meta: Run, You Clever Boy.... - The Bells of Saint John

[lonewytch]

First of all, hurrah that the show is back and what a great ep! Secondly - well, nothing secondly, except here is meta! Featuring nursery rhymes and Celtic myth, the Question and the Quest, the mirrors and the web, forests and leaves. Oh, and Chairs.

Comments

[a_phoenixdragon]

Hmmm...I will agree to disagree (as I did not like River's ending). I feel that it was a lovely place for a little girl who was dying and though the people who were there would rather be there than not alive, I still feel it is a prison of a sort in its own way. But those are my personal feelings.

The Cloud did NOT have an extended world like that, you do have a point - but the basic principals were the same. Your consciousness was uploaded into a system and there is no way out of that system. River may have a long life, with a lot to do and could be relatively happy in there - but the Doctor told her there was no way he could get her out. And he made it clear he wished he could. Those people were 'saved', but if the Doctor could have found a way to get them out of CAL's system, he would have done so.

I will heartily agree that CAL was an extended world and more expansive than the Cloud ever cared to be, but all the same it was built for a child - that same child was content to be there. It may be close to Gallifrey's afterlife (and the Matrix systems that contain the memories/experiences of the TimeLords contained within it), but it was built for her - not anyone else.

I do not mind the strong feelings at all! I feel rather strongly about it as well and may be taking this in the wrong light, just because the Library system horrified me on a personal level. A pretty trap is still a trap to me and while it may be a miraculous way to save a dying child and give her a life she wouldn't otherwise have had, it still has its limits. River chose to be there, to save everyone at the expense of herself - but it was a hard choice all the same and one that couldn't be undone once it was done.

Personal feelings aside though, the Cloud was a dark mirror of the Library system. A lot of the parallels and ideas were the same, the only difference being the Library was made to expand and nurture the minds inside; the Cloud was made to contain and imprison until the Greater Intelligence had a use for them - and then those minds would be extinguished long before their time. So I do acknowledge those differences *bows*, I just feels the differences were not vast enough (though that is just my opinion).