Ace (Doctor Who)

Ace (given name Dorothy) is a fictional character played by Sophie Aldred in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A 20th Century Earth teenager from the London suburb of Perivale, she was a companion of the Seventh Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1987 to 1989.

Other appearances

The spin-off media give contradictory versions of Ace's eventual fate. The Virgin New Adventures and BBC Books novels, for example, state that Ace left the Doctor (in the novel Set Piece by Kate Orman) to become Time's Vigilante, doing what the Doctor did but on a smaller scale. The comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine had 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. Which of these outcomes are canonical, if any, is debatable. 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 officially chronicled.

Related Topics:
Spin-off - BBC Books - Kate Orman - Doctor Who Magazine - 1996 - Death Comes to Time - Canonical - 2005

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Ace's first name is Dorothy. Production notes suggest that it was intended that her last name was Gale, an allusion to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, given the fact that she was transported to Iceworld via a time storm. The Virgin novels and Big Finish audio plays, however, have given Ace the last name of McShane, with some suggesting that her middle name is Gale, or Gail.

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Sophie Aldred reprised the role of Ace in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. She has also voiced Ace for several audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions, alongside Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. In one of these stories, The Rapture, Ace discovered that she had a brother named Liam, of whom she had no previous knowledge.

Related Topics:
1993 - Dimensions in Time - Big Finish Productions - Sylvester McCoy - The Rapture

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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 gave details of each serial featuring the character Ace, complete with many photographs and concept art. It also contained a list of other spin-offs in which the character of Ace appeared and some of the conventions at which Sophie Alred attended, along with some information about the planned Season 27, including Ace's departure.

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