Doctor Who review: UNIT: House of Silents reintroduces a forgotten monster
By James Aggas
UNIT: Silenced begins with House of Silents, an opening episode that reintroduces a fantastic Doctor Who monster for a new medium.
The Doctor Who audio spin-off box set UNIT: Silenced begins with House of Silents. UNIT has been investigating some strange energy readings coming from the home of Miss Faversham, a rich philanthropist. Initially, it seems like nothing’s going on. Then they start to hear about the people going missing…
House of Silents is a great way of reintroducing the monsters first seen in Matt Smith story, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. It’s actually a shame that they weren’t used as much afterward. They’re a fantastic idea, and like the very best of former showrunner Steven Moffat’s monsters, that idea is an extremely simple one – what if there was a monster you instantly forgot about the moment you looked away? How would you know it was there? More importantly, how would you know you hadn’t seen it before?
On top of that, they’re also a great visual monster, too. Of course, for a company like Big Finish, this could present a problem. When you tell stories in an audio-only medium, how can you make a visual monster like the Silence work?
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Silent audio
The first episode of UNIT: Silenced does a great job of adapting the Silence to audio. It’s not just the voices that Big Finish recaptures well (originally played by Marnix van den Broeke, now voiced by Nicholas Briggs).
But they also capture the Silence’s very presence, particularly through the sound design. If you rewatch their original TV appearances, there are little sound effects used to indicate the exact moment someone forgets seeing the Silence or to indicate being in the same room. Big Finish uses these elements well in their sound design.
As for the story itself: we’re presented with an intriguing mystery in House of Silents. The Silence, after decades of being hunted down, is finally planning their revenge. But what is their ultimate goal?
What’s interesting is that the audience knows more about the enemy than UNIT does, which only increases their threat, due to them having no idea of the danger they’re all in. And when they do finally confront the Silence, they end up making things far worse…
House of Silents is a pretty good way of starting this box set. It catches up with some of the regular characters, but more importantly, it does a great job of both reintroducing a major monster while setting up the key arc of this volume. Definitely worth a listen, especially while the episode itself is still free.
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Have you listened to House of Silents yet? Do you think it does a strong job of reintroducing the Silence? And do you think Big Finish should focus even more on the Silence in the future? Let us know in the comments below.