10 Traumatic Doctor Who Facts You'll Wish You Hadn't Heard
5. Rigsy Had To Deal With Clara's Corpse
As far as companion deaths go, Clara’s concludes on a comparatively positive note.
Though she’ll always have to return to the Trap Street at the moment of her death to prevent any paradoxical timeline shenanigans, she has her own TARDIS to travel the universe with in the meantime, and Maisie Williams’ immortal Ashildr to keep her company. Compared to Moffat’s other companion deaths, that seems like a pretty good way to go.
But at the end of the day, she is still dead on Trap Street, and that's going to be particularly traumatic for one person in particular: Rigsy, Clara’s friend, who she first met in the excellent Series 8 episode Flatline.
Though this wasn't featured in the episode itself, the shooting script for Face the Raven contains the rather grim note that the Doctor tasked Rigsy with taking Clara's body back to her family, and informing Coal Hill School of her death.
It's tough to imagine him lugging his friend's corpse out of Trap Street, and he won’t have had much help, either. The Doctor can't have returned as his memories of Clara were wiped, and presumably Ashildr won’t be able to help either, as her return would mean crossing time streams with her younger self.
Which means that Rigsy is left alone in the Trap Street with Clara’s dead body, and with absolutely no knowledge that Clara actually got to live a full life travelling around the universe before her death. Poor bloke.