Characters / Doctor Who – The Silence

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The Order of the Silence (Eleventh Doctor)

"Silence must fall when the Question is asked. The First Question, the oldest question in the universe."

The Silence initially appeared to be a mysterious faction of strange creatures, known as Silents, who were scattered across the Earth and influenced humanity using their Laser-Guided Amnesia powers to instill post-hypnotic suggestion. For unknown reasons, the Silence desired the Doctor's Death and made several attempts to assassinate him.

Later it's revealed that the Silence were in fact led by a strange woman named Madame Kovarian, and were the masterminds of much of many of the problems the Eleventh Doctor faced. These include: the cracks in time caused by them blowing up the TARDIS, along with engineering the perfect assassin to kill the Doctor who turned out to be River Song.

Their full origins are explained "The Time of the Doctor". The Silence were once members The Church of the Papal Mainframe, a Church Militant group that existed in the 51st and 52nd century. However during the Siege of Trenzalore, it was discovered the Time Lords were at risk of returning and starting the Time War anew, should the Doctor answer the First Question by speaking his true name. The Mother Superious Tasha Lem, then made an unscheduled faith change and rechristened the church to "The Church of Silence", dedicated to the sole cause of preventing the Doctor from speaking his name, so that "silence will fall".

The Kovarian Chapter were in fact a Renegade Splinter Faction from the main Church, where they attempted to use time travel to prevent the Eleventh Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore. What they didn't know was that their intervention was a Stable Time Loop, as their first attempt created the cracks in time that led him to the planet in the first place.

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In General

• Big Bad: The Kovarian Chapter functions as this for the Eleventh Doctor's run, causing the cracks in time that plague him throughout Series 5 before making their on-screen debut in the Series 6 premiere. It's unclear if Madam Kovarian herself is actually the brains or just The Face, but she definitely has significant influence.
• Church Militant: Like the Papal Mainframe, they are a religious organisation, yet make heavy use of soldiers and have a conventional military hierarchy.
• Epic Fail: Their assassin River Song not only rebels, but almost destroys the universe trying to prevent the designated victim's death. And that's not to mention their entire campaign given that Stable Time Loop thing...
• Gambit Roulette: Their plans to kill the Doctor are always incredibly convoluted and extreme. But given who they're dealing with... you can kinda understand.
  • Their initial plan involves using post hypnotic suggestion and subterfuge to convince all the Doctor's enemies that he will destroy the universe, and to stop him they have to build the ultimate prison, the Pandorica. They also set it up so this ultimate prison will have a restoration field that will stop anyone in the prison from dying, and also happens to be a way to restart the universe if it should be destroyed. They then use a lower level time machine to sneak a member of their race aboard the TARDIS, wait till the Doctor has been sealed in the Pandorica, and then proceed to destroy the universe by blowing up the TARDIS. At this point they expect the Doctor to use the Pandorica and the exploding TARDIS to reboot the universe, which will save everyone but trap him in the void between realities in the process. And if any part of this plan hadn't worked, they'd have blown up the entire universe for good, the exact thing they're trying to kill the Doctor to prevent. Unfortunately for their planning, the Doctor ends up using some interesting Clap Your Hands If You Believe magic from his Touched by Vorlons companion to escape.
  • Their second plan involves stealing one of the Doctor's companions and her unborn child, then replacing the companion with a programmable flesh avatar to prevent the Doctor (and the companion!) from realizing the kidnapping. After that they begin genetically modifying the unborn child, who was conceived on the TARDIS, to be a human Time Lord (as opposed to a Gallifreyan one). Then, after first surviving an assault by the Doctor himself to save the child when she's a baby, they transport her from the far future to 1960s America, where they use post-hypnotic suggestion again to cause the Moon landing. This is so the humans develop a spacesuit they can use to keep the child healthy and alive, and they can train her to kill the Doctor. Then, after the child manages to escape, and decides she doesn't want to kill the Doctor, and then saves his life, they keep tabs on her for several thousand years (thanks to her time travelling with the Doctor). At which point, they wait till she graduates from university to put her back in the space suit they developed in the 1960s, time travel her back to 2011 Utah, and put the suit on auto-pilot to force her to shoot the Doctor when he arrives there. Along the way the Silence are nearly wiped out by the Doctor and end up creating another universe-ending time paradox when the child tries to resist shooting the Doctor. And after all that, the Doctor uses a fairly simple Tricked Out Time gambit to survive getting shot.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Silence are the closest things to main antagonists in Series 5, as the ones responsible for destroying the TARDIS in the finale and creating the cracks in time. However, aside from a mysterious voice uttering "Silence will fall" in the penultimate episode, none of their agents physically appear until Series 6.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Despite being around since series 5, it's only in the final episode of series 7 that the Kovarian Chapter's full motivations are revealed: they wanted the Doctor dead before he potentially summoned Gallifrey back into our universe on the planet Trenzalore, an act that could have re-sparked the Time War.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Not exactly heroes, but their ultimate goal is to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore and speaking his name, as that will cause the Time Lords to come back and the Time War to resume, devastating the universe. Their first plan has the side effect of destroying the entire universe apart from the Earth, their second one fails and destroys the linear nature of time — hardly different outcomes from the ones they were trying to prevent in the first place.
• Omnicidal Maniac: They're the ones responsible for destroying the TARDIS and the universe on June 26, 2010. Silence will fall. Let's put this into perspective. If you make the Daleks try to prevent your victory, you've earned the title... except for the fact that this is actually a Subverted Trope, as their real goal is actually just to kill the Doctor and prevent the Time War from resuming and destroying the universe. Blowing up the universe was just a side effect of their poorly thought-out plan.
• Religion of Evil: They're a religious order with extremely unsavory beliefs and methods.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Of the Papal Mainframe.
• Share Phrase: Silence will fall; almost serves as the Arc Words.
• Stable Time Loop: By trying to prevent the Doctor from getting to Trenzalore and potentially letting the Time Lords back into the universe through a crack in time, they created the crack in the first place.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Given how much damage the Time War did to the Universe, it's completely understandable why they'd want to stave off another one.
• You Already Changed the Past: Both of their attempts at killing the Doctor:
  • First, they blew up the TARDIS... which created the cracks in time through which the Time Lords were threatening to return on Trenzalore in the first place.
  • Second, their kidnapping of River Song to turn her into an assassin to kill the Doctor led to her saving his life several times, ensuring he'd live long enough to get there.

Subgroups

Silents

The Silents (Eleventh and Thirteenth Doctors)

Played by: Marnix Van Den Broeke (2011)
Voiced by: Barnaby Edwards (2011)

"Silence will fall."

The faces (creepy, creepy faces) of the religious order, the Big Bads of the Eleventh Doctor's run. The Order itself is comprised of a much larger collection of races, but the Priests are the main attraction: in the same vein as the Weeping Angels, you're never safe if you're not looking at the Silence, but for a different reason: as soon as you look away from a Silent Priest, you forget you ever saw it.

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• Alien Invasion: The invasion is long over (at least in an alternate reality anyway). They've been controlling the planet for the last 10,000 years.
• Amnesia Danger: They cause it due to a function in their biology. As soon as you look away, you forget they're nearby.
• Badass Boast: In "Day of the Moon", and immediately subverted when the Silent saying it gets shot just to prove him wrong.
  Silent: This world is ours. We have ruled it since the wheel and the fire. We have no need of weapons.
• Back for the Finale: They appeared in the Eleventh Doctor's last episode, after not appearing for over two years.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: They wear nightmarish versions of stylish black and white business suits.
• The Blank: They have two prominent eyes, but that's it. They otherwise lack other familiar facial features like a nose, mouth, or ears.
• Breakout Villain: Along with the Weeping Angels, they are the revival series' most popular villains.
• Brown Note Being: Their presence causes mental harm and amnesia, people forget them as soon as they look away.
• The Cameo: One appeared in the Judoon prison in "Revolution of the Daleks", where they encountered the Thirteenth Doctor just before she escaped with Captain Jack Harkness.
• Ceiling Cling: They sleep hanging upside down. In packs.
• Creepy Good: "The Time of the Doctor" reveals that the race, as a whole, are supposed to be the ultimate form of confessional privacy. They are servants of the Papal Mainframe and act in their interests, aside from the Renegade Splinter Faction. They just look scary.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: Evil Silence wear ties, Good Silence wear collars.
• Expy:
  • Word of God states they were inspired by Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream (with expanded universe implying that this actually is a painting of a Silent and they have been behind its numerous thefts), as well as combining visual elements of both The Greys (facial features, skin colour, overall body shape) and The Men in Black (the tendency to wear suits).
  • They also end up taking after Slenderman, the latter of which was at his peak in popularity at the time of their debut. However it's unconfirmed if they actually are inspired by him or if this is a coincidence.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Talk in creepy, raspy voices.
• Four-Fingered Hands: They have four large spatula fingers, with one large one used to discharge electricity.
• Glass Cannon: They can easily disintegrate people, break through thick glass and heavy doors, but they can be killed fairly easily through conventional means.
• The Greys: According to Word of God, the idea is that stories of alien abduction by The Greys, among other things, represent half-retained memories of the Silents when on occasion people don't quite forget everything.
• Good All Along: "The Time of the Doctor" reveals that they were originally genetically engineered by the Papal Mainframe to serve as the perfect confessional priests, allowing people to confess their deepest sins and immediately forget about doing it. The ones the Doctor has been fighting are part of a Renegade Splinter Faction, attempting to alter history to prevent him ever reaching Trenzalore.
• Good Shepherd: It is revealed in "The Time of the Doctor" that they are genetically modified priests, and their amnesia aura is intended to make them ideal to confess to.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Doctor drives them off Earth by tricking one of their own into ordering the entire human race to kill them on sight. An untold number of them on Earth end up dead because they tried to kill the Doctor, and if they hadn't made plans to kill him, he wouldn't have even known they existed.
• Kick the Dog: The first time we get a real scene with a Silent, it blasts a woman to death in front of Amy for no real reason, providing this little pleasant exchange.
  Amy: Why did you kill her?
  Silent: Joy. Her name was Joy.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Their power is to make people forget the moments with them.
• Laser-Guided Karma: They kidnapped Melody Pond from her parents, abused her throughout her formative years, and brainwashed her into trying to kill the Doctor for them. Many years later (but from their perspective, no time at all), this comes back to bite them in the backside when an adult River winds up mowing down a group of them in "Day Of The Moon", while helping the Doctor banish them from Earth forever.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: 95% of the time when a character interacts with a Silent and then forgets about it, it's not shown; the scene we see continues abruptly from immediately before to immediately after.
  • When the Thirteenth Doctor sees a Silent in her jail cell, she quips, "I forgot you were here."
• The Men in Black: According to Word of God, one of the inspirations for them. Hence the black suits and memory damage.
• Mundane Utility: Their terrifying ability that any person who sees them forgets they saw them as soon as the person turns away? Turns out that they're confessional priests and the original purpose of the ability was a way of preserving the privacy of the confession.
• Nightmare Face:
  Amy: You're ugly. Has anyone ever told you that?
• No Mouth: Although a hole reminiscent of The Scream, where their mouth should be, forms when they discharge electricity.
• The Noseless: They appear to have nostrils, but no definable nose.
• Oh, Crap!: Upon realizing that the Doctor just turned their own tactics against them, and now all humans are going to start killing them on sight.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "The Silence" is the name of their Religion of Evil, rather than the species. It's a moot point because even if they were willing to tell people their real name, they'd forget about it as soon as they turned away.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Doctor hadn't even heard of these guys before they came after him (at least as far as he can remember).
• Paranoia Fuel: Acknowledged in-universe. Their unique ability means that they generate this constantly in those who confront them, since as soon as you stop looking at them, you forget if you are in the room with them. Suddenly noticing a lot of tally marks on your skin is a good reason to panic.
• Psychological Horror: The scariest part about them is how they can be within close range without knowing, and the only sign they're close are tally-marks written on your arms.
• Religion of Evil: Subverted. They are briefly presented as such, but they actually consider themselves the guardians of history, and will simply act to destroy things they perceive as an unacceptable threat to the future. They were also designed for perfect confessional privacy.
• "The Scream" Parody: Word of God is that the Silence are inspired by the screaming figure in the painting. What makes it more interesting is that In-Universe, the painting may actually be based off them, which has led to the Silence being responsible for the numerous thefts of the painting.
• Shock and Awe: Their only way of killing someone in person. "The Wedding of River Song" reveals that they can only manipulate existing sources of electricity to create their lightning weapon, so they can be prevented from using it by being insulated from electricity sources.
• Shout-Out: According to Word of God, they were visually inspired by the famous painting The Scream.
• The Spook: The entire race is made up of Spooks because no one knows anything about them and it is hard to remember because you forget when encountering them.
• Squishy Wizard: As they rely on their psychic powers, their manipulations and sometimes lightning, they don't even bother to carry weapons. Fighting openly for them basically means lining up to be butchered.
• Sssssnake Talk: They have a definite tendency to hiss their S's.
• Staring Contest: Keep eye contact with them at all times, otherwise you forget them and they kill you.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: They seem perfectly fine when immersed in liquid for long periods in "The Wedding of River Song".
• Wham Line: "You should kill us all on sight." Not when they say it, but when it is used against them!

The Headless Monks

Order of the Headless Monks (Eleventh Doctor)

A mysterious robed religious sect, they serve as the elite guard of the splinter faction of the Papal Mainframe. The Headless Monks believe that the origin of all sin lies in the head and not the heart, and having interpreted scripture literally, have decided to amputate theirs in the name of their faith.

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• Body Horror: They're not just "headless", they have little twisted neck stumps!
• Cool Sword: The Headless Monks have cool swords that have red lightning running up and down the blade.
• Elite Mooks: Word of God is that the Headless Monks are the Church Militant's special forces. They're possibly Elite Zombies as well, since the detectors don't register them as alive.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Headless Monks, monks who don't have heads.
• In the Hood: The hoods of their robes are capable of standing up so that their literal headlessness is not apparent when the hood is raised. It's normally death to lower one's hood.
• Off with His Head!: The Headless Monks ask for a donation upon conversion.
• Put on a Bus: Never appeared again after their first appearance in spite of their relevance to Series 6's conflict.
• Shock and Awe: The Headless Monks' swords have red lightning on the blade when activated.
• The Undead: They're specifically stated to not show up on a life-detecting scanner.

Leadership

Tasha Lem

Tasha Lem (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: Orla Brady (2013)

The Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe.

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• And I Must Scream: The Doctor says that Tasha would die before revealing information. The Daleks inform him she did die. Several times. And she indicates she died screaming for the Doctor.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Maybe "like" is a better term here, but despite their somewhat adversarial relationship, Tasha Lem still takes time to... keep the Doctor supplied with marshmallows.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The Doctor and Tasha Lem are hinted to have been involved at some point in their pasts, and those feelings haven't exactly vanished.
• Big Good: She led the Siege of Trenzalore’s defensive forces for centuries, keeping all of the Doctor’s enemies at bay.
• Expy: Tasha Lem, for River Song. Apart from being Mother Superious and being converted into a Dalek puppet, pretty much every line of her dialogue could easily have been spoken by River. She can even fly the TARDIS. This has led to some speculation regarding who Tasha Lem is, or whether she was a straight-out replacement character for River, maybe due to Alex Kingston being unavailable; Steven Moffat is on record as saying he wanted River to appear alongside Amy and Rory during the regeneration, at least, but Kingston was not available.

• Hand Blast: Once Tasha is turned into a Dalek puppet, she has a gunstick in her hand and fries three Daleks with it.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Tasha starts out as (presumably) a human and an ally of the Doctor, then gets converted into a Dalek agent, but is swiftly converted back to the side of right by the Doctor, at which point the door appears to stop revolving with Tasha a Face again, even though she's technically now a Dalek Puppet.
• Killed Offscreen: Was murdered and resurrected several times over by the Daleks, and according to The Wintertime Paradox, died after delivering Clara to Trenzalore for the final time.
• Manchurian Agent: She becomes the Dalek Puppet variety.
• Meaningful Name: (Na)Tasha is a Russian name traditionally given to girls born on or near Christmas Day. It is an appropriate name for a character appearing in a Christmas Episode set largely in a town named "Christmas".
• New Old Flame: Tasha Lem has had intimate relations with the Doctor in the past.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Tasha Lem's conversion of the Papal Mainframe into the Order of the Silence basically gave rise to all the problems the Eleventh Doctor was facing for most of Series 5-6. Although considering its results (i.e. the Kovarian faction engineering the very cracks through which Gallifrey was able to contact the Doctor and grant him his new regeneration cycle, and the existence of River Song), it was Nice Job Fixing It, Villain! as well.
• Noodle Incident: She and a previous incarnation of the Doctor have been in a relationship before (she initially assumes Eleven is wearing a new body), and she knows how to fly the TARDIS.
• Put on a Bus: Tasha vanishes from the narrative after returning Clara to be with the soon-to-die aged Doctor. She is not seen, nor referenced again, even after the Daleks are destroyed.
• Rasputinian Death: Implied to have suffered a lengthy death after the initial defeat by the Daleks.
• Really 700 Years Old: According to the Doctor, Tasha Lem is "against" aging.
• Revenant Zombie: Played With. After she's turned into a Dalek puppet and Manchurian Agent, her personality eventually breaks through the programming for a time with some aid from the Doctor, effectively making her have shades of this because of what Daleks puppets are, until the programming reasserts itself.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Tasha Lem has some odd similarities with previous Doctor Who recurring character River Song: 1) Was/is in a relationship with the Doctor. 2) One of the few people who knows how to fly the TARDIS other than the Doctor. 3) Mentioned to have had psychopathic tendencies for her entire life. It's lampshaded by the fact that River is mentioned by name and the Doctor compares Tasha to her.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Tasha Lem is too strong-willed to be converted into a Dalek, just like Oswin Oswald.
• Uneven Hybrid: According to Orla Brady, Steven Moffat told her Tasha is mostly human with some alien ancestry.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tasha Lem refuses the Doctor's pleas on assisting the Time Lords, believing that their return would bring about another Great Time War. When the Daleks show up, they confirm that she is completely right.

Madame Kovarian

Madame Kovarian (Eleventh Doctor)

Played by: Frances Barber (2011)

"Oh Doctor, fooling you once was a joy. But fooling you twice, in the same way? It's a privilege."

The leader of the Silence, or rather the Kovarian Chapter, which is a Renegade Splinter Faction of the main organisation. Madame Kovarian is hellbent to kill the Doctor at all costs, seeing him as the greatest enemy to the rest of existence.

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• Abusive Parents: She was far from kind to Melody.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Eleventh Doctor, who she dedicated her life to trying to kill. She's the one behind the Evil Plan in his first two series. Frances Barber even describes her as being the nemesis of Matt Smith's Doctor.
• Big Bad: For Series 6 of the Eleventh Doctor's run, kidnapping Melody Pond and raising her to kill the Doctor. Whether or not she actually leads the Silence is unclear.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Whatever her position among them may be, Kovarian isn't nearly as important to the Silence as she thinks she is, and is unceremoniously killed with River's forces after being captured.
• Church Militant: In her first full-length appearance, she appears to be the militant leader of the religious coalition against the Doctor in "A Good Man Goes to War". In "The Time of the Doctor", she's explicitly stated to be the head of a splinter group from the Papal Mainframe. This would imply that the Silence under her command rebelled in "The Wedding of River Song", leaving her to die after she'd outlived her usefulness.
• Dirty Coward: As seen in Entitled Bastard, she tries to get Amy to save her life when the Silence decide her surplus to requirements, despite being a complete and utter Smug Snake before.
• Dragon-in-Chief: It's unclear exactly where she falls in the hierarchy of her faction, but for the most she is the one calling the shots and devising the Evil Plan. Ultimately the Silents remind her who is in charge and subject her to a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.
• Entitled Bastard: Has the nerve to ask the woman whose kid she kidnapped and raised into a psychopathic Laser Guided Tyke Bomb (to kill said woman's best friend, to boot) to spare her because that's what the Doctor, a "good man" (the very man she's been plotting to kill) would do, and Amy would "never do anything to disappoint [her] precious Doctor." She gets exactly what she deserved.
  Amy: The Doctor is precious to me, you're right. But do you know what else he is, Madame Kovarian? Not here. [Locks Kovarian's eyedrive back into place] River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie.
• Evil Gloating: Loves to do this, first to the Doctor in "A Good Man Goes to War" where she talks about how she's fooled him twice, and then to River Song in "Closing Time", where she belittles River's attempts at a independent life.
• Evil Is Hammy: Starts coming across as this in "Closing Time", where she taunts River Song with a children's rhyme from the shadows. Compared to some of the other hams on this list, she's still pretty subdued.
• Eyepatch of Power: She is credited as "Eyepatch lady" before her name is revealed. It's actually an "eye drive" that lets her interact with the Silence without forgetting them.
• The Face: The most recognizable human member in the Silence, with her faction ever being known as the "Kovarian Chapter".
• Hate Sink: She is one of the main figures of the Silence movement. Kidnapping a pregnant Amy Pond, Kovarian has her daughter Melody taken away from her to be trained into a weapon to kill the Doctor. When the first attempt on the Doctor's life fails, Kovarian tracks down a reformed Melody - now going by the name River Song - and traps her in an astronaut suit to force her to kill the Doctor. In an Alternate Timeline where River never shot the Doctor, Kovarian is betrayed by the Silence and begs Amy to save her. Amy instead recalls all the terrible things she put her and her family through before letting the Silence kill her. Despite her ultimately well-intentioned goal of preventing the Time War's return, Kovarian's cruelty, arrogance and cowardice make it unlikely for the audience to feel anything but contempt for her.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: She programmed River and her siblings so that they couldn't kill her. This may have been a miscalculation since, when they turn on her, in transpires that they can't kill her but they can imprison her and make her suffer.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: In the third season of "The Diary of River Song" she's well and truly gone, determined to kill the Doctor no matter the cost and going so far as to attempt to kill the Fifth Doctor despite the fact it would cause reality to break AGAIN. River notes that even the Silents and the Headless Monks have washed their hands of her for being too extreme.
• Karma Houdini: As noted below, her Karmic Death happens in an alternate timeline, so she's presumably alive. However, the way Tasha Lem speaks about her in "The Time of the Doctor", she implies Madame Kovarian and her followers faced some kind of punishment at the hands of the Papal Mainframe.
• Karmic Death: Of a sort. In the alternate timeline created by River not killing the Doctor, Amy lets her die from the eyepatch, which the Silence boobytrapped. Since that timeline is erased, though, she's presumably alive.
• Knight Templar: Confirmed in "The Time of the Doctor", where Tasha Lem reveals that Madame Kovarian leads a group that broke off from the Papal Mainframe to launch a crusade against the Doctor. (Word of Gay also says she's Tasha Lem's ex-wife.)
• Laser-Guided Karma: Her eventual fate in The Diary of River Song. After yet another scheme to kill the Doctor blows up in her face, River persuades her 'sisters' (who Kovarian created from her DNA at Demon's Run) to turn on her for abusive callousness. Since she conditioned them all to be unable to kill her, they make do with locking her up the Nightmarish Nursery she'd kept them in and making her suffer as much as they can. It's suggested that they've inherited Rory's patience and will eventually be able to overcome the conditioning by which time her death will be a mercy.
• Manipulative Bitch: Has proved herself quite capable of manipulating the Doctor — and relishes it. Just read the quote.
• No Name Given: Prior to "A Good Man Goes to War", she was never named on-screen and listed only as "Eye-Patch Lady" in the credits.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: "The Time of the Doctor" reveals that the Kovarian Chapter is this for the Papal Mainframe. While the Papal Mainframe are trying to preserve the Siege of Trenzalore and prevent it escalating into open war, Madame Kovarian decided to try and alter history to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore in the first place.
  • This, rather ironically, bit her in the ass, because if she'd just stayed put at Trenzalore, the cracks in the universe would never have happened and no one would have gone to Trenzalore (not mentioning that without River, the Doctor would have probably died much earlier on in his time stream.) Nice job fixing it, villain indeed.
• Smug Snake: She has an incredibly smarmy and oily demeanour.
• Stable Time Loop: Had she stayed in her own time and not attempted to kill the Doctor by creating River, River would have not been there to sacrifice herself in "Forest of the Dead", meaning the Tenth Doctor would have been killed while in the Library and (indirectly) not regenerated into the Eleventh Doctor. And this has more consequences:
  • The Tenth Doctor would not have been around to stop Davros from destroying reality, meaning her time would no longer exist.
  • Without the Eleventh Doctor, the War Doctor would activate the Moment, destroying Gallifrey instead of putting it in a Pocket Dimension.
• Villains Want Mercy: She has the gall to beg Amy for help when her booby-trapped eyepatch is triggered. Amy refuses and puts the eyepatch back on her.
• Xanatos Gambit: Every possible outcome of her plan in "A Good Man Goes to War" includes either the Doctor's death or her escaping with Amy's daughter, meaning her ultimate goal is either accomplished or still easily attainable.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She was only killed in an alternate universe, meaning that she survived in the main timeline. Big Finish would later pick up on her further exploits, where she attempts to kill the Fifth Doctor.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When the Silence have the Doctor in their grasp, they decide they don't need her anymore, and trigger the kill switch in her eyepatch.

Colonel Manton

Colonel Manton (Eleventh Doctor)

The leading officer of the Church's forces at Demons Run.

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• The Dragon: He appears to rank below Madame Kovarian and helps her in commanding the Demons Run forces.
• Embarrassing Nickname: His punishment the Doctor instills on him is to tell his troops to "runaway", forever giving him the humiliating name of "Colonel Runaway".
• Hidden Depths: He is surprisingly good at calming down the Headless Monks and ceasing the friendly fire that the Doctor tricked them into. Pity his efforts don't last for long, with the Doctor taking advantage of the disarmed soldiers to teleport in his personal army.
• Humiliation Conga: Ooh boy. First the Doctor manages to infiltrate his forces as one of the Headless Monks, then when he tries to apprehend the Doctor the lights go out leading the Church and the Monks to attack one another. When Manton finally calms down and regains control by having his men disarm themselves, all of the Doctor's allies teleport in and hold the Church at gunpoint. Now at his mercy, the Doctor orders Manton to give the order for his troops to "runaway", so that he would forever be known as "Colonel Runaway". The cherry on top, Kovarian betrays him and tells him to go along with the Doctor's demands.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A non-lethal example. With no more use for him, Madame Kovarian goes along with the Doctor's demands to have him order his troops to runaway.
  Madame Kovarian: Give the order, Colonel Runaway.

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