Silence (Doctor Who)

The Silence is a fictional religious order or movement in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A specific group within this order is played primarily by Marnix Van Den Broeke with a race of aliens who resemble the central figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Executive producer Steven Moffat created the Silence, intending them to be "scarier" than past villains in Doctor Who. Though the phrase "Silence will fall" recurred throughout the 2010 series of Doctor Who, the Silence was not seen until the 2011 series' opener "The Impossible Astronaut" with their name being revealed in the following episode, "Day of the Moon".

In creating the Silence shown in "The Impossible Astronaut", Moffat drew inspiration from Edvard Munch's famous 1893 expressionist painting The Scream as well as the Men in Black, figures from popular urban mythology. The Silence continues Moffat's trend of using simple psychological conceits to make his monsters more frightening. In this case of the Silence, their existence is a secret because anyone who sees them immediately forgets about them after looking away, but retains suggestions made to them by the Silence. This allows the species to have a pervasive influence across human history while being difficult to locate or resist.

Creation
Producer Steven Moffat created the Silence, suggesting their level of scariness would compete with other Doctor Who adversaries from previous episodes. Actor Matt Smith, who portrays the Eleventh Doctor, called these aliens "the scariest monsters in the Show's history". And Karen Gillan, who portrays companion character Amy Pond, commented that the Silence could "actually rival the Weeping Angels in terms of scariness".

The Silence shown in "The Impossible Astronaut" are depicted as tall humanoids with bulbous heads and mouthless, bony faces, partly inspired by Edvard Munch's The Scream. Their eyes are sunken within their sockets and the skin of their cheeks stretches to the point of their narrow chins. Their large, shriveled hands resemble a human hand except where the ring and middle fingers would be is a large flipper-like finger. They speak in low, guttural voices though they have no apparent mouths. Aliens affiliated with The Silence seen to date in the series have been dressed in black business suits with an unusual texture. According to Steven Moffat, their resemblance to Munch's The Scream is not coincidental: although humans are not consciously aware of their existence, a "subconscious awareness" of the Silence manifests in such works. They are also partly inspired by mythological figures known as "men in black" that became popular amongst UFO conspiracy theorists during the 1950s and 60s.

Reviewers have noted that, in creating the Silence seen in "The Impossible Astronaut", Moffat again uses a psychological "gimmick". The Silence are only perceived while being viewed; they are instantly forgotten once a viewer looks away. To keep track of their encounters with the Silence, Doctor Who's characters mark tallies on their bodies or use audio-recorder devices embedded in their hands to let them know if they have seen the Silence. These Silence also use an energy discharge from their hands to displace someone, leaving behind only debris. While absorbing and discharging this energy, a depression appears where one would expect a mouth to be. The Doctor believed they had humanity go to the moon simply to create a spacesuit for their ends.

Appearances
The unexplained ominous phrase "Silence will fall" recurs throughout the fifth series of Doctor Who, in 2010. The plot thread is left open in the series finale, "The Big Bang", where the force responsible for the TARDIS' destruction is left unidentified. The Silence are introduced, and are thought to be a species rather than an event, in the two-part premiere for the show's sixth series, airing in 2011, however, The Silence is later revealed to be a religious movement. In "The Impossible Astronaut", a Silent observes the Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy (Karen Gillan), Rory (Arthur Darvill), and River (Alex Kingston) in Utah. At the start of "Day of the Moon", the Doctor's companions spend several months in America researching the Silence, making marks on their skin whenever they see one of the aliens. They discover the Silents' memory-alteration mechanism, and their power to hypnotically manipulate human beings. By recording a Silent saying, "you should kill us all on sight," on a videophone&mdash;which the Doctor broadcasts during the Apollo 11 moonlanding&mdash;Earth's populace is conditioned to kill Silents, though they will not remember doing so. While captive, a Silent tells Amy that she will "bring the Silence." The Doctor, Amy and Rory escape to the TARDIS while River Song kills the Silents holding Amy hostage. In "Let's Kill Hitler", it is revealed that Amy and Rory's daughter, Melody Pond, later known as River Song, was kidnapped and brainwashed to become an assassin for The Silence. The Silence operate on the belief that if "the oldest question in the universe" is asked, silence will fall across the universe.

Analysis
The narrative device introduced by the Silence—that they are forgotten as soon as one looks away—provides Moffat with further narrative potential for retroactive continuity. MaryAnn Johanson comments on the scene in which Amy, in the space of a few seconds to the viewer, acquires dozens of tallies indicating instances of spotting Silents: "That could be happening throughout this story... indeed, through the entire history of Doctor Who. Moffat has just created a pretty much unassailable narratively sound reason for inserting retcons anywhere throughout the half-century history of the show."

Reception
The Guardian's Dan Martin responded favourably to the Silence. Though he described them as "a standard Moffat psychological trick", he commended it as the "most refined to date" and praised an introductory scene that was reminiscent of the unsettling directorial work of David Lynch. Alan Sepinwall (HitFix.com) wrote that though the Silence's central gimmick felt similar to previous ones, Moffat "continues to use those same tricks in such clever combinations, and with such technical flair, that I'm not tired of most of them yet."

The A.V. Club's Keith Phipps wrote favourably of Moffat's handling of the species in "Day of the Moon". In particular, the introduction of a hand audio-recorder conceit as particularly clever, as it allowed for developments in Rory's paranoia concerning Amy's feelings for the Doctor, although Phipps reflected that he was confused by the montage that connected the Silence to other mentions of "silence" in previous episodes.

Following concerns being raised about whether the Silence had made Doctor Who too scary for children, Moffat responded by saying, "I emphatically think that's not the case," adding, "children like to be scared&mdash;like on a ghost train or a rollercoaster."

Some reviewers noted favourable comparisons with monsters from American fantasy series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "the Gentlemen" from its critically acclaimed fourth series episode "Hush" (1999). Mike Moody for AOL TV wrote of the Silence, "They're pretty damn scary, and they remind me of The Gentleman from Buffy. (Anything that recalls Buffy is a plus for me.)" A Television Without Pity reviewer described the Silence as monsters which "look essentially identical to the Gentlemen from Buffy.