Doctor Who: The Bells of Saint John Review – 9 Points To Ponder
7. What Is The Significance Of The Cloud?
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The Snowmen (series 7 Christmas special) portrayed the Doctor as literally living on a cloud. Clouds are perceived as large things but they are really made up of a lot of little bits. A literal cloud is condensed water vapor basically a bunch of tiny droplets of water. In Bells of Saint John, peoples minds/souls are uploaded into a data cloud each individual human life has been integrated into a whole mind. The resulting data cloud is greater than the sum of its parts in the sense that the overmind has access to the skills, knowledge and talents of each individual mind. The cost of integration with the data cloud however, is loss of physical form, a giving up of ones self. There are interesting similarities between the data cloud as presented here and the data core referenced in Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead (series 4). If you take a close look at the screens in the Shard control center in The Bells of Saint John, you will notice that the individuals are all situated in a background as if they created virtual realities to ground themselves even though they no longer exist in physical space. River Song was also uploaded into a virtual reality and it is quite fascinating that in The Bells of Saint John the Doctor refers to a life reduced to this as a living hell. Does he regret his actions at the Library?