Great post. It felt very much like a Doctor regeneration, in that most Doctors haven't gone out fighting a million Daleks or Cybermen, but saving someone, or due to frankly bad luck.

It was her compassion for Rigsy (a young father with a new born baby) that led her to take the risk. A mistake, but she was also desperately unlucky

i never liked her so no-i do sympathise with the awful storyline shes been given as her finale

Anyone have sympathy for clara dying - I immediately think, which death?

The Dalek Clara death, and the Victorian death, yeah both were touching, and I liked each of those Claras.
This one? Pfft, bring on the crying wolves.

Ah, but what the Doctor did was not his reaction. He reined in his vengeance because Clara wanted him to.

I think that, although the cause of death was a bit of a clunky plot contrivance, the actual lead into it was pitched perfectly. It shows so well the path that Clara has been on - she's had a series of monologues where she faces down alien terrors on her own, and we've seen her develop from:
Cold War - terrified but willing to do what she can - and needing to be coached through it.
Deep Breath - terrified but able to keep control, think through it and have faith in the Doctor.
Kill The Moon - making decisions on behalf of the whole Earth.
The Girl Who Died - Able to confidently face down an alien masquerading as a god who has already proved willingness to kill without provocation. (Admittedly, she also did this in Rings of Akhaten, which is a bit of an outlier on this trajectory.)
Face the Raven - overly confident, make a mistake, faced the consequences, accepted her death without fear.

Quite so. I didn't watch the episode. Too many let downs for the Doctor facing his greatest danger/foe/difficulty - yeah since he last faced that. Clara's died too many times for it to have any real emotional impact.

From comments, it appears the Doctor got lead around by the nose or that teleporter - he really must collect all those Time Agency devices.

Danny Pink with his consciousness in a cyberman and Clara dead, how is Colonel Pink ever going to get born? Think of the children.

Clara's gone from the series for good or rather Jenna is. Permanently. That would be why so much time was spent creating a Zygon Clara. The Zygon Invasion two-parter strongly intimated that there were two Zygon Osgood's.

Clara stays home in the pod allowing Zygon Clara to travel with the Doctor and absorb the Raven gaining all its knowledge. Of course, in Norse mythology, Odin used a pair of Ravens to gather information. The doctor will be able to access this information in an altered state of consciousness.

As a side note, I've yet to work how Clara was able get the Timelords to grant 11 a whole new slate of regenerations from their time-locked state.

The human Clara would then have taken the face of Osgood to maintain the number and split to maintain that truce, courtesy of Zygon Osgood.

Equally sidetracked - the Doctor created a mire unit for Ashildir. Why didn't he create one for Clara? The Doctor knows he faces an army of Hybrids and must defend Gallifrey. The Raven held critical information and Ashildir is his ace in the hole. Not that he can leave Ashildir loose after he's destroyed said hybrid army. Those cybermen with the timelord consciousnesses could be said to be hybrids. The return of the Pink one?

He didn't create the Mire devices. He had two that had been retrieved from the Mire corpses/robot shells. He used one to resuscitate Ashildr and gave the other to her for her to use if/when she found someone with whom she could live forever.

All that was quite clearly stated in The Girl Who Died.

Yep. Compassion mixed with a certain recklessness and complete faith that the Doctor would "fix it". I thought it was a great end (?) personally, completely in keeping with Clara's development over the last couple of years. Her 'addiction' to the Doctor's lifestyle which caused friction and conflict in series 8 when she fell for Danny; and the huge distress she felt at his death. I think it's generally worked very well myself. Was she sometimes bossy, over confident and compromised by her addiction to adventure and her 'real' life? Yes. I didn't personally find this irritating; I found it mostly thoughtfully written and very well acted by JC.

So to answer the question; 'course I felt sympathy! A young, intelligent but flawed young woman who's gone through an awful lot gets killed thinking she's doing the right thing.

I would add; a) I do know she's fictional! and b) of course we've only seen episode 1 of a de facto 3 parter.

For me, Clara's death seemed quite empty and pointless.

The whole reason she died was a 'small print' issue in the contract Ashildr had with the Raven. And then the Doctor just stood there, accepting he could do nothing to save her, and watched her die. Really? Can you imagine 10 doing the same for Rose, or 11 for Amy?

The whole scene lacked gravitas and importance, for me. It wasn't heroic or even particularly tragic. It was just pointless.

In classic Who, companions were bumped off with real gusto. There was poor old Adric sacrificing his life at the end of the amazing Earthshock to try and save the Earth. And then there was Peri, abandoned by the Doctor only to be murdered by Gallifrey's High Council in order to prevent Crozier completing his mind-swapping surgery.

OK so Peri's death was retrospectively changed, but it was certainly written and filmed as her death. And it was shocking and devastating at the time, as was Adric's.

But Clara's final scene just didn't feel like a final scene. Which is why I think she's not dead or will be rescued retrospectively. And I'll be very surprised if the Doctor genuinely believes that she's dead too. His behaviour in that final scene was beyond strange. Even for 12!

Well, it was played on a larger scale, but Adric's death was pointless too, of course. Brave; impeccable intentions; but as it turns out, the poor little twerp didn't need to be on the ship trying to save it as it had to crash. There are echo's with Clara, as if she hadn't acted the way she did, Rigsy would've been okay anyway. The fact that her 'death' was caused by her taking things into her own hands, thinking she was helping the Doctor and Rigsy I found particularly poignant. Adric thought he was saving the World; Clara thought she was saving a friend. Both had confidence that they could sort things. Whoops!

Yes I do. She was trying to help Rigsy but ultimately got in way over her head though.

What a perfect description of Adric. That really made me laugh!

Clara Is Back In 9 Days!

Is she really dead yet

See told you they d have her in ep 11

She's still dead though. You kept saying she wasn't actually dead, but all we saw on Saturday was an image from the Doctor's imagination.

Really? I saw loads of sci-fi. Are you sure you were watching Doctor Who?

Clara's and Danny's 'deaths' would leave a niggling loose end with Orson Pink.

I'm afraid I punched the air and cheered when that snippy little cow pegged it. But hell - why won't she stay dead?! And why is the Doctor so angsty and pathetic about her? (Their relationship never worked for me - unlike the previous Doc - it always seemed forced, probably because of the length of their contracts...) JC is one of the worst actresses on TV, thinking that one merely needs to mumble and 'talk normal' to be classed as good, and seeing her alongside PC - an actor of towering talent - has always been embarrassingly uncomfortable to watch. (Wrinkling one's button nose and subglottally muttering, "Huh?" at the most charismatic and urbane Doc we've ever had just doesn't cut it, darling - to another soap, go, and quickly too. Farewell.)

She IS dead.

its questionable if most of these people on the board are actually watching this show.

I still can't believe she really is dead .. can't remember seeing anything in the press about her being written out before the end of the year.

I was hoping throughout last weekend's episode (Heaven Sent?) that she would come back at some point and we'd be treated to her pretty looks and cheeky persona for a little while longer.

If it's not to be, let's hope the next Companion can at least match up to Clara.

Have to say I agree with this. I wasn't moved by Clara sacrificing herself for somebody she had only met once before. If she had done this to save somebody she loved it would have been much more moving. It also seemed ridiculous that the Doctor couldn't find a way out of it (as he usually does). It's hard to believe that Clara is actually dead so I suspect she is now living in some sort of other dimension and will pop up again to tell the doctor everything is fine.

I couldn't agree more! I will miss her dimples and Lancashire lilt. I must confess to having a bit of a crush on Jenna since I met her a couple of years ago. A really lovely person, very sweet natured and modest. I have been lucky to have met a few well known people thanks to my work, and she is my favourite by quite a margin

The original Dalek Clara was great (Oswyn Oswald in "Asylum of the Daleks"). Everything subsequently was downhill... in fact, from when she became Clara was downhill.