The most recent Doctor Who special saw Jodie Whittaker out on the high seas and coming up against pirate queens and Sea Devils in her penultimate outing as the Thirteenth Doctor. At the end of the episode, audiences were given a look at her final episode coming later this year, in which the return of two characters from the past has fans excited.
The trailer teased the return of two companions from the days of classic Who: Tegan and Ace. Tegan was a companion to the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) for a short time, as well as to the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davidson). Ace was a companion to the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy and appeared in the final storyline of the classic series (not including the Eighth Doctor's story in the TV movie). While both women played an important part in Doctor Who's history, this article looks at Ace, the impact she had on the show, and what her return means.
Ace's History
Played by Sophie Aldred, Ace was introduced to the show in the 1987 story Dragonfire. Born on Earth in 1970, Ace actually started her time in the show as a waitress on the planet of Svartos. Ace was around 17 when she joined the Doctor on his travels and came from an unhappy home life on Earth. How she ended up on Svartos in the first place was also an interesting plot point. As a rebellious teen with a love love of science and making things explode, Ace had been expelled from her secondary school for blowing up the art room, and she went on to experiment with nitroglycerine in her bedroom. The resulting explosion from that experiment catapulted her into the future and to Svartos. Ace's real name in the show was actually Dorothy Gale, in reference to The Wizard of Oz character and how she ended up on Svartos.
As unlikely as this plotline sounds, even for Doctor Who, it was part of the overarching plot involving Fenric. Compared to many previous companions, Ace was a lot more fleshed out. Her character had more depth and backstory than many of her previous counterparts who tended to just be along for the ride. When Ace was growing up, the relationship with her mother was strained to say the least, and when she was 13, her friend Manisha's home was firebombed in an act of racial violence, killing her. Her experiences led her to lash out and get put on probation for arson.
While she was traveling with The Doctor she also carried a baseball bat and a homemade explosive of her own recipe called Nitro-9. At first, Ace's tough exterior served as a way of coping, but as her tenure on the show went on, she grew to be truly confident in herself.
Ace's Travels With The Doctor
While traveling with the Doctor, Ace affectionately nicknamed him the Professor. On their journeys, The Doctor often acted as such, and always encouraged Ace to solve problems herself and to learn more about what they were encountering and where they were. Despite this, the relationship grew to become strained. The Seventh Doctor was known for his manipulation of people and situations, which rubbed Ace the wrong way, often causing confrontations and distrust.
A huge part of Ace's story lay in the way she ended up on Svartos. While she believed it was down to a random consequence of a homemade explosion, it was actually due to a time storm created by Fenric. To understand more about Ace's story, it's important to also understand Fenric. Fenric is an entity from the dawn of time that the Doctor faced and defeated 17 centuries before the events of the serial "The Curse of Fenric." But why did Fenric create the time storm and send Ace to Svartos?
As the audience discovered during this serial, Ace was a wolf of Fenric, a descendant of the evil, carrying his curse inside her. Fenric needed Ace as part of his plan to escape his prison. The worst part for Ace was discovering that The Doctor has known this about her all along. The story featured Haemovores, vampire-like creatures, from far in the future of the human race, and is widely regarded as one of the best and scariest episodes of classic Doctor Who.
As for Ace and The Doctor, by the end of the serial, they had patched their relationship and the revelation about her past had allowed Ace to work through much of her past traumas. Ace and The Doctor never parted on screen. Sadly, the series was canceled, and when the Seventh Doctor returned before his regeneration into the Eighth incarnation, Ace was already gone. Her adventures continued in both audio and book format, but it's hard to say what will be kept from these as canon when Ace returns to the show. It's likely that her charity, A Charitable Earth, will continue to be a part of her narrative as it has been mentioned on the show itself.
Where does Ace's story go from here, and what will her appearance in the upcoming special mean for the show? It's hard to say, her adventures outside the confines of the show have been many. She's met most of, if not all the revival incarnations of The Doctor through audio adventures and books, including Thirteen, and it will be interesting if that is held to in the final episode. The most interesting thing about Ace's potential in the show lies where she didn't get to go. It was revealed that if the show hadn't ended where it did Ace would have become a Time Lady by enrolling in the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey, but considering Gallifrey's position in the current canon, this would be a complicated scenario. There's still hope that audiences will see that in Ace's future, but for now, most are just happy she's back.