Hogan Reviews

“Conspiracy of Silence” is the first part of the “Last Queen of the Nile” box, a two-parter compared to the titular story’s four, and honestly it does feel like they were worried a historical themed boxset wouldn’t sell so added this in so they could stick a recognisable monster on the front. That being said though this is actually quite a fun story, the first part shows us the story from the perspective of our main cast complete with Silence memory wipes, and then the second part is the same story again but fast-forwarding through repeated scenes while showing all scenes with the Silence in, completing the picture. It’s a fun idea, so let’s take a look!

Following on from the previous story, which seemed to be implying The Doctor (Tom Baker), Leela (Louise Jameson) and The Brigadier (Jon Culshaw) would be going on some sort of adventure together but instead they apparently just landed back in The Brig’s regular time zone and then went on a UNIT mission together, which seems like something of a waste, but hey-ho. An isolated oil rig went dark and a UNIT team sent to find out what happened was similarly silenced (pun intended!) so our lead trio, along with new expendable UNIT solider Sergeant Nolan (Charlie Hayes) head to the oil rig themselves. They soon split up, with The Doctor, Brig and K9 (voiced as ever by John Leeson) who I keep forgetting to mention heading one way, and Leela and Nolan another, and although we don’t hear what happens its clear both Leela and Nolan encounter the Silence, with the latter firing her gun and attracting the attention of the rest of the group. Together they find an excavating room where some mysterious gaseous entity that has been trapped beneath the earth since before the dawn of man is being pulled up from the depths, as you do, and it soon possesses the suddenly now-dead Nolan.

It soon “wakes” and uses Nolan’s body to apparently claim to be attempting to take over Earth by calling more of itself up from deep below the surface and possessing human bodies. In order to stop it The Doctor, Brig and K9 head to where the Time Lord is detecting unearthly tech while Leela stays with the body… which soon wakes and heads to the extraction site. The Doctor and co. to their surprise find no alien tech at all and soon find out that Nolan is using the excavator so K9 suggests using the rig’s supply of explosives to destroy it, which The Doctor agrees. Meanwhile Leela is locked out of the room and therefore can’t stop the creature so soon reunites with everyone and they all escape in the returning chopper, including a mysteriously damaged K9, in time to avoid the explosion. As they escape though Leela’s instincts tell her they’re forgetting something important…

It’s a fun way to handle the Silence, seeing the story from the perspective of how the characters remember the event first, and then filling in the gaps with the second half. Otherwise though the story is a normal slender two-parter without a lot of substance, but in this case that’s fine, because the unique hook holds it together.

The Continuity:

Huh, I didn’t know the last Queen of the Nile was a Silent. Learn something new every day I guess!

The Silence, at least as an enemy of humanity hiding in the shadows, comes from their debut two-parter “The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon”, including their fate of having any human want to kill them on sight, which is referenced a lot in the second half of this story. Other than that though, not much… I guess Second Doctor classic “Fury From The Deep” features an oil rig as part of its setting, so there’s that!

Overall Thoughts:

Conspiracy of Silence was a good hour of Who, taking the Silence enemy and coming up with a unique way of presenting them by essentially telling the same story twice but with the Silent memory wipe effect on and off. Otherwise the story may not do much else to enthral, but in this case that’s fine as I’ve not seen the twist done before.

As mentioned several times, Part Two is just the same story again but the bits we already know “fast-forwarded” through so we can hear what happened in regards to the Silence. So Leela’s confrontation with them first wasn’t much, Nolan then appearing also doesn’t yield any new info (though she fires her gun at them due to the subliminal message to kill them on sight, which as mentioned is a good continuity check) so really its only when we get to the excavation room and the gas creature as we find out The Silence are intentionally excavating it so the creature can capture the minds of the humans and guide them as they themselves are no longer able to due to the previously mentioned subliminal message all humans have to kill them. Nolan is actually killed by them allowing the gas creature into her body but obviously due to the Silence’s memory trick everyone assumed it took over her and killed her. Likewise when it wakes in Nolan’s body it reveals the Silence’s plan and that it wishes to stop them from drawing more of it to the surface, but visiting Silence in the room meddle with everyone’s memories… apart from K9, who has a digital “mind” and therefore can’t be manipulated.

They head to the alien tech and actually find a makeshift Silence timeship and K9 informs The Doctor and the Brigadier about the Silence, their goals and their powers so The Doctor comes up with the plan to use the explosives and tells K9 to tell them to do it once their memory gets wiped. Meanwhile Leela actually enters the room with Nolan/the gas creature and together they turn off the excavator until the Silence step in to stop them, and soon with no other choice Nolan pushes Leela out of the room and sacrifices itself to stop the Silence from extracting any more of itself (there’s a weird sentence), Leela obviously not remembering anything other than not being able to get into the room where Nolan is. On the way out of the rig some surviving Silence approach and try to take them out before they leave and while K9 stuns them he gets shocked for it, damaging his memory banks and therefore explaining why K9 never tells The Doctor of them after the fact, as well as explaining why K9 was damaged as they left. Good fun.