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Dorothy Gale "Ace" McShane was a companion of the Seventh Doctor.
Initially a brash and reckless teenager (TV: Dragonfire), Ace matured significantly into a strong, independent adult over her many years of TARDIS travel and other experiences, who was capable of surviving on her own. (TV: Survival, AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)
Born on Earth, Ace eventually attended the Academy on Gallifrey, becoming a Time Lord. With this, she was given a TARDIS of her own and she became an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)
Biography
Before travelling with the Doctor
Dorothy Gale McShane was born on 20 August 1970 (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation, Falls the Shadow, Set Piece, Relative Dementias) to Audrey Dudman (TV: The Curse of Fenric) and Harry McShane. (AUDIO: The Rapture) She was named after the main character of The Wizard of Oz because her mother (AUDIO: The Settling) and maternal grandmother were fans of the film. Audrey claimed that Ace's grandmother found it took her away from all her miseries. (PROSE: Love and War)
Ace had a younger brother named Liam, who was born in 1974. However, she did not recall her brother's existence until later meeting him in Ibiza as he was taken by their father to live with him after her parents' separation. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
She was a member of the Church of England (AUDIO: Gods and Monsters) but was not very religious. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark, AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned)
In February 1971, she was visited as an infant by the Seventh Doctor, who apologised to her for his future manipulation of her at Gabriel Chase and in relation to Fenric. (PROSE: Ace of Hearts)
Ace was a Brownie, one of the lower tiers of Girl Guides. She was kicked out after she turned a summer camp's fairy marquee into a makeshift Molotov cocktail. (PROSE: Survival)
As a child, Ace holidayed in Spain on several occasions. (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned)
In the mid-1980s, while working in McDonald's, Ace briefly met the Fifth Doctor's companion Tegan Jovanka. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus)
Naturally aggressive but also clever, Ace was skilled at using her knowledge of chemistry despite failing it for her O-levels, making bombs filled with an explosive of her own devising called Nitro-9. (TV: Dragonfire)
She suffered several traumatic events in her childhood in Perivale, London. These included a bad relationship with her mother and in 1983 the firebombing of her friend Manisha Purkayastha's flat by Neo-Nazis. Manisha died, prompting an angry Ace set fire to Gabriel Chase, an abandoned mansion said to be haunted by an ancient evil. (TV: Ghost Light, PROSE: Blood Heat)
Ace was a troubled teen on Earth, setting off fire alarms at school to miss double French lessons (AUDIO: Revenge of the Swarm) and ultimately being expelled for blowing up the art room as a "creative statement." (TV: Battlefield) She studied The Tale of Beowulf, but only paid attention due to the fighting. (AUDIO: Black and White)
Ace was a fan of the pop singer Johnny Chess. She found a picture of him with his shirt-off which was published in Teen Beat to be very attractive. (AUDIO: Maker of Dreams) Chess was the son of the First Doctor's former companions Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation, Byzantium!)
Working in a fast food chain, Ace encountered the Ergon. Assuming it to be her friend Barry Groves wearing a chicken costume, she gave it a box of fries, which the Ergon took back to the anti-matter universe for his master Omega. Ace later recalled this encounter to the Doctor, who was privately amused but did not explain himself to her. (PROSE: Anti-Matter with Fries)
In 1987, at the age of 16, Ace and a friend named Julian Milton planned to run away together and packed supplies and clothes. (PROSE: Love and War) According to one source, Ace's father had a stroke while she was in Margate with Julian, and he died shortly after she returned. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising)
Later that year, while she was in her room experimenting with the extraction of nitroglycerin from gelignite, a time storm swept her up and transported her to the deck of Sabalom Glitz' spacecraft, the Nosferatu, which was docked at Iceworld in the far future. Trapped on Iceworld, she got a job as a waitress and formed a relationship with Glitz, (TV: Dragonfire) to whom she lost her virginity. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
Sometime later, whilst working for Anderson in Iceworld's ice cream parlour, she met the Seventh Doctor, whom she referred to as "Professor", and his companion Melanie Bush, whom Ace nicknamed "Doughnut".
Ace's career as a waitress ended when Stellar's mother complained to Ace about lumps in her milkshake, resulting in Ace pouring the drink over her head and Ace getting fired by Anderson.
When Mel left the Doctor at the conclusion of their battle with Kane, he offered to take Ace with him in the TARDIS, and she enthusiastically accepted. (TV: Dragonfire)
Early travels
While exploring the TARDIS, Ace found the TARDIS zoo and inadvertently released a dodo. The pursuit led Ace to a gigantic wardrobe, where she found a mirror reflecting a vampire-like figure. Before the Doctor could explain further, the dodo knocked over the mirror, and the figure vanished. Ace then returned the dodo to the zoo. (PROSE: Echo)
Under the Doctor's tutelage, Ace fought the Daleks and faced Davros in November 1963, destroying one Dalek with an anti-tank rocket and damaging another with a baseball bat upgraded by the Hand of Omega. During this adventure, her portable stereo was destroyed by a Dalek. She also met and came to like Mike Smith. However, she quickly hated him when she found out he was working for the Daleks. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks). She opposed Helen A and her sadistic government, which required people to be happy on pain of death, and worked with Susan Q to undermine her rule over the colony. (TV: The Happiness Patrol) Visiting the Psychic Circus on Segonax, she helped defeat the Gods of Ragnarok (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) and stopped the Cybermen from getting hold of the Nemesis statue in 1988. During this encounter, she killed multiple Cybermen with gold coins and destroyed a Cyber-shuttle using Nitro-9. (TV: Silver Nemesis)
Ace was sent undercover by the Doctor to Gideon Vale, posing as a maid where she met Rachel Jensen again, though she couldn't do the duties properly. She helped Rachel in her investigation, knowing that Rachel could hack a security door. They managed to get into a vault which contained a lot of nuclear warheads. She was then imprisoned. After escaping she stopped the Vale's private army by cancelling out the mind control. She got annoyed when the British Army started to shoot at them on their way to stopping The Light. She drove a motorcycle with the Doctor riding pinion to get to the launch site to stop the launch of the missiles. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)
At this stage, the relationship between the Doctor and Ace took a darker turn. At least initially, he had been trying to educate her, not merely have adventures with her. His style of teaching, however, was occasionally unorthodox. At times he lied to her or at least withheld certain truths, so she would face the demons of her past and emerge as a stronger person. (TV: Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric)
She later met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, helping UNIT defeat the Destroyer and Morgaine in Carbury in 1997. (TV: Battlefield)
The Doctor forced Ace to face demons from her past, taking her to Gabriel Chase, arriving a century before she had burnt it down. There, she discovered that the presence in the house of the entity known as Light was what she had felt when compelled to burn the house down. (TV: Ghost Light)
While visiting Maiden's Point in 1943, Ace learned that her arrival on Iceworld was not an accident, but part of a larger scheme conceived by one of the Doctor's greatest enemies, a cosmic evil known as Fenric. Ace was a Wolf of Fenric, one of many descendants of a Viking tainted with Fenric's genetic instructions to free it from its ancient prison. Fenric had transported her to Iceworld by time storm and had made her a pawn in the complex game between it and the Doctor. The Doctor appeared to have been aware of this from their first meeting, although Ace was not. After Fenric was defeated, Ace continued to journey with the Doctor. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
In another alternate timeline created by the Decayed Master, she met the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown. She gave the Sixth Doctor the nickname of "Joseph," a reference to the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He did not understand the reference, though Peri found it amusing. Although the Sixth Doctor did not seem to be particularly pleased with his future self's choice of travelling companion, Ace got along well with Peri, who was surprised to learn that she referred to the Seventh Doctor as "Professor." Ace lost all memory of this encounter when the timeline was erased.
Immediately after this, she and the Doctor visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton, Hampshire on 23 November 1963. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
Ace returned to Perivale where she found that most of her old friends had gone missing. She thought they had moved on, but they had been taken to the Cheetah World as prey for the Cheetah People. The Tremas Master, an old enemy of the Doctor, was using them to get off the planet. Ace returned with two of her friends and went off to travel with the Doctor again. (TV: Survival)
Adventures with Raine Creevy
As it turned out, the Doctor had been trying to shape her mind to the point that she would be able to attend the Time Lord Academy. His manipulation of her was ultimately for the benefit of Time Lord observers who were assessing her potential. Ultimately, however, she refused this academic opportunity and continued to travel with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Thin Ice) Following this decision, she encountered a young woman named Raine Creevy, with whom she had a somewhat prickly relationship. (AUDIO: Crime of the Century) After leaving her on Earth for a time, (AUDIO: Animal) the trio were reunited onboard the Space Vessel Vancouver. (AUDIO: Earth Aid)
Later travels
Sometime later, Ace noticed that there were some overdue Library books in the TARDIS library which came from Kar-Charrat. She got annoyed that she couldn't read any books in the library so went back to the TARDIS and met Bev Tarrant after she was injured. Ace was captured by a Special Weapons Dalek and duplicated. She was later used as a bargaining chip to get the Doctor out of the rainforest. After being helped by the Kar-Charratans to escape she had to avoid the malfunctioning Dalek test subject. After the Doctor learnt the truth about the Wetworks facility, he ordered Ace to blow it up before they left. (AUDIO: The Genocide Machine)
In 1959 Ace met James Dean who called himself Jimmy. Ace was surprised to see that the movie star was still alive, while everyone thought that he was killed in a car crash in 1955. James Dean and Ace started dating and Ace got a tattoo with "ACE, JIMMY, LONDON 1959" written in ribbons over a heart. She later even became pregnant with James Dean's child, but Ace was killed by George Limb and their child never came to life. When James found out about his unborn child he stopped supporting George Limb and travelled back through time. He died in the car crash as he was destined to do. Due to the temporal disruptions caused by Limb's attempts to use a flawed time machine he'd acquired from the Cybermen, the Doctor was "reunited" with a version of Ace from a timeline slightly divergent to the one he'd experienced, as various realities collapsed together to cope with the damage caused by Limb's actions. This version of Ace didn't have a tattoo, disliked peas and had trouble remembering her correct surname, but was otherwise identical to the "original". (PROSE: Loving the Alien)
Leaving the Doctor
After both creating and defeating the Timewyrm (PROSE: Genesys, Timewyrm: Revelation) and restoring the TARDIS after it was damaged in a temporal collision, (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark) Ace gradually became more and more frustrated with the Doctor's manipulations. In December 1968, they landed near Crook Marsham where she met with Robin Yeadon. She tried to convince the Doctor not to retire. She went to the radio telescope nearby and saw a dead body there. She tried to persuade the Doctor to help with the mysterious goings-on. When Robin's stepfather Lawrence Yeadon died, she consoled him. She witnessed the attack on Jill Mason. After the Doctor arrived, she was still being attacked and chucked some Nitro-9 at the being but that made it stronger. After the Doctor defeated the Sentience, she debated whether or not she should leave the Doctor. (PROSE: Nightshade, AUDIO: Nightshade)
After saying goodbye to her old friend Julian at his funeral, the Doctor brought her and the TARDIS to the planet Heaven in the year 2570. Ace met a young Traveller by the name of Jan Rydd and fell in love with him. Along with a psychic named Christopher, she helped free the Doctor from being trapped in Puterspace by the Vacuum Church and wanted Jan to travel with her in the TARDIS. However, Jan was infected by Hoothi fibres. Through the Doctor's manipulations, Jan put Ace to sleep with a drug and tried taking a shuttle on his own to the Hoothi sphere, but Máire woke Ace. They followed Jan.
On board the shuttle, Máire betrothed Ace and Jan to be wed. Thinking that they would set the shuttle on a collision course with the sphere, Ace and Máire ejected their pods. Jan instead ignited the sphere with his pyrokinesis, killing three of the four Hoothi and sacrificing himself.
Landing on Heaven, Ace spoke to the part of the Hoothi group mind containing Julian, killing the last Hoothi and freeing the dead minds from the group mind. Angered by him causing Jan's death, Ace left the Doctor. (PROSE: Love and War, AUDIO: Love and War)
In Spacefleet
Now living in the 26th century, Ace joined Spacefleet and fought Daleks and other intergalactic threats. She encountered Bombardier Daleks and tried to steal the power from a Special Weapons Dalek after it vaporised a Red Crescent ship full of children, pitying it as it begged her to kill it. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising) She also spent three weeks in a mine on a nameless alien world, was chased by a creature with six arms, (PROSE: Falls the Shadow) took part in the Ramos Offensive on Lan Beta and was stationed on Verdanna. (PROSE: Parasite)
Three years later, combat-hardened and cynical, she rejoined the Doctor and Bernice Summerfield, (PROSE: Deceit) attempting to gather information for IMC. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising)
Travels with Bernice Summerfield
Ace's relationship with Bernice was at first less than cordial, possibly out of jealousy, but the two eventually became friends. While in 1976 London, with her relationships with Bernice and the Doctor at breaking point, Ace accepted the offer of the misguided renegade Time Lord Mortimus to join with him as his companion and accomplice. However, she meant to betray Mortimus all along. By this time she had finally gotten over the death of Jan, and was finally able to reconcile with the Doctor and Bernice. (PROSE: No Future)
She went with the Doctor to Manaxus where they landed in a reconstruction of Hamlet. Meeting Benny's old friend Panactum Gilmanuk, Ace helped him to remove the mud from the theatre that they were digging out. She was later tasked with piloting the archaeologists' ship back to Heletia when their pilot was killed. Shortly afterwards, they were attacked and she devised a way to stop the attackers by firing a load of explosives at them. Discovering the atrocities that the Heletians had committed and wanting to show the Exec, Ace was imprisoned by Marlock. After being rescued by Benny, she watched the performance of The Good Soldiers and found it boring. (PROSE: Theatre of War)
She was stationed on Ry'leh to observe what was happening there while the Doctor and Benny investigated the machinations on Earth. Ace observed that an army was coming through a portal and wanted the Doctor to be there. Shortly afterward, he arrived riding a Rakshassa which Ace found annoying. She climbed a mountain to find the Rakshassa camp with Watson. In the base, she encountered Azathoth who wanted to make Ace her thrall. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire)
The Doctor, Benny and Ace visited the Pinehill Crest Hotel in 2003. She was tasked in investigating a Time Experiment. She pretended to hate the Doctor when the Scourge invaded and watched what they did to the humans. She asked Michael Pembroke to deafen her in order that she wouldn't get controlled by the scourge. She made her way to the TARDIS on the Doctor's orders and once she entered she started to hear. The Doctor asked her to mess about with the dimensions. (AUDIO: The Shadow of the Scourge)
When she accompanied the Doctor to Orbos to collect Benny, she was affected by Remnex's psychic message. She then helped Benny do her work, before she heard Remnex's scream. She was stunned by Slyde but later recovered. The Doctor later entrusted her with the safe keeping of the skull of Vilus Krull, whilst he went to Marran Alpha. She later found out that both Slyde and Lomar were part of the Cult of the Dark Flame. After being trapped on Marran Alpha she had to fight the living skeletons before the Doctor got them back to the Space Station. The Doctor later asked her to pull a lever to stop a black light explosion. (AUDIO: The Dark Flame)
After their ordeal with the Robot Ants, Ace left the Doctor again to become Time's Vigilante. She used a short-range time hopper mounted on a motorcycle to patrol a particular segment of time, basing herself in Paris in 1887. (PROSE: The Curse of Fenric, Set Piece) She later attended Bernice's wedding to Jason Kane (PROSE: Happy Endings) and was transducted to Gallifrey by Romana II during the Doctor's return to his ancestral home, the House of Lungbarrow. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
Ace was eventually admitted to the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro) from which she went missing and the Doctor was asked to look for her. Benny was then sent to look for her. (AUDIO: The Revolution)
Benny followed a trace of Ace to Adolin where Ace had left some Nitro-9, proving that she was there. Benny then discovered that Ace had transmatted somewhere. (AUDIO: Good Night, Sweet Ladies)
Ace was stranded on a forbidden world which was trapped in a decaying time lock. She lived in a 24-hour time loop, which meant she and Benny had to live through it with no memory of previous days. On the planet, there was a set of ghosts that randomly appeared and she had to evade each day. She tried to get Benny to trust her again. She got angry that the Doctor sent Benny to find her. She tried to warn Benny about Klinus. When Benny wanted to get into the abandoned city, Ace tried to stop her from doing it. (AUDIO: Random Ghosts)
At the Academy, she was given the planet of Talmeson to watch over. Visiting Earth to catch up with her mother, she discovered that she had died from cancer. When she returned, she discovered that Talmeson had been wiped out by the Daleks, prompting her to wipe them out by time locking Skaro with an Omega device. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
Ace later saved Benny from being trapped in a pyramid on Mars. (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh) She explained to Benny that she had also seen the Doctor die in 1941. Taking her to find the Eye of Horus for the Doctor, the pair found that it wasn't in Sutekh's tomb. She used her thieving skills to try and steal it from a museum, but discovered that it was already stolen. Ace and Benny tracked it down to Graull's bank where they used it to release Isis. Isis revealed that the Doctor was with her. When Benny and the Doctor went missing, she vowed to find them. (AUDIO: The Vaults of Osiris) She then rescued Benny and the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Eye of Horus)
On seeing Sutekh's devastation, she thought that the Doctor had gone a grand scheme too far. She went after Benny when she went to find the survivors. The Doctor wanted to leave but Ace wouldn't let him without Benny. She brought a gun with her when she searched for Benny and used it to shoot at the skeletons that followed her. She eventually caught up with Benny just before Sutekh killed Alyx Courtland and was about to be killed herself. She realised the Doctor's trap for Sutekh and noticed that Sutekh was using a time storm to ensnare the Doctor. (AUDIO: The Tears of Isis)
Rejoining the Doctor in his TARDIS, she was sent by him to follow Harmonious 14 Zink to Erratoon and was imprisoned with a nameless Tracer who had taken human form. There, her memory was wiped by the robotic constables, but she was rescued by the Doctor, who planned to restore her memory with the help of the TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Prisoner's Dilemma)
When Ace and the Doctor investigated Sherilyn Harper as she had the Fearmonger inside her, she used her wits and ingenuity to talk to Walter Jacobs to get him on their side. She met up with her old friend Paul Tanner. When Alexsandr Karadjic contacted them and kidnapped them she realised that she could stop him from shooting her by appealing to his inner nature but he shot her. (AUDIO: The Fearmonger)
When the Doctor wanted to collect Edvard Munch's The Scream on the planet Duchamp 331, they encountered Bev for the second time. When she found the painting she was mentally attacked by it. They also encountered the Master who wanted to use the planet animated by the Warp Core as a weapon against the universe. (AUDIO: Dust Breeding)
They landed in Colditz Castle in October 1944, where the Doctor was shot and she became a prisoner of war. Her rucksack was searched and Kurtz took her walk-man. Ace was later used by Elizabeth Klein to get the Doctor. She was later placed in solitary for hitting Kurtz. She later tried to escape but failed when she was betrayed by Timothy Wilkins. After averting a change in the timelines they left in the TARDIS, but witnessed the death of Kurtz who was half inside the TARDIS and half outside when it dematerialised. (AUDIO: Colditz)
The Doctor took Ace to Ibiza on 14 May 1997 to "relax" following her ordeal at Colditz Castle. She went clubbing at The Rapture and got drunk. She wanted the Doctor to leave her alone. While there, she discovered that she had a younger brother named Liam McShane. After discovering this she decided to help the Doctor investigate Gabriel and Jude. She learnt that they were fugitives from a war and that they were taking the youth to fight their war. She was trapped with Liam in the club and then taken to Jude where she was pushed out of the DJ booth into the ceiling but was caught by Jude. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
Adventures with Hex
Whilst in London in 2021 investigating with the Doctor for evidence of "xenotech" — alien technology being used on humans, which was in fact Cyber-Technology — she met Hex, a nurse working at St Gart's Hospital. Following their adventure, she convinced him to join her and the Doctor, taking him under her wing. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
They landed on Uluru whilst it was travelling through space. She saw people who had turned it stone and didn't expect to see Uluru in space. She was knocked unconscious after they met Wahn and Mulyan in a car crash. After she recovered she met the Galyari. She was determined to get the Doctor out of the Dreaming. She went into the mines with Vresha and Korshal. She was then accosted by a dreamtime version of the Doctor and made to drown. (AUDIO: Dreamtime)
The Doctor, Hex and Ace landed on Colony 34 where she helped the Doctor run for president. During the election campaign, she was known as the rebel queen and showed Ryan Wareing that there was poverty on Colony 34. She told Wareing that a prisoner told her the corruption on the planet. She spotted that people were being culled. She was a fugitive and was arrested. After Jaeger was re-elected she was drugged and made to confess but she managed to shout the truth. She then revealed that Jaeger was using dead bodies as a fuel source, then killed immigrants and the incarcerated when the dead ran out. (AUDIO: LIVE 34)
The TARDIS materialised in a wood, where Ace accidentally fell into a lake. Taking her to a nearby cabin, the Doctor discovered a series of murders and that the people there were experimenting with time. Ten years earlier, a girl had been killed as a result of a misdiagnosis and the scientists were trying to send a message back to warn their past selves. This interference with the timeline caused the girl to become alive again in a state of zombie-like limbo. To correct their mistake, the Doctor travelled back and undid the damage. (AUDIO: Night Thoughts)
The Doctor and his companions went for breakfast on London's South Bank, but soon discovered that both London and the TARDIS weren't real. Voyaging through the depths of the "fake TARDIS", the Doctor found he and his companions had been entrapped by a vortex predator. They eventually located the real TARDIS and escaped back into the real universe. (PROSE: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast)
The Doctor sent Ace and Hex to Monte Carlo in 1969 to recover the Veiled Leopard diamond. (AUDIO: The Veiled Leopard)
She helped Hex to learn the skills of identifying the place they had landed in and to observe when they landed in Drogheda. She promised the Doctor that she would look after Hex but then she started fighting, and was there when Kieran Fitzgerald. She initially thought that Hex might have been killed in the battle. She then helped Mary Fitzgerald when they went to Wexford and piloted the TARDIS. She then went looking for James Fitzgerald before the Doctor ordered her to get obstetric forceps. When Hex was ordered to be executed she tried to stop it. (AUDIO: The Settling)
On landing in the First World War, they were caught in a blast and taken to Charnage Hospital. She tried to convince Hex that even though they were in the great war they shouldn't interfere in ways to stop it. Private Taylor tried to attack her and the Doctor with a bayonette. She then helped the Doctor in his investigations and started interviewing the soldiers in the hospital, and listened to Dudgeon's story about the Battle of Mons and seeing the Angels. Hex and Ace went to the church in No Man's Land and found Dixon alive. She realised that Brook had made the platoon attack themselves. After the Doctor stopped Brook she thought that Taylor could make a good career as a forge artist. (AUDIO: No Man's Land)
When they landed on Nocturne, she started to complain about the lack of information that the Doctor gives on arriving on a new planet, which Hex agreed with. After the murder of one of the Doctor's old friends, she was sent to look after Will Alloran as the Doctor thought his brother Lomas Alloran was involved. He then told her about the war and his experiences. She became distraught after Will committed suicide. (AUDIO: Nocturne)
After escaping from a snot monster, the Doctor, Hex and Ace landed on Tuin, for a twin moon festival. She got interested when she heard of the spas available on the planet. Soon after Ace and Hex were attacked by Ori and she went looking for the Doctor. She realised that the Doctor only took them there to end the war. She was taking by Irit to learn the ways of the Ir before the Doctor's wedding. She then saved the Doctor from being burnt at the stake and became the Shining Wife. In the marriage ceremony they were attracted to the centre of the planet and discovered that the planet was sentient. After the wedding Tuin got her to try and kill Hex, and latter Ori and Irit. (AUDIO: The Dark Husband)
Reunited with the Doctor, the trio arrived in Egypt in 1902 where they met a young Time Lady named Jane Templeton who had been stranded for centuries on Earth trying to find her TARDIS and who had accidentally transgressed the laws of time by becoming a god to the locals. Ace was transported into the future with Jane where Jane located her TARDIS. The Doctor informed Jane that her TARDIS was dying, prompting her to fly it into the sun, rejecting the Doctor's offer to save her life. (AUDIO: False Gods)
The Doctor, Ace and Hex travelled to the island of Mendolovinia in 33 AD to help solve a code, but fell into a trap laid by the Order of Simplicity. She realised that the machine Verryman was using could broadcast a signal to augment brains. She got mad when Verryman infected the Doctor with the stupifying virus. (AUDIO: Order of Simplicity)
The TARDIS crew attempted to track down an alien artefact that controlled others into telling the truth. While the Doctor and Hex followed Joey Carlisle, the person who had stolen the artefact from the Forge, Ace encountered a child version of her mother. Whilst the Doctor roamed the streets, Ace conversed with May Carlisle before Merchant arrived for the technology. (AUDIO: Casualties of War)
The Doctor, Ace and Hex encountered a being from a dimension made out of language and communication — Nobody No-One, a Word Lord. This being followed them into a top secret facility and proceeded to cause chaos until the Doctor captured him inside a book only for him to escape again. (AUDIO: The Word Lord)
Ace and her friend were lured in to the Celestial Toyroom but managed to defeat the Celestial Toymaker but to stop him resurfacing the Doctor placed her and Hex in charge of looking after the Doctor at a sanatorium in Switzerland, in 1926. As part of the plan she and Hex stayed in the attic and manipulated events. She tried to convince Hex that manipulating the Doctor was for his own good. When there was a talent contest she was its compare. She tried to stop Queenie Glasscock from leaving the sanatorium but failed when Queenie used a Molotov cocktail on the painted sky. She worked out how to defeat the Toyamaker just before the Doctor had defeated him again. (AUDIO: The Magic Mousetrap)
The Doctor, Ace and Hex landed on Bliss, a jungle planet under Dalek attack. While Ace and Hex helped in the battle with the Daleks, the Doctor discovered that a local professor had combined larvae and Piranha-locust DNA to create a new species known as the Kiseibya. The Kiseibya fed on metal and were created to save mankind from the Daleks, but quickly became uncontrollable, decimating the Dalek forces easily. The Doctor planned to blow up the station and slaughter this new species, but Beth Stokes, a former prisoner of the Daleks, chose to stay behind to finish the job instead. (AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks)
They travelled to Scutari in 1854 in order to cheer Hex up by visiting his idol, Florence Nightingale. The Doctor and Ace left Hex with her and travelled back a month earlier to find out why the Doctor was known in that time. Landing in Sevastopol, she was hurt by falling debris and the exterior of the TARDIS turned white after the HADS was activated by cannon fire. She then spent her time recuperating with Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy who she later persuaded to let her escape. She decided to go to St Petersburg to find the Doctor and met him halfway. When the Doctor hugged her it allowed the TARDIS to reappear. They both rushed to find Hex but found him after he was shot by Bartholomew Kitchen. (AUDIO: The Angel of Scutari) This wound was proving to be fatal, so the Doctor and Ace returned him to Earth in 2025. She helped the Doctor save him by bringing him to St Garts hospital. Here she met Lysandra Aristedes and The Forge when they tracked her and the Dcotor's lifesigns. After seeing Helen transform into a mutation she helped Lysandra with her work, joining her on missions. She got aggrevated when the Forge killed humans before they mutated. She was disgusted when Lysandra and Jarrod were ordered to kill the infected humans. When Hex was rebelling against the Doctor, Ace shot the Doctor to defuse the situation. (AUDIO: Project: Destiny)
Seeking out a Time Lord sarcophagus stored in the Forge Vault, Ace and the Doctor, now without Hex, discovered that it contained a future version of the Seventh Doctor himself, who was unable to prevent the present Doctor from being killed. Combatting Nobody No-One once again, Ace spent a period living in England with Henry Noone, but eventually realised that the future Doctor had set up events to occur just as they had, enabling her to resurrect the Doctor. The trio were reunited, and together they defeated the Word Lord once and for all. Forgiving the Doctor, Hex resumed his TARDIS travels. (AUDIO: A Death in the Family)
Shortly afterwards, the TARDIS landed in 1930s Alaska, with the Doctor intending to investigate a strange ice formation. They ran into an expedition who were looking for the same thing. Whilst exploring Ace fell down a crevasse, and she had to be rescued by the Doctor. She later found her way into the psychiatric institute CP Doveday was at. She spent time with Doveday and learnt more about him. He later told her to leave him for a while after he had a fit. She witnessed Doveday becoming more influenced by the Karnas'koi. (AUDIO: Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge)
Discovering that the Doctor had gone missing, Ace and Hex seemingly managed to pilot the TARDIS to England, 1989. After landing Ace realised something was wrong when Albert Marsden was creating a fallout shelter. Peggy Marsden told her how a Nuclear War was imminent. Realising that they were stuck in a time loop, the pair were unable to prevent a pair of Elders Gods from escaping, but managed to pass the test the Doctor had left behind for the Gods and summoned what seemed to be a black painted TARDIS to retrieve them. Upon entering the Black TARDIS, however, they discovered Sally Morgan and Lysandra Aristedes already there. (AUDIO: Protect and Survive)
Upon discovering this, they realised that the Doctor was travelling in two separate TARDISes, simultaneously. While Hex and Sally piloted the White TARDIS, Ace and Lysandra brought the Black TARDIS to 5th century Denmark, where they met Beowulf and faced an alien called Garundel. They discovered that the Doctor was previously in this location, but had been kidnapped by an unknown enemy. She started to respect Lysandra on this mission. After following the Doctor's clues and instructions, they retrieved an artefact called Weyland's shield, restored the original TARDIS and destroyed the black one before setting off on their way to locate the Doctor. (AUDIO: Black and White)
The TARDIS crew arrived in a pocket universe which was under the control of Fenric. After releasing the Doctor, it was revealed that Fenric was playing a game against another Elder God called Fenric for control of Weyland's shield, which could grant omnipotence to an Elder God. Ace met with Hurmzid who came from a timeline where his father used Anthrax which had been given to him by Weyland. She realised that when he was given a talisman which could call a Time storm that they had more in common. She was chased by Haemovores. Fenric sent her back to Perivale in 1987 on the day she left, hoping to persuade her out of going through the original time storm, but Ace escaped. She later helped to fight off the Haemovores and then went after Lysandra and Sally. When Ace and the Doctor where in Weyland's Smithy she stole one of his tanks. It was also discovered that the TARDIS crew had been pawns of Weyland, used to help him win the game against Fenric, and Hex was destined to become the quintessential pawn in Weyland's plan, who prevented his death after being shot in Scutari. However, Hex managed to banish Weyland, and stop the game, but became possessed by Fenric. Hex sacrificed himself to prevent Fenric from permanently taking control and gaining power, saving the Doctor, Ace, Sally and Lysandra. (AUDIO: Gods and Monsters)
Ace was still distraught for the time it took the Doctor to return Sally and Lysandra back to their respective times and places. The Doctor admitted to her that all he ever known was dead and that's why he wasn't reacting like she was. She went to Hex's room and saw that the TARDIS was archiving his room, and found a letter to Hex's grandmother, written soon after he first travelled. She then forced him to tell Hex's grandmother of his death. Upon landing in Liverpool, she helped Lily Finnegan fight against a group of hooligans. When a rival gang appeared, she found Hex, who had become a gangster in Liverpool, living as Hector Thomas. She then went to his house and ended up kissing him. She took Hector to Hex's wake. After discovering that Hex had survived as an incorporeal being who had been returned to Earth without his memories, Ace forced the Doctor to give her a chance to help him regain them. (AUDIO: Afterlife)
She started to have an intimate relationship with Hector, but still hoped that Hex's memories would return. After Hector piloted the TARDIS to Titan, she started to get concerned especially when the Doctor told her about the Swarm. She caught Saturnian plague. She was taken to the Bi-Al Foundation for treatment and was cured. After the Swarm took them to the 52nd century, she managed to stop the Doctor from being squashed when a bulkhead closed. She went with the Doctor into the Hypernet. Talin helped their progress by first giving them a pair of bikes then Ace a gun. Whilst the Doctor was creating an anti-virus programme she was piloting a ship full of methane towards the planet size nucleus and was rescued by the Doctor before it blew up. (AUDIO: Revenge of the Swarm)
The Doctor took them to Ancient Athens to help Hector recover. When Ace tried to release some slaves she was taken to see Cleon, who then banished her from the city. She was happy that Adonia was a soldier and she liked being a Spartan. She used her Nitro-9 to blow up the gates of Athens to let the Spartans in, which she regretted. She tried to stop Cleon from burning down but she couldn't and she had to be rescued by Tyrgius. (AUDIO: Mask of Tragedy)
She tried to persuade Hector not to leave but failed. She later found Sally at the local train station and started to fight. They were stopped by Janet Green before it went too far. She and Sally were then taken to the Army ship off the coast and helped to stop the Hirudine. She thought that Janet was dead but Ace saw her revive. Ginny then gave Hex his memories back. She didn't want Hex to sacrifice himself again. She helped him remember himself. (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)
Adventures alongside Mel
After travelling with Glitz, Mel ended up on the run from his criminal associates. She was reunited with the Doctor and Ace on Ricosta and joined them on their travels. (AUDIO: A Life of Crime) They accidentally visited Spain during the Spanish Civil War, (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned) the planet Prosper, (AUDIO: Maker of Demons) Parking, (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking) Liverpool (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) and the Silurian capital city, China and America in 2085. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)
As a CIA agent
She eventually returned to Gallifrey and completed her Academy training, and joined the Celestial Intervention Agency. She undertook many missions for them, often to avert civilisations from discovering time travel, but was annoyed that her TARDIS had a working chameleon circuit, making it difficult to find in the field, and wished it could just appear to be an old police box.
On one such mission, she arrived back at her TARDIS to find Rexx, a Time Lord who wanted to give her a mission as her companion to discover the origin of an anomaly near Earth. Rexx took her to the site of the anomaly and found the Hand of Omega there. Rexx thought that Ace couldn't be trusted as she was loyal to Romana. He used Ace as Romana had given her certain privileges since she had travelled with the Doctor and had her hypnotised as she had an affinity with the Hand due to a previous adventure with the Doctor. He planned to then have Omega inhabit her in a bid to help him escape. Coordinator Narvin was sent by Lady President Romana to find her and tracked her to Greater Henge on Earth before they were both taken through the black hole into Omega's domain. When they arrived, Omega released his control on Ace. When Romana arrived in this domain she enabled Ace to help stop the realm collapsing. Omega stole her TARDIS because it was known to the CIA. She escaped from the domain, with Romana and Narvin piloting the Type 160 but when it ran out of power she was stranded just after escaping the black hole with Narvin after Romana was saved by Irving Braxiatel. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)
She was charged with treason, and Trave was sentenced to execute her due to Ace's part in the Omega Plot. After the timelines had been changed, Romana now as Coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency sent her to Outpost Delta, on the border of Monan Host and Gallifreyan space. She also took delight in imprisoning Adjutant Coordinator Tauras. She used her explosive expertise to disarm a bomb on the station. After disposing of the bomb, she was attacked by the Watchmaker. When Romana made a deal with the Watchmaker and the timelines were rewritten again, she did not die. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
At some point during her time on Gallifrey, she was tasked with alerting the Doctor and Raine Creevy that the Reborn Master had stolen the Dimensional nodes from the vault on Tersurus. Due to the energy drain at the Doctor's location, she couldn't get the full message out. (AUDIO: Dominion)
The Last Great Time War
She went with Irving Braxiatel to get permission for a field mission to gain vital information. (AUDIO: Celestial Intervention)
Braxiatel took her to The Obscura. She thought that this investigation sounded like one of her adventures with the Doctor. She thought that Braxiatel had been there before. She discovered Daleks in the hold and found out that the Daleks were mutating themselves to get through the Obscura. Braxiatel was testing Ace to see if she was ready to fight in the war. Danna informed her that she taught Braxiatel all he knew. She started to become paranoid and thought that Brax was telling the Daleks where they were. She thought that she could salvage some Dalek weaponry to face off against the Daleks. Braxiatel asked her to get the Book about the Obscura so that the Daleks couldn't use the information it held. She was tired of being manipulated by Time Lords. She started to be effected by the Obscura energy. She eventually made her way to the TARDIS. She heard that Brax wouldn't destroy the Dalek fleet. Brax showed her his mind and she thought he was worse than the Daleks. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura)
Fate
According to one account, while again accompanying the Seventh Doctor, a younger-looking Ace died in an explosion she set to kill one of the three Lobri. (COMIC: Ground Zero)
Another stated that Irving Braxiatel wiped her memory of Gallifrey and the Time War, and returned her back to Earth after visiting the Obscura and almost being killed by it and the Daleks. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura)
While on Earth, she began a charity called "A Charitable Earth" to help children in need. By 2010, it had raised billions of pounds. (TV: Death of the Doctor, AUDIO: In Remembrance)
Ace later returned to Coal Hill School in 2016, after a charity dinner. During this time, she met Miss Quill and Charlie Smith. She told them to run, as a Dalek went after them through the space-time rift. (AUDIO: In Remembrance)
Alternate timelines
In an alternate timeline, Ace was killed by Chad Boyle in December 1978 when he hit her on the head with a brick. Boyle was subsequently recruited by the Timewyrm. This timeline was negated when the adult Ace prevented Boyle from attacking her younger self. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)
In another alternate timeline, Ace was killed by Kurtz in Colditz Castle in October 1944. The laser technology contained in her Walkman was used by Nazi scientists to refine uranium and create nuclear weapons. They subsequently bombed New York City and Moscow, forcing the surrender of the United States and the Soviet Union and winning the war for Germany. This timeline was negated by an alternative version of the Eighth Doctor who, while posing as a German scientist named Johann Schmidt, fabricated a "flight log" for the TARDIS and manipulated Elizabeth Klein into travelling back in time to Colditz in October 1944 on the pretext of retrieving the Doctor so that he could teach her to pilot the TARDIS. Her lover Major Jonas Faber saw through Schmidt's trickery but was too late as Klein had already decided to disobey his orders and make the trip into the past. Unfortunately for Klein, her arrival in Colditz alerted the Seventh Doctor to the impending alteration of history and he and Ace were able to prevent it. (AUDIO: Colditz, Klein's Story)
In an alternate timeline where the computer was never invented, it was strongly implied[by whom?] that Ace became a young woman known as Dee, who worked with the amnesic Eighth Doctor to try and topple the corrupt Star Chamber that ruled Britain. (PROSE: The Domino Effect)
In another alternate timeline created by the Master, she met the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown. She gave the Sixth Doctor the nickname of "Joseph," a reference to the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He did not understand the reference, though Peri found it amusing. The Sixth Doctor did not seem to be particularly pleased at his future self's choice of travelling companion. Ace got along well with Peri, who was surprised to learn that she referred to the Seventh Doctor as "Professor." Ace lost all memory of this encounter when the proper timeline was restored. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
When the Cybermen allied with Rassilon to take over history, Ace was cyber-converted and confronted the Seventh Doctor while he was planting Nemesis mines across the Cyber-Fleet. (COMIC: Prologue: the Seventh Doctor)
Undated events
- At some point, Ace was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
References
A version of the teenage Ace appeared in a "hellscape" dream the Eleventh Doctor created while the mind parasite Mr Waites fed off the worst thing Doctor could imagine. In the dream, the Doctor worked in the Mediation Section of the Department of Commonality. He turned away Ace when she was being sent to a correction unit for spraying something on a school wall. He said it was "out of [his] hands". (COMIC: John Smith and the Common Men)
Personality
Ace covered her fears and insecurities with a tough, streetwise 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 in her backpack. She also wielded a baseball bat.
She was convinced the Doctor needed her to watch his back and was fiercely loyal to him. (TV: The Curse of Fenric) In turn, the Doctor took a special interest in Ace's education, taking her across the universe and prompting her to come to her own conclusions rather than giving her all the answers. (TV: Ghost Light)
Even though Ace matured greatly over her time with the Doctor, she always remained headstrong and on many occasions tended to charge into situations without completely thinking. As a result of this, in times of severe emotional pain, she was always likely to act rashly and occasionally blamed the Doctor for his regularly manipulative ways and means. (TV: Survival, AUDIO: Afterlife)
She believed that the Doctor had the "deepest, saddest eyes." (AUDIO: The Prisoner's Dilemma)
Ace once told the Doctor that she loved him. (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)
She did not want to have children. (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)
The Doctor expressed a belief that she would either become a renegade Time Lord or Lord President of the High Council. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
Ace gave Mel the nickname "Donut". (TV: Dragonfire; AUDIO: A Life of Crime, Fiesta of the Damned, The Blood Furnace) On another occasion, she referred to Mel as "the squeaky one". (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)
Ace once described the Doctor as her guru. (AUDIO: Nightshade)
The Doctor trusted Ace with his life. (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)
Behind the scenes
Ace's name
Ace's full name was never revealed on the television series, in which she was usually referred to by her nickname. Her surname was not established until original novels featuring the character were published, but her first name, Dorothy, was referred to on screen in the television story Dragonfire.
Production notes suggest that it was intended that her last name would be Gale, given the fact that she was transported to Iceworld via a time storm, much like Dorothy Gale, transported to Oz by a tornado in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The novels (and, later, the Big Finish audio dramas) gave Ace the last name of McShane. The Past Doctor Adventures set after the television story Survival and written by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry used the surname Gale, as the authors were unaware of the name used in the New Adventures. This was eventually resolved to some extent when the novel Relative Dementias by Mark Michalowski gave her full name as Dorothy Gale McShane, a version later taken up by the audios.
Ace's farewell
Ace is the only televised companion whose departure from the Doctor's company has not been definitively established in any media. Instead, there are a number of conflicting accounts.
If Doctor Who had continued as a television series after Season 26, Script Editor Andrew Cartmel had planned that Ace go to attend university on Gallifrey where, despite her human heritage, she would have trained as an apprentice Time Lord. She would have left halfway through Season 27.
Beginning with the novelisation of The Curse of Fenric, spin-off media have put forward conflicting scenarios of how Ace finally departed the company of the Doctor. The TV movie Doctor Who did not explain or rationalise her absence.
In The Sarah Jane Adventures television story Death of the Doctor, a reference was made to a former companion of the Doctor named "Dorothy", who was running an organisation known as "A Charitable Earth". Sophie Aldred has stated that she does not believe that this would be Ace's chosen profession unless the charity was nothing more than a front for UNIT. [1] However, this was eventually confirmed to be Ace in the Big Finish audio drama In Remembrance.
Russell T Davies revealed in issue 445 of Doctor Who Magazine that he hoped to have Aldred return as Ace in The Sarah Jane Adventures, both in the present day and potentially also in flashback sequences. The death of Elisabeth Sladen, however, prompted the premature conclusion of the series.
Miscellany
- Ace was the last companion of the Doctor to be a minor, up until Courtney Woods, who was 15. Ace was 16 when she joined the Doctor.
- According to Rona Munro, the writer of Survival, there was to be a lesbian subtext to the relationship between Ace and Karra. This raises the possibility of Ace being the first LGBT companion on screen. (DOC: Cat-Flap)
- Ace was voiced in the German dub by Carin C. Tietze.