Steven Moffat is a genius who has created some of the most memorably scary monsters Doctor Who has ever seen. When he says that the Season 6 monsters are going to be the scariest since the Weeping Angels, I believe him.
But I don't for one moment believe that they'll be scarier than the Angels. Because he can't do that. The Angels are (or were, up until "Flesh and Stone") in a league with only the Daleks.
The Daleks were terrifying back in 1963/4 because we didn't know they were men in tin cans. They look genuinely inhuman, and are thus terrifying.
The Angels took that concept one step further. They have decidedly humanoid features, but with one important exception: thanks to some very talented dancers and the magic of computer effects, they appear to be completely frozen. The first time I saw "Blink" I'd assumed that they were a mix of props and CGI, because I didn't for one second think that real people could freeze so effectively like that. You don't realize that they're people in suits.
And all that nonsense in "The Time of Angels" about the things that hold the image of an Angel become Angels themselves - that wasn't necessary. The Angels are already terrifying; the end of "Blink" revealed that any statue, anywhere could be an Angel in disguise. It's like saying the Daleks are extra scary because they can fly. Well, no, a Dalek is scary because it's a Nazi in an impenetrable suit of armor and it honestly believes you should die, and unless you're in Death to the Daleks, it's got the means of killing you at its disposal.
So the new monsters are called the Silence and their big shtick is they can make you forget you saw them. See, Moffat's got this whole notion that monsters aren't scary in and of themselves and thus need extra imbued powers. No four-year-old watching this is really going to get it. At all. A four-year-old watching "Blink" might not get why the Angels can't move on-screen, but they'll still be terrified.
Moffat's best monsters have been based on primal fears: the Vashta Nerada exploit a very basic fear of the dark (and, incidentally, this is why the fear-heavy "Silence in the Library" is a lot better than the technobabble-Matrix-whatever-filled "Forest of the Dead," lingering resentment about the River-Doctor plot being pinched from Audrey Niffeneger notwithstanding). The Weeping Angels are things that move when you're not looking at them; you turn back and bam! they're suddenly right in your face. The virus in "The Empty Child" was creepy primarily because it was a kid - no parent wants their kid turned into a monster, and no little boy wants that to happen to his best friend.
In contrast, Moffat's worst monsters - the clockwork droids in "Girl in the Fireplace" and the Smilers in "The Beast Below" have so flagrantly been people in suits, with nothing really to differentiate them from any other man-in-a-mask. Ooooh, their heads turn 'round. Scary. Not.
Moffat doesn't work on an intellectual level. No, I'm not saying his scripts are stupid; one thing I love about "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" is that the Chekov's Gun is actually very subtly introduced early on. What I'm saying is that he doesn't, or shouldn't, go for your brain. Because the concept that my computer might become an Angel if I pause "Blink" for too long isn't nearly as frightening as "Blink" itself.
And that is why I think the Silence is/are going to be a dud. They rely on a high concept, rather than a basic primal fear, whereas Moffat is better with the latter.
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