The Meaning of Silence (Quantum Series)

The Seers of Dronid is the first episode of season 33 and is written by Steven Moffat.

Plot
The Doctor, Jack and Amy on the search for a missing Rory get a call from an old friend of the Doctor’s at Cambridge.

Synopsis
The Doctor sprints into the TARDIS, which looks very different from when we last saw it as there are soot marks over most of the walls and the glass panels have cracks in them, followed closely by Captain Jack into the control room and quickly ducks as a blue blast of electricity follows hitting the console as Jack kicks the door shut stopping the beam, the Doctor gets up and pulls his friend up we can now see the Doctor’s hair has grown longer and now reaches his shoulders and he also has a light beard. The two friends look at each over briefly and then burst out laughing, however they are interrupted by the phone ringing, the Doctor stops and picks the phone up. Over the phone we can hear a distraught Amy, she’s telling the Doctor that Rory has been kidnapped and the police are stumped, they can’t find any clue to what’s happened to him… 

 The scene cuts to the front of Amy’s house as the TARDIS materialises, the Doctor emerges, his hair still long but his beard shaved and he is wearing the green trench coat, his is followed by Jack who shuts the door and looks around, he seems to count the houses before walking to Amy’s door. He walks slowly to the door and softly knocks, Amy swiftly answers clearly having been crying, she jumps into the Doctor’s arms and sobs into his shoulder, he comforts her before introducing Jack, he seeing the situation decides not to try to flirt with her. When they get inside the Doctor asks for more information.

 Amy tells them that Rory was working late shifts and was out late so Amy had gone to bed seemingly safe in the knowledge that Rory would arrive later, however that was not the case as when she awoke in the morning be was absent. She first called the hospital where he works to see if he was still there however when she found that he had left as usual she started to worry and called the police, that was two weeks ago with no sign. However that’s not why she called the Doctor, the previous day a strange man calling himself Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the Doctor smiling at the name of his old friend, arrived at her house and said he’d looked over the police reports and in view of who Amy and Rory are as former travelling companions with the Doctor he suggests that it wasn’t just a regular kidnapping and he suggests an extra-terrestrial involvement and recommends calling the Doctor and as he was leaving asked Amy to say ‘hi to the old fellow’ for him.

 The Doctor thinks it over then takes his two friends back to the TARDIS and sets the coordinates for the Shadow Proclamation, he (Jack) then starts to explain that the Doctor as a technical legal representative of the Time Lord’s is allowed access to the data on the crackdown of Silence followers after Demon’s Run, Amy proceeds to ask the Doctor why he jumps to the conclusion it was the Silence not say the Daleks, Ice warriors or cybermen. The Doctor summarises by saying that he has to narrow it down somewhere and the Silence are someone who already know where they live and are easier to track down via the Shadow Proclamation’s investigations.

 When the TARDIS materialises the woman in charge (NOTE: THE SAME ONE AS THE STOLEN EARTH ) orders the workers to clear the room except a contingent of Judoon guards. The Doctor steps out of the TARDIS flanked by Amy and Jack, he formally greets her as an acting-ambassador after the formalities are over he asks for a report on the activities of the Silence and any information about Rory, the woman reveals that a number of facilities have been raided but there’s been no information about Rory at any of them, she apologises as the Doctor thanks her and enters the TARDIS followed by Amy and Jack. As they enter the Doctor grimly says that it’s time for plan B, as he grabs the lever to dematerialise it snaps off in his hand the Doctor gasps in frustration as Jack mutters ‘not again’ while Amy bursts out laughing despite her previous sadness the Doctor ignoring her hysterics wedged his screwdriver into the base of the lever and trips the take-off function as the TARDIS dematerialises the Doctor punches the Temporal orbit button and turns to Amy and helps her to stop laughing and takes her hand in his own left and to his own disdain takes Jack’s hand in his remaining one he then tells them not to let go under any circumstance because where they’re going is protected by defence systems that could drive them insane without any hope of rehabilitation.

 He leads them through the TARDIS corridors noticeably the lights power up in front of them and power down behind them both Jack and Amy ask where they are going, the Doctor responds by saying that they are going to primary control. They eventually reach a large metal door akin to a bulkhead with an old fashioned keypad with Galifreyan symbols, he briefly moves his hands to the pad before pulling back and starts muttering to himself ‘code… code’ before pressing in the correct buttons. After the code has been entered the hexagonal door panels split apart and the trio enter a large cavernous control room with battered wooden flooring and a dusting splintering mahogany wood console (NOTE: It’s the control room from the TV movie but heavily damaged with wires poking out from gouges in the floor), the Doctor seems to stop and look around the room in contemplation before walking to the console. As he gets there he looks at the twisted metal girders where separate computer screens hang from damaged clips he looks up and Amy starting to get frustrated leans on the console, which instantly powers up, some of the screens activate, while some show static some of the others show the seal of Rassilon and have data planes filled with old high Gallifreyan symbols. The Doctor heads towards a screen with the worn words ‘NAVCOM’ in white paint above, the Doctor straightens the screen and begins making alterations to the TARDIS external location systems, put simply he’s going to use the internal scanner records to extrapolate Rory’s biodata and then he’s going to extend to temporal-spatial sensors of the TARDIS to find that biodata and linked with the NAVCOM to produce co-ordinates, the Doctor also remarks that he used a similar method to locate Demon’s Run and to tell that the flesh Amy wasn’t real. Here Amy seems confused since she thought that flesh duplicates had the same DNA as the originals, this is where Jack cuts in to explain biodata while the Doctor re-networks the TARDIS system, Jack explains that biodata isn’t your DNA as such, it’s more of temporal DNA, it is basically your personal past and you characteristics, while DNA manipulation can change you now biodata manipulation can make it so you were always one way, put simply biodata controls your relationship with history, Jack mentions that the time agency never succeeded to even analyse biodata strands and to his knowledge the surviving trans-temporal powers like the Nekkestani, the Monans or the Phaedons have only succeeded in detecting strands of important people, while the TARDIS keeps a full record of the biodata of almost all of the people in the vicinity of it’s initial landing.

 The Doctor suddenly interrupts them when he declares that something’s interesting. Jack and Any go over to the screen the Doctor is at, but they can’t read the Gallifreyan equations so Jack askes what’s interesting. The Doctor turns round, the Doctor is clearly wearing 10s glasses, and explains that Rory’s got two complete biodata strands, essentially two versions of himself, the original seems to have been overwritten or the Doctor adds ominously based on the readings the TARDIS has will be overwritten. Amy mentions what he said about time being rewritten and the Doctor amends her by saying that he lied, time can’t be rewritten but it can be overwritten essential new timelines can form changing history and forcing the old timelines out of phase as a dead end timeline, only accessible through specialist equipment. So the Doctor theorises, sometime in their personal future Rory’s timeline, his whole history will be changed to the Rory we know.

 Sometime later Jack and Amy are sitting down in the arm chairs while the Doctor cursing in Gallifreyan stumbles in and out of the dilapidated wooden console and the myriad of active screens on all six of the metal pillars before grunting in frustration and leaning on the console. Amy sees this and askes what’s wrong, the Doctor tells her that there’s not enough spare parts, the full NAVCOM firmware, temporal-spatial sensors and the internal biodata pool can’t work together due to the TARDIS databanks being full and the NAVCOM package being a streamlined version of the type 90 TARDIS software filling a full 80% of the Doctor’s type-40. Suddenly the Doctor spasms Amy and Jack run to him as he falls to the ground however the TARDIS then starts moving as the time rotor groans Amy and Jack are thrown to the floor as the TARDIS makes a u turn through the vortex and starts screeching through the vortex to a single point.

 Jack and Amy haul themselves up and Amy yells at Jack to stop the TARDIS to which he responds that he’s unfamiliar with these controls he’s only used the coral theme and the console they used earlier, however soon as the TARDIS started in the opposite direction it stops. We then see through a mans as he heads into the TARDIS it seems to have landed in a Victorian like room complete with wooden panels, as he gets to the door he produces a key and pushes the door open. Back in the TARDIS Amy and Jack have helped the Doctor up the Doctor starts saying that it’s impossible as the double doors to the outside open and the figure comes in, he smiles and says “Ah, there you are Doctor” we now see that it’s professor Chronotis, the Doctor’s old friend, he carries on at the Doctor’s widened eyes. “I believe you asked for my help…”

 Rory wakes up in a worn rusted prison cell with just a blanket on a steel bed he looks restless and starts repeating a mantra, sounding like ‘don’t worry Amy and the Doctor will find you’, however he’s interrupted when Madame Kovarian comes in through the door, she looks down at the pitiful fate of the nurse from Leadworth before laughing. Kovarian then starts to taunt Rory that the Doctor’s never coming for him, that they’re almost beyond the Doctor’s reach and by the time he realises where Rory is it’ll be too late, she says that knows because the Silence bringer, their equivalent of the pope has decreed it based off of reading you biodata strands. As if to prove her point she mentions his apparent second history and starts to say that even the Doctor won’t break the laws of time, while known as a renegade he’s developed a streak of responsibility about said laws since to quote him ‘he became the last to enforce them’, she further taunts that he didn’t break them to save Gallifrey so he won’t break them for his pet…

 (To be continued)