House of Silents

UNIT #3.1

Released: 23 November 2016

Listened: 4/7/23

Another new boxed set, this one called “Silenced,” because, well, it features the Silence, an Eleventh Doctor monster from series 8. The Silence’s big thing is that you forget them as soon as you’re not looking at them, an effect that persists even through recordings. Which is tricky to do on audio, but fortunately the TV show provided a nice sound effect for “I’ve just forgotten about the monster,” and it gets used here. The other big issue is that UNIT doesn’t have any records of them, because the Doctor, River, Amy and Rory dealt with them in 1969 by implanting a subliminal “kill on sight” order within humanity, and called it a day. That’s fairly sloppy, even by the Doctor’s standards, and it means UNIT has to figure out a lot of stuff that listeners already know. In other news, remember Colonel Shindi? I do, and I liked him. Unfortunately, Ramon Tikram was unavailable for the last boxed set, but he’s back this time. He’s still recovering from the events of “Extinction,” and using a wheelchair, but he’s getting fidgety, so Kate assigns him to surveil the house of one Mrs. Faversham, noted wealthy recluse and philanthropist (and possibly crazy cat lady, judging from the sound effects). Osgood spotted a strange energy discharge there, but nobody else can find anything wrong…or at least, nobody can remember seeing anything wrong. Fortunately, we don’t do a “everybody thinks Shindi’s crazy” plot; he’s too good an operative for that, and everybody else is too smart. 2016 UNIT also has better resources than making marks on your arm with a sharpie when you see a Silent. But there’s still a lot of mystery to figure out, and they’re just getting into it. Also, remember Jacqui McGee? She’s gone from investigative journalist to free-speech vigilante during the time she’s been away. She keeps trying to expose UNIT secrets under a pseudonym, and Osgood keeps taking them down. But Jacqui’s onto the Silence and knows that UNIT is a step behind, so she breaks cover to tell Kate what she knows, which admittedly isn’t much. Jacqui is still fundamentally right that UNIT keeps more secrets than they ought to, but she’s still addressing the problem with blunt force, and it’s not getting her anywhere. It’s kind of cool that UNIT has to approach this as a mystery to solve, rather than an invasion to fight. And the fact that both sides are concerned with secrecy means there won’t be any attention-grabbing street battles. It’s a decent start.