Silence (Doctor Who)
The Silence are an alien race that feature in Doctor Who.
Contents |
History
The Silence were a humanoid race of grey-skinned alien beings. Their origins were traced to the Papal Mainframe that reformed itself into the Church of the Silence. It was responsible for genetically engineering a race of Confessional Priests that were memory proof. As such, when anyone approached the priests to confess their sins the moment they looked away they forgot the encounter. It was these Confessional Priests that were the race of beings known as the Silence. The Silence was founded by Tasha Lem, Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe, when she changed the core tenets of the Papal Mainframe to dedicate it to ensuring that 'silence would fall' in response to the First Question, sent by the Time Lords to find the correct universe into which they could return. It was believed that the Time War would begin anew if the Time Lords returned to the universe, and so the Church of the Silence was created to prevent the Doctor from answering the First Question and telling the Time Lords that it was safe for them to return. While the main body of the Silence attempted to prevent the Doctor from speaking his name at the Siege of Trenzalore, the Kovarian Chapter broke away to try to stop the Doctor through time travel. (Episode: The Time of the Doctor)
The Silence allied with Madame Kovarian, the Church and the Order of the Headless. They were behind the Battle of Demon's Run and the kidnapping and brainwashing of the infant River Song, then known as Melody Pond. (Episode: A Good Man Goes to War) She later made several attempts on the Eleventh Doctor's life. Ultimately, she kissed him with poisoned lipstick. She later broke free of her conditioning and revived him using the remainder of her regenerative energy to save his life. (Episode: Let's Kill Hitler)
It was implied they were responsible for the Moon landing because they needed a special spacesuit for Melody Pond for the day when she would kill the Doctor. The Silence's occupation of Earth was broken when the Doctor issued a post-hypnotic command via the Apollo 11 footage to the entire human race. The footage included a recording that Canton Delaware had made of a Silent saying that humans should kill the Silents on sight. (Episode: Day of the Moon)
Overview
In appearance, the Silence were tall humanoids with bulbous heads and mouthless, bony faces. (Episode: The Impossible Astronaut)
They were seemingly impervious to some forms of scanning technology as a bio-scanner used by River Song was unable to detect them in underground tunnels. (Episode: The Impossible Astronaut)
Due to being memory proof, even allies of the Silence suffered from forgetting about the creatures the moments they turned away. As such, those that joined the Silence made use of special eye drives that were worn over the eye. These artificially recorded information and fed it directly to the brain allowing the user to remember an encounter with the Silence. (Episode: The Wedding of River Song)
Notes
- The Silence were created by Producer Steven Moffat who drew inspiration from Edvard Munch's 1893 expressionist painting The Scream as well as the Men in Black.
In other media
Video games
- In The Eternity Clock, the Silence appeared as antagonists in the video game. In 1561, they were shown to be experimenting with stasis field technology and harnessing temporal energy for their operations. They later used a piece of the Eternity Clock to change fixed points in time but were thwarted by the Doctor.
- In Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, a Silence could briefly appear in the story of The Gunpower Plot.
Other
- In Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, a Silent appeared as an antagonist in the short-story "Scream" with this renegade member of the race dressed in white and being referred to as the Scream.
Appearances
- Doctor Who:
External Links
This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.
