Doctor Who: Sarah Dollard Surprised By Clara’s Return

The return of Clara Oswald, and the ending of Hell Bent where she departed with Me in her TARDIS, came as a surprise to everyone, including Sarah Dollard, the writer of Face the Raven.

Clara Oswald was gone. She had died, and would not be returning to Doctor Who. We all saw her demise, and while she appeared in the Doctor’s mental TARDIS, one had to expect that these glimpses of the back of her head would be the last time that she would be seen.

Except, all that changed during Hell Bent. The Doctor rescued her with his extraction chamber in the milliseconds before her death some 4.5 billion years in the past, pulling her back to Gallifrey in an attempt to bring her back to life. It worked to a degree, as Clara was able to go forth and continue her adventures, absconding with Me in another stolen TARDIS, but her heartbeat never returned.

This turn of events was certainly a surprise for viewers, but it also came as a surprise to Sarah Dollard, the writer of Face the Raven. While she knew a few of the broader details of what would happen with the Doctor following her episode, she was unaware of the majority of what would happen afterwards, an arrangement she actually preferred.

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The reason for this was that Dollard wanted to enjoy the series finale of Doctor Who just like the rest of the fans, without knowing what was to happen beforehand. Yes, she had an idea that Moffat was going to attempt to find a way to put Clara into the finale, but only in a broad sense. The details of exactly how he planned to do so were unknown to Dollard.

And so, it was with joy that she got to watch Clara avoid the fate of Donna Noble, keeping her memories of her time with the Doctor. Even though it would have been done in an attempt to save her life and allow her to have the existence the Doctor felt she deserved, that life would have been empty. There would have been an itch somewhere in the back of Clara’s mind that she would not be able to scratch, despite not knowing the cause.

Dollard also mentioned her grief at the death of Clara. As she worked on her story for the better part of a year, knowing that it would be in Face the Raven that Clara would meet her end, Dollard mourned her passing from a number of different sides. Now that Clara gets to live on, and in Dollard’s words, “live on gloriously,” she will be needing to get used to the idea that the former companion will be continuing her adventures somewhere else.

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The return of Clara Oswald, and her ability to continue her adventures, came as a surprise to many fans of Doctor Who. That surprise was even shared by those who worked on the show, including Sarah Dollard, who wrote the episode that Clara died in.