Alice Carroll: Difference between revisions

|image      = AceRepublica.jpg

|aka        = Ace

|first      = Republica (audio story)

|appearances = [[Alice - list of appearances|'''''See list''''']]

'''Alice''', also known as '''Ace''', was an individual who travelled with the mysterious [[fourth-dimensional being]] known as [[The Professor (Republica)|the Professor]] or [[the Dominie]].

[[Ace's timeline|Her timeline]] was fractured between a number of conflicting lifetimes. According to [[the Cleric]], she "was myriad" and was both "Alice down the rabbit hole" and "Dorothy in the cyclone", as well as "Wendy in the sky" and "Lucy in the snowy woods". ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Republica (novelisation)|Republica]]'')  

Notably, a very similar [[Ace]] had Dorothy for a birth name; she travelled with the [[Seventh Doctor]] but frequently referred to him as "Professor". [[Ace's timeline|This Ace's timeline]] was fractured by the [[Quantum Anvil]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[At Childhood's End (novel)|At Childhood's End]]'') The Dominie mentioned to [[Tris'Tean]] that he travelled with "a woman called Alice" in one version of his timeline, while in others, he travelled with "[[archaeologist]]s and [[android]]s", ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Choice (novelisation)|The Choice]]'') the former descriptor matching one of this prime Seventh Doctor's companions, [[Bernice Summerfield]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Love and War (novel)|Love and War]]'', etc.)

=== Early life ===

In a version of her timeline distinct from the one where she was called "Alice", Ace's mother was fond of watching ''[[The Wizard of Oz]]'' on tape. Ace herself found [[Dorothy Gale|the protagonist]]'s perpetually amazed attitude irritating.  

A young Ace once wore "[[Alice's father|her dad]]'s old dress jacket" to the youth club dance with someone called [[Misha (Republica)|Misha]]. She got [[Slur|called]] "[[queer]]" and the memory remained painful, coming back to her when she was referred to as "a queer fish" by a guileless stranger in unrelated circumstances. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Republica (novelisation)|Republica]]'')

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The Professor and Ace once visited [[1990s]] [[England]] only to discover that history had been [[Alternate timeline (Republica)|dramatically altered]] by an escaped [[Ithacan]] criminal known as [[LeCompte]]. Convincing [[Oliver Cromwell]] to appoint [[John Lambert]] as his successor instead of [[Richard Cromwell]], LeCompte had allowed Cromwell's Protectorate to survive for centuries, meaning that this late-20th-century England remained a totalitarian [[republic]] ruled by a [[Lord Protector]]. The Professor and Ace further discovered the truth about LeCompte's origins, and that he was actually trying to steer [[Earth]]'s technological development so that he could direct its military forces back at his homeworld in revenge for his exile. However, realising that (unbeknownst to LeCompte) the wormhole back to LeCompte's homeworld was also a [[time rift]], the Professor tricked him into his own doom by allowing him to fire the war rocket ''[[Behemoth (Republica)|Behemoth]]'' through the wormhole, laying waste to the past version of [[Ithaca]], killing LeCompte's past self, and consequently cancelling out his alterations to the timeline. Ace was horrified at the Professor destroying this version of history, aberrant as it was. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Republica (audio story)|Republica]]'', [[PROSE]]: ''[[Republica (novelisation)|Republica]]'')

The two later landed at a top-secret British research base in [[Greenland]] during [[World War II]] where they helped defeat voracious insectoid monsters, ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Island of Lost Souls (audio story)|Island of Lost Souls]]'') and on the holiday planet [[Millanno]], uncovering the secrets of the darker half of the [[Isle of Prosperity]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Prosperity Island (audio story)|Prosperity Island]]'')

[[File:Alice in liminal space.jpg|thumb|left|After being hit by a car, Ace found herself in a liminal space between [[life]] and [[death]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Other Side (TT audio story)|The Other Side]]'')]]{{section stub}}At some point, Ace became separated from [[the Dominie|her travelling companion]]. She found herself temporarily blind and cared for in an unfamiliar place by a mysterious man named [[Dorsai]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Left Hand of Darkness (audio story)|The Left Hand of Darkness]]'')

She found herself separated even further from the Professor when she died in a car accident. While the Professor picked up a new companion, [[Nadia (The Other Side)|Nadia]], Ace found herself fighting to survive in a liminal space where the ghost of her [[Ace's nan (The Other Side)|nan]] urged her to pass on into "the other side". ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Other Side (TT audio story)|The Other Side]]'')

In a different version of history, the Professor and Ace visited a [[temple]] built on a "weak point in the [[Linear Universe|linear universe]]", whose clerics were instantly aware that many timelines overlapped over Ace. She was given a glimpse of her and the Professor's adventures bringing down the Protectorate, and was disturbed to realise that she did not remember anything about the event. When she rejoined the Professor, he confessed that he didn't remember either, and moreover, had not been aware that his history had been rewritten, even though he usually did. Ace asked if a mysterious "[[Meddler (Republica)|him]]" they'd defeated in the past "after all this timeline rubbish" was to blame, while the Professor was more evasive, stating that there were others who could "meddle with things". They had a heart-to-heart about the moral weight of people from aberrant timelines, with the Professor reaffirming that "everyone mattered" even if they were native to unstable timelines. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Republica (novelisation)|Republica]]'')

[[The Dominie]] mentioned his travels with Alice to [[Tris'Tean]] during his solo journey in [[Ecto-Space]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Choice (novelisation)|The Choice]]'')

Ace is strongly implied to be the same Ace that travelled with the Doctor and in the original audio drama she was played by [[Sophie Aldred]]. Various people involved, including Aldred, felt this was too blatant a copy of ''Doctor Who'' and the BBC would send a legal warning over it. The second series of audios would rename her Alice; [[Nigel Fairs]] suggested this name due to its similarity to Ace. ([[REF]]: ''[[Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who]]'')