Howling:Moffat screwed up Silents

Moffat's introduction of the Silents (alien race) created the following troubling conflicts or unlikely scenarios: The Doctor has effectively caused a massive civil war on Earth for a reason that makes very little sense as there are plenty of parasite species everywhere. Moreover, this doesn't even account for minority cases like the blinds (who wouldn't see a sight of them but never made clear if they are also affected by Silents) or people with physical disabilities (would a guy with no limbs suddenly jump out from his wheel chair and start biting Silents, acting like some mad dog to a person viewing from another angle?). The repercussions are too great yet Moffat seem to downplay it too much that it hardly makes sense. Did Moffat screw this up bad? --222.166.181.177 14:10, November 10, 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Both Amy and Rory have never watched the moon landing? Aged Canton's presence when Amy and Rory first met him clearly indicates that Amy and Rory are on a timeline in which the footage has been tempered, yet Amy didn't went berserk and killed Silents.
 * 2) Why kill the Silents? There are many more parasitic species on Earth ranging from insects to bacteria, and you may even consider house cats parasitic, unless the Doctor has oddly suddenly became a racist, the Silents massacre is completely out of character.
 * 3) Silents can shoot lightning and humans can't, so unless we're in America, where most people are armed, whenever people see Silents and go berserk, the Silent(s) will either run or fry the humans into ashes. A lot more people should die around the world because of this and with (2) in mind, the Doctor has either became extremely stupid or, for some odd reason, decided to risk human to eraticate a specific parasite.
 * 4) Timecode. What happened to timecode in the videos? When all recording and copies of the landing has timecode error and the frames don't add up, isn't it obvious?
 * 5) When a person tries to kill a Silent, wouldn't the people around him who didn't see the Silent think the person went mad? Especially considering that the person will have amnesia afterward.
 * 6) Silents in countries with no television transmission at that time or the next few years afterward would have prevented the import of television or recordings. Plenty of countries except the States and the UK wouldn't have television transmissions or common playback devices at that time period. Many countries in Africa would have declared war on other parts of the world under the Silents' influence in an attempt to exterminate the hypnotized humans with Silent killing tendency.
 * 7) The poor who couldn't afford television would rebel against the rich and the government for the same reason in (6). Earth's humans would end up with a massive scale war divided by people hypnotized by the video and those who didn't until one party is all killed or the Silents effectively no longer on Earth.
 * 8) Bullets should have been flying everywhere in the states the moment the footage was shown, people would have been scared by this and a lot of innocent people would have been killed by accidents or the Silents.

Parts of the Silence rebellion are a bit unlikely, but all of your points can be explained. Blind people could still hear the Silence, but wouldn't kill them because they couldn't see them. People in wheel chairs would shoot the Silence if they had a gun or stab them or something if they are close enough, but they are only going to kill them in ways that they are capable of doing so. If a handicapped person is incapable of killing a Silence, they will not try.Icecreamdif talk to me 21:02, November 10, 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) The few times that Amy and Rory saw the Silence, they had very little opportunity to attack before they forgot about them again. In the scene in the bathroom, Amy may have felt some desire to kill the Silence, but she was able to exercise self control having encountered aliens before, and knew that taking a photo and gathering intel on the Silence would help lead to their destruction.
 * 2) This is just speculation, but maybe the Doctor and friends decided to kill the Silence because they've seen the moon landing footage before. The Doctor saw it a few times when he was stranded in the 60s with Martha (and he'd probably seen it before anyway), so he subconsciously wanted to kill the Silence causing him to manipulate the Silence into creating the message in the first place. Even so, the Silence are a bit more manipulative than your average parasite. Humans can't even remember seeing them, and they are controlling every aspect of humanity, effectively turning all humans into slaves. We all know that the Doctor isn't a huge fan of slavery, and likely felt that humans were better off without the Silence controlling them.
 * 3) First of all, I live in America and I don't know anyone who carries a gun around with them, but you still have a point. Before the moon landing, the Silence only killed people who were either a threat to them, or who were bugging them while they were using the bathroom. There were few enough mysterious deaths that nobody noticed. The Silence don't want humanity to realise that there are countless mysterious deaths, and there lightning attack is pretty slow and inneffective. The Doctor and River were able to destroy a whole rooom full of Silence and noone was hit by the lightning. The Doctor didn't even have a real weapon. They may have killed a few, but they would have been outnumbered and died before they could do much damage.
 * 4) This one's really a minor error. The timecode probably includes the bit with the Silence, and people just assume that nothing particularly interesting happenned in those couple of seconds.
 * 5) If you were able to tell that somebody was beating a Silent to death, you would have to see the Silence. Otherwise it would look like they just walked across the room for no reason. The only ones who would look crazy would be the ones with the guns and, as you said, most people don't carry guns around with them.
 * 6) Many people without televisions wouldn't have tried to kill the Silence. Still, many people would have seen it on other's televisions, or listened to it on the radio. Also, don't forget about all those Magpie TVs that are floating around. Presumably the people who would have been involved with importing the TVs were conditioned to kill the Silence anyway. The Silence probably didn't consider it worth it to drive the whole planet into war. There real purpose on Earth was just to hide Melody for a while, so they probably decided it would be more efficient to lie low for a while than to cause a huge war.
 * 7) Same as (6). It just wouldn't be worth it for the Silence.
 * 8) Guns are really only popular in the crazy redneck areas and the South in America. People all over the country do own guns, but at most there would have been a few isolated incidents with people being wrongly accused of murder. Still, even in places like Texas, bullets wouldn't be flying everywhere. People would be shooting the Silence. That means that people are only shooting when they see a Silence, and for the most part the bullets would hit the Silence and people would forget about it.