suggestion power would imply. Now it is possible that with other changes, over time, the view of the Church becomes less associated with forgiveness and more with manipulation. There have certainly been sects who sought to impose their interpretation of right & wrong through limiting freedom to act. But even if in a thousand years the priests are like that, it still makes no sense for The Doctor to tell Clara they are just perfect confessional priests, because the only way she has of understanding that is in terms of contemporary confessional priests. It would make more sense to give her an answer like he gave Amy about the Bishop & his platoon, that the church has changed to address new situations and these priests reflect that change. But then he would still need to explain their behavior towards her, and how that reflects the changes.

Since everyone at the Mainframe was supposed to be naked, it is possible that eyedrives were simply concealed by the holograms. But that would not do for The Doctor & Clara. Possibly at some point the Doctor was able to upgrade the Tardis psychic translation circuits to function like the eyedrive. But of course, he never mentions that. But since the Doctor seems to be well acquainted with the leader of the mainframe, it would not be surprising if any means they had for skipping the eyedrive would at some point have come into his possession.Phil Stone ☎  18:32, March 18, 2014 (UTC)

They weren't "chasing" Clara. Every time Clara saw them they were blundering about declaring "Confess" but Clara wasn't running from them, they weren't chasing her. It just seemed to be their default state and whenever Clara looked at them they did that when she looked away she forgot about them as you do with "Silents". It's hard to see the Doctor could have been joking, if he was we've been misinformed about the role of The Silents on the Mainframe and are given no information to amend that misunderstanding. So we ultimately learning nothing about the original role of The Silence, it's not very helpful. You're understanding of confession is (arguably) correct according to the Church on Earth understood by human religious believers. But this is The Church Of The Papal Mainframe, apart from appropriating a few terms they have no obvious connection to any institutions of Earth history. They think differently and have different, unexplained practices and probably have their own ideas about what confession entails. It's possible that the Silents of the mainframe are attempting to extract a very specific sort of confession and not the broad scope of guilt the priests of Earth would. And the Doctor never said they were perfect without giving an explanation to qualify the term. Now that might be a lie but it's not a joke. The Doctor seemed to be suggesting that by forgetting what you had confessed you could also forget the incident and associated guilt and go away absolved unhindered by any restraints your guilt may be causing you. It still sounds odd and the Silents may well have another function which their roles as priests is meant to hide, in which case the Doctor is trying to maintain that protection, but whatever else he was doing he wasn't joking and we are meant to take some sort of true information from what he said to Clara. But essentially these sort of questions are part of the reason I am unsatisfied with the resolution of the arc the story is supposed to provide. They have no obvious motive to extract confession from Clara who has no business being there, they seem to do it because it is in their nature to do it, it's what they are engineered to do, and they don't know any better. They appear to have no self-will and beings like this with no self-will cannot become the beings of series six who lead The Silence into trying to murder the Doctor.

Oh and Clara doesn't have any sort of eye-drive. We know this because she continues to forget every Silent she sees. On that note it's also possible the Doctor doesn't go into deep and complex detail of the matter as he knows full well Clara will forget all about them as soon as they leave their presence.DCT ☎  18:03, March 25, 2014 (UTC)