Ace Returns! (webcast)
Ace Returns! was a trailer for the Blu-ray release of season 26 of Doctor Who.
Like Jo Grant Returns before it, this was a narrative trailer, set around the present day, featuring a companion from the season, here Ace as played by Sophie Aldred, who has now long since departed the Doctor's company.
Synopsis
Ace is standing in her office reminiscing over her past adventures with the Seventh Doctor, when suddenly the sound of the TARDIS is heard and the Doctor knocks on her door and she runs off.
Plot
In the middle of the streets of London is a building standing tall, belonging to A Charitable Earth. In an office with a large wall-length window overseeing the Thames is a woman. Ace.
Ace thinks about what happened thirty years ago. How she was just a kid who thought she knew it all when she met him and he showed her the universe full of adventures: monsters, demons, friends, enemies, fights, justice and so much more...
The Doctor and Ace... teammates.
When suddenly, he let her go to make the world a better place. She says she loves what she does for a living now. But that she some times still look for him from her office-window because he left her with a promise that he would return one day.
Then she hears the sound of the TARDIS and sees a familiar silhouette behind the door and a question mark handle knocking on the door. She exclaims "Wicked".
Ace grabs onto her trademark jacket and heads out the door of her office.
Cast
- Ace - Sophie Aldred
- Seventh Doctor - Matthew Sweet (uncredited)[1]
Crew
- Written by - Pete McTighe
- Director - Pete McTighe[1]
- Production assistant - Jasmine Allodi[1]
- Camera operator - Matt Patrick[1]
References
- The building housing Ace's organisation A Charitable Earth appears.
- Ace is looking out through the window in her office towards the Thames.
- Ace mention knights from another dimension, ghosts from the past and horrors from the future.
- A picture of the Seventh Doctor and Ace is sitting on her desk table, along with a picture of her in Africa with a bunch of orphans, and some headphones.
- The sound of the TARDIS is heard.
- Ace has a coat rack on which hangs her signature jacket.
- The Doctor knocks with his question mark umbrella handle.
- The door to her office has roundel shaped windows.
Story notes
- Participants to the story, including Sophie Aldred, consider it as the true closure to Ace.[2]
- Throughout the webcast, clips from Sophie Aldred's time on Doctor Who in season 26 are shown while she is talking about her adventures in-character. (Battlefield, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Survival)
- This is the first actual depiction of Ace's organisation, A Charitable Earth, which was mentioned by Sarah Jane Smith at the end of TV: Death of the Doctor in 2011, and which was later expanded upon by Ace herself in the 2018 audio story In Remembrance.
Behind the scenes
Pete McTighe wrote and directed this webcast under the title of The Promise.[3]
