Yes, I think I agree with you. I thought season five was fairly well balanced. There were five episodes that were directly based around the plot of the cracks, and eight episodes that were only indirectly related and played with the main plot around the edges. So far, season six has had six main plot episodes and two random plots, and the division between them has been fairly sharp. Granted, however, the ganger two-parter was in a grey area. It ended up being fairly important to the main storyline, but the actual plot of the two-parter stands on its own as a random set of episodes. So I'm not sure how to classify that one. If we split it down the middle, we get five arc episodes and three random, so that's still pretty arc-y. But I enjoy it even though I haven't felt quite the same sense of you-can-figure-this-out-if-you're-clever-enough-ness that I got from season five. There's a lot of mystery here, but I don't yet know if we can piece together the clues, which I love doing.



As the male of the species, I must respectfully decline to ever grow tired of Amy. But I guess anything's possible, depending on where her character goes. I actually hope she will willingly give up her life with the Doctor and go back to being normal, rather than being left behind or having something traumatic happen that forces her to leave. I feel that would be a nice change.



But they're so cuddly! You wuss. :P My girlfriend was fairly creeped out by them too.

I'm wondering what role they will play, given that the Doctor appeared to essentially defeat them in 1969. I suppose there are some that could have hidden and survived.

Speaking of, why a spacesuit? The Doctor posited that mankind went to the moon because the Silence needed a spacesuit, presumably for young River. But why a spacesuit? What can a spacesuit do that some other sort of suit or device couldn't?

Well, it can withstand the vacuum of space and let a person breathe where there is no air. Such as underwater, which is where the impossible astronaut came from. Why did it have to come from underwater? If it was teleported in somehow, why teleport it into water? Was there some sort of base under the water?

A member of the Silence was watching from a nearby rock. Amy saw it. This was in 2011, long after they were defeated in 1969. True, the Doctor himself in his own timeline hadn't defeated them yet at that point in the story, so they may still have existed in the future, but the rules of timey-wimey would allow that one to go either way. It's possible that the fact the Doctor would one day defeat them in 1969 would mean that they never existed beyond that. Except that one was clearly there in 2011. And it's possible that people have been seeing something scary in the TARDIS since the start of season five, something they forget as soon as they look away. Both the Doctor and Amy, in The Eleventh Hour looked up toward the ceiling of the TARDIS at one point with a very strange expression, confusion from the Doctor and near panic from Amy, emotions that were instantly forgotten when they looked away. We've seen that the Silents hang from ceilings. Are they inside the TARDIS? Have they perhaps been in there for a very long time? That might explain how they were able to destroy it, but it doesn't explain why they would want the universe to have never existed.

Holy crap, I'm rambling, and I'm not done yet. The Silence said that Amy would "bring the Silence." How could Amy do that? By giving birth to River? Is River somehow involved with the Silence? Her older self didn't seem to know what they were, but it's possible she could have forgotten, given how they work.

And the astronaut suit was also a prison. I feel like the Doctor when he rambles when he's missing something. Think, think. The suit could move on its own to catch the girl (maybe little River). It was built to be very strong, to hold something very strong. Why would little River be very strong? Your idea that whoever was inside the suit might not have been in control of what the suit was doing has merit. But why the need for a person inside the suit at all, in that case? Why the specific need for someone who is at least half Time Lord? Is it related to their efforts to make a TARDIS of their own? Why would they want one? As a weapon? Against who, they didn't have any enemies that we know about until the Doctor showed up. Do they want a TARDIS to defeat him? Or do they have an enemy we haven't seen yet?

Did all the Doctor's enemies gang up on him at the end of season five on their own, or did something point them at him? Did something trick them into working together? Could the Silence have done that? If their disappearing and commanding trick works on other species, it's possible they could have, to get the Doctor out of the way. How did all those species show up in 102 AD? Can they all time travel? I guess the Daleks have shown some ability in that area, maybe they shared it? Time travel would also be needed to plant the Pandorica in ancient times and start the story about what it was. They seemed convinced that only the Doctor could pilot the TARDIS, though we've seen that River can do it, which suggests that they are mistaken. But what gave them that idea in the first place? There used to be a lot of TARDIS machines and a lot of people who could fly them.

If the Silence have been nesting in the TARDIS, they could know an awful lot about a lot of things. They might even be able to fly it themselves. Hmm.

Did you know that the headless monks from A Good Man Goes To War were mentioned in season five? When the Doctor and Amy are at the museum where they find the black box containing River's coordinates in Time of Angels, the Doctor mentions that the place where the museum is now was the final resting place of the headless monks. Don't know if that means anything.



Those do seem to be likely outcomes, which is why I keep looking for other ones. But I might be looking too hard. Would River go to jail for killing the flesh Doctor? Would she willingly stay there and feel guilty about it if she had no control over the spacesuit and if it wasn't even the real Doctor?



You may be right. There's been an awful lot of "you think it's the Doctor but we actually mean Rory" going on though. And he's the only other person we know right now who could be considered "a good man, and a hero to many". The cleric in Time of Angels also thought that the Doctor would refuse to help River if he knew what she had done. Which seems like it must be something worse than involuntarily killing the flesh Doctor ...




Maybe the eyepatch is something bionic. Something over your eye that lets you see things in a certain way, or lets you see the Silence?



Prisoner Zero certainly knew something about them. So did the Weeping Angels. This suggests they aren't restricted to Earth. Oh, that's what I meant to say above. If the Silence are nesting in the TARDIS, perhaps that gives a new meaning to that repeated phrase, "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know." Maybe the reason it's funny is because the danger is right there in the TARDIS with him and he can't see it.



Me too.