Howling:Questions from Season Five

The Howling → Questions from Season Five

There be spoilers about un-released stories here.
Run back to the forums if you're scared.

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)