A sort-of Christmas-themed fic (well, there’s a Christmas in there, anyway?) starring a very minor Doctor Who character who I always liked.
Title: Loophole Fandom: Doctor Who Summary: After Clara’s death Rigsy has to return her body to the outside world, and mourn his loss. Notes: I took some inspiration here from the original script of Face the Raven, which contains a little bit of extra stuff about Rigsy and his partner and his life. It seems to have been deleted from the official BBC website but the Internet Wayback Machine caught it!
One of the missing scenes from Sarah Dollard’s original Doctor Who script “Face the Raven”. It confirms that The Doctor did carry Clara’s body inside. [x]
There was an exchange written (but cut for time) where the Doctor ordered Ashildr not to wipe Rigsy’s memory so that he could take care of [Clara’s] body and tell her family and honor her always. As we see from the post-credits scene, Me let him keep his memories of trap street.
Sarah Dollard on a cut scene from Face the Raven (x)
I can’t stop thinking about Clara’s family. What happened to her dad? Her gran? Why didn’t Clara mention them when she knew she was gonna die? That bugs me.
Did Rigsy have to move Clara’s body out of the street? I hope he didn’t have to. No, that would be a logistical impossibility, surely. They must have found some other way of moving her. Did her body get left in her flat for her family or coworkers or neighbours to find? Is she going to get a funeral? Will she be buried next to her mother, next to Danny maybe?
What possible explanation could be given for her death? Rigsy was the last human being she was seen with, and….yeah, no, that way lies unbelievable awfulness. Did Clara leave instructions in the TARDIS, maybe, about what to do in the event of her death? It sounds like the sort of thing she would do. So who carried them out? Who informed Clara’s family? What reason did they give for the sudden death of a healthy young woman – undetected medical condition? Accident? Suicide? Is Rigsy out there somewhere yearning to tell the real story of how his friend died but knowing he can’t?
How’s Courtney doing? Who will take the Year 7s for Taikwondo now? Does Jane Austen ever discover the fate of her one-time-girlfriend from the future? I just have so many questions. I hope the show answers even a couple of them.
i know y’all mean well and I’m in denial about Clara’s death too but this is truly uncomfortable? (not the scene, the moment was great) but this scene was amazing for Rigsy, because it showed Rigsy having moved beyond where we’d seen him last. he has a partner who loves & cares about him, he’s started a family, he has a place in the world where he is understood and cherished and deemed worthy, as opposed to being treated like dirt which is how he was treated by others in Flatline. he’s a happy proud dad who clearly loves his child and from his later phone conversation with his partner you can tell he cares about them both & is sensitive to them. (further it gives context to Clara’s sacrifice later on and ties her actions back to other moments from her life, including the death of her own parent & the way she consistently tries to care for children who aren’t hers–as an au pair, in Rings, as a teacher, when she meets both young Danny and the young Doctor etc., but i’m gonna focus on Rigsy here since that’s his baby)
and this moment was brilliant shorthand to show all of that, so to take that moment, strip Rigsy’s growth as a character out, strip him out of his family’s life & make him just a housepainter in someone else’s life, and to give his child to a different set of characters is kind of uncool?
