Moderator's Note: This is Mike's original Ace summary:

Ace gets my vote for the best companion. There's no one thing about her that captures my interest; rather, it's her total character. I applaud the writers for coming up with a character that is contemporary but not stuck in her time.

I'm still trying to form a picture of Ace from the New Adventures. I got turned off by her bitterness in "The Left-Handed Hummingbird" and "No Future," but I have to admit that her behavior was believable.

Sophie Aldred did a great job as Ace. I loved her surreal scene flirting with the soldier in "The Curse of Fenric."

Can someone tell me if Perivale is realy as naff as Ace says it is?



Lots of people hate the suburb they grow up in - they're bored with and have a desire to see the world. So in Ace's eyes Perivale is boring but others probably see it differently.

I thought Ace was terrific - apart from her unfortunate tendency to say 'wicked'. She does share a problem with K-9, though - whenever the Doctor's in trouble, he can get out of it by saying 'pass me some of that nitro-9 you haven't got'.

I wish the New Adventures had given us more of a picture of her 3-year transition period - as they did of Sam's in Seeing I - because I have the same problem of not quite knowing what to make of the grown-up, bitter Ace.

Ace is my favourite companion, too. There was more attention paid to her background (friendship, family life, traumatic events) than for other companions, it seemed, and some interesting conflict with the Doctor. There was a genuine chemistry between Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred on screen which I particularly enjoyed.

I would have liked an Ace-only Dalek war New Adventure - I'm afraid I rapidly lost interest in buying them once Ace had left the second time around. I don't think that the betrayed Ace in Love and War was a million miles away from the embittered Ace who returned shortly afterwards, though.

No, I don't think they were too different, but that it got tiring to listen to Ace constantly slagging the Doctor. She did get better; her guest appearance in "Head Games" wasn't too bad.

'You're a bastard but you're OUR bastard.' In Head Games she sums up the Seventh Doctor - and finally seems to have come to terms with him. (Mike, I hope this doesn't count as swearing - blame Ace, not me!)

Sarah, why did you give up after Ace left? I admit it look me a while to adjust to Benny being a 'real' companion, despite not appearing on screen, but now I think she's great. Admittedly Cornell did pile it on a bit thick - an alcoholic fake professor with a lover who betrayed her, a father who (apparently) betrayed the human race, and a mother who died trying to save her doll...

Actually I've asked myself why I gave up on many occasions, Emily. I can only narrow it down to two reasons.

Firstly, I was such a fan of the Seventh Doctor / Ace relationship. I hadn't been into DW for a long while (not since Tom, really) but the dynamic on screen really got me interested again. So another companion coming along and 'usurping' Ace's rightful place seemed unacceptable. Pretty childish, eh?!

Secondly, the character of Benny left me pretty cold. As you say, Paul C certainly set up lots of angst and cynicism within the character, but those extremes aside, I just didn't like her very much, given a few of her character traits.

I loved that line in Head Games, too. I think she had been coming to terms with his darker side for a while - probably since No Future, when she was able to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Has anyone else heard the Audio Adventures in Time & Space CD`s from BBV (for those of you who haven`t heard of them, they`re CDs featuring Sophie Aldred as Ace and Sylvester McCoy as some bloke who she always calls Professor. Sound familiar? Good). Anyway, these CD`s are BRILLIANT. Ace`s character is expanded upon even further in them, and they are superb.

I first encountered Ace in two different Doctor Who novels, Illegal Alien and then Blood Harvest. The differences were astounding. What exactly happened between the two that changed her so?

Well, ok, here goes. Illegal aline is a PDA with the 7th Doctor, meaning it is set somewhere between the stories, or after survival, and before Timewyrm. In the 8th (?) NA, Ace leaves the Doctor, because he didn't stop her friend Jan from dying. Then she turns up about 5 books later, although 3 years has passed for her. She's an 'Irregular Auxilary', fighting Daleks.


Is Perivale even real?

Edje--yes. A search on www.mapquest.com shows that Perivale is a western suburb of London. It's not to far from either Ealing or Hounslow, off the A302.

I actually took the tube to Perivale, when I lived in London during my university career. On leaving the station, we (I was with a friend - another fan) located the playground from Survival, where Ace tries to evade the Cheetah-person, but we couldn't for the life of us find the way to any high street. It was all dual carriageways and playing fields, from my now distant memory (this was proabably around 1990).

So yes, it's real enough.

One more question. Was Ace played by a real teenager or a fake teenager as Susan was?

Sophie Aldred was 25 when she debuted as Ace, so I'd have to say fake teenager. For the record, Carole Ann Ford was 23 when she appeared in "An Unearthly Child."

Kind of reminds me of all those 50's B-movies where all the teenagers look to be in their thirties.

Was their any companion that was actually a teenager acting as a teenager? I want to say Adric but I am not sure.

Besides Susan of the DrWho movies, of course, who looked to be preteen.

Nicola Bryant was 18 when she was cast as Peri, from memory.

Here's a list of young Who actors and their age at the time they debuted on the show:
Nicola Bryant (Peri)--22
Michael Craze (Ben Jackson)--24
Jackie Lane (Dodo)--18
Katy Manning (Jo)--20
Wendy Padbury (Zoe)--20
Mark Strickson (Turlough)--22
Sarah Sutton (Nyssa)--20
Matthew Waterhouse (Adric)--20
Deborah Watling (Victoria)--19
Anneke Wills (Polly)--25
Frazier Hines (Jamie)--22

Now, these are their ages in the year their first episode aired; obviously they would have been a bit younger when cast and filmed.

I couldn't find a DOB for Maureen O'Brien (Vicki) or Katarina (I'm blanking on the actresses name).

Alright, another question. What was Ace's real name, as I'm assumming that that isn't? Did she have some horrible nerdy name that would have fit in a P.G. Wodehouse book, like Priscilla Grunt-Futtock? I just hope her surname wasn't Rimmer.

It was Dorothy. I'm blanking on the last name.

McShane if you beleive the NAs (I do), although when the character was created JNT proposed the name Gale(I'm not 100% certain of this) because that was the surname of Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, whom Ace was sort of based on (whipped away in a whirlwind/explosion type thing).

Her last name was never said on screen. Paul Cornell tried to add it in his novel Love And War but it was removed, then it was hinted at in Conundrum (something starting with M) and then finally Kate Orman confirmed it was McShane in Set Piece.

Yet its Gale in BBC books. Says so in THE MATRIX

So Tucker and whatisface messed up. Because despite what Lawrence Miles would like us all to think, the BBC editors consider the EDAs to be a direct continuation- either they missed it or that was before they were decided on that bit of 'unofficial' policy.

Actually, where is it given- because if it's the Doctor or Ace telling someone else, they may well be lying for some reason, and Gale would be an interesting choice, given the WoOz reference.

If it is Gale, then some clever writer could slip in a reference to her aunt Cathy who used to work with a dapper gentleman named Steed.

Is it possible Ace's mother remarried briefly at some point, whereby Ace's named changed from McShane to Gale but she didn't like it so she changed it back - but occasionally the Gale reference still surfaces?

I could be wrong, but I think it`s spelt Gail in The Matrix and the shorty story Ace of Spades.

I dont think it was Zoz! Ill check when next I enter my land of forgotten books. I think Ill go with Chris Tomas idea. Sounds fair enough and it saves me anymore headaches trying to come up with an explnation!

You`re right, it is Gale. And the short story`s actually called Ace of Hearts. Oops.

You seem to be everywhere I go Zorro! Do I know you?

Is it ever explained how she got the nickname Ace? I used to think it was because she said "ace" a lot but she says "wicked" far more often.

It's cos she's 'Ace', innit.

But did she give the name to herself or others?

Any particular reason why she nearly always called the Doctor Professor? It's a good thing her real name wasn't Maryanne.

She did it to annoy him - at first. Then it became an endearment.

There's a short story in the 'Mark of Mandragora' graphic novel called 'Teenage Kicks', written by Paul Cornell, which explains the origin of Ace's nickname.
Apparently she used to be in a streetgang of sorts where they all wore jackets proclaiming the name's 'Jack', 'King', 'Queen', etc.

It was originally published in Doctor Who Magazine, as was The Mark of Mandragora comic.

Fenric certainly knew her story quite well in
The Curse Of Fenric.He even claimed to be responsible for sending her to Ice World,at least
for the time storm that landed her there.However
I think he was just grandstanding about that part.
btw:Notice that the only two survivors of The
Curse Of Fenric other than the Doctor and Ace
were the woman who turns out to be Ace's grandma
and the baby who turns out to be her mother.So
that makes for an interesting paradox,if Ace weren't there to help save them would she have later been born?

But if Fenric didn't cause the timestorm, who did? As the Doctor said, Ace couldn't even pass a chemistry exam - so SHE certainly didn't whip up a timestorm.

Sophie Aldred has her new web site up at, rather obviously, www.sophiealdred.com

Hmmm...dare I say the timestorm may have been a
work of Providence!

Of course with the Seventh Doctor everything is a lot more mysterious and even hinging on the mystical.

I think that Gale was probably supposed to be
Ace's surname since her name Dorothy was,I believe,supposed to be a reference to The Wizard Of Oz,as was the timestorm that brought her to
Iceworld in the first place.

Ace was the Coolest of the Companions.

I know this is sacrilege, especially with Ace coming in right after Mel (a parody of a companion), but does anyone else think the writers went a little too far in the other direction with Ace, giving her too much backstory, too many psychological problems?

Recently watching Ghost Story for the first time since a litle after it first aired, the writers' otherwise applaudable efforts to flesh out her character and give her problems seem to get in the way of the story.

Turlough was just as complicated. He could even be considered slightly more homicidal depending on whether you view holding a rock over someone's head vs blowing them to kingdom come with nitro more or less violent.

does anyone else think the writers went a little too far in the other direction with Ace, giving her too much backstory, too many psychological problems?

Yes! Mind you, it's just as well, given that she hung around emoting for god knows how many NAs. (And she STILL didn't have as many problems as Benny the alcoholic whose father fled in the middle of battle, whose mother died for her doll and whose first love betrayed her.) The writers still managed to grossly neglect certain facets of Ace's character, however - not bothering to give her a surname, hence the NA/PDA/audio confusion over whether it's Gale or McShane, and not telling us what was up with that 'I ain't got no mum and dad' stuff, leading to ludicrous abominations such as The Rapture.

Turlough was just as complicated. He could even be considered slightly more homicidal depending on whether you view holding a rock over someone's head vs blowing them to kingdom come with nitro more or less violent.

Oh, Turlough was DEFINITELY more homicidal. Of course, I'm prejudiced, given that it was the DOCTOR who was gonna have that close encounter with the rock, whereas Ace's nitro-nine escapades weren't generally aimed in his direction.

Then again, after reading several NAs with her and Benny, I've seen her turn into some sort of psychopath far beyond anything Turlough ever thought of. I don't know what book she turned into a "soldier," but most soldiers don't become casual killers or fail to blink an eye at mass murder. I'm reading "No Future" at the moment, and she's thinking about killing Benny just because she gets on her nerves. In Egypt she was an army of one, and again in Tenochitlan. On that graveyard planet, I remember she somehow managed to blame the Doctor for her love turning into a fungus or something like he was some sort of spore carrier. No, I don't think I like the fictional Ace at all.

She has her moments, but GOD those authors went too far when setting up the friction between her and the Doctor. (Of course, if you believe that godawful Loving the Alien, the Ace we get in the NAs is NOT the Ace we get in the TV series.)

I don't really blame Ace for blaming the Doctor about Jan going splat, though. Alright, so it totally wasn't his fault, but he's the DOCTOR, you'd EXPECT him to stop the Love Of Your Life's head exploding. (At least, until you stop to examine his track record. Fitz, for instance, has managed to lose more Loves Of His Life than I've had hot dinners. Fat lot of use Mr Universe-Saver was.)

And I'm sure Ace didn't mean it about killing Benny. In Falls the Shadow she actually thinks that Benny's death hurts more than Jan's. (Admittedly I find this highly unlikely.)

Since the New Series has now invalidated all the novels, I wonder if we'll ever know what happened to Ace?

She was with the Seventh Doctor when Classic Who ended in 1989, yet the Doctor was alone when the New Series began in 2005 (until Rose joined him). I wonder what became of Ace?

More to the point, the McCoy Doc was also alone in the telemovie...of course, even if the books/audios WERE still canon they wouldn't help much. The Big Finishes take a bizarre 'Just call her McShane and ahhhh, she's got a hitherto unsuspected little brother!' line, the NAs dump her in nineteenth-century France with a time-travelling motorbike for no readily apparent reason, and the PDAs have her shot dead while pregnant and replaced by a 60-foot alternative-universe version.

You SEE what happens when we're deprived of PROPER Who for sixteen years??!!!!

According to the Sarah Jane Adventures, Ace made it back to present day Earth sometime between Survival and the 1996 Atrocity. I guess this further proves that the novels of the 1990's are no longer canon.

You can say THAT again. Those novels are officially reduced to so much waste paper, in one fell swoop.

Of course, some people may think that 'Dorothy Something' might actually be Dodo, but the 'Something' is a dead giveaway - we never DID get Ace's surname - not to mention the initials of A Charitable Earth...

Now I'm picturing her raking in the billions with cries of 'Wicked!' and waving deodorant cans threateningly in the direction of anyone reluctant to cough up...

Does anyone favour Ace coming back for the 50th anniversary?
She can push McCoy's wheelchair!

Of course, some people may think that 'Dorothy Something' might actually be Dodo

Except Dodo's name is Dorothea.

---
Does anyone favour Ace coming back for the 50th anniversary?
---
Only if Peri does and Mel doesn't.

Actually, so long as Mel doesn't come anywhere near it I'd be fine.

If they are going to bring back an old companion for the 50th, my guess would be William Russell - or maybe him and Sophie so they have companions from the first and last original stories.

Of course, some people may think that 'Dorothy Something' might actually be Dodo

Except Dodo's name is Dorothea.

Well, Sarah was obviously rather vague about her name.

Of course, the initials of A Charitable Earth suggest it definitely isn't Dodo.

If they are going to bring back an old companion for the 50th, my guess would be William Russell - or maybe him and Sophie so they have companions from the first and last original stories.

Nice idea, ruined only by RTG announcing in SJA: Death of the Doctor that Ian HASN'T AGED...(also, where the hell would Barbara be? In Peru?)

"also, where the hell would Barbara be?"

On holiday. A permanent one ;)

They should have let Barbara die with JH - keeping her alive when Jackie Hill is dead is pretty disrespectful to JH.

Oh, I don't know about 'disrespectful' - if it was me I'd be happy that a bit of me was living on in the Whoniverse, forever young...

I would have cast Charlotte "Marmalade Atkins" Coleman as Ace instead of that Chelsea Pensioner Sophie Aldred.

Oi! Sophie Aldred's not THAT old!

(Well, obviously she is NOW...)

Ghost Light:

Ace says she hates dead things one minute, and is chatting cheerily to a stuffed ostritch the next.

Ace decides to give the Doctor's specific instructions 'a miss' to go for a nice walk? Is she CRAZY?

The Doctor tells Ace to FETCH the inspector - whereupon she goes exploring with him.

The Doctor tells Ace not to eat the soup - and she proply reaches for the soup ladle.

I realise she's rather annoyed about being dragged to the haunted house and all, but if she blatantly flouts the Doctor's specific instructions all the time, how come she's still alive?

'It's an angel, stupid' - Ace believes in ANGELS? She's hardly in a position to call anyone else stupid, then.

Ace is surprisingly bad at unarmed single combat. Even against a Victorian lady like Gwendoline.

Obviously, Ace believes in angels. When she knows the time is right for her, she'll cross the stream - she has a dream!

RTG on his planned appearance of Ace in the SJA:

'We could have explained what happened to Ace, and how she left the Doctor. I was even tempted by the thought of showing it, with some sort of long-shot, cleverly-angled flashbacks...Would we even have seen Sylvester McCoy waving goodbye in a long shot?...I can see her pulling up on Bannerman Road - Scene 1, pre-titles - in a sports car and sunglasses, all dead cool and strong, and as beautiful as ever. She's now a classy, tough businesswoman...but after five minutes with Sarah Jane, she'd be swinging that baseball bat, and reverting to childhood again, and loving it.'

WANT! WANT NOW!

Why did you have to post that, Emily? I will now be forever pining for the "could have been."

I guess I just wanted to spread my misery around a bit...

No Future:

'Ace woke up, completely at ease and sane, at one with the world as a warrior.

'That was what they didn't understand, she thought. They didn't understand that you could enjoy explosions and violence and murder and still be sane' - surely THE DOCTOR understands that?

Ace hasn't cried for years? Someone reread all the previous books immediately - she must have squeezed out a tear SOMETIME!

Tragedy Day:

'Ace was impressed. It made a change to be paired up with somebody intelligent on her travels' - I'm sorry, is THE SEVENTH DOCTOR too thick for her?

'My mum's a hairdresser. She works in a salon called Rene's in the Broadway. In her bag she carries some curling tongs, a copy of Take A Break and some cosmetics' – Ace to Forgwyn. Since when has she spoken about her mother to ANYONE, let alone a chance-met teenager?

'Can't we just go? Whatever's going on here isn't our quarrel, is it?' – a rather unusual attitude for a TARDIS traveller in general and Ace in particular, surely?

Ace doesn't spot the 'rough approximation' of the Doctor – while Benny does?

'Ace's tendency to instantly become best friends with the lead female character in any story has by this point [Curse of Fenric] become an irritating tic that borders on being creepy' - Who's 50. How embarrassing that - unlike Rose's female-domestic-obsession - I just never noticed.

Ace was played by a Old Age Pensioner who looked about a million years old, not 16. and "Gordon Bennett, what a load of spots!" type speech is not what a "streetwise" late eighties British teenager would say.

Ace looked like...a mature sixteen-year-old. Having a ghastly childhood and then being whisked away by a timestorm almost certainly has an ageing effect.

my favourite Ace snafu was actually in a fanfiction submitted to Sonic Screwdriver, the Australian fanzine.

It started with the words "'Come forward'. Ace swallowed."

Didn't plans call for Ace to appear on the Sarah Jane Adventures, if Liz Sladen had lived?

Perhaps we would have found out when Ace left the Doctor and came back to Earth. She was mentioned on the SJA, running a charity called A Charitable Earth (ACE).

Companion Piece: 'Ace, though, comes from a grim dystopian recent past: Britain under Thatcher. It's not a coincidence that she shouts abuse at tyrants, befriends Soviet soldiers and thumbs her nose at anything aristocratic or authoritarian. Her accent, appearance and very existence were created as an affront to Thatcherism' - hmm. Hadn't quite thought of it like that before. (Especially the bit about the Soviet Union not being authoritarian.)

evidently to the writer of the piece, the peoples' democracies are the *true* democracies. None of that capitalism nonsense!

'Ace' is apparently the term by which we should be referring to asexuals. If it catches on the way 'gay' did, watching late-eighties Who is going to become quite a surreal experience.

How ridiculous. It's a word that means so many other things, that it'll just get lost in all those other definitions. They should come up with their own dumb name.
Here's what dictionary.com says about 'ace', and not a word of asexual stuff....

1. a playing card or die marked with or having the value indicated by a single spot:
He dealt me four aces in the first hand.
2. a single spot or mark on a playing card or die.
3. a.Also called service ace. a placement made on a service.
b.any placement.
c.a serve that the opponent fails to touch.
d.the point thus scored.
4. a fighter pilot credited with destroying a prescribed number or more of enemy aircraft, usually five, in combat.
5. a very skilled person; expert; adept:
an ace at tap dancing.
6. Slang. a one-dollar bill.
7. Slang. a close friend.
12. (in tennis, badminton, handball, etc.) to win a point against (one's opponent) by an ace.
13. Golf. to make an ace on (a hole).
14. Slang. to cheat, defraud, or take advantage of (often followed by out):
to be aced out of one's inheritance; a friend who aced me out of a good job.
15. Slang. a.to receive a grade of A, as on a test or in a course (sometimes followed by out).
b.to complete easily and successfully:
He aced every physical fitness test they gave him.
adjective
16. excellent; first-rate; outstanding.
Verb phrases
17. ace it, Slang. to accomplish something with complete success:
a champion who could ace it every time.
Idioms
18. ace up one's sleeve, an important, effective, or decisive argument, resource, or advantage kept in reserve until needed.
19. be aces with, Slang. to be highly regarded by: The boss says you're aces with him.
20. easy aces, Auction Bridge. aces equally divided between opponents.
21. within an ace of, within a narrow margin of; close to:
He came within an ace of winning.

1. any die, domino, or any of four playing cards with one spot
2. a single spot or pip on a playing card, die, etc
3. (tennis) a winning serve that the opponent fails to reach
/eɪs/
noun acronym
1. (in Britain) Advisory Centre for Education; a private organization offering advice on schools to parents
2. Allied Command Europe
3. angiotensin-converting enzyme See ACE inhibitor
Related Abbreviations for ace Expand
AcE
1. access control entry
2. American Council on Education
3. angiotensin-converting enzyme
4. Army Corps of Engineering

I wonder how many of these Dorothy had heard of when she decided to change her stupid name to...something even stupider.

Sophie Aldred thinks Ace should have stayed with the Doctor until she died of old age (Digital Spy.) And she's obviously talking PROPER old age, not the fake type Rory keeps keeling over from. Good idea, and would certainly beat running a charity (SJA: Death of the Doctor), marrying some eighteenth-century French guy (novelization: The Curse of Fenric), guarding a time-rift (New Adventures: Set Piece) OR getting shot dead by her lover and being replaced by a ten-foot replica from an alternative universe (Past Doctor Adventures: Loving the Alien). Sure, it would make Seven's age even more incompatible with Nine's but as they're ALREADY totally incompatible...

Sure, it would make Seven's age even more incompatible with Nine's but as they're ALREADY totally incompatible...

Timey wimey stuff.

Ace gets a mention for this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Badbutt

To TV Tropes' credit, and probably not to Who's, pretty much every trope page has some Doctor Who mention.

They should have Ace on the New Series. Imagine her meeting JODIE...

Ace: Professor, is that you!?

Sophie didn't look Ace's sixteen, which is what we were talking about. Ace as Audrey made her be before she rebelled

I'm sure Ace would have complained about it - loudly - if her mother had inflicted curls and rabbits on her.

Something got nuked or moved.

The date doesn't match.

I moved discussion of Sophie Aldred's book to the Novels: Thirteenth Doctor: At Childhood's End section.

Ah!

Ace and Doctor?! You sound like a kids’ TV series about a girl and a man who stuffs live ferrets down his trousers!

What kind of creepy kids shows did you watch!?

it's riffing off Rimmer's description of Ace and Lister in "Dimension Jump". And, McCoy's variety act involved stuffing ferrets down his trousers.

Now that Ace has K9, how about a show about them having adventures.

Ace could take over Bannerman Road.

Nope, Sarah decided she was good enough for K9 but that she'd rather LOCK MR SMITH UP IN ETERNAL DARKNESS than let Ace get her hands on him.

Does that seem right?

Imagine Ace teaching the gang how to whip up some Nitro-Nine.

Maybe Ace learned to make Polly Cocktail from the Jackson couple and added some to her Nitro-Nine recipe, thus making Nitro-Ten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgHRLi02JAc&list=LL&index=3

Ace returns and apparently Polly is crashing on the Jovankas' couch!

The reason they gave Ace's middle name as Gale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Gale


The Farewell Sarah Jane video confirmed her last name as McShane.

So, Ace's full name is Dorothy Gale McShane.

I know.

And we know Ace made it back to Earth at some point after Survival.

Well, we don't really KNOW that. Death of the Doctor and Farewell, Sarah Jane imply as much - and how DARE she get K9! - and A Charitable Earth says so (albeit then packing her off back to outer space) and Set Piece claims she ends up in nineteenth-century France. But there are plenty of other accounts of what happened to the poor woman, including getting DEAD (the comics), living on Gallifrey fighting the Time War (the Gallifrey audios) and, um, whatever-the-hell was going on in Death Comes to Time...she becomes a Time Lord or something?

I think she became a timelady but still spends a lot of time on earth with Mel, peri, Tegan, and Nyssa.

Why shouldn't she get K9?

Because Sarah has a son who works for UNIT and who gives their pet to a casual acquaintance instead of a son who works for UNIT?

Maybe RTD has an Ace show in the works.

OH.

Now wouldn't THAT make so much sense...

Ace should TOTALLY get the dawg!

Tough luck, Luke!

Luke and Sky propably have their own K9 each.

Well, RTD wrote that Ace got K9.

Maybe K9 himself chose to go with Ace during the funeral.

But I like to think maybe there are a lot of K9 around, that eventually every former Companion got one, heck maybe Jack and River had K9's before they met the Doctor.

Luke and Sky propably have their own K9 each

Well, About Time made a good case that the Doc acquired 'em in a K9 shop so there's no reason he shouldn't have purchased/stolen a whole bunch more.

And then of course there's thousands of K9s in The Diary of River Song Season Eight: A Forever Home...

Well, RTD wrote that Ace got K9.

Which makes no sense since Luke got him when he went off to university. (Luke having electronic help with exams apparently being so much more important than, you know, saving the planet and stuff.)

Maybe K9 himself chose to go with Ace during the funeral.

He IS a pretty treacherous kinda mutt (counting all his incarnations as the same person) - abandoning Marius for the Doctor, abandoning the Doctor for Leela...

But I like to think maybe there are a lot of K9 around, that eventually every former Companion got one, heck maybe Jack and River had K9's before they met the Doctor.

Christ I hope not, just cos he's a treacherous mutt doesn't mean I want him to be MOLESTED! (Think I'm exaggerating? Just watch what Captain Jack does to Trine-E - or was it Zu-Zana...)

Jack already fricked everything.

Gaia wrote:


Ace was already named Dorothy in the show.

ACE: There's something I've never told anyone. Do you promise not to laugh, and not to tell no one?
MEL: Of course.
ACE: It's my name. It's not really Ace. My real name's Dorothy. That's how I knew they couldn't be my real mum and dad. My real mum and dad would never have given me a naff name like Dorothy. Come on.


Teenage Ace would say that.

Now that the character is middle aged, seems she now goes by Dorothy, having long since grown out of her rebellious phase.

Yeah, Ace\Dorothy's 19 in her last episode. And does'nt seem to be much of a rebel anymore. It is possible she started going back by Dorothy shortly after the last scene in Survival.

She would be in her early 50's now.

Of course, she started a charity called A Charitable Earth, a wink to her old nickname.

For those of us who need a refresher/overview of what happened to Ace, particularly post- Survival.

https://blog.lovarzi.co.uk/doctor-who-companions-who-was-ace/

'Ace became one of the few Doctor Who companions who didn’t receive a proper on-screen send off (the others being Dodo Chaplet, Elizabeth Shaw and the first Romana, if you’re interested.)'

Oh, never mind Yates, Benton and Harry, then...

'However, in the Big Finish adaptation (renamed ‘Thin Ice‘) Ace decline’s the Doctor’s offer of a life on Gallifrey, and opts to keep travelling with him instead.'

Er, no, actually her Time Lord assessor rejected HER.

I can't believe it didn't bother mentioning her getting killed in the comic strips!

OR getting killed in PDA Loving the Alien and replaced with a 60-foot Ace from another dimension...

Also I realized that likely Ace turned 18 in the gap between dragonfire and rememberance.

She didn't spend TWO YEARS with McCoy before we saw her again. She was sixteen in Dragonfire:

KANE: How old are you?
ACE: Six... eighteen.

She was born August 1970, so it's likely that while she was 16 when the time storm took her in 1986, she was already 17 when joining the Doctor. Maybe 1971 would be a more likely birth year.

Oh man, companion aging is weird and I should settle a few dates in my Khachapuri Doctor AU. I guess I should just write it all in my Companion Crack thread.

For example, Turlough. I usually see him as older than Nyssa but I think he might be younger because Nyssa propably born 1963 and Turlough might be born in 1964 and Malkon in 1967.

Moderator's Note: conversation moved from Companions: Sarah Jane Smith section:

GAIA: Or maybe it has to do with the Time War. You know how in Classic Who, EVERYONE seems to immediately forget they have a family outside the TARDIS? That’s a tardis psychic link thing, it makes your crewmembers be like your family, After all you can go back in time and then your loved ones will never exist again. This is also why they seem to fall in love with people they have no chemistry with, and why they end up dressing weird.

ME: That's a rather brilliant theory I must give careful consideration to.

Yeah. Of course it's just differences between pre and post 1990 writing (The original Season 27 would be very NuWho-esque in its treating of families) but.

Probably pre and post 1987 since it was always obvious 'I don't have no mum and dad!' Ace had mother-issues. And therefore a mother.

It's also obvious since the start that Peri has a stepfather, Tegan an aunt, Nyssa a father and stepmother, Adric a brother, Leela a father, Victoria a father.

But none of 'em seemed AFFECTED by these facts. Almost ALL these relatives were SLAUGHTERED as our new Companions entered the TARDIS and even TEGAN never indulged in more than a moment's hysteria before deciding they were SO over it.

Yeah

Maybe with ace, the tardis knew she was going to become a time lady and that the time war might be close, and thus she kept some attachment.

ACE DOES NOT BECOME A TIME LADY!

(Whatever else may or may not be canon, Death Comes To Time absolutely under no circumstances qualifies. Like the 60s Annuals but if anything EVEN WORSE cos they may have provided the Doc with Kroton the Happy Cyberman and John and Gillian the Grandchildren but at least they never bloody KILLED HIM OFF.)

Yeah, there is stuff that implies that Brax kicked her out of Gallifrey, but there is also stuff where Brax and Ace hang out together on Gallifrey with Narvin, Leela, and Romana.

I suspect the hanging-out occurred BEFORE the kicking-out, though it has to be said, the timelines appear very very confused...

Maybe Brax realized that Ace had a better destiny?

If Ace had been a Time Lady and regenerated and travelled the universe, then some stuff would'nt have happened?

MAYBE BRAX PREVENTED ACE'S EVENTUAL REGENERATION INTO DODO!!!

Ace n'Dodo are definitely separate people who both turned up to Sarah Jane's funeral...

...Not that that proves anything, come to think of it, Shroud of Sorrow had loads of Doctors turning up to the Brig's funeral and all thirteen I M Foremen hung out together in a freak show in Interference...

I don’t think Dodo is an Ace regen.

But I think that if Ace was a Time Lady, an Ace regen would date a Susan regen.

I doubt it, Ace shags anything that moves in the NAs and PDAs (and even had a couple of romances on-screen, extraordinarily for Old Who) but all of 'em were male.

Though I guess there's nothing to stop a Susan incarnation being male and it would be really really hypocritical of me to complain...

Actually there is some subtext that averages out to her being bisexual but there was illegality about homosexuality.

It wasn't illegal in Britain the 1980s, it was merely* illegal for any of Ace's teachers to mention its existence to her. Thanks, Maggie!

Of course, I'd forgotten about the Survival subtext, owing to not-noticing-it-in-the-first-place but as THE WRITER says it was her intention we should probably take it seriously, just not quite as seriously as those dozens of men Ace jumped into bed with shortly before they died horribly...

*Yes, this is a highly sarcastic 'merely'.

Sophie Aldred’s Ace is what one would quaintly describe as a ‘tomboy’, but would nowadays be recognised as gender-nonconforming. The antithesis of the ‘Doctor Who girl’ who screamed and twisted her ankle, she dressed in leggings and Doc Martens, was handy with explosives and refused to be talked down to by anybody (Hence her dismissive nickname for the Doc: Professor).

We’d seen Ace form an emotional attachment with Mike Smith, until she discovered he belonged to a facsist movement, and – in a rare instance of the original series explicitly acknowledging sexual awakening – manipulatively flirt with a squaddie in The Curse of Fenric (“Have to move faster than that if you want to keep up with me. Faster than light”) but it wasn’t until Season 26 that we saw Ace show signs of bisexuality, forming closer bonds with Shou Yiong, Gwendoline, and Survival’s Karra, played by Lisa Bowerman.

Ace’s intended sexuality is somewhat complicated. At least two of the scriptwriters working for Doctor Who at the time very much intended for her to be gay, but didn’t really tell anyone else until after the show had been canceled for fear of being censored. As such, there’s some contradictory subtext in her stories.

To quote her TvTropes character sheet: “Very much Depending on the Writer. Creator Ian Briggs wrote a sexual liaison with Sabalom Glitz into her character outline, although it was never made explicit in the series. Other writers, like Rona Munro, intentionally wrote her as a Butch Lesbian (as much as the BBC would permit anyway). Ace occasionally has chemistry with male guest stars (notably Captain Soren in “The Curse of Fenric”), but it’s much more common with the ladies. Her TV series appearances average out to Bi the Way, which Sophie Aldred herself agrees with.”

Since Ace never identifies herself by any sexual identity, I think it’s safe to say she’s bi, pan, or queer, with a preference for women.

Sophie Aldred’s Ace is what one would quaintly describe as a ‘tomboy’, but would nowadays be recognised as gender-nonconforming

I actually think 'tomboy' is a much more appropriate way of regarding it. No need for drastic surgery, no need to even kick up a fuss about pronouns, if a girl likes climbing trees and blowing up art rooms and suchlike, what's the big deal...

The antithesis of the ‘Doctor Who girl’ who screamed and twisted her ankle, she dressed in leggings and Doc Martens

Well, sometimes she wore skirts and really weird hair-nets...

(Hence her dismissive nickname for the Doc: Professor).

That wasn't dismissive! It was CLEARLY a MUCH better description of darling McCoy - and most of 'em - than 'Doctor' when even S/HE doesn't seem to know whether s/he's actually a doctor...

but it wasn’t until Season 26 that we saw Ace show signs of bisexuality, forming closer bonds with Shou Yiong, Gwendoline, and Survival’s Karra

When you travel with the Doctor you're bound to go overboard the moment you spot anyone of a similar age and gender. Nothing to do with your sexuality. The first female we saw Ace form an inexplicably sudden and warm relationship with was MEL BUSH for heaven's sake*...and just watch Rose with Gwyneth or Raffalo, Martha with Chantho or Jenny...

Ace’s intended sexuality is somewhat complicated. At least two of the scriptwriters working for Doctor Who at the time very much intended for her to be gay, but didn’t really tell anyone else until after the show had been canceled for fear of being censored

*Sigh*

Creator Ian Briggs wrote a sexual liaison with Sabalom Glitz into her character outline, although it was never made explicit in the series

Oh, THAT'S why Paul Cornell keeps going on about Ace losing her virginity to Sabalom Glitz on the floor of his spaceship and it being bloody awful...I thought that was some terrible idea of HIS...

Other writers, like Rona Munro, intentionally wrote her as a Butch Lesbian

What nonsense, Rona Munro wrote her as a pussycat. LITERALLY.

Since Ace never identifies herself by any sexual identity, I think it’s safe to say she’s bi, pan, or queer, with a preference for women.

She's, like, the most heterosexual character in Who history.

Am I the ONLY ONE who bothers reading the books?! Including the one written by Sophie Aldred in which Ace is very much - as per usual - dating one of those MAN things...?

*Note to Russell T God: Nyssa and Tegan married? LOVE IT! But drop a mischievous line in about Ace/ Mel and, Living God or not, you are in TROUBLE.

Power of the Doctor:

'That is a good look on you, Professor' - ISN'T it just DON'T LEAVE ME JODIE!

'And Ace! Or should I say Dorothy? Didn't the Doctor ditch you? No? Little fallout with your Machiavellian maestro?' - trust the Master to be mean enough to call her 'Dorothy'...Still no surname given on-screen, then (in Chibnall's place I'd've been sorely tempted to give her one that wasn't 'Gale' (PDAs) or 'McShane' (NAs, audios) just to screw 'em up (though I suppose THAT would have raised the horrifying possibility of Ace changing her name on marriage)...'Little fallout with your Machiavellian maestro', though, is a wonderful way of covering MOST of the various endings bestowed on Ace, though it's odd there's no mention of her and the Master fighting in the Time War at the same time (you don't mean the Gallifrey audios are just...MADE UP?!).

'You never failed me, Professor. You made me the person I am today. I'm sorry we fell out. I'm sorry I judged you. I didn't understand the burden you carried' - less happy with Ace shouldering all the blame for McCoy being a git to her.

'Last time I saw you, you were half-cat' - Ace says it like it's a BAD thing.

'[The Master] can't do much from a UNIT prison cell' - Ace is so sweet and innocent...

'You never failed me, Professor. You made me the person I am today. I'm sorry we fell out. I'm sorry I judged you. I didn't understand the burden you carried' - less happy with Ace shouldering all the blame for McCoy being a git to her.

Yeah, we don't know what really happened there, and frankly I still can't help feeling the resolution was too easy.

DOn't worry- when Ncuti regenerates into McCoy I'm sure we'll get the answer we need....

The Doctor SPECIFICALLY said in Day of the Doctor that s/he only regenerated back into FAVOURITE faces...

Sophie Aldred - My Life in a Mixtape:
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001sndk

Part of Radio 2's Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebrations as Sophie Aldred presents her favourite tracks.
This includes a song played in The Pilot.