Viewers of Doctor Who‘s festive special got an extra present with the news that Jenna Coleman’s Clara is jumping aboard the TARDIS for another year. The actress kept media and fans guessing right up to the last moment, and the revelation was announced at the press screening for Last Christmas before being unveiled to the nation in the closing minutes. Showrunner Steven Moffat had some fun depicting Clara as an elderly woman (surely every cast member in the show has been in OAP prosthetics now), suggesting Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor was to leave her behind. But it turned out to be a hallucination, convincing the Time Lord to invite her for another round of adventures. Coleman remarked:
It’s wonderful. I get a whole other series of stories with the Doctor and I couldn’t walk away with the story being unresolved. There is so much more to do. I think they’ve finally just reached a point where they really understand each other. The arrival of the 12th Doctor has just kind of dropped this whole bombshell and allowed the dynamic to totally change, so I think just when Clara was feeling more comfortable in the relationship, it has suddenly thrown something new up.
Capaldi dropped his curmudgeonly persona to agree:
I’m thrilled. Jenna has just been fantastic and such a pleasure to work with.
Coleman’s renewed tenure puts her on course to be the longest-serving companion in the newer era of the series, a title previously held by Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond.
The episode was an unusual and ambitious Christmas feast that combined elements of ALIEN, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. Overnight ratings were 6.3m. Series 9 of Doctor Who starts shooting in January, the first part’s title confirmed as The Magician’s Apprentice.
Sources: BBC, Doctor Who News
