4. I Want To Hold Your Hand
When the bird has flown Got no-one to call your own Got no place to call your home When the bird has flown. lyrics from Day is Done, by Nick Drake The Doctor is always seeking connection. Often one of the first things he does is reach for a companions hand. In Angels Take Manhattan, for example, he is constantly grabbing Rivers hand, never letting her go for very long. It is telling that in Hide he is not the one holding Claras hand. In fact she lets him know quite emphatically that she does not wish him to do that. Its almost like he cant connect with her no matter how much he wants to. They are like the universe and the pocket universe, existing next to each other but unable to truly interact. How many times has the Doctor been disconnected from the ones he loves? He loses Rose to a parallel universe, Amy to a time he cannot revisit, River to a hard drive, Gallifrey to the Time War. What if he is also disconnected from himself? Clara keeps exhorting him to remember. Is she a message he has sent from another incarnation? Perhaps one he needed to forget in order to protect himself or the universe?