Living in the Past (short story)

Living in the Past
Doctor:	[[doctor::Seventh Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Ace
Main setting:	Earth, Cretaceous
Key crew
Writer:	Andy Lane
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who Magazine 162
Doctor Who
Next →	Teenage Kicks

Living in the Past was a short story in DWM 162. It was the first appearance of Ace in DWM fiction. Morever, it offered an explanation for where she had been for the several years that had elapsed since her introduction on television — namely, that she had been living in the Cretaceous period of Earth's pre-history.

It and Teenage Kicks, which followed it, were unusual cases of DWM prose that was narratively continuous with the DWM comic strip. The events of this story were in fact prefigured by the issue's comic story, Doctor Conkerer, which was explicitly said to be the adventure immediately before the Doctor "picked up Ace".

Summary

The Doctor arrives in Mongolia during the Cretaceous period to pick up Ace, whom he had dropped off there. Along the way he encounters a pit of Dholes and an alien slave who has escaped from a nearby construction site. Ace arrives with a herd of assorted dinosaurs to trample the site, destroy it and free the slaves.

Characters

• The Doctor
• Ace

References

• While looking for Ace, the Doctor sees a tsintaosaurus, a dsungaripterus, a protoceratops and a velociraptor.
• Ace leads thousands of dinosaurs, including ankylosaurs, tyrannosaurs and bactrosaurs, to trample the alien construction site; she herself rides an Alioramus.
• The alien security guards appear to be either Ogrons or Volkrii.

Notes

• Illustrations by Cam Smith.
• Steve White is credited as dinosaur consultant.

Continuity

• Ace first expressed a wish to visit the Cretaceous in TV: The Happiness Patrol.
• The Doctor mentioned Ace was visiting the Cretaceous in COMIC: Train-Flight, which explained why he was travelling alone during his early DWM comic appearances.

Timeline

This was the first appearance of Ace in a Marvel UK publication. It is unclear precisely what story precedes this for her. The Seventh Doctor's entire runs in DWM and IHP precede this story. Somewhere between TV: Survival and DWM: A Cold Day in Hell (the Seventh Doctor's first comic strip adventure), he dropped off Ace to live with dinosaurs, only to pick her up again in this short story.

So the best we can say is that:

• For the Seventh Doctor, this story occurs after COMIC: Doctor Conkerer
• For the Doctor and Ace, this story occurs before PROSE: Teenage Kicks

Since Teenage Kicks is another short story, though, Ace's proper comic debut, however, isn't until COMIC: Fellow Travellers. Nevertheless, these intervening prose stories do "count" in the Marvel UK continuity, because the Doctor mentions in Doctor Conkerer that he's about to "pick Ace up". Since both Conkerer and Living in the Past were in the same issue, the connection between the two is especially obvious.