What is The Silence? It’s a question we’re all itching to find out the answer to. Steven Moffat has promised answers next year, but right now we have some new titbits to speculate on.

Firstly, anyone hoping for the return of an old enemy, prepare for disappointment. Everything we’re hearing so far suggests that The Silence is an entirely new monster for the show.

Doctor Who’s producer Piers Wenger recently told Sci Fi Magazine: “Steven’s not a big fan of using monsters from the classic series or monsters that we’ve seen before, so we’ve got quite a lot of new monsters this coming year. There’s going to be a monster that recurs, that we’ve heard referenced in the series already, but which we’ve never actually seen the physical manifestation of, and it’s called The Silence. It will be a recurrent theme and will have an ongoing significance.”

Wenger also dropped this really interesting hint: “We’ll see [The Silence] in its physical form, but that is something that is already established in many ways. It figured in the last series but we’re going into the true terror of them, the horror of their species and their needs. It’s going to emerge next year.”

It seems we won’t have to wait long in the sixth series, as filming details reveal that The Silence is in the opening two parter.