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It's 1969, I'm 6 years old...

...and I'm watching the Moon Landing. Mummy and Daddy aren't in the room at the moment...

In real life my brother watched the Moon Landing when he was four years old. How do you think he'd have managed?

Wait. The Moon Landing is on and the parents aren't bothering to watch? Just leaving a small child alone in a room with the TV, unsupervised? That's more disturbing than anything in the episode.

Only if we're talking about the original broadcast. Mummy and Daddy may have seen it a million times already. ;)
 
...and I'm watching the Moon Landing. Mummy and Daddy aren't in the room at the moment...

In real life my brother watched the Moon Landing when he was four years old. How do you think he'd have managed?

Wait. The Moon Landing is on and the parents aren't bothering to watch? Just leaving a small child alone in a room with the TV, unsupervised? That's more disturbing than anything in the episode.

Only if we're talking about the original broadcast. Mummy and Daddy may have seen it a million times already. ;)
IIRC, it was in the middle of the night, here in California, I wanna say 2am or 4am, but, I was only 5, so, I could have been woken up anytime after 8pm or 9pm
 
Y'know, last week I thought it would be cool to make a Silent costume for Halloween this year. Now ... I think I'd be better off if I don't.

It would be a great costume; you could keep going back to the same house for candy over and over again, and they wouldn't remember you'd been there before.
 
They also can't apparently use their power if they're under any kind of physical duress. You could probably just slap one and they'd be like "OMG WTF Y U HIT ME?!" and then have to start powering it up again.

The only reason the one in the restroom took out the older woman was because she was completely unaware of the threat and Amy was too shocked to do anything about it (and not under any subliminal order to kill on sight).

So unless a Silent was making a preemptive strike from behind, chances are just about anyone could survive their 'attack.'

Which kind of makes sense. If no one can remember you, why would you need a hardcore offensive ability let alone any other kind of defense mechanism? Especially if you've been under that for hundreds of thousands of years (remember, the Silent said he was there when we were learning to use fire and the wheel).

But, again, I still don't understand why the Doctor found them to be a threat to Humanity. Clearly if what was said was true and the Silence were responsible for our entire development as a culture, Earth would instead be a symbiotic world of both the Silence and the Humans. And other than killing the older woman in the restroom for no apparent reason (I still don't understand what happened there), what 'great evil' did the Silence do beyond trying to protect themselves from discovery? Especially to the point of the Doctor -- the Doctor -- condoning and bringing about an act of genocide?

Of course the real question is: Why didn't the Silence just orchestrate a counter subliminal message? They could implant it into all kinds of video and radio signals. Heck, just make it so it gets transmitted every five minutes, and make it a message that counteracts the order for genocide.
 
The Doctor has just ordered many humans to their deaths. That's his point.

Except he hasn't, because otherwise the historical record would show many people dying (blowing up, most likely) in 1969 - a fact the Doctor, UNIT and Torchwood would have been very much investigating. The Doctor knew this already (wibbly wobbly, timey wimey) so therefore he knew it would work.

And no, it's not the same as, say, the Doctor knowing in advance that the march of the Adipose would fail because he'd been to years post-2008 before, since those types of events fall into the "time can be rewritten" category. But there would be too much of a risk of a "fixed point in time" being affected if he blindly made such a thing as this happen, so he had to know.

Alex
 
Its stupid and I'm surprised that more haven't brought up the Doctor taking the entire human race to war pretty much..and unknowingly more or less.
 
The Doctor has just ordered many humans to their deaths. That's his point.

Except he hasn't, because otherwise the historical record would show many people dying (blowing up, most likely) in 1969 - a fact the Doctor, UNIT and Torchwood would have been very much investigating. The Doctor knew this already (wibbly wobbly, timey wimey) so therefore he knew it would work.
Alex

For that matter why didn't Torchwood, UNIT or the Doctor know about the Silents in the past?
 
hmm. question: is the subliminal message present in all recordings?

if so, how does amy not have a subliminal message to kill silents on sight? wouldn't she have seen a recording of the moon landing at some point? or it wasn't in the recording because from her perspective, she has not gone back in time yet?
 
...and I'm watching the Moon Landing. Mummy and Daddy aren't in the room at the moment but I suddenly notice that a scary looking man in a dark suit is there. Normally if something like this was to happen I'd scream and run away but instead I feel an overwhelming compulsion to kill the Scary Man instead.

That's odd, the Scary Man is doing something strange with his mouth. Even odder, I don't think he even had a mouth a few seconds ago.

Now I'm starting to feel really strange. There's all this pressure building up inside me like I'm a balloon that's about to pop.

And now I'm having this vision of a skinny young man with a bow tie who's celebrating the success of yet another brilliant plan to save the Earth.

Pop.

I'm not up on my history, but were lawn darts around back then? They were forever banned by the time I was born, but I imagine it's because they're harpoons for kids and could therefore take out many Silents.
 
I'd also add you don't turn into a zombie person. You're driven to want to kill them, but you don't trance walk over to them. The people with guns shoot and kill because they realize they can do it. A six year old might start to instinctively plan a way to kill them and only carry it out subconsciously. He could carry it out at some future date instead.

Was that is some Special Edition version of the episode? The order was "kill us all on sight" with no qualifications.
Actually, it was "You should kill us on sight." Not "Kill us all on sight! Do it! Do it now!" I just watched the episode two hours ago, and the message definitely contains the word "should".

The word "should" makes all the difference: it doesn't implant an order to kill them and kill them immediately, but rather a feeling that you ought to. If you can't, then you don't -- but you feel you should.
 
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