One Doctor Who Concept That Ended Up Being a Wasted Potential

Summary:

• Doctor Who is a British sci-fi television series that has just celebrated its 60th anniversary.
• Over the years, the show has introduced hundreds of monster concepts, some of which have been reused, while others have only appeared once.
• Whovians believe that the concept of the Silence, introduced during the 11th Doctor's run, has not been fully explored.

When the show runs as long as Doctor Who does, there are only so many new concepts the writers can come up with to keep the audience entertained.

Even though the Doctor can travel to virtually any point in time and space thanks to his TARDIS, it is still hard to come up with new ideas without recycling the ones that have already been done.

Fortunately, fans of the show are usually very understanding about this, and are generally on board with the idea of seeing previous characters or species again.

However, instead of another awakening of the Daleks or Weeping Angels that have terrorized various incarnations of the Doctor over the years, viewers would prefer the writers to bring back more original concepts.

For example, the one religious group who made their intentions to see the Doctor fall very clear, but were never seen again, were the Silence. And many Whovians would be very excited to see them back... if they wouldn’t forget about them immediately afterwards.

Will The Silence Be Back In Doctor Who?

The first mention of the Silence was in the premiere episode of Series 5. As this antagonist group was crucial to the Eleventh Doctor's run, the writers foreshadowed their appearance early on. Most of the action, however, was taken by The Silence throughout series 6, as they tried to get rid of the Doctor.

Although a little confusing, the Silence had a great monster concept: as soon as the characters turned their backs on them, they forgot they'd ever seen them. This allowed them to live among humans for years and years, using their inventions and resenting human progress.

If the Doctor hadn't sent the Silence away, the future of humanity could have been very different. By now, we would probably all be living as the Silence's slaves for labour and resources. But he did, and no Silence were seen for another decade.

It was not until 2021, during the 13th Doctor's episode "Revolution of the Daleks," that the Silence made a brief cameo, as one of the species was captured by the Doctor, along with a Weeping Angel, an Ood, a Sycorax and a Pting. Unfortunately, the show did not acknowledge their powers in any way.

However, it would be nice to see the Colonies of Silence in their full power again. Given the show's premise, it should be no problem to come up with an explanation for how and why the Doctor will cross paths with them. And their beliefs would only add spice to another Doctor's arc.

If you want to revisit your favourite Silence episodes, you can stream all the modern episodes of Doctor Who on Max. Keep an eye out for the release date of series 14, and be the first to see what challenges the 15th Doctor will face on his adventures!