Perivale- 600 Million, Rest of the Universe- Nil

The story of the best 'Doctor Who' companion of the 1980's is (like Ace herself) cute, complicated, and straightforward all at once.

The Doctor chanced across a girl in the distant future, working at an ice themed restaurant on the ice-y ice planet Svartos. 

Calling herself only 'Ace', Dorothy Gale McShane had arrived on Ice World due to an unpredictable 'time storm' following an  experiment with her home-made explosives in the London suburb of Perivale in the year 1987.  In other words, she arrived with a bang.

She was mouthy, spunky, quick to action, and didn't give a toss if her room was neat or her armpits were shaved.  At 13 years old, I took quite a shine to Ace.  She was 16 but she told everybody she was 18, and she was TOUGH.  Maybe TOO tough for the likes of me, but hey, it was my fantasy, right?  (Sophie Aldred may or may not have taken out a restraining order prohibiting me from setting foot on her continent.  What of it?)  She called the people she didn't like 'toerags' and hit Daleks with a bat and she had a giant tapedeck and a knapsack full of fricking grenades!  Find me a teen boy who thinks ANY of that is a bad idea.

Ace took up with the Doctor, but I would venture to say she was his last onscreen female companion where there unequivocally ISN'T anything romantic happening.  At least, they aren't kissing!  (He's too old for her anyways, Ace would be better off with someone younger... skinnier... Canadian.)

They are in CAHOOTS, though.  It's a mentor/student thing for "The Professor" and his friend "Ace", which grows closer over time until they are more like surrogate family.  With all the emotional turmoil that entails.  He needed a daughter and she needed a daddy. 

So what if they're not the same species? 

He's got the brains, and she's got the bombs, and they've both got issues like tissues.

Leaping for cover, snarling in frustration, cruising for boys, leading a rebellion, or holding aloft the sword Excalibur, Ace is always on the move. "Sometimes I travel so fast I don't exist." she once observed.

Two TV years together and Ace is the single companion with no televised departure.  In many ways, she never left.  In many other ways, she's left a lot:

Paul Cornell wrote a heated argument into the novel 'Love and War' where Ace finally storms out of the Doctor's life at age 26.  She spends three years as a Space Marine, having wanton affairs and killing Daleks by her lonesome, then storms back into the TARDIS at 29 along with his new companion, Benny.  (More on HER later.) 

There's a comic where Ace dies. (Ask me if I think it's canonical... don't bother, I haven't read it, but it ISN'T.  Or she got better.  Or it was a parallel universe.  Quit asking!)  

There's a cool audio adventure (Death Comes To Time) where Ace's in training to become a Time Lord because their race is nearing extinction.  I am very fond of it and it has Stephen Fry & Anthony Head in it, too.  Which is even cooler!

There's a novel by Kate Orman (Set Piece) where at the end an Ace in her (thirties?) becomes a solo adventurer guarding a dimensional Rift near Paris on a time-travelling motorcycle.  (This is supported on-screen during 'Silver Nemesis' by a painting young Ace discovered. See, she'd pose for it in 1880's France in her own personal future.)  The rift guardian bit is kind of 'Torchwoody', but I like it anyway.

I hear in Cornell's 'Happy Endings' Ace might get married.  (It was written 14 years ago, but it takes place in 2010.  I better see how THAT turned out!)

You kids with your baggy pants and your tongue studs can keep your Roses and your Marthas.  As the 7th Doctor once said: 'Exotic alien swords are hard to come by... Aces are RARE.'

If I have been too effusive in my praise of a fictional punk 80's kid from a cancelled TV show no one else was watching then so be it: Ace is wicked!

(And for the record, yes, I enjoy it when my wife wears a ponytail and calls me a 'toerag'.)

I Just Do The Best I Can.

It's week three of my all 'Doctor Who' month, and in the words of Dr. Denis Leary YER ALL COMIN' WITH ME!

It's 1980's companions day, and you're welcome.  By which I mean welcome to skim and move on.  Let's begin with the final companions of the fourth Doctor, those three lovable scamps who  showed up just in time to witness his regeneration and ride the fifth Doctor's beige coattails to the stars:

ADRIC- 'Oliver Twit' A brainy swamp urchin from the bogs of Alzarius in E-Space, Adric seems to have been a hyper-evolving marsh boy with a gift for math, quick healing, and body odour.  The precursor to Wesley Crusher was even more irritating in retrospect, but at the time: I found it very easy to identify with the clumsy teen stowaway.  His death when I watch it now seems deeply contrived and tacked on, but at the time- it was like they tore my damn heart out.  OH, my GOD, they killed ADRIC!  You BASTARDS!  And so on.  It's a time machine, Doctor, can we go back for him? Sadly, no, he's gone forever, dead with the dinos, part of history.  Why?  Don't ask questions, let's see if the next schoolboy will be a red-head...

NYSSA- 'Lab Assistant Barbie' Clever biologist-slash-fairy-princess from the planet Traken, a world held together 'by everyone just being terribly NICE to each other'.  And Nyssa is nice, too, if unfortunately suffering from quiet middle child syndrome.  Stuck between whining Adric and whinging Tegan, this poor lass who lost her father, her home planet, and everything AROUND her home planet for light-years to the machinations of THE MASTER, and thus actually HAS something to whine about, is just happy to gad peacefully about with the Doctor.  Coming from tragedy and leaving in tragedy, Nyssa is brave, helpful, and wonderful, becoming a doctor herself on station Terminus.  A delight as a solo companion in the audio adventures.

TEGAN JOVANKA- "Just a Mouth on Legs" Air hostess from Brisbane, Australia, stumbled aboard the TARDIS in 1981 and clung on like a tick all the while complaining about how she wanted to leave.  OK, so it was a rough time, the Master killed her aunt, Adric died, and she got possessed by the Mara twice.  This was not a barrel of koalas, or whatever they say down under.  Plus, making her an Aussie did not pan out in viewing figures or in getting to visit Tegan's homeland like they'd hoped. Oh, well.  I liked Tegan well enough and was sad to hear that by 2006 when the 5th Doctor bumped into her again she had contracted a terminal brain tumor.  Brave Heart, Tegan.

VISLOR TURLOUGH- 'Schoolboy Assassin' Sly ginger-haired exile from the planet Trion masquerading as a Brit in the mid-80s.  Ingratiated himself to the Doctor at the behest of the chaotic Black Guardian, who promised Turlough power and adventure and... uh, I dunno, girls, maybe, if only he would bump off the Doctor.  Will the young lad in the very tight shorts become a man?  And is knifing somebody in the back the best way to BE a man?  He's looking out for number one.  He's hiding something.  Is that a Black Guardian transmission crystal in your shorts, or are you just plotting my downfall?

KAMELION 'Robots Should Be Neither Seen Nor Heard'- A shape-shifting android built by the Gelsandorans to invade Xeriphas, hijacked by the Master for some ludicrous scheme to replace England's King John and NOT sign Magna Carta! Ha!  Take that, HISTORY!  Anyway, the Doctor wrested Kamelion away from the Master and promptly shoved him in a TARDIS broom closet for a couple of seasons or something because the (real robot) prop didn't work all that well. And then the Master stole him back, and, well, the Doctor had to put Kamelion out of his misery.  Too bad, in a lot of ways, because on the face of it, they had Commander Data & Constable Odo rolled into one right there.  But he was NO K-9!  

PERPUGILLIAM 'PERI' BROWN 'A Mouth Above Boobs'- If the Aussie girl didn't do it for ya, how's about a California girl?  In a bikini!  And when Turlough hauls her aboard (I saved her life, she nearly drowned!  He showed off, splashin' around!), she's STILL in a bikini!  And, uh, her American accent is totally radical!  DAK-Tir! DAK-Tir!  Kent Ya See AYm Bernin' Bernin'!  OK, it's bizarro.  She's a botany student, but her skills find no application here.  Poor Peri is usually there to be the object of some grotesque freak-balls' lusts (remember Sil? Well, there's plenty of horny space-goblins hoping for a smooch with Perpugilliam.)  She meets a terrible fate on Thoros Beta.  Either you believe the Doctor's (probably faulty and implanted) memory of her death by botched brain surgery, or the (dubious) official Time Lord version in which she escaped somehow and married King Yrcanos (Brian Blessed!!!) of the Krontep.  Which begs the question: which would YOU rather?  

MELANIE BUSH "As boring as they come!"- Hey, that's the line they put in her mouth, not me.  Mel is a computer programmer from Sussex whose skills find no application here.  She's peppy, she's obsessed with aerobics, she's a quintessential eighties girl except she's not actually snorting crack on screen.  I'm joshing you.  Mel gets a lot of put-downs from fans, and I'm one of them.  She's TOO chipmunk cheerful. (And this from a guy who thinks Squirrel Girl is the Bee's Knees!)  Her arrival is never shown: Mel just shows up knowing the Doctor before the Sixth Doctor ever meets her, and then leaves with him (presumably so he can deliver her into the care of his own future self, then quickly leave and go meet her for the first time somewhere else... or... something...).  Miss Bush has very little screen time with the Seventh Doctor: he arrives with her on a new planet, sends her on an errand, hangs out with some other spunky local girl, then meets up with Mel again when it's time to leave. It seems she took the hint, and takes the standard way out: she falls for some unlikely wastrel and toddles off into the sunset.  In Mel's case, the wastrel was...

SABALOM GLITZ 'These Sideburns Cost Me 5 Grotzis!'  A pirate some two million years in the future, probably one of those ICE PIRATES I've heard so much about.  Glitz is a self-serving mercenary whose tall tales are as colorful as his wardrobe, and whose swash is firmly buckled in his own best interest.  Not exactly a companion, but he seemed to show up a lot, or the Doctor showed up in his vicinity.  A character witness at the Doctor's 'Trial of a Time Lord'.  Think slobby space rogue Captain Jack Nuthatch. I like to think he and Mel deserve each other.

BEST 1980'S COMPANION: None of the above!  Join me tomorrow in the year 2,001,987 to find out!