Howling:The Silence in 2011

Here's something that's been bugging me from The Impossible Astronaught/Day of the Moon. While the Silence were driven from Earth by humanity in 1969, there is a single Silence on a cliff overlooking the Doctor's death/funeral in 2011.

So what they heck is he doing there? He can't be there by accident, as Earth is an incredibly dangerious place for the Silence at that point in time and they wouldn't be just wandering around the desert. If I had to guess there are 2 likely answers:


 * 1) The Silence is on an offical mission and is there to ensure the Docotor's death goes off as planned.


 * 1) The Silence in question is a turncoat who was invited along with everyone else and simply got envelope 5 (which no one else knew existed). Falrinn 03:53, May 14, 2011 (UTC)

There are 2 likely answers. One is that in the original timeline the Silence were never driven away, but that was changed when the Doctor, Amy, and River travelled back in time to 1969. The obvious problem with that theory is that the future Doctor and Canton already knew what was going to happen. The more likely reason is that the Silence weren't actually all driven away from Earth. Since we will almost certainly be seeing the Silence again this season, it is likely that the Silence are still all over the planet in 2011.Icecreamdif 14:20, May 14, 2011 (UTC)

And the third likely answer is that the Silence' control room in the second episode is the same as the unit on Aickman Rd. last year. It is a Tardis-style machine, can travel in space and time, and the Silence in question used it to travel to 2011 and the Doctor's death.Boblipton 15:10, May 14, 2011 (UTC)

That's possible, although the TARDIS-style machine on Aickman Rd. was abandoned, and was being operated automatically by a hologram. In Day of the Moon, the Doctor implied that after he and River killed all the Silence in the TARDISish machine, the automatic hologram turned on and took the thing to Aickman Rd. Of course, it's possible that there were silence in The Lodger, and we just don't remember them.Icecreamdif 15:16, May 14, 2011 (UTC)

Another likelihood is that since the Silence had burrows all under the surface of the Earth, some of the Silence were simply not seen by humans, and therefore were not killed by them. --Revan\Talk 15:36, May 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * I have little doubt at least some of the Silence survived 1969, I just find it highly unlikely that particular one was there by chance. Earth is a highly dangerious place for the Silence after 1969, so they wouldn't go walking around on the surface for no reason. Falrinn 22:40, May 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the Silence make a deal that if the Doctor is killed, they will leave Earth alone. The Doctor persuades River to kill him in 2011, for which River gets put in the Stormcage. One of the Silence is there to witness the Doctor's death. 200.199.23.105 11:22, May 17, 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. The Silence are known to be able to blow up the TARDIS. I think the Silence made a deal to leave Earth alone if the Doctor sacrafices himself. Of course, he made a plan to change history and save himself by getting Amy and the gang involved. 93.93.222.212
 * I agree. The Silence are known to be able to blow up the TARDIS. I think the Silence made a deal to leave Earth alone if the Doctor sacrafices himself. Of course, he made a plan to change history and save himself by getting Amy and the gang involved. 93.93.222.212

It probably wasn't River who killed the Doctor. If it was River, there are probably a million better disguises that she could have been wearing than an astronaut suit. The astronaut suit was self-repairing in The Day of the Moon, so it probably "ate" somebody else. River was already in Stormcage at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut, which means that she already killed whoever she killed. If it was her in the astronaut suit, why would she have shot at herself, and seemed so shocked at the Doctor's death. Besides, the people at Stormcage hadn't heard of America, so how would they have arrested somebody for an event that happenned there thousands of years ago, especially since the astronaut escaped back into the water.Icecreamdif 21:12, May 17, 2011 (UTC)

Although, the doctor did say kill you for all eternity, which means we could be killing them right now.

The only reason amy didnt trie to kill it is because she never watched the moon landing, which contained the footage of the Silence.

You don't think that Amy, Rory, River, or the Doctor, who all saw the Silence before the end of the episode and didn't kill them on sight, had ever seen the moon landing in their entire lives. River may not have seen it, but we know the Doctor saw it in Blink and Amy and Rory almost definetly saw it at some point.Icecreamdif 20:35, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Here's my theorizing on the subject: time is in flux around the events of this season's plot arc and none of the events shown are set -- which is why the TARDIS keeps shifting between Amy being pregnant and not pregnant. Until the issue of the Doctor's interference with his own past are settled, none of these have any effect on the 'complicated space-time objects' that are the Doctor, River, Amy and Rory. Even when -- because I have confidence that this will all be sorted out -- this is all set, they're still going to retain their memories of the alternative timeline in which the Silence was not on the footage of the Moon Landing. And if you don't understand it, well, you're neither an eleven-dimensional being nor a particularly complicated space-time event.Boblipton 21:05, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Timey-wimey. Because Amy, Rory, the Doctor, and River all watched the moon landing before they interfered, they may have seen a different (Silence-free) version. They remember people who never existed and events that never happend, as time travelers. So it's reasonable that they'd only have seen a version of the moon landing with no Silence in it. 216.239.45.4 22:35, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

So if the moon-landing didn't have the footage of the Silence in it until the Doctor and friends interfered, why did Canton and the 1103 year old Doctor already remember the events of 1969 at the beginning of the episode?Icecreamdif 22:48, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Because they have lived through those events on their own personal timeline. Had Amy not been able to convince the Doctor to go to Space 1969, it wouldn't have happened and that alternative timeline would have been pinched off. It's a mess of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that doesn't make sense to you because your mind lacks the ability and training to think of more than three-- maybe five -- spatial dimensions and time as a linear sort of thing that everyone experiences the same way. I have a hard time explaining how Social Security is going to run out of money in ten years to my dog and he's a very bright dog. He is a sheepdog and has brilliantly kept me from being eaten from wolves, but the Federal budget estimates for 2020 are beyond him. He assumes that it's my job to deal with that and his to deal with wolves and it satisfies him.

It doesn't make much sense to me either, but I think the Doctor is probably smarter than I am at timey-wimey stuff. On the other hand, I think I'm probably better at money than he. So the dog takes care of the wolves, I take care of the money and the Doctor deals with timey-wimey stuff. Boblipton 23:16, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'll assume that the dog comparison applies to humans in general, and not to me personally. I understand that there are some timey-wimey concepts in Doctor Who that mere humans like ourselves are incapable of understanding, but I don't see how the timeline created in The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon can both have happenned and not have happenned at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut. Either Canton should have had no idea who Amy, River, Rory and the Doctor were, or they should have subliminally remembered seeing the Silence in the moon landing. Actually, it seems odd that none of them have ever seen the Silence before. Even if they did remain mostly in hiding after 1969, the Doctor's been to Earth hundreds of times from before 1969, so he should remember seeing the Silence other times whenever he sees him. We'll probably get more answers later in the season though.Icecreamdif 02:46, May 19, 2011 (UTC)

I happen to believe that paradoxes are failures of the language and that the answer is generally that things possess ding ach sich .... or, if you want to know who shaves the Spanish barber, follow him around or even go to the extreme case of asking him. Not quite possible with the Doctor, but we've seen examples of paradoxes before: the only reason that there isn't a hole in space the size of Belgium where there 5th & 10th Doctors' TARDISes collided is that the tenth doctor remembered watching the Tenth Doctor fixing the problem as the Fifth Doctor; likewise, I suspect that the reason River Song knows about the Blue Stabilizers is the Doctor told her about them after having learned about them from her.

None of this means that I understand the details, any more than understanding in general how radio waves travel will let me build a broadcasting station. However, as a general physical concept, let's assume that there are tipping points at which minor matters can cause great events... but until the sequence is completed, nothing is actually written in stone, so to speak; that would seem to mean that events simultaneously are and are not, like Schroedinger's cat.... which I happen to think is nonsense, since the answer is to open the box and look.

But then, I don't really understand timey-wimey stuff -- and I was spekaing of humans in general, Icecreamdif and myself in particular -- and I don't believe there are wolves threatening me. But my dog is convinced there are and I am unable to convince him. Possibly he knows something I don't. And maybe the Doctor does too. Boblipton 09:07, May 19, 2011 (UTC)

Time and *Relative Dimension* in Space. So in the Whoniverse at least, time is two dimensional. There is forwards and backwards (future and past), but also a Left and a Right in time. Most of us are only aware of the normal time dimension, but the Doctor and co. are aware of time as a two-dimensional plane. Actually Stephen Hawking has already grasped this, he may be the first of the Timelords (a kind of real life anti-Davros) : http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=19484 200.199.23.105 11:10, May 19, 2011 (UTC)

In relation to this, I have just been rewatching THE DOCTOR'S WIFE and notice that the Doctor doesn't understand how the TARDIS can archive something that hasn't happened yet.... but she can. Apparently you need to be able to intuitively think in more than four dimensions to understand this sort of stuff, while eleven is sufficient. Boblipton 20:08, May 23, 2011 (UTC)