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Sil
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Reviews
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Sil
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The Real Green Death by Andy Hughes 10/4/08
I noticed the villains page here seemed a little lacking, and that sent my mind back to a memorable moment in my Doctor Who viewing.
I thought I had seen all that Who had to offer. Killer clams, anti-man, knight from another dimension, zip-up cybermen. Even though I've barely dented half of the Who canon, I was pretty sure there was nothing left to shock me, let alone disturb me.
Then I sat down to Vegeance on Varos and met a slimy-slg man named Sil, who proceeded to steal my heart. VoV takes a lot of flak for being cynical and needlessly violent, but it's my favorite Colin Baker story and one of the few Who stories that goes for real social commentary beyond "don't pollute/use nuclear energy" or "see, black Daleks and white Daleks should get along". At the heart of VoV is the idea that humans are either mindless sheep or selfish and solely hungry for power, a boldly existential statement for such a moralistic show.
Which leads us to Sil. What a beautifully disgusting creature. How best to describe him? If you haven't seen Nabil Shaban's frightening performance, there's really not much to say. I had seen images of him before watching the episode and didn't think too much of it. But until you actually see this little crescent-shaped slug with arms, gnashing his teeth and clicking his tongue atop a giant unmentionable device, you can't really appreciate the strangeness of it all. He is over the top, of course, but unlike the Master he is a creature who seems to have no other volume. I had seen plenty of alien races in the new and old series, but rarely had a being felt so truly otherworldly as Sil.
He is completely unredeemable, and because of that he is a wonderful character to watch and he embodies the classic dichotomy of the braggart: self confident and yet totally dependent and cowardly at heart. He's completely full of hot air, as is revealed at the end of the episode, and he lends a level of comedy while still providing menace (I, for one, wouldn't want to get on his bad side). And even though we find ourselves in an era of monsters so much more convincing and truly threatening than little ol' Sil, I find that the simplicity of his costume and makeup enhances the menace. You could actually walk into a real physical room and see this strange man all made-up and ready to repulse; the same obviously cannot be said of Cassandra or the Gelth or other CGI creations of the modern age.
I have yet to see Mindwarp (or any of the Trial of a Time Lord season, for that matter), which takes place on Sil's home planet and introduces us to other members of his race, but I'll seek it out solely for that reason. Sil is one of the best original creations of this era of the show's immense history and an ancestor of other creatures that would follow. I wouldn't take a taxi ride with him, but I look forward to seeing him onscreen again.