Almost a decade since Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor began, Raphael takes a look at one of the more divisive and confusing areas of his era in Doctor Who: the Silence arc.
I was recently rewatching the adventures of my favourite bow tie wearing man, the Eleventh Doctor. As I was doing so, a sort of epiphany hit my mind. With hindsight and the ability to stream and/or binge Matt Smith’s era, his multi-series story arc of The Silence gains a lot more clarity.
The most egregious issues with this arc were the length of time it took and the adherence to an overly episodic format. Now that this era is no longer current I believe this story arc has gained more clarity, making it easier to untangle. So to the newcomers or the eternally perplexed, I hope this article serves us a trusted guide in navigating the timey-wimey quagmire.
The Silence arc: From The Eleventh Hour to The Time of The Doctor
At the start of The Time of the Doctor, the Doctor arrives on the planet Trenzalore by permission of the Papal Mainframe – or ‘the Church’ – a powerful religious-military body in the universe. They are affiliated with genetically engineered creatures known as Silents, sometimes collectively known as ‘the Silence’.
They acted as priests for the Church, but aside from that this species is shrouded in mystery. It remains unknown exactly who or what created them or whether all Silents were affiliated with the Church. In The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, they hint that they are almost as old as the universe itself, and they demonstrate that a large group of them have populated the Earth.
As the Doctor explores Trenzalore, he finds a scar tissue of the Cracks in Time – the Time Lords he placed into a pocket dimension in The Day of The Doctor are attempting to renter the universe through the Crack. They broadcast the question ‘Doctor Who?’, the answer to which would confirm that they are entering the correct location.
The Church understood the dangers of the Time Lords re-entering the universe at a time when the Daleks and a variety of other hostile forces were orbiting Trenzalore. They proclaimed that the “Time War will begin anew”, so to avert such chaos and destruction they renamed themselves ‘The Church of the Silence’, as their principle cause was to now stop widespread war.
The Kovarian sect
They became utterly devoted to the cause of ‘silence’, both in terms of peace and their determination to not let the Doctor speak his name. A conflict broke out in and around Trenzalore for hundreds of years.
During this time, a branch of the Church fragmented, headed by Madame Kovarian – she had far more sinister intentions to avert a new Time War. Her branch was ruthlessly determined to stop the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore in the first place. It is clear that the Church had access to a form of a time-travel technology, especially as a group of Silents were seen with a prototype TARDIS in Day of The Moon.
First, Kovarian’s branch somehow hijacked the TARDIS and blew it up. But they didn’t know the effects such an act would cause, as reality began to falter and collapse. This is what created the Cracks in Time – the Doctor fixed this in The Big Bang.
Second, they trained a ‘psychopath’ to kill him. This was River Song whom they knew had Time Lord DNA, so believed her to be an effective outlet to kill the Doctor. Of course, this plan ended up backfiring too, as River Song became the Doctor’s wife instead of his killer.
The Question
When the Doctor and Madame Kovarian first met in A Good Man Goes To War, she talked of an “endless bitter war” against him – referring to the struggle happening in the future at Trenzalore. Kovarian’s branch of the Church/the Silence gained notoriety, as their intentions had become known by others.
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A term brandished by them, ‘Silence Will Fall’, became known. As did knowledge of the Question – ‘Doctor Who?’. For instance, Dorium Maldovar knew of the Question. He also knew of the Truth Field at Trenzalore when he mentioned it as a place where “no living creature can speak falsely”.
‘Doctor Who?’ was evidently a dangerous question when used in certain contexts, as the Question was used by the Great Intelligence to enter the Doctor’s time stream which almost caused reality to falter like the Cracks in Time. The Doctor’s tomb at Trenzalore in The Name of the Doctor was a future Trenzalore, not the one seen during The Time of The Doctor. The timeline where the Doctor’s tomb appears is an aborted future. The Doctor was supposed to die on Trenzalore, but the might of the Time Lords altered this by granting him a new regeneration cycle.
Did this help to clear up any questions you had regarding the Silence arc? Or are their key plot points that still need to be cleared up? Let us know in the comments below.