While I was at Gallifrey One this past weekend, I had the joy of interviewing Sarah Dollard, an incredible writer and the woman responsible for breaking all of our hearts in “Face the Raven.” Between ribbon exchanges and cosplays, we talked about fandom, Clara’s death, and Jane Austen’s cut scene.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Whovian Feminism (Alyssa): When you were told that you were going to be writing Clara’s death, what were the issues that you wanted to address and what issues were you concerned about?

Sarah: I think, with TV in general, you can fall into a trap that when a female character dies, it’s more about the impact on the male characters or the male protagonist. There’s a lot of concern about the trope of fridging, and I’m really aware of that. That was all swirling in my head as potential traps I could fall into. Especially because the show is called Doctor Who, and it’s about the Doctor, and it’s Twelve who we’re going to be staying with in the next episode and the following episode and the season after.

For me it was incredibly important, before I even put a word on the page, to think about how it would be Clara’s episode and how it would not just be Clara’s death but Clara’s scene. That she would own it, that she would have agency. One of the first things that I wrote for that scene was “You’re reckless all the bloody time, why can’t I be like you?” I’m sensitive to those issues because those are the issues that upset me in the media I love the most.

Alyssa: Reading the script that was published online, there were a lot of scenes that I particularly liked that got cut from the final edit. Which scene did you like most that got cut that you wish had stayed in?

Sarah: From the script that you’re referring to that was released via the BBC Writersroom, I think some of my favorite stuff that got cut were the jokes from the interviews with the aliens on the street about how they perceived humans and how they perceived Rigsy. They were my little darlings. But I think my favorite scene that got cut actually got cut for time just before that draft. It was a scene between Clara and Anahson, just the two of them alone. Clara was asking Anahson about her mother and whether her mother had any enemies on the street.

Alyssa: And you’ve also mentioned that there was a scene with Jane Austen that got cut. Can you tell us about that?

Sarah: Yeah! That got cut pretty much as soon as the script got given to anyone from production. As soon as it got to Nikki Wilson, our producer, there was a chat about whether we really needed characters in the pre-credits sequence that weren’t going to directly feed the main story, because there were already so many speaking parts on Trap Street that had to be prioritized. Logistical cuts have to be made like that all the time and I can totally see why it was the first scene to go.

The original pre-credits scene was actually a scene in Jane Austen’s England, with Jane and Clara and the Doctor sitting around the table playing poker with a couple of other characters. The concept was that Clara, being very close with Jane and pranking each other and trolling the world together, taught Jane Austen to play poker like an absolute gun. They would take their least favorite people from history and bring them to Jane’s garden and play poker with them and rip them off by allowing them to believe Jane couldn’t play.

Alyssa: One of my other favorite characters that got cut was Jen, Rigsy’s fiancee. You had written a few scenes with her, including one at the very end where she is with their daughter, Lucy, as Rigsy is painting the TARDIS. I was wondering why you wanted to include Jen in the initial draft?

Sarah: It was really important to me that we got to know Rigsy more and we got to see a little more of his life. I felt his introduction in Flatline was so great. You got hints that he was estranged from his family and that through his experiences in Flatline, he found the emotional wherewithal to call his mother and make peace with her after his aunt’s death. At one point in my script his mother was in it as well. I really wanted to see that he had made up with her and now had a family of his own. So for me it was about making Rigsy feel like a really rounded character and making it his story, as well as Clara’s.

I was gutted that Jen got cut. A great actress named Naomi Ackie was cast to film the scenes. I don’t know where they got it from, but I’ve seen on Tumblr a still of that final scene where Rigsy is painting the TARDIS and you can actually see Jen standing there with Lucy in her arms. And there was a line there, where she says “Isn’t the Doctor going to be mad at you?” And he says, “I hope he is mad. I hope he comes back and properly goes off at me.”

Alyssa: One of the things that’s personally been very interesting to me is that you are very involved in fandom. You are a fangirl like the rest of us and you were in the Doctor Who fandom for a while before you actually got to write an episode for the show. What has it been like for you, as a fan, to then come in and be in a position to write an episode for the show?

Sarah with a Clara cosplayer and Sarah cosplaying Donna Noble at Gallifrey One

Sarah: Coming in as a fan probably isn’t an unusual experience. I think the vast majority of writers who come in on the show are fans of the show, no one more so than Steven himself. But I guess there’s a slightly different tenor to the fandom of today. There’s something different about being a fangirl involved on Tumblr and Twitter and all of that. It’s different to the fandom world that Steven was involved in before he “went canon.” I was incredibly excited and incredibly honored and I felt very lucky to be there.

I think my knowledge and enthusiasm as a fan absolutely helped me get the job. My first meeting at BBC Wales was with Doctor Who’s Script Executive Lindsey Alford, and we had a long chat about my favorite episodes, my favorite companion, my favorite Doctor, who I thought the next companion should be and what type of character she should be, all that kind of stuff. I actually welled up talking about Donna, which was embarrassing, but Lindsey is also a fan and we connected about being fans. I hope I don’t get in trouble for telling you this about Lindsey! But we talked a lot about Ace, and how Lindsey would dress up as Ace when she was a kid and how she had her own homemade cardboard TARDIS. So it was really nice to connect with her on that level.

Alyssa: And has it been any different for you, being a part of the fandom, now that you’re in the position of being a creator of one of the episodes for the show?

Sarah: Oh yeah, absolutely. I don’t think you can go back to talking about the show in quite the same way as somebody who hasn’t been on the inside and seen the way that decisions are made. And I’ve read criticism of my work and of my decisions from a perspective that I might have held a year ago. I have read criticisms of Clara’s death and the way Clara died, and read fellow feminists talking about it. And whereas previously, if I disagreed with somebody on a certain point, as a fan I could’ve jumped in and had a back-and-forth, but now, coming from the inside, I can’t do that anymore. It would be like punching down, and I’m absolutely not about that. I’ve been biting my tongue a bit, but also thinking about it too - whether they were right, whether I could’ve done things differently.

Alyssa: One of the things that frustrates many fans is the gender disparity in creative positions in television. We know that, especially in sci-fi and other genre shows, less women are being invited to write and direct episodes. Fans sometimes feel frustrated because we want things to change and we want to help make that happen, but we don’t know how we can make our voices heard. As outsiders and not members of the industry, we often wonder how we can make our demands heard in a way that is productive. I was wondering what you thought about how fans can speak up and productively talk to showrunners and content creators about how we want more women writing, directing, and producing the television shows that we love.

Sarah: Where we are now, there are so many more opportunities for fans and consumers to not just contact creators but the people who are in charge of employing the content creators, whether it be on Twitter or at cons, like this one. I think it is just about asking the questions. It is also really important to remember that when you are talking with somebody on Twitter, just as much as when you’re talking with somebody face-to-face at a convention, it’s important to remember that the person you are talking to is trying to do the right thing and probably does want to hire in a more diverse way. So it’s about putting your questions forward in a respectful way and not going out of your way to be accusatory. But if you feel strongly then do bring up those issues, ask those questions, and ask how they can do more to hire women as writers, as producers, as directors. I think that the more voices that are heard and the louder that chorus gets, the more that will be done.