"Um, pardon me for interrupting..." Roderick had only just come off his shift and sat down in the station refectory, still in his technician's overalls, when a voice and a gentle tap on his shoulder caused him to look behind him and up into the face of a youngish man with brown hair, wearing a light-brown coat over a blue jacket, white shirt and red tie. "I don't suppose you can tell me anything about that ship, can you?" the man asked.
His lunch on the table in front of him, Roderick followed the man's long arm pointing at the vessel docked in the salvage yard outside the refectory's viewing port. "The SS Madame de Pompadour? She was found drifting in the Dagmar Cluster; been missing for over a year. Ion storm messed her up, by the looks of it. Clockworks went mental, killed the crew, used their bodies for spare parts! Bloody horrific, I'll tell you! Funnily enough, her sister ship, Marie Antoinette, went missing not long ago too. God knows what - "
"Her name..." The man's voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper as he stared out the window at the vessel. "Of course, it was the ship's name. That's why they thought they needed her...Oh, Reinette..."
"Are you alright, mister?" Roderick asked carefully.
When the man looked back at him, it seemed to Roderick as though his eyes were brighter, wetter. "I'm always alright," the man replied. "I have to be." With that he started walking away toward the exit. He had just reached the door when he stopped, turned back round, and said "That other ship you mentioned...SS Marie Antoinette? I'll keep a close eye out. Sure I'll come across it one day." And then he was gone, leaving Roderick alone and uncertain as to just what that had been about.
A technician ate his meal in silence and mused on a stranger's questions and sadness. And the Doctor sat in the TARDIS and mourned for a girl in a fireplace.