This article is a Guest Post by Martin Newman.

I don’t know how many of you still watch the British Sci-Fi show Doctor Who, but this past week introduced probably some of the creepiest monsters in the shows history.  By creepy, I don’t mean salt shakers that only 6 year-olds find creepy, but creepy as in keep the light on at night creepy.

Think about the following.  You enter a dark room and instantly get the feeling that something is not right.  Suddenly you think you see something out of the corner of your eye.  You turn to look and are see a hideous monster unlike anything you have ever seen.  You turn to run and, wait a minute, what were we doing?  This room looks creepy.  Something doesn’t feel right.

You probably just asked, what happened to the monster?  That’s the point of the new monsters in Doctor Who known as the Silence.  Once you look away from them, you instantly forget that they are there.  It is the perfect type of disguise.  They can hide in plain sight due to this fact.  In fact, according to the storyline, they have been here for centuries, and nobody knows why.  They have influenced everything including the moon landing.

The way that the producers setup many shots were also creepy.  Mix one part horror movie with one part sci-fi.  A lot of shots inside a creepy house with no lights and vague messages on the wall to GET OUT.  Then all of a sudden, strange markings start appearing on the companions of the Doctor, which makes it even more creepy.

To find out more about the show, you need to watch the Doctor Who episodes “The Impossible Astronaut” and the “Day of the Moon.”  All I have to say is that Doctor Who has gotten a bit more sophisticated than when I was a young boy.  In the past, you could almost make an online gambling wager that the music was probably the creepiest part about the monster of the week for many episodes.  The current incarnation of the show seems to have picked up the writing and storytelling to make it a must see for not just kids who like the show, but those of us who may have grown up watching the adventures of the Doctor in the Tardis.

Silence - It’s one of the world’s best virtues.

Being silent is an art in itself, and I happen to be a master of that art. I’m basically a silent person. I’ve never mastered the art of being loquacious.  I just can’t go on to talk for hours on end. Whenever I talk, I convey my points as briefly as possible and end with a majestic full-stop. That doesn’t mean that I’m proud of being silent. I would ideally love to talk for hours on end. In fact, there was a point in  time, when I used to talk more than what I do now. But then, something happened… something snapped within me, and I lost the ability to talk.

It happened one fine morning. One day, I wake up and I realize that I’ve lost the ability to talk! It’s not like, I went mute or anything. I could technically talk. Voice would come out of my mouth, I could utter syllables, alright. But my communication was just essential. I suddenly became brief in my conversations. My conversations were short (and not necessarily sweet).  That was when I noticed that silence was a part and parcel of me. I’m inherently a listener. NOT a talker. I could listen to people talk for hours on end, but if you ask me to talk for a couple of hours, I’d go mute. I just can’t do it!

I’m not exactly proud of being silent. In fact, I detest it. I envy everyone who talks a lot. Which means, I envy most girls. They just manage to dig out topics out of the blue and go on to talk, talk and talk. Whew. I would LOVE to do the same. Sigh!

Next comes the issue of what to talk. That’s where I’m stumped again. I’m not exactly full-of-beans. If you thought I was a walking-talking Encyclopedia Britannica, you couldn’t be more wrong! They say, “Known’s a drop. Unknown’s an ocean”. For me, ‘unknown’ makes up Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean combined. I often feel a bit deprived because of my lack of knowledge. Can’t say that I’m not doing anything about it. I’m reading my way to glory. Hoping that content will solve my quagmire of not being able to speak up when I want to.

Despite not being able to talk volumes about what I like, a part of me loves being silent. I prefer listening to people talk, rather than the act of talking. Listening is good. Everyone talks, few listen. I’m quite a good listener; I listen to friends’ problems for a living. When you listen to people, it makes them feel happy. They feel important, because there’s someone to listen to what they  have to say. In fact, there’s a friend of mine who’s exactly the same.

I guess I’ll find it a tad too hard to break my mould of being silent. But in a way, it’s made me a good listener.

Let’s see where silent listening takes me to…