(given name '''Dorothy''') is a fictional character played by of the
Seventh Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1987 to 1989.
Ace first appeared in the 1987 serial ''
Dragonfire '', where she was working as a waitress on the planet Iceworld. She had been a troubled teen on Earth, having been expelled from school for blowing up the art room as a "creative statement". Gifted in chemistry (despite failing it for her
"O"-level s), she was in her room experimenting with the extraction of
Nitroglycerin from
Gelignite when a time storm swept her up and transported her to Iceworld, and far in her relative future. There, she met
The Doctor and his companion
Mel . When Mel left the Doctor at the conclusion of the serial, he offered to take Ace with him in the
TARDIS , and she happily accepted.
Ace was arguably the most independent of all the Doctor's companions up to that point. Suffering from traumatic events in her childhood, including a bad relationship with her mother and the death of her close friend Manesha due to a
Racist Firebombing , Ace covered up her own fears and insecurities with a streetwise, tough exterior. Her weapon of choice, disapproved of by the Doctor (who nonetheless found it useful on occasion), was a powerful explosive she called "Nitro-9", which she mixed up in canisters and carried around in her backpack.
Affectionately giving the Doctor the nickname of "Professor", she was convinced that the Doctor needed her to watch his back, and protected him with a fierce loyalty. In turn, the Doctor seemed to take a special interest in Ace's education, taking her across the universe and often prompting her to figure out explanations for herself rather than giving her all the answers.
Under the Doctor's tutelage, Ace fought the
Dalek s in 1963 (''
Remembrance Of The Daleks '') and the
Cybermen (''
Silver Nemesis ''), encountered the all-powerful
Gods Of Ragnarok in ''
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy '', the sadistic torturer called the
Kandy Man in ''
The Happiness Patrol '', and many other dangers. She also faced the ghosts of her own past in ''
Ghost Light '' and ''
The Curse Of Fenric ''. Over time, she began to mature into a confident young woman, and her brash exterior ceased to be a front.
What the Doctor was aware of but Ace was not, was that her arrival on Iceworld was no accident, but part of a larger scheme conceived by
Fenric , an evil that had existed since the beginning of the universe, a plan that stretched across the centuries. Ace was a "Wolf of Fenric", one of many descendants of a
Viking tainted with Fenric's genetic instructions to help free it from its ancient prison, and a pawn in the complex game between it and the Doctor. After Fenric was defeated, Ace continued to journey with the Doctor.
The circumstances of Ace's parting of ways with the Doctor are not known, as the series went on hiatus in 1989 with the end of the very next serial, ''
Survival ''. A painting seen in the extended version of the serial ''
Silver Nemesis '' suggested that at some point in her personal future Ace would end up in 18th or 19th Century
France . This idea was further explored in the novelisation of ''The Curse of Fenric'' (which contains an epilogue not included in the televised serial in which the Doctor visits an older Ace in 1887 Paris) and the
Virgin New Adventures .
The production team's intent was to have Ace eventually enter the Prydon Academy on the Doctor's home planet of , was never made as the series ceased production. When the Seventh Doctor was next seen in the
1996 ''Doctor Who'' Television Movie , he was travelling alone, with no reference to what had happened to him or Ace in the interim.
Ace and the Seventh Doctor appeared twice more on television after ''Doctor Who'' was cancelled. The first was in 1990, in a special episode of the
BBC2 educational programme ''Search Out Science''. In this episode, the Doctor acted as a quiz show host, asking questions about astronomy; Ace,
K-9 and "Cedric, from the planet Glurk" were the contestants. The last appearance of Ace on British television was in the 1993 charity special ''
Dimensions In Time ''. Neither of these appearances is generally considered
Canonical .
The character was extensively developed in the
New Adventures , a BBC-licensed series of novels from
Virgin Books continuing on from ''Survival''. Ace becomes more and more frustrated with the Doctor's manipulations, eventually leaving his company in ''Love and War'' by
Paul Cornell . She joins Spacefleet and fights the Daleks for three years, later rejoining the Doctor and his new companion
Bernice Summerfield in ''Deceit'' by
Peter Darvill-Evans , older and more hardened. This development in the character was the result of a deliberate decision by Darvill-Evans as the editor of the line at Virgin to change Ace and her role in the ongoing narrative.
Ace's relationship with the Doctor remains strained for some time, but by ''No Future'' (also by Cornell) they had resolved their differences. In ''Set Piece'' by
Kate Orman , Ace leaves the Doctor again to become Time's Vigilante, using a short-range time hopper mounted on a motorcycle to patrol a particular segment of time; in effect doing what the Doctor does, but on a smaller scale.
Other
Spin-off media give contradictory versions of Ace's eventual fate. The comic strip in ''
Doctor Who Magazine '' has Ace being killed off just prior to the events of the 1996 television movie (''Ground Zero'', DWM #238-#242). In the webcast audio play ''
Death Comes To Time '', Ace inherits the mantle of the Time Lords when they become extinct. These contradictory fates were all in stories licensed by or, in the last case, made by a part of the BBC (
BBCi ), and there is fan debate as to which, if any, should be considered canonical. Ace's fate has yet to be referred to in the new ''Doctor Who'' television series of 2005, making her one of the few companions whose departure from the TARDIS has yet to be chronicled on television.
Ace's first name is Dorothy. Production notes suggest that it was intended that her last name would be Gale, an allusion to ''
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz '', given the fact that she was transported to Iceworld via a time storm. The novels (and, following their lead,
Big Finish audio plays), however, have given Ace the last name of McShane, with some suggesting that her middle name is Gale, or Gail.
Sophie Aldred has voiced Ace for several audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions, alongside
Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and, in some stories,
Lisa Bowerman as
Bernice Summerfield or
Philip Olivier as
Hex . In one of these stories, ''
The Rapture '', Ace discovers that she has a brother named Liam, of whom she had no previous knowledge.
In 1996, Doctor Who Books published a hardback by Sophie Aldred and Mike Tucker entitled ''Ace!: The Inside Story of the End of an Era'' (ISBN 1-85227-574-X). This book gives details of each serial featuring the character Ace, complete with many photographs and concept art. It also contains a list of other spin-offs in which the character of Ace appears and some of the conventions which Sophie Aldred attended, along with some information about the planned Season 27, including Ace's departure.
In 1998,
BBV produced a number of audio adventures starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as "The Professor" and "Ace". The plays were not licensed by the BBC, but the duo were clearly intended to be the same characters, to the extent that the BBC intervened, causing BBV to change the character names to "The Dominie" and "Alice".
