Ace
Dorothy Gale "Ace" McShane, was a companion of the Seventh Doctor. She was a human from late 20th century Earth, born on 20 August 1970. (NA: Timewyrm: Revelation, Falls the Shadow, Set Piece, PDA: Relative Dementias)
A troubled youth from the London suburb of Perivale, Ace was estranged from her mother, and haunted by memories of arson.(DW: Dragonfire) Naturally violent, she was skilled at making bombs filled with an explosive of her own devising called Nitro-9. She would often assist the Doctor by lobbing these grenades at particularly entrenched opponents, such as the Daleks and Cybermen. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks, Silver Nemesis)
She was notably one of the Doctor's youngest companions. She was still attending school when a freak accident created a time storm and transported her to Iceworld. By the time she met the Doctor and Mel, she was only 16. (DW: Dragonfire) This atypical youth gave her a somewhat different relationship to the Doctor than most companions. At least initially, he was trying to educate her, not merely have adventures with her. His style of teaching, however, was occasionally unorthodox. He somtimes lied to her, or at least withheld certain truths, so she would face the demons of her past and emerge a stronger person. (DW: Ghost Light)
As it turned out, he was 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. (BFA: Thin Ice) Following this decision, she also travelled for a time with Raine Creevy, with whom she had a somewhat prickly relationship. (BFA: The Lost Stories range)
Ace's life after this point was temporally complex. There were accounts of several different and incompatible futures. According to at least one, she died before truly reaching adulthood. (DWM: Ground Zero) Others held that she became embittered towards the Doctor and left his company at the time Bernice Summerfield started travelling with him — only to be occasionally pulled back into his orbit, even into her late 30s. (NA: Love and War, Conundrum, St Anthony's Fire, Happy Endings) In still other accounts, her anger towards the Doctor was not strong enough to force her to leave. According to these accounts, she seemed perfectly happy to continue travelling with him. (BFA: All of the main monthly range) During this time, she also travelled amiably with Hex a male nurse also from England. (BFA: The Harvest, et al)
Biography
Before travelling with the Doctor
It contains several grammatical or factual errors, or otherwise offends our our Manual of Style.
Dorothy was the daughter of Audrey Dudman. (DW: The Curse of Fenric) She suffered several traumatic events in her childhood, including a bad relationship with her mother and the racist firebombing of her friend Manisha Purkayastha's flat. Manisha died and an angry Ace set fire to Gabriel Chase, an abandoned mansion said to be haunted by an ancient evil. (DW: Ghost Light, NA: Blood Heat)
She was a troubled teen on Earth, expelled from school for blowing up the art room as a "creative statement". Shortly after, she began to work as a waitress at a fast-food cafe, a job she found unexciting. Gifted in chemistry (despite failing it for her "O"-levels), she was in her room experimenting with the extraction of nitroglycerin from gelignite when a time storm swept her up and transported her to the deck of Sabalom Glitz's spacecraft, the Nosferatu, which was docked at Iceworld far in her future. Trapped on Iceworld, she got a job as a waitress and formed a relationship with Glitz, eventually losing her virginity to him (NA: Love and War). Some time later she met the Seventh Doctor, whom she referred to as "Professor" and his companion Mel ("Doughnut"). When Mel left the Doctor at the conclusion of their battle with Kane, he offered to take Ace with him in the the TARDIS, and she enthusiastically accepted. (DW: Dragonfire)
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 was convinced he needed his back watched and was fiercely loyal to him. 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. [source needed]
Early travels
Under the Doctor's tutelage, Ace fought the Daleks and faced Davros in November 1963. During this adventure her portable stereo was destroyed by a Dalek. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks). She opposed Helen A and her sadistic government, which required people to be happy on pain of death. (DW: The Happiness Patrol) She stopped the Cybermen from getting hold of Nemesis in 1988 (DW: Silver Nemesis) and saved the Psychic Circus on Segonax from the Gods of Ragnarok. (DW: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) She also met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, helping UNIT defeat the Destroyer and Morgaine in Carbury in 1997. (DW: Battlefield)
The Doctor forced Ace to face demons from her past, taking her to a house she had burned down a century before she did. 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. (DW: Ghost Light)
Ace's arrival on Iceworld was not accidental, but part of a larger scheme conceived by 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, and 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. (DW: The Curse of Fenric)
Ace returned to Perivale where she found that all 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 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. (DW: Survival)
Further journeys with the Doctor
Some time later she encountered the Master's influences involving Duchamp 331 in the 26th century and met Bev Tarrant for the second time. (BFA: Dust Breeding).
Following a brush with Nazis in Colditz Castle in October 1944 (BFA: Colditz), the Doctor took Ace to Ibiza on 14 May 1997 to "relax" following her ordeal. While there, she discovered that she had a younger brother: Liam McShane. (BFA: The Rapture)
Journeys with Hex and the Doctor
Whilst in London in 2021 investigating with the Doctor for evidence of 'xenotech' — alien technology used on humans—in fact Cyber technology --she met Hex, a nurse working at St Gart's Hospital. Following his help she convinced him to join her and the Doctor, taking him under her wing. (BFA: The Harvest)
Later travels
Indications exist that the Doctor had plans to take Ace to Gallifrey and secure her admission to the Prydon Academy, possibly as part of his assumed mission as "Time's Champion". However, Ace became more and more frustrated with the Doctor's manipulations. (NA: Nightshade)
The Doctor took the TARDIS to planet Heaven in the year 2570. (NA: Love and War) By now twenty-six years old (NA: Set Piece), Ace she met the young Traveller Jan Rydd and fell in love with him. She took on the name Dorothée and intended to live the rest of his life with Jan. Following Jan's death she bitterly turned against the Doctor. Filled with loathing, she finally left the Doctor's company. (NA: Love and War)
Now living in the 26th century, Ace joined Spacefleet and fought Daleks and others. Three years, later, combat-hardened and cynical, she would later rejoin the Doctor and Bernice Summerfield (NA: Deceit).
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 a breaking point, Ace accepted the offer of the misguided renegade Time Lord the Monk to join with him as his companion and accomplice. However, she meant to betray the Monk all along. By this time she had finally gotten over the death of Jan. (NA: No Future)
Life after the Doctor
Finally, 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. She based herself in Paris. (NA: Set Piece) Ace attended Bernice's wedding to Jason Kane. (NA: Happy Endings)
During a search for other companions of the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith discovered that a "Dorothy something" was alive and well and running a company called A Charitable Earth, the initials of which spelled "ACE". By 2010, ACE had raised billions. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
Alternate fates
There are several varying and contradictory reports of Ace's eventual fate.
- She settled down to live in Paris in 1887 after leaving the Doctor. (DWN: The Curse of Fenric)
- Ace, still apparently a teenager and accompanying the Seventh Doctor, died in an explosion she set to kill one of the three Lobri. (DWM: Ground Zero)
- After experiencing total systems failure and being stranded in the solo spacecraft she piloted, Ace died in deep space. (Mindgame Trilogy)
- The events of this version of Ace seem to have occurred during her time with Spacefleet in the 26th century.
- The Seventh Doctor, now traveling with another companion, Antimony, a somewhat more mature Ace had a degree of independence. The Kingmaker pronounced her worthy and Ace received the legacy of the Time Lords. With the Time Lords themselves and the Doctor having now sacrificed himself, Ace remained the last recipient of the legacy of the Time Lords. (WC: Death Comes to Time)
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 DW: Dragonfire (TV story).
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 hurricane in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The novels (and, later, the Big Finish's audio plays) gave Ace the last name of McShane. The Past Doctor Adventures set after DW: Survival and written by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry used the "Dorothy Gale" name, 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.
Continuity regarding the "writing out" of Ace
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 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 rationalize her absence. She is, to date, one of the few official companions and the only TV companion to date whose fate (or at least departure from the TARDIS) has not been revealed.
In SJA: Death of the Doctor, a reference was made to a former companion of the Doctor named "Dorothy" (almost certainly Ace), who was running an organisation known as "A Charitable Earth".
Russell T Davies revealed in issue 445 of Doctor Who Magazine that Sophie Aldred would have returned as Ace in The Sarah Jane Adventures, both in present day and flashback sequences which potentially might also included Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and revealed how Ace truly left the Doctor. The death of Lis Sladen, however, caused the cancellation of the series.
Unofficial appearances
Ace (or a character very like her, played again by Sophie Aldred) appeared in a series of BBV Productions audio play Republica and others in the same series, alongside Sylvester McCoy as "the Professor". For legal reasons, the character's name was "Alice".
Aldred also played the nameless "Human" who closely resembles Ace during her time in the 26th century and dies in the last segment of Mindgame Trilogy.
Sophie Aldred has also appeared in character in the fan-made video "Gene Genius".
Other trivia
Ace was the final female television companion to date not to kiss, or to be kissed by, the Doctor until one-off companion Adelaide Brooke in 2009.
According to Rona Munro, the writer of Survival, there was to be a lesbian subtext to the relationship between Ace and Karra. This would have made Ace the first LGBT companion on screen.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
