Contract Issues in “Doctor Who”
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW FOR “FACE THE RAVEN”
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As we get ready for the season finale tonight, I thought I’d bring up the fact that a major story point of “Doctor Who” recently revolved around a matter of contract law.
If you watched the episode “Face the Raven,” then you know that the Doctor’s companion, Clara, found herself in mortal peril when she agreed to be marked for death instead of her friend Rigsy. Ashildr, the immortal woman who’d caused the whole problem, looked at Clara mournfully after being told of the substitution. She could have broken the contract for Rigsy’s soul, she explained, but she couldn’t break the contract for Clara’s soul. Poorly phrased, at first this made no sense to me. I understood it as Ashildr being willing to breach the contract on behalf of Rigsy but not on behalf of Clara and I was annoyed (because I’ve always been very fond of Clara).
However, upon reflection, I think I’ve realized what they really intended: Ashildr and the deadly raven entered into a contract by which the raven would receive Rigsy’s soul. Ashildr had the right to terminate this contract with notice to the raven (and that notice could take the form of Rigsy’s willing transfer of the death mark), but she did not have the right to alter the terms of the contract to substitute anyone else for Rigsy. If she terminated the contract, the raven was free to carry out its death sentence on whoever carried the mark. When Rigsy transferred the death mark to Clara, he apparently voided the raven’s contract with Ashildr to kill Rigsy. Which meant that Clara’s death mark had no contractual implications: neither Ashildr nor Rigsy were involved with it or could affect its meaning in any way. Clara was outside of the realm of contract law. So I think we were truly meant to believe that Ashildr was powerless to fix Clara’s situation, because all of the power she’d received under the contract had been terminated.
I think.
I am such a joy to watch “Doctor Who” with, as you can see. And after I went through all this analysis for my friends’ benefits, they pointed out to me that this was an alien contract and who knows what alien contract law looks like. I wonder if alien contract law requires consideration…