We cap off the Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Broken Memories boxset with this two-parter that oddly starts with the Eighth Doctor and then concludes with the Seventh, but then when they key monster’s power is to remove themselves from people’s memories whenever they look away it’s not hard to grasp how they’d use the idea! Sadly the story suffers from some extremely cartoony voices that rob a lot of scenes of any drama, but at least they use the “Silents” really well, even including some of the convoluted lore to boot. Let’s take a look!
“The Silent Priest” is actually the first story we see the Silents being used as they apparently were supposed to be and that’s as priests who hear the confessions of those who seek them out and because they don’t remember the encounter once they walk away the visitors feel great without the nasty memories. After a nervous young man named Carl (Reda Elazouar) walks out of the church with a spring in his step The Doctor (Paul McGann) arrives, not really remembering why but once he sits down with the Silent Priest (voiced by Nicholas Briggs) he’s told he frequently visits due to the Time War giving him lots to talk about and forget. We then hear that Carl is working for a nasty gangster called Bud Shacket (Mark Elstob) who himself works for syndicate boss Albion Graves (Alistair Petrie) and he was sent to the church to find out its big secret, but naturally Carl doesn’t remember a thing. This is where the cartoony voices ruin things, especially Bud Shacket as Mark Elstob seems to go for a cheesy gangster voice so thick it would sound over-exaggerated in a 60s cartoon. Way over-board.
Well, anyway, Albion isn’t thrilled that they still don’t know what’s going on so Bud and Carl head to the Church and end up beating a human priest to death and then running as The Doctor and soon after the police arrive. Naturally The Doctor is taken in for questioning by local police officer Kay Aradhana (Mina Anwar) and then finds himself caught up in the local gang war between Albion’s group and a gang led by Nalah Massi (Luyandra Unati Lewis-Nyawo, blimey… bit of a mouthful!) who also runs the big casino/hotel, brought about by Nalah apparently killing Albion’s brother. The Doctor is captured by Nalah and has a funny scene where he talks to the Silent Priest as the guards looking after him frequently freakout and then look away and act normally. The two create a plan to put an end to the conflict, something the Priest is reluctant to do because he shouldn’t directly intervene in local issues by the order of his Church but at the same time he really wants to help the local people. Soon Albion and Nalah meet in a neutral location, flanked by a couple of thugs each…
I’ll get to the end in the Spoilers section, but to give a brief over-view of “The Silent City” it’s a good story with The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) arriving in the city a year after his future self’s adventure and dealing with the after-effect. Can’t say any more until the spoiler bit but it works really well as a two-parter even if the Doctors visit in the “wrong way round”.
The Continuity:
Our final look at the overall boxset cover. Technically the Seventh and Eighth Doctors are in the wrong order, now that I think about it…
The Silents first appeared in the Eleventh Doctor double bill “The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon” as an enemy force trying to take over Earth, but as the Eleventh Doctor’s run continued they made a few more appearances where it was later revealed the original ones were a splinter group and most of them were simple Priests from the “Papal Mainframe” who take confessionals.
Overall Thoughts:
I really enjoyed this double bill, it showed there is use in the Silents yet despite being a bit muddled across their TV run, sadly though some over-the-top cartoony voice work killed a lot of the mood dead. Still though, overall I did enjoy the two-part story and how it played out backwards from the Eighth to the Seventh, and I can see myself listening to it again, despite the poor vocal choices…
The Silent Priest ends as the titular Silent secretly revealed what the truth Carl admitted to him was to The Doctor and he thinks it will solve all the issues, so the young man eventually admits it was him who killed Albion’s brother and he blamed Nalah for it out of panic and fear. Instead of leading to a ceasefire though all this does is see Albion kill Carl, much to Shacket’s dismay, and then getting killed himself by the angered Priest. Nalah and Shacket then agree to work together using the Priest to alter people’s moods and give them hypnotic suggestions, something the Silent agrees to as it would lead to a more peaceful city. The Doctor protests but Shacket merely turns him away from the Priest and tells him he successfully created a ceasefire, which makes The Doctor happily walk away thinking his job done.
This leads to “The Silent City” where Kay has enlisted The Doctor, now the Seventh version, to investigate Nalah and Shacket’s new “clean” business in the Casino, as well as their mysterious owner. The Doctor stays for a few days but beyond seeing young rich girl Jessica Harker (Genevieve Gaunt) lose all her money and seem happy doing so nothing seemed out of odds, even if he couldn’t really remember the owner he met, and in fact when he hears another Doctor was here a year ago and that led to the unusual string of peace he was happy to leave knowing he’s uncharacteristically landed in the peaceful wake of one of his future adventures, but soon a pattern emerges of Kay’s investigations being dropped for a variety of odd reasons and when Jessica’s dad Maynard (Glen McCready) is kidnapped only to appear on TV saying it was all a hoax The Doctor goes back to the casino.
He meets the owner again, the Silent Priest, who as well as revealing they’ve met before many times also says how he doesn’t like some of Nalah and Shacket’s methods but with all the money they’ve made he’s fed the poor of the city and rebuilt much of it and generally turned it into a much nicer, safer place. The Doctor is pleased with his goal but soon a bunch of other Silents arrive to kill the traitorous Priest, causing a firefight between the Casino’s gangsters and the Silents, one that ends with the death of Shacket and eventually the Priest after he comes down to the lobby to face his fate. The Doctor is furious, after all he knows something about ignoring the non-intervention rules of his people to help others, but thanks to the Silents power once they leave he remembers nothing of the Priest or the rest of his people. Kay arrests Nalah, Jessica and her father leave (with a lot less money) and The Doctor finds a note on his TARDIS from his future self who had arrived looking for someone but he can’t remember who…
Hogan Reviews 