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'.)

Flipping Cats!

This week I finally chanced upon the method by which to watch Classic 'Doctor Who' with my wife (she only enjoys the modern series).  When she (exhausted from her theatrical exertions at the Fringe festival) passed into slumber beside me on the couch, I popped 'Survival' in the DVD player and we had a wonderful time!

She was awakened by the synthesized theme music long enough to see one of the villains of the piece: a teleporting alien feline scavenger called a Kitling.  To her, of course, it was 'Basement Cat'.  I lookeded that up here.  Soon she was in dreamland once more.  

And, albeit still conscious, so was I!

'Survival' was the final aired story of classic 'Doctor Who' in 1989. Written by Rona Munro, directed by Alan Wareing, it has a poetic, dream-logic quality and could rightly be called a fairy tale as much as a science fiction story.  Here are some of the things that make it wonderful, despite its (mostly budgetary) limitations.

Here we soon see the Doctor's long-serving companion, Ace, on the run as usual. In three short episodes, she goes on the offense, on the defense, helps someone in need, needs help herself, and leaves her old home behind for her new home.  Always a survivor.

"Don't you know any nice people?  Not power crazed nutters trying to take over the galaxy?"

We see the Master again in his 1980's body.  He's on the prowl here, slave to a strange maddening malady turning him more feral.  Hunting, cutting, putting a young man called Midge on a leash, putting Midge under his control, putting Midge to death.  The Master leads his pack, culls the herd, finally gets his claws around the Doctor's throat once more.  And he is seemingly destroyed, but by now we can be sure of his survival.  

"We shall become animals." he snarls, in one of this incarnations' most menacing turns ever.

We see the Doctor trying to catch a cat.  Setting up elaborate traps, but only falling into them himself.  We see him scared and poised to run, but standing his ground.  We see him solve a mystery and pose further questions.  He juggles cat toys and rides a deadly motorcycle chicken race with equal bravery.  

At one point in the final episode he is up-ended and looking foolish on the rubbish heap (where he started long ago), but he saves the day by refusing to give in to his own aggression, and strides off arm in arm with his companion.  

"Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else the tea's getting cold.  Come on, Ace, we've got work to do."

It's all here.  The song, even diminished, even humbled by a crescendo of American sci-fi, still remains.  This was a good show and getting better, but all things end.

I praise it here as a personal favorite, not only because August 20th is MY birthday (1976), but the birthday of all three leads in 'Survival', the final classic story.  Sylvester 'The Doctor' McCoy (1943), Anthony 'The Master' Ainley (1932), and Sophie 'Ace' Aldred (1962) are all August 20th Leos in a story about cats!

So 'run beyond the horizon and catch your hunger', but keep your head: 'if we live like animals, we die like animals'!