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Ace was a companion of the Seventh Doctor. Her real name was either Dorothy Gale or Dorothy Gale McShane.
Initially a brash and reckless teenager, 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. Born on Earth, Ace was a central player in fighting the return of Fenric and battled many of the Doctor's most infamous foes alongside him, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master. Her timeline was complicated; during an encounter with the Quantum Anvil, she saw her future fracture into various different but all valid possible outcomes. Amongst these futures were continued travels with the Doctor, a life in 1887 France, and becoming a Time Lord after attending the Academy on Gallifrey.
Within that version of her future, she was given a TARDIS of her own and she became an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency. Eventually, due partially to the erupting Time War, Ace had her memory erased by Irving Braxiatel, who also further meddled with her personal history. She was returned to Earth, where she set up a charity - A Charitable Earth - dedicated to helping Orphans.
In 2022, Ace met fellow former companion Tegan Jovanka upon Kate Stewart requesting help at UNIT; allowing her to meet the Thirteenth Doctor and help stop the Master once again. Afterwards, Ace joined a Companion support group stated by Graham O'Brien to share her stories about the Doctor; even helping comfort Yaz, who had just left the Doctor before her regeneration.
Biography
Before travelling with the Doctor
Her cameo as "Dorothy something" in The Haunting of Gabriel Chase
Dorothy 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)
Some of her mother's boyfriends would often offer to take care of Ace in order to get on her good side, taking her to pubs to buy her fish and chips and a fizzy drink while they would ignore her to spend time with their friends. In these instances, Ace would play darts and steal people's beers. The boyfriends, however, would sometimes start arguing with her after getting too drunk, at one instance giving her a black eye. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Genesys)
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 either nearly died (PROSE: Timewyrm: Apocalypse) or did die, prompting an angry Ace to 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) She discovered her love of speed and danger when a friend let her drive his car, and she took it up to 80 on the motorway. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
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!)
In the mid-1980s, while working in McDonald's, Ace briefly met the Fifth Doctor's companion Tegan Jovanka. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus) 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)
Ace got her nickname when she joined a teenage gang from Putney to spite Midge. The other members were King, Queen, Jack, and Joker. (PROSE: Teenage Kicks)
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)
In either the early summer (AUDIO: Gods and Monsters) or 15 September 1987, (PROSE: At Childhood's End) 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 Svartos, she got a job as a waitress and formed a friendship with Glitz, (TV: Dragonfire)
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 so it delivered blasts of energy strong enough to smash Dalek eyestalks off and damage transmats. During this adventure, her portable stereo was destroyed by a Dalek, something that pleased the Doctor as it was a dangerous anachronism. The Doctor explained to her if someone technically minded found the stereo and discovered how it worked, the microchip revolution could take place 20 years too early, causing damage to the timeline. 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)
During this adventure, she met Charlie Smith after he travelled back in time, but only met him briefly. After leaving Earth, the Doctor and Ace traced the Dalek which went to 2016 but got distracted before following it. An older Ace later suggested, to the best of her memory that the TARDIS had been attacked by a Bandril timeship (AUDIO: In Remembrance)
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 fired from her catapult and destroyed a Cyber-shuttle using Nitro-9. She admitted to the Doctor she didn't like Cybermen. At the same time, Ace learnt several of the most chaotic events in Earth's history - the First World War and Hitler's invasion of Poland, for example - were down to the statue. (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)
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)
Darker turn
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)
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 Planet as prey for the Cheetah People. The Tremas Master, an old enemy of the Doctor, was using them to get off the planet. Ace, after managing to get the mental influence of the Cheetah virus under control (though the Doctor noted that a part of the Cheetah Planet would "always live on inside her"), she returned with two of her friends and went off to travel with the Doctor again. They made their way back to the TARDIS, which she now called "home", (TV: Survival) although they found it taken over by the Master, who whisked them along to a destination of his choosing as part of a scheme. She tried to physically attack the Master, though the Doctor kept her at bay. When the Master damaged the TARDIS controls and ran off into another room, the Doctor resolved that they would see where they ended up. (PROSE: How did this creep get in here, Professor?)
Further adventures
While the Doctor met with Zoe Heriot on a space station, Ace visited the station's chemistry lab. (PROSE: Dream a Little Dream for Me)
After Ace helped the Doctor counter the First Rani's plot to control the universe, Ace and the Doctor were joined on their travels by K9. (TV: Dimensions in Time) When the Doctor later hosted the The Ultimate Challenge quiz show, Ace and K9 competed against Cedric. (TV: Search Out Space)
As it turned out, the Doctor had been trying to shape Ace's 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)
Work to do
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)
The fractured timeline
Multiple futures
Around 1990, Ace and the Doctor visited the last resting place of the Wraiths, interdimensional beings that existed in multiple timelines simultaneously, and the home of the Astingir, where unbeknown to her, the Doctor came to check on the Quantum Anvil - a temporal possibility engine created by the Astingir in their war with the Wraiths which shattered the time streams of the latter into infinite potential outcomes leaving them intangible. Ace, while trying to steady herself in a tremor, made contact with the Anvil upon being grabbed by the Wraiths when she stood too close to their containment. Contact with the anvil ensured Ace was imbued with the ability to commune with the Wraiths, but she also saw her life splinter into different outcomes, showing Ace multiple different possible timelines of her future. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
It showed her a life on Gallifrey, (PROSE: At Childhood's End, AUDIO: Intervention Earth) a life in the TARDIS with a dark haired woman (PROSE: At Childhood's End, Love and War, AUDIO: The Shadow of the Scourge, et al.) and a young man, (PROSE: At Childhood's End, Nightshade, Love and War, AUDIO: The Harvest) killing a Dalek while the explosion reflects in her black sunglasses, (PROSE: At Childhood's End, Love and War) a life with an ancestor of Sorin, (PROSE: At Childhood's End, Set Piece) dying in an Nitro-9 explosion. (PROSE: At Childhood's End, COMIC: Ground Zero) It also showed her a life where she never left the Doctor, saving worlds as she grew old with him. (PROSE: At Childhood's End, AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)
Ace became angered when the Doctor admitted that they'd come so she could touch the anvil, hoping that she would act as an emissary for the Wraiths when the time came to establish peace between them and the Astingir. They were attacked by a hoard of Astingir and were forced to flee. While trying to evade them, Ace used a can of Nitro-9 to distract them but ended up collapsing the ground beneath them, killing the entire group in the process. She was so traumatised by this that once they returned to to the TARDIS, she declared that she was leaving the Doctor.
According to Ace's memories, this adventure with the Doctor was her final trip with him, (PROSE: At Childhood's End) but her memories and timeline had been further altered by Irving Braxiatel, casting doubt on her account. (AUDIO: Soldier Obscura, Assasssins) The Doctor gave her a space-time-pager to call him when needed, which she did when Rufus told her about an alien encounter. She had to arrange a plan to break out an alien from an estate in Hampshire. She was captured during her plan and was bitten by the vampire Rohesia. Ace rescued Mags when she was to be kidnapped by Rufus. She went with the Doctor to stop Rufus' plans. She stayed on Earth with Arthur. (AUDIO: An Alien Werewolf in London)
Leaving on Heaven
Life in the future begins
After both creating and defeating the Timewyrm (PROSE: Timewyrm: 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)
In one possible timeline for Ace, (PROSE: At Childhood's End) after saying goodbye to her old friend Julian at his funeral, the Doctor brought her and the TARDIS to the Heaven in the year 2570. She 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 at this point (PROSE: Love and War, AUDIO: Love and War) of this timeline. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
In Spacefleet
As part of this same possible timeline, (PROSE: At Childhood's End) Ace, now living in the 26th century, 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, was stationed on Verdanna (PROSE: Parasite) and wore a helmet made from the dome of a Black Dalek Supreme. (PROSE: Shadowmind)
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) Travelling with Bernice and the Doctor was another potential timeline for Ace. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
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 Locris 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 afterwards, 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)
The Doctor sent Ace to fight in a war between humans and Chelonians in the 57th century, claiming time had been distorted there. Ace realised there seemed to be no distortion and caught a glimpse of the Timewyrm, who she mocked. Afterwards the Doctor collected her and Benny and explained he’d actually sent them to distort time to lure the Timewyrm out so he could trap it. (COMIC: The Last Word)
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)
Life with an ancestor of Sorin
Should be expanded
Another possible future for Ace was a life with one of Sorin's ancestors, (PROSE: At Childhood's End) Count Nikolai Sorin. By this telling, 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)
In spring 1727, a woman whose name was misunderstood as Mademoiselle "Machine" stayed at the Cunicularii. Hiding behind a fake French accent, she drew tarot for Nate Silver and Nick Plainsong; the card she drew for herself was the Ace of Spades. Despite usually refusing the brothel's patrons, she had sex with Silver, who then died in her room. A child in the street outside made puffing noises (PROSE: Newtons Sleep) resembling the sound on Ace's time hopper. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
When Ace met up with the Doctor again years later and shared a happy conversation with him, she admitted that she had fallen in love with Nikolai. (PROSE: The Curse of Fenric) Ace and Sorin pretended to be married, making her name "Dorothée Sorina-McShan". She later attended Bernice's wedding to Jason Kane. (PROSE: Happy Endings) She was transducted to Gallifrey by Romana II during the Doctor's return to his ancestral home, the House of Lungbarrow. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
New travels with the Doctor
In one possible future, Ace would continue travelling with the Doctor and other companions for a long time. (PROSE: At Childhood's End) 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)
She got annoyed when the Doctor landed in the middle of nowhere instead of Edinburgh. She learnt about the Grey Man from Kirsty Bell and went up the mountain to search for it. They found Andy in a cave on the mountain. She was curious about a set of footprints. She helped Kirsty when she got frost bite and helped her through her fear. (AUDIO:The Grey Man of the Mountain)
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 Bankside Hospital. Following their adventure, she convinced him to join her and the Doctor, taking him under her wing. (AUDIO: The Harvest) Her travels with the Doctor being joined by Hex was yet another one of the potential timelines shown to Ace on the Wraith homeworld. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
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 crew landed on the Isabella only to discover it empty. Ace tried to resist being arrested. Anna confided in her about her situation onboard posing as a boy. (AUDIO: The Flying Dutchman)
Ace tried to find a location to have a holiday with Hex and the Doctor after their recent adventure but something went haywire. She became agitated in a house in Norfolk that had been abandoned. She searched for clues with Hex before they had an argument. She found an analogue answering machine in such a technologically advanced house. She then started to think the house was after them. As Ace and Hex were dying of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, they discovered that George Colbert had murdered the house's original inhabitants for the land they had. (AUDIO: Displaced)
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 bayonet. 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)
She thought something was up when the Doctor piloted the TARDIS to Paris in 1922. She became concerned when Kevin Archer started acting strangely. She aggravated Panda upon meeting him. She then helped in the Doctor's investigation of Iris Wildthyme. She helped Iris to destroy Dora Muse's body, and grew worried when Iris, Kevin and Panda fell into the river. (AUDIO: Muse of Fire)
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 taken 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 stupefying 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 was bored on the TARDIS and found the planet Unity in the destination finder and wanted to go there. She learnt that there was a medical facility which allowed people to face their shadow selves and resolve their issues. On Unity, she encountered her shadow self, who told her that she was being ignored normally because she went around blowing things up. When the world started falling apart, she went with the Doctor and Malcolm Grove to the core. She got annoyed when the TARDIS went haywire (AUDIO: Shadow Planet) and had to make an emergency landing on Nirvana. She went to explore with Hex but later went mountaineering with the Doctor. They discovered a dead body in one of the caves. Running back to the TARDIS after discovering what the planet truly was, she braved the storm to find Hex. The TARDIS dematerialised leaving Ace and Hex stranded on the planet. They spent their time locating food and shelter to survive whilst waiting for the Doctor. In one of her dreams, Ace received a message from the Doctor. When they were chased by a set of sea monsters, the Doctor managed to rescue them. She said that she would not forgive the Doctor for how he treated Hex. (AUDIO: World Apart)
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 Toymaker 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 Gart's Hospital. Here she met Lysandra Aristedes and The Forge when they tracked her and the Doctor's life signs. After seeing Helen transform into a mutation she helped Lysandra with her work, joining her on missions. She got aggravated 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. Combating 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 Elder 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 had 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 the city but she couldn't and she had to be rescued by Tyrgius. (AUDIO: Mask of Tragedy)
In possible timeline, Ace never left the Doctor. (PROSE: At Childhood's End) 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
The Doctor finally let her pilot the TARDIS, which led her to pilot it to Chimbly's base. (AUDIO: You Are the Doctor) On her second attempt, she piloted it to a mysterious mansion, where she ended up being trapped in its library. (AUDIO: Come Die With Me) She was charged with breaking the law and sent for trial. (AUDIO: The Grand Betelgeuse Hotel) She then helped the Doctor investigate what was happening on a space ship near Earth. (AUDIO: Dead to the World)
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, where she encountered the sexism of the time. She helped to discover the effects of a God Seed. (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned) The Doctor later took her the planet Prosper, where she got separated from the Doctor. She worked out that it was the drugs the Mogera took that caused them to mutate. (AUDIO: Maker of Demons)
They later went to Parking where she was arrested. She used her knowledge of explosives to lure out of the Free parkers. This attracted Dunne to her. She had to convince the Free Parkers and the Tribe of the Lost that something was causing that fight against the wardens. (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking) They later went to Liverpool where she discovered that Vinny Gillespie was an alien. She was kidnapped by him. She went to stop the building of the ship but couldn't stop it, and consequently couldn't stop the sacrifice of Lee Clayton. She tried to pilot the TARDIS but it didn't respond. She found it exciting using a hologram to defeat the Eorgem. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) Ace told Mel that the Doctor had changed their course because he wanted to deal with some unfinished business, and warned her when the Doctor was in this state. They went the Silurian capital city, China and America in 2085. She learnt that the Silurians wanted to provoke a nuclear war and was worried about the Doctor's motives. She went to stop both Bart Falco and Shen not knowing which was under the control of the Silurians. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)
Ace was left in an alternative Berlin in 1961 by the Doctor, where she encountered Tom Elliot. She tried to help him but eventually he escaped from her. She realised that the timeline they were in was collapsing. She had to cross the Belin wall to give the photos she needed to stop the bomb. (AUDIO: Red Planets) Later she helped in defeating the Arkallax. (AUDIO: The Dispossessed) Mel knocked Ace and the Doctor out and brought the TARDIS to Josiah W. Dogbolter, as contracted under duress. Using a Quantum Possibility Engine, Dogbolter created a future wherein he was president and Ace, the Doctor and Narvin were written into different lives. She was a police officer in this life. After Dogbolter's interference was unwritten and the TARDIS returned to the Doctor, Ace, while still furious with Mel and declaring that she'd need to earn her trust back, decided to give her another chance as she was sure that she would try. (AUDIO: The Quantum Possibility Engine)
As a CIA agent
A human in the CIA
In one possible timeline, Ace began a life on Gallifrey. (PROSE: At Childhood's End) 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 try and wipe them out by time locking Skaro with an Omega device. Her efforts failed, but she did reunite with the Doctor and Benny. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro)
Ace was sent by the Doctor 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)
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)
She 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. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth) 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)
During her time on Gallifrey, Ace modified an old TARDIS, though it became stuck in the shape of an arcade game. (AUDIO: The First Days of Phaidon)
Shifting timelines
In the original timeline, (AUDIO: Enemy Lines) during the presidency of Romana's third incarnation Ace 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 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 over 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 and Narvin were eventually found by Trave who informed them they had been sentenced to death due to their part in the Omega Plot.
After the events had been changed to prevent Romana's regeneration by Irving Braxiatel, Romana's second incarnation, now as Coordinator of the Celestial Intervention Agency, sent Ace 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 Leela contacted her to warn her it had been planted there as part of a conspiracy to provoke war between Gallifrey and the Monan Host. After disposing of the bomb, she was killed by the Watchmaker, who was seeking to balance the timelines.
When Romana and Leela made a deal with the Watchmaker and the timelines were rewritten a final time, she did not die. In this timeline she and Narvin arrested the conspiracists together and Narvin was bemused by her suggestion to "high five" to celebrate. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
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)
Return to Earth
Founding A Charitable Earth
Irving Braxiatel wiped Ace's 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) Brax also altered parts of her timeline from as far back as her adventures with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Assasssins) She remembered her final adventure with the Doctor as being their encounter with the Wraiths, though the Seventh Doctor later confirmed Ace's story that she eventually parted ways with him after an adventure featuring the Rani who was "up to her old tricks", although the Doctor accidentally left her in London, Ontario, rather than West London as planned and she had a hard time getting home without a passport. After her departure she went, every Tuesday, to the care home that her grandmother was in and just sat with her, holding hands and, before her grandmother died, Ace believed she'd realised who she was and her eyes "sparkled" and she "smiled like she'd never smiled before". (TV: The Curse of Fenric). Eventually, she became a celebrity (PROSE: At Childhood's End) upon beginning a charity called "A Charitable Earth" to help children in need, (TV: Death of the Doctor) particularly orphans. By 2010, it had raised billions of pounds. (AUDIO: In Remembrance) In addition to being a CEO, Ace also became a professor of Sociology, giving lectures at a college. (AUDIO: Dark Universe)
Ace adopted a cat she named "Sorin" and established her headquarters close to UNIT's base in the Tower of London, knowing that a sudden increase in traffic outside her window would be a clue as to whether the Earth was under threat. (PROSE: At Childhood's End) Ace later returned to Coal Hill in 2016, after a charity dinner, to deal with the temporal anomaly that the Doctor had previously detected when they were leaving Shoreditch in 1963. During this time, she met Miss Quill and Charlie Smith, as they had been alerted to her presence. She told them to leave her to deal with the matter; a Dalek came through the space-time rift from 1963. She argued with Quill about being prepared for a Dalek attack, whilst Charlie fell through another tear to 1963. She could remember going to the academy on Gallifrey, despite what Braxiatel did.
She saved Quill from a Dalek gunblast, and started to remember meeting Charlie in the past. In one of the Chemistry labs, she used her Nitro-9 on the Dalek and severely damaged its casing. However, she was injured in the process, and then tied up by Quill. Later, she told Quill that the Twelfth Doctor must have seen something in her and that's why he saved her. She also explained to Charlie what her charity was about, before bidding farewell to Coal Hill once more. (AUDIO: In Remembrance)
Ace was eventually "recruited" by the Doctor as part of his plan to trap the renegade Time Lord known as "the Eleven", the Doctor believing that the Eleven had the potential to be more dangerous than other renegades due to his lack of restraint or agenda but he needed to create an opportunity to prove how dangerous the Eleven was to other Time Lords. To this end, Ace planted fake evidence that she had a more negative opinion of the Doctor than she actually did so that the Eleven would approach her for help in his plan to unlock the power of the Dark Universe. The plan apparently backfired when the Eleven actually unlocked the portal, something the Doctor hadn't believed he'd actually do, but the Doctor was eventually able to undo the Eleven's conquest of the universe. However, he only accomplished this through making a deal with the Dark Citizens for an unspecified future favour, prompting Ace to angrily denounce the Doctor as just as bad as the Eleven as both of them sought power for their own reasons, even if it was only different kinds of power. (AUDIO: Dark Universe)
Making amends with the past
Info from Quantum of Axos needs to be added
By one account whilst investigating something in space in 2020, Ace met the Doctor again, who was now in their thirteenth incarnation. Because of the terms they'd parted on years earlier, Ace struggled to trust the Doctor, remembering what she used to be like but nonetheless accepted her help. While waiting for the Doctor's then-companions Yasmin Khan and Ryan Sinclair to be taken, she was abducted by a squad of Ratts in Yaz's place and brought to Halogi-Kari, the former envoy of Fenric who'd organised her being swept away to Iceworld personally.
Eventually, the Doctor arrived to rescue her and found that she was acting as the emissary for the Wraiths as she had planned for her all those years ago. When the Wraiths let Ace go, wishing to remain as they were in containment and no longer evoke a war, Ace pursued Halogi-Kari to get revenge. She ignored the Doctor's pleas for her not to act and decided for herself to allow Halogi-Kari to live so he could seek out everybody he had taken and return them home before surrendering himself to the Shadow Proclamation for a final prosecution. After the Doctor returned everybody home, she delivered a letter Ace had written to her friend Will Buckland, informing him that she'd stayed behind to settle matters with the Wraiths and left him in charge of A Charitable Earth until she returned. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
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According to another account, Ace first met the Thirteenth Doctor in 2022, "three decades" after her initial travels with him. She had been recruited by UNIT along with Tegan Jovanka and witnessed the Doctor bring the Spy Master into custody, teasing him that last she'd seen him he was "half cat". The Doctor left her and Tegan to watch the Master, however he unleashed an army of Cybermen on them. Ace escaped by parachuting off the roof of UNIT's HQ, however was shot down by a Cyberman and was only saved by Yasmin Khan materialising the TARDIS right beneath her. Yaz sent her to a volcano to stop the Daleks' part in the Master's Dalek Plan, where a AI hologram the Doctor had secretly planted on Ace at UNIT activated due to her being in deadly danger. The hologram took the form of the Seventh Doctor, giving Ace the chance to apologise to him, before encouraging her into action. As she moved against the Daleks, she encountered Graham O'Brien who was also investigating the Daleks and together they blew up their base. Ace then helped the Doctor pilot the TARDIS before being returned to Earth by Yaz. Ace later joined Graham, Yaz, Dan Lewis, Tegan Jovanka, Melanie Bush, Jo Jones, Kate Stewart and Ian Chesterton at a support group meeting for former companions of the Doctor that Graham had organised. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
According to one account, while in the A Charitable Earth headquarters, Ace was thinking back on her old adventures until she heard the TARDIS, with the Seventh Doctor knocking on her door. Excited, she went to him. (WC: The Promise)
After arriving back after a climate conference, she became intrigued to an app that Ed showed her. She was worried about what Aurora was promising. She used her version of K9 to get more information. She encountered the Tenth Doctor with K9 Mark II who realised that her K9 was an Axos duplicate. She confronted Aurora about how she wanted to use the disadvantaged. It wanted to use Ace because of her previous knowledge of time travel technology. She was copied by Axos in order to get the Doctor to obey. After Axos was defeated, the Doctor offered her another trip but she declined and so her gave her K9. K9 asked her to seek out K9 Mark IV. (AUDIO: Quantum of Axos)
Ace attended Sarah Jane Smith's memorial on a "bright, cold Spring day", where she discussed Sarah Jane with other guests, and helped fight the Jackals of the Backwards Clock to foil the Trickster's revenge plot. Towards the end of the service, she recalled her memories of Sarah Jane to Luke, Clyde and Rani. She left the funeral with K9 Mark IV, adopting him as her own. (WC: Farewell, Sarah Jane)
Working with Torchwood
Info from Death in Venice needs to be added
Ace went to help a country struggling with an alien invasion, but found herself stuck in a quarantine hotel. She met St John Colchester who was in the room next door, taking a disliking to him after discovering he worked for Torchwood, and discovered an alien creature growing into a copy of herself in a cupboard. Working with Colchester they escaped their rooms and discovered the staff were all identical clones, brainwashing and cloning the occupants of the hotel to incite unrest in the country on behalf of the Unity. They escaped, prompting the clones to dissolve to avoid discovery and releasing the rest of the gusts, though wondered if this was truly the Unity's plan all along. (AUDIO: The Red List)
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) This was one potential timeline out of the many for Ace's future. (PROSE: At Childhood's End)
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 for a brief time before it was destroyed. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
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)
During her early travels with the Doctor, Ace would often set out to do something and when she was successful at it she would jump up and yell "Ace!". (TV: Dragonfire)
Ace enjoyed dinosaurs, (TV: The Happiness Patrol, PROSE: Living in the Past) motorbikes, (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) scrambled eggs, hot buttered toast, kedgeree, kidney, sausage and bacon for breakfast. (TV: Ghost Light) She also enjoyed coffee (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) and lemonade. (TV: Battlefield) She preferred the Beatles to Elvis Presley. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Ace suffered from coulrophobia, a fear of clowns. (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) She also objected to racial prejudice, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks; Ghost Light) and was a feminist who objected to chauvinism. (AUDIO: The Veiled Leopard, No Man’s Land; PROSE: Timewyrm: Genesys)
Ace was quite compassionate under her tough exterior. She comforted any upset person, such as Judith Winters, who was mentally broken after her experience being controlled by the Renegade Dalek's Supreme, (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Bellboy, who was torn over the Psychic Circus's fall since being taken over by the Gods of Ragnarok, (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) and Squeak when the Tremas Master's kitling killed her cat. (TV: Survival) She felt sorry for Helen A losing Fifi even though she'd led Terra Alpha with an iron fist. (TV: The Happiness Patrol) She tended to Karra even though she was a Cheetah Person. (TV: Survival) She was happy on the idea of humans and Silurians making peace. (PROSE: Blood Heat)
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, PROSE: At Childhood's End)
She believed that the Doctor had the "deepest, saddest eyes" (AUDIO: The Prisoner's Dilemma), and once described the Doctor as her guru. (AUDIO: Nightshade) One of her greatest fears was the idea of the Doctor going bad, (AUDIO: The Fearmonger), and Ace once told the Doctor that she loved him. (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders) The Doctor trusted Ace with his life. (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)
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)
According the Doctor, Ace ate through biscuits faster than an infestation of mice. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace)
After leaving the Doctor, Ace had difficulty trusting people, and would often take on a flippant tone of voice to hide how she truly felt. She tried several times to be a part of a long-term relationship, but her issues with trust and the fact that she never wanted to 'go further' led to many break-ups, although she often remained in touch. She admitted that she had always loved speed, and was often noticeably in awe of large vehicles. Although she set up her own charitable organisation, she was extremely paranoid of Torchwood, UNIT, or the Counter-Measures group finding about the work that she used the charity as a cover for, continuing to develop Nitro-9 (eventually Nitro-90) and examine any alien technology she could find.
Although she often dreamed of seeing the Doctor again, when she encountered the Thirteenth Doctor she was deeply suspicious, arguing with her and trying to let Yasmin Khan know how manipulative the Doctor could be. However, she made up with her when she saw that the Doctor had changed and how harshly wrong she'd been (PROSE: At Childhood's End) and later expressed excitement at seeing the Seventh Doctor again, (WC: The Promise) and the Tenth Doctor. (AUDIO: Quantum of Axos)
Although she understood Tegan's anger with the Doctor, she did her best to keep her from acting on it and commented on the appearance of the thirteen incarnation well. She retained her sass; commenting on the Master's cheetah sickness, preparing to fight, fighting Daleks willingly, and showing her annoyance on Graham's question about her age. She still loved the Doctor and apologised for how wrong she was now she understood the seventh incarnation's burden as they made up. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
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.[source needed] 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 implied that her full name was 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, rationalise, or even address her apparent absence from the TARDIS.
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, which hinted at its conclusion that the organisation was more than just a simple charity. This implication was later supported by At Childhood's End. At Childhood's End also offers a possible explanation of sorts for the vast amount of conflicting accounts by implying that contact with the Quantum Anvil has fractured Ace's personal timeline into multiple possible ones.
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. Davies was later able to nod to this idea in some fashion for the webcast Farewell, Sarah Jane, by having Ace appear as one of the many guests at Sarah Jane's funeral and ultimately departing the funeral as the new owner of K9.
Doctor Who: Legacy
In the story of Doctor Who: Legacy, the Seventh Doctor is separated from Ace by a time paradox.
Miscellany
- 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 intentionally LGBT companion on screen, (DOC: Cat Flap) although she would not be the first taking retrospective continuity into account, as Liz Shaw was established to not be heterosexual long after her televised era, through her romantic relationship with Patricia Haggard.
- According to Sophie Aldred, Ace was considered to appear in the TV movie, but it was decided that explaining the concept of the Doctor to a new audience was complex enough without introducing the companion. Furthermore, she was busy with presenting work, although she said she would have dropped it in a heartbeat in favour of returning.