Howling:Questions from Season Five

As much as I have liked the recent story arcs, I am still a little confused about a handful of points. I guess the writers will expand on them as further seasons allow, but I wanted to make sure I was not missing something.

Who is the “silence will fall” voice and what is there relationship to the The Silence? – At the time I thought this to be a threat, and the tone of the voice fitted that (the threat being the silence at the end of the universe). But knowing the silence must fall is a prophecy; it does not make sense any more.

Who visited Amy’s house the night before her wedding? Was it the speaker of “silence will fall”, or was it the Silence? Why were they there? To carry out the attack on the Tardis, or to check on Melody Pond (would she be there in this version of reality?)

Whilst they were at it, why didn’t they take revenge on River for her failure to kill the doctor? They had her in the Tardis and could have killed her.

The Silence appear to be rooted in this universe, so the plan to destroy it with the cracks and to unite the doctors enemies to stop it seems high risk (whether it was the Silence, or their mysterious ally.)

I am also confused with the clerics. In Crash of the Byzantium they seem to want the help of the doctor and consider him an ally. Yet earlier in the story line for them, they are fighting the Doctor in A Good Man Goes to War.

[Unsigned to this point]

"Who visited Amy’s house the night before her wedding? " The burn patterns seen by River were about the right size and shape for Daleks but it's never been definitively revealed what made them.

"why didn’t they take revenge on River...?" This one, at least, has a reasonable answer. River's imprisonment seems to be part of a scheme to conceal the fact that the Doctor wasn't killed. It may be that revenge wasn't sought because the villains didn't know there was something to take revenge for. Also, River was in the TARDIS when whoever blew it up did so but the TARDIS protected her by putting her into a time loop. (The Doctor explained that in The Big Bang.) If it hadn't been for that protection, the explosion would have killed her. Those who caused the explosion may not have known how well the TARDIS could protect her occupants and would, therefore, have assumed that River would die.

"The Silence appear to be rooted in this universe..." The Alliance obviously didn't know what they were doing. They thought the Doctor was going to destroy the universe and imprisoned him in the Pandorica to prevent that. The result was that he was unable to prevent the TARDIS explosion, so the action of the Alliance led to the very thing it was intended to prevent. In Let's Kill Hitler, it seemed to be implied that the Silence was trying to kill the Doctor to stop him answering the question that would cause silence to fall. Speculation: The apparent illogic of what's been going on may be the result of the Silence having got hold of the wrong end of the stick (again). They're convinced that the Doctor is the source of the danger when, in fact, the danger is caused by their attempts to get rid of him. So far, I can only speculate about this because we still don't have enough facts -- Series 6 didn't answer all the outstanding questions.

"I am also confused with the clerics." You're not alone. The best guess I can make is that the clerics in A Good Man Goes to War were (unknown to themselves) under the control of the Silence, while those in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone (Crash of the Byzantium) were not. One thing I noticed when watching The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone was that Octavian implied that some people did not regard River's (supposed) victim as a hero, although Octavian himself did: "a hero to many" but not to everyone. In A Good Man Goes to War, it was obvious that several people among those gathered to fight the Doctor admired him, meaning that opinion within the Church was divided.

"Who is the “silence will fall” voice and what is there relationship to the The Silence?" I've left this to last because it seems the most important question. It's also still unanswered. The voice (heard in the TARDIS just before the explosion) definitely wasn't the voice of the Silence aliens we met in Series 6. Maybe it's their real leader. Maybe it's their real enemy. Maybe it's both and they're being manipulated into bringing about the outcome they're trying to avoid. At the moment, the only firm conclusion I can come to is: Insufficient data. --89.240.242.138 23:14, October 29, 2011 (UTC)

A good set of answers and speculations, 89. I would add that perhaps the Church isn't as monolithic as some seem to think. Octavian calls the Doctor "A hero to many" and believes River has killed the Doctor..... and apparently thinks maybe he knows before his death and maybe he doesn't.... and since he's here he hasn't died yet, so since he'll survive, so will we. I expect he's befuddled by the issues of time travel and the semi-mythical status of the Doctor. We are not dealing with just the facts -- as portrayed on the tv show and so forth, which proceeds in a fairly linear progression from the Doctor's viewpoint, after all. After Octavian's death in Flesh and Stone I have been expecting to see him twenty years earlier, a raw Second Verger, who winds up telling the Doctor "I think you've seen me at my worst." Maybe in the Gamma Forests. Boblipton talk to me 01:28, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that destroying the TARDIS was a first attempt at killing the Doctor by the Silence. They wanted to stop him from answering the Question (which would lead to nothing but silence) and in doing so, created a huge explosion that the Doctor would be blamed for, and thus the Alliance would imprison him. The total event collapse would still occur, so the Alliance would have failed, but the Doctor wouldn't be able to visit Trenzalore and answer the Question because he'd be trapped inside the Pandorica. The Doctor escaped and stopped the total event collapse, so the Silence tried again, this time by killing him, and that's where Amy and Demons Run and River and the Space Race come in. The bit I don't get is that the Silence seem to be trying to kill the Doctor to prevent the untold horrors that would happen when he answered the Question. In order to stop 'silence' (presumably some sort of apocalypse) the Silence attempt to destroy the universe which seems a tad bit hypocritical. I'm sure it will be discovered eventually, I just think the Doctor should have said something like "River was the Silence's second attempt to stop me. The first must have been the Pandorica, creating a total event collapse and blaming it on me so the people of the universe would unite and imprison me." And then say that, I don't know, the Silence live in a bubble universe that wouldn't have been effected by the TARDIS apocalypse but would've been effected by the Question apocalypse. The preceding comment was made by Bigredrabbit (talk to me) 10:43, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

I also think the Spacesuit thing's a bit weird. So the Silence spent 40000 years manipulating humankind into creating a spacesuit, which they needed to trap River. Two questions spring to mind:

1) Why does it have to be a spacesuit, why can't it just be some other suit.

2)If they know how to build it, why not just do that rather than wasting an incredibly long amount of time getting someone else to do it.

Maybe the Silence just like long and elaborate schemes that make no sense, or maybe Steven Moffat has a trick up his sleeve. I hope for the latter but fear for the former. Something tells me there might not be any further mention of the TARDIS exploding or spacesuits... The preceding comment was made by Bigredrabbit (talk to me) 10:43, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

They're neurotic. Boblipton talk to me 11:53, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the silence falling that comes from the question being answered is somehow even worse than the total event collapse. As for the space suit, that's not even as over complicated as their plan seems ot be. If they need someone to just shoot the Doctor a couple of times, then why did it have to be a Time Lord? Couldn't they have picked any random person off the street, stuck them in a space suit, and had them shoot the Doctor a few times. HOpefully, there will be some kind of answer in the next season.Icecreamdif talk to me 20:16, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Boblipton: Of course they're neurotic. You'd be neurotic, too, if everyone forgot you the moment they looked away!

Seriously, though:

It does seem pretty unlikely that the Silence would devote 40, 000 years (probably longer since our ancestors acquired fire) to developing a spacesuit. Given the age of some of the races in the DW universe, they could have got a spacesuit 40, 000 years ago, if they'd wanted one then. My take on this isn't that they started manipulating humanity in order to get a spacesuit but that they were manipulating humanity, anyway, to expand their unwitting labour force, then decided to have the spacesuit made on Earth (where they were already established) because that fitted their plans. Even if they didn't know about the "fixed point in time", the Doctor visits Earth more frequently than any other planet, so it's the obvious place to lay a trap for him. He associates with humans more than with any other species, so using humans as their catspaws is also obvious. If the Silence were established on Earth, anyway, they'd only need to pick a time when humanity was within striking distance of being able to make a spacesuit.

Why a spacesuit? Basically, they wanted some kind of life-support suit. A diving suit would serve that function but a diving suit isn't bulletproof and a spacesuit (visor excepted) is. NASA's suits are covered in kevlar to protect against micrometeoroids, which have about the same kinetic energy as rifle bullets, concentrated in a far smaller impact area. Someone in a spacesuit is going to be very difficult to stop at short notice. A person in a diving suit emerging from a body of water might be unexpected but wouldn't have anywhere near the same surprise factor as a person in a spacesuit emerging from a body of water. Instead of trying to do something about it immediately, any witnesses could be expected to waste vital time wondering, "What the hell is going on?"

Having allowed for all that, though, there's still plenty that doesn't seem to make sense and the various schemes do seem severely overelaborate. As Icecreamdif says, if all they needed was for someone to shoot the Doctor, they could have found plenty of willing hitmen who'd have done it for a little money -- and probably several who'd have done it for free. I, too, hope SM has a trick up his sleeve that will eventually make sense of why the Silence have gone about things the way they have, rather than Keep(ing) It Simple, Stupid! --2.101.53.95 20:47, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

"Maybe the silence falling that comes from the question being answered is somehow even worse than the total event collapse." — Icecreamdif {C}This is what I thought too, however I also considered that perhaps the Silence simply considers silence falling to be worse than the destruction of the universe, while we might consider the destruction of the universe worse, basically a case of Blue and Orange Morality. Basically they believe anything is better than the question being answered, remember they also kept trying to kill the Doctor in the collapsed!timeline in Wedding of River Song even though that would leave the Doctor dead but the timeline still collapsed.

As for the marks outside of Amy's house the night before her wedding, while it wasn't confirmed so-to-speak (otherwise it wouldn't be brought up) but I'm fairly sure it was supposed to be one of the members of the Alliance there to get the physic imprint off her house to create the Autons (perhaps even a probe from the Nestene itself).

{C}As for the spacesuit, basically it's a stable timeloop, remember they already know that River in the spacesuit "kills" the Doctor there "before" the Doctor had actually went there, so they actually got their plan from knowledge of the fixed point and thus went through the effort to create the fixed point because they had to, in order to fulfill the fixed point. The Light6 talk to me 04:28, November 2, 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly. Remember, the Doctor's supposed death wasn't a natural fixed point in time like Pompeii or Bowie Base One. Lake Silencio on April 22 2011 at 5:02 PM was already a still point in time (whatever the hell that means) which made it possible for the Silence to deliberately turn it into a fixed point. That means that before they created the fixed point it wasn't a fixed point and didn't necessarily have to be fulfilled. Besides, if they couldn't even tell the difference between the Doctor and the Teselecta, how would they have known that it was River in the space suit. I guess they piicked the location because it was a still point, and then decided that as long as they were on the beach it would be awesome to have an assassin come out from the water in a space suit. Of course, we still don't know why young Melody had to be in the space suit, or why she regenerated.Icecreamdif talk to me 21:50, November 2, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well remember that at one point they would have located the "still point" and then engineered into a fixed point, once it was a fixed point what would of their past selves seen once they looked at what was previously a still point but was now a fixed point? Basically by creating the fixed point that altered the past changing it so that their previous actions were the result of a time loop while their "present selves" remembered creating the fixed point out of the still point. Also while I still don't understand why they needed River in the spacesuit (apart from time loops) I would say young Melody having spent her whole life on Earth in the suit had been protected from Earth's pathogens and had no immunity and simply caught something that would be harmless to you and I but was fatal to her. The Light6 talk to me 00:21, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * The Light6, I think I understand what you said, but I've been doing some fine-point editing, so let me see if I can rephrase it a little more clearly: the Silence engineered a fixed point in time and then had one of their number witness it (the Silent that Amy saw). To make sure it happened, they engaged in a bootstrap paradox to make sure all the details were correct: the spacesuit, River inside, etc. Is that about it? If so, I like it.Boblipton talk to me 00:55, November 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's basically it. The Light6 talk to me 03:08, November 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * Icecreamdif, "a still point in time (whatever the hell that means)": The most obvious meaning is that nothing much happens there -- at least, nothing that's either the result of events elsewhere or the cause of events elsewhere (elsewhere in space or in time), so that a major event could be created there without running foul of unpredictable repercussions. That, at any rate, is my interpretation of the term (subject to any later elucidation in the show itself).


 * The Light6/Boblipton: The Silence involving themselves in a bootstrap paradox is the best explanation I've so far seen for the complicated way they went about it. If so, it had the effect that making things complicated so often does: it went wrong. They created a fixed point, all right, but not quite the one they intended to create. Instead of the fixed point being the Doctor being killed, it was the Doctor (falsely) appearing to be killed. The Silence seem to have made two major mistakes: 1. Failing to Keep It Simple, Stupid, and 2. Taking on a Time Lord when they didn't really understand how time works. Speculation on my part: It may be that the nature of the fixed point was such that it didn't matter too much what really happened, as long as what appeared to happen was the same. It might not have made any real difference if the Doctor had found some other way of faking his death and the "cremation" afterwards -- a way that didn't involve the Teselecta -- as long as he found some way of faking it.


 * The Light6, "young Melody .... had no immunity ..." etc.: From what little we saw of events at Demon's Run before the rescue by Rory, the Doctor and allies, it seems quite possible that baby Melody had been switched for a ganger very early on, perhaps immediately after birth. If so, she might also have been deprived of the immune system "starter" provided by breast feeding. Colostrum (also known as foremilk) is loaded with immune factors. Missing out on that isn't going to be disastrous for a baby who's otherwise brought up normally (i.e., with plenty of environmental stimuli for her immune system) but if Melody was also kept in a germ-free environment afterwards, that would be liable to put her immune system at a disadvantage. --89.240.245.168 03:20, November 3, 2011 (UTC)


 * meh...the show stopped making sense a long time ago since Moffatt took over. Rewriting time means a doctrine established in all previous Doctor Who seasons is now nothing, all those precautionary and mind boggling time loops are now meaningless. The Doctor not only lies now, he lies alot, and so does every single character on screen. You can't trust what you see, what you hear, what you believe and what you deduct. Whatever happened, there's a possibility that it will be undone. It's coolness over logic now... Man I miss Classic Who--222.166.181.54 15:20, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

Well, classic Who didn't have to deal with thiss kind of thing much because, for the most part they didn't do story arcs. Besides, I always find it kind of weird when people compare the new series to the classic series,. I mean, the show probably changed more from An Unearthly Child to Survival then from Survival to Rose. As for rewriting time being a Moffat idea-have you ever seen Genesis of the Daleks? Anyway, this is getting slightly off topic. 89, your explanation for a still point probably makeks about as muich senses as any, but as even in your exxplanation the Sileence had to created the still point in some timeline somewhere before the supposed time llop started, it still doesn't explain why the plan had to be so complicated, or why they need a Time Lord in the space suit. Icecreamdif talk to me 19:58, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

Talking out of my a**, let's look at it this way: a fixed point in time has to be stable within the web of time, such as it is in the post- Time Lord universe. Given that the Doctor turns up everywhere twice eventually, you, the Silent in charge, identify the conditions that can be adjusted to what I can only call an equilibrium state, indentify Lake Silencio on the afternoon of 22 April 2011 and go take a look and see what you can do to lure the s.o.b. there at the right time. Well, that's good, a lake. You don't want to give the Doctor a chance to figure things out or talk his way out, so you can hide the deadly assassin there until the fatal death takes place. While you're standing there thinking, you see the Doctor and his buddies show up, picnic, River in the space suit come out of the Lake, and so forth. It happens.It's the frigging fixed point in time that involves the Doctor's death before he can tell anyone doctor who! Now it's up to you to make sure it does happen that way and, not being quite sure which, if any details are important -- something even Time Lords have been shown to be fuzzy about, given Vesuvius and Adelaide Brooke -- you set up every detail to replicate just what you've seen. I'm sure the Silents would have been equally happy with, say a meteor strike, but their motive is to make sure that the fixed point in time occurs just as they've seen it so it remains a fixed point. If they'd seen a brass band and a fireworks display, they would have arranged for those too. But they didn't, so they didn't. That's the reason these are bootstrap paradoxes: the effect derives from the cause, which derives from the effect. It happens that way because it happens that way, ding ach sich gone mad. [Unsigned but presumed to be Boblipton 20:59, November 3, 2011]

Icecreamdif, "it still doesn't explain why the plan had to be so complicated, or why they need a Time Lord in the space suit": The explanation immediately above (which I think is by Boblipton) that the Silence couldn't tell which details were important does seem reasonable, as far as the complexity is concerned. It may not be that they needed a Time Lord (or, rather, a human with some Time Lord abilities) in the suit. It may be more of the same bootstrapping -- they found out that River Song/Melody Pond was the presumed assassin and decided they had to stick with that. When they found out (either by their research before they started or after they kidnapped the pregnany Amy) that River has Time Lord DNA, they'd be highly likely to conclude that that was somehow important, even if it really wasn't -- and we don't know whether it was or not. Additionally, the main servant they were using was Kovarian. Everything we've learned about her indicates she's a genuine sadist. It also indicates that she'd not really believe in the possibility of her own failure. Given the choice between a simple, quick method of getting rid of an enemy and a much more complicated and chancy method that inflicted suffering on several friends of that enemy, she'd go for the suffering. A sane person would see that that reduced the chances of success. Kovarian would not; she'd expect the entire universe to follow the script she'd written inside her head. To Kovarian, the idea of using as the assassin someone who loved the Doctor and was being forced to act against her deepest inclinations would be well-nigh irresistible. --89.241.72.134 23:38, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

My apologies for neglecting to sign. Yes, the section that begins "Talking out of my a**" is me. Accept no substitute rectums. Boblipton talk to me 23:46, November 3, 2011 (UTC)

I think one thing many of you are forgetting about ontological/bootstrap paradoxes/time loops is that the Silence played no part in it's complexity (assuming this is the case), a time loop can be very simple or needlessly complex and all without any choice of the participants in the time loop as to it's complexity because it was already at a set complexity. In simpler terms, why didn't they create a simple scenario? Because the scenario was already complex before they even started. It's a paradox, they tend to do these things (also I'll probably just add that if you really want to be confused by paradox complexity read Homestuck). The Light6 talk to me 05:21, November 4, 2011 (UTC)

Did any episode actually say that this was a timeloop? Either way, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that it is a time loop. In that case, we can probably assume that the Silence who Amy saw on the beach winessed the Doctor's death and reported all the details back to Madame Kovarian and the other Silence. They would then know that somebody in a space suit kills something that lllooks like the Doctor. We already know that they were mistaken about "who" was killed, so how would they have any clue who was in the space suit. Why wouldn't they just put Kovarian, a Silence, a cleric, or some random person who they kidnapped, into the space suit, and let them kill the Doctor. This still leaves no reason for the ridiculously complicated plan to create River, and success is much more likely if they use someone who is not in love with the Doctor. Also, they must remember a time when tthe Doctor's death was not a fixed point, because if it was always a fixed point then no timeline could exit where the Doctor urvives to go to Trenzalore and reveal his name. Icecreamdif talk to me 19:31, November 4, 2011 (UTC)

Because they saw it was River. Boblipton talk to me 19:38, November 4, 2011 (UTC)

I think Boblipton has to be right that they somehow knew it was River, either because they actually did see her in the suit or because they found out from the kind of historical record the crew of the Teselecta was using. We do know, after all, that the Silence must have access to time travel; Melody turning up in the 1960s proves that.

I'm not sure I'd agree with The Light6 that "the Silence played no part in its complexity" but the part they played might only have been to go along with it for the reason given above: not being able to tell what was and what wasn't important. In any case, much of the complexity appears to have no necessary connection to the events of the fixed point itself. Why was Melody in the 1960s at all? Being in Leadworth in the 1990s can, at least, be explained by the need to ensure Amy and Rory got together -- but why was she in the US in the 1960s? --78.146.179.32 20:35, November 4, 2011 (UTC)