Okay so ik you don’t come to my blog to hear about Doctor Who head cannons or theories. And I haven’t posted in months but also, c’mon, this is tumblr and posts on here never die. But this just came to me after watching the Christmas special, “The Snowmen”.
I always thought it was a bit crazy that The Doctor would go from being a reclusive mourner to fun, adventures heroics again so quickly. And even offering Clara a key to the TARDIS after like ONE interaction.
Obviously, The Doctor initially forms bonds with his companions quickly. However, if you think about it, The Doctor probably saw the connection between him and Clara and basically placed all his eggs in one basket by jumping into a companion relationship with her straight away. Because he was sort of running from his grief, he saw this budding companionship with Clara as an escape or replacement for his current grief over Amy and Rory.
I don’t think he really dealt with his grief, he just sort of moved around it and found someone else he felt a connection with. Considering her whole existence in this storyline was to save his life over and over, it makes sense that Clara and him would connect in every timeline. But it’s easy to see that even before he knew she was soufflé girl, he felt her death so deeply because he wasn’t just mad at himself for her death, (The Doctor is very good at blaming himself for companion deaths) but also the recent death of the Ponds.
So when he speed-runs a whole companion relationship with Clara in the span of one evening, (meeting, connecting, adventuring, and then the companion dying.) it’s basically a double whammy and he gets hit with double the grief. Mourning Clara, and then having all that guilt and grief about the Ponds coming back to the surface.
TLDR; The doctor is already mourning a gigantic loss when he meets Victorian Clara and it only gets worse when she dies.
