Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (28 page)

It seems Mel just doesn’t learn to look beyond appearance, as shown in the South Wales holiday camp of Shangri-La in 1959, in
Delta and the Bannermen
. Despite the obvious joyous atmosphere, she looks on the camp with disdain – although this might just be disappointment at their failure to reach Disneyland. She soon adapts though, and throws herself into the swing of things, clearly enjoying the rock ‘n’ roll – joining in the dancing and the sing-song atmosphere. But her righteous side is on display once more when Gavrok destroys a bus-load of innocent holiday makers in his search for Delta and her daughter, the last Chimeron princess. Despite the threat to her life, Mel cannot contain her righteous fury and is quick witted enough to make Gavrok believe Delta was on the bus. Her ability to make friends quickly is often on display, although she doesn’t always seem to be a very good judge of character as proven with Tabby and Tilda. But people do find Mel to be trustworthy, as Delta demonstrates when Mel witnesses the birth of the Chimeron Princess. Mel’s own lack of judgement comes to the fore once more on Iceworld, the trading colony on the dark side of Svartos in
Dragonfire
. There they are reunited with Glitz, who fobs them off with some story about how he lost his ship and crew, and procured a treasure map – Mel believes him, but when the truth comes out that he sold his crew she immediately turns her back on him. It is curious that she believes him at all, having seen how spendthrift he is on their previous encounter at the Doctor’s trial, this shows how naive and trusting she can be, even when she knows better.

For the first time since the introduction of Mel, her character is finally given some thought when she is paired with Ace (
Dragonfire
)
– a sixteen-year-old Londoner who is stranded on Iceworld. Unlike the clean-cut, healthy living Mel, Ace is a rebel – a very strong-willed character who is out for some fun, regardless of the rules she has to be break. Mel is easily led by Ace’s excitement, coming across as a prefect who is being misled by the ‘bad girl’ of the class, brushing with danger for the first time ever – and developing a taste for it. This is no more evident than when Mel is throwing a can of nitro-9, a homemade glycerine-based explosive of Ace’s design. There is a clear joy on her face as Ace eggs her on – ‘Yeah, Doughnut!’ Nonetheless, there are still moments of friction between the two. When Ace takes Mel to her very messy quarters, Mel is clearly disgusted and struggles for a place to sit, until Ace insists she just sit on the clothes. But later, when stuck with Glitz, she happily joins Ace in tag-teaming him with verbal abuse. Despite all this unexpected edginess to Mel, it still comes as something of a surprise when she decides to take her leave of the Doctor, especially as she decides to continue her travels with Glitz – keeping him on the straight and narrow instead, a prospect that doesn’t fill Glitz with joy. She quite clearly doesn’t care for Glitz at all, so why does she leave? The Doctor is sad to see Mel go, but realises he has no choice. Before leaving though, Mel does suggest that the Doctor take Ace with him – possibly realising the perfect fit they will be together.

If Mel was one of the most under-developed companions ever, then her successor could not have been more different. For the first time in twenty-four years, we met a companion whose back-story was almost as important as the Doctor’s. Not since Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen had a paring in
Doctor Who
been so successful...

Ace
–
Sophie Aldred
(
Dragonfire
to
Survival
)

The first time we see Ace is just before the Doctor and Mel enter the cantina on Iceworld. Ace is right in the thick of it, arguing with Glitz, or ‘bilge bag’ as she calls him. She is immediately shown to be both moody and argumentative, character traits that will soften during her deepening friendship with the Doctor, her ‘Professor’. She hones in on the conversation that Glitz has with the Doctor and Mel, and lets them know that Glitz won the treasure map in a game of cards. She is not convinced by the promise of treasure, but enthusiastically invites herself on the treasure hunt – a better alternative to working as a waitress in a space bar, that much is true.

She finds herself teaming up with Mel, whom she calls ‘Doughnut’ (nicknames are a thing Ace often uses – usually derogatory – which is not a surprise, really, since she refuses to accept her own real name and goes by a self-assigned nickname). She doesn’t take too kindly to Mel’s prim ways, but enjoys the challenge of corrupting such an obviously clean-living person, and finds herself opening up to Mel in a way that is clearly unusual for her. She tells Mel her story; that she is sixteen, from Perivale (almost certainly from a time no earlier than 1987 [one of the many badges that adorn her bomber jacket says 1987], and when they visit 1988 in
Silver Nemesis
she checks up on her football team, Charlton Athletic, which suggests that she is near her own time), and was studying Chemistry A-level (and developed her own brand of explosive – nitro-9); during an experiment a time storm whipped up in her bedroom and whisked her off to Iceworld (the origin of this time storm is later revealed in
The Curse of Fenric
).

Ace doesn’t actually believe she comes from Earth, and is certain her parents adopted her since her
real
parents would never have given her a ‘naff’ name like Dorothy. Ace is a young girl very much looking for a place in which to fit. Consequently she is almost seduced into serving Kane, the cold-hearted ruler of Iceworld, but it is only Mel’s voice that prevents her from giving in. Despite their obvious differences, Ace bonds with Mel. While Mel is horrified by the bio-mechanoid dragon that guards the treasure, Ace is merely in awe of it. At the end of
Dragonfire
Ace is all set to go with Mel and Glitz, but at the behest of Mel, the Doctor offers Ace a trip around the twelve galaxies en route to Perivale. Ace is very excited about the prospect, even willing to obey his rules, although the rule of calling him ‘Doctor’ and not ‘Professor’ doesn’t last very long at all. Of course what neither Ace nor the viewer realises at the time is that the Doctor’s reasons for taking Ace with him are much darker than anyone would suspect.

When we next see Ace and the Doctor, they have just arrived in London, 1963, in
Remembrance of the Daleks
, and it is quite clear that some time has passed since they left Iceworld. Their bond is extremely well-defined, an easy student-mentor relationship that was barely hinted at in
Dragonfire
. But it is more than that. The Doctor clearly trusts Ace a great deal, and in return Ace has much respect for him. It is also clear that this is Ace’s first journey into the past; she has a complete indifference to walking around the streets of 1963 London with a huge ghetto blaster over her shoulder, pumping music that is over twenty years out of time. When she comes across a jukebox in a nearby cafe, she is amused by the music, and immediately takes to Mike Smith (a sergeant in the Intrusion Countermeasures Group – a pre-cursor to UNIT – who are in the area investigating alien activity), who watches her in fascination as she tries to work out the coinage of the time. Later, while walking back towards Coal Hill School, Mike is trying to teach her the pre-decimal system, and Ace has as much trouble understanding it as Susan did in
An Unearthly Child
(a wonderfully clever piece of continuity, since
Remembrance of the Daleks
is set in the same locations as that episode
and
only a month or so later). Once at the junkyard in Totter’s Lane, Ace is itching to get in on the action, highly impressed by the weaponry used against the Dalek, even though she considers it unsophisticated.

The Doctor is fully aware of Ace’s nitro-9; that she carries several canisters in her rucksack, even though he told her not to. Ace uses it against the Dalek much more successfully than the contemporary weapons used by the army presence.

She can drive, although does have a problem with the choke (something cars in her day no longer have), and is fascinated by the Doctor’s history – even though she finds his explanation of Dalek history somewhat confusing. She does, however, instinctively understand the racist ideals of the Daleks, and is repelled by them; something that resonates deeply with her as we discover in several stories, especially
Ghost Light
when we learn she once burned down an old house because of her anger over a racist attack against her best friend, Manisha. This protective anger is also often on display whenever she feels the Doctor is being attacked, be it verbally or physically, as the headmaster of Coal Hill School discovers after he traps the Doctor in the cellar with a Dalek – for his troubles he receives Ace’s head in his stomach.

She seems to have an instinctive understanding of most weaponry, easily handling the anti-tank rocket, with which she destroys a Dalek. One thing she doesn’t like, though, is being left behind by the Doctor when he decides it is time to wander the streets of London to ‘bury’ his past – she wants to go with him, but he tells her, ‘It’s not your past, you haven’t been born yet’, a statement that pricks the curiosity of Professor Rachel Jensen, but Ace will not explain what he meant, revelling in the mystery as much as the Doctor. She also doesn’t have much time for people protecting her professor (not surprising, since in
Battlefield
she states that protecting the Doctor is
her
job), or being treated like a housewife – for instance when Mike suggests she has something nice cooked for when he, the Doctor and the rest return from dealing with things at the school, her response is to call him a ‘scumbag’. Fortunately the Doctor is able to calm her down, asking her to trust him, this she does and remains behind. Although not for long – boredom soon sets in, and when she spots the ‘no coloureds’ sign in the window, she is incensed and ready to verbally assault Mike’s mother, but realises that she cannot blame them for being a product of their time, and goes out for a breath of fresh air instead.

Her earlier indifference to the web of time has unfortunate consequences for her – when she returns to the school to collect her ghetto blaster and comes against a whole Dalek assault squad. She doesn’t shy from them, though. ‘Who you calling small?’ she yells, lashing out with her baseball bat (turned into a powerful weapon by the Hand of Omega). She is rescued by the Doctor and Gilmore’s men, although her ghetto blaster doesn’t come out in one piece – a fact the Doctor is glad about since its existence could have caused incalculable damage to the timeline. Later, the Doctor explains to her the importance of the Hand of Omega – a remote stellar manipulator – and how it played a part in the formation of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. He even hints that he was there at the beginning, although when Ace picks him up on his slip he tries to cover it up, but realises it is too late. Ace’s impulsiveness almost proves a problem when she and the Doctor go Dalek hunting – he has to hold her back several times – and when she later discovers that Mike betrayed them to the Daleks, she takes it very personally. ‘I trusted you. I even liked you.’ His excuse of trying to keep the outsiders out repulses Ace; she is disgusted by his bigotry which she feels is no better than the viewpoint of the Daleks.

In
The Happiness Patrol
we discover that Ace hates fake and phoney things – muzak, for instance – which, from someone who is so real and raw in her emotions, is hardly surprising. She is initially unimpressed by the Happiness Patrol’s ‘fun guns’, thinking them toys, but upon seeing their firepower she soon wants to handle one. She cannot play the spoons (possibly explaining her disdain at the Doctor playing them in
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
), and is not good at telling jokes. She is not the performing type – for such a loud, outgoing kind of girl, she is not someone who likes attention. While on Terra Alpha she easily befriends Susan Q – an ex-member of the Happiness Patrol – finding in her a kindred spirit; like Ace, Susan is not part of the team, and has never been one to fit in.

Unlike Mel, Ace is not a fan of junk mail, and is very much against visiting the advertised Psychic Circus in
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
. She reveals a fear of clowns – another aspect of her hatred of fake things – but the Doctor, instead of simply understanding, coerces her into going with him to the circus, exactly so she can face this fear (this will not be the last time he does such a thing, most notably later in
Ghost Light
).

She is convinced the Doctor has hidden her rucksack, and thus her supply of nitro-9. However she does find it again by the time they reach 1988 in the following story,
Silver Nemesis
. Once on Segonax, the planet on which the Psychic Circus performs, Ace reveals her thing for bikes after seeing Nord the Vandal’s. When the Doctor challenges her about the circus, she states that she is scared of nothing, but her reaction to the Chief Clown belies this. The Doctor is surprised to hear her call him ‘Doctor’, ‘Ah so, “Doctor”, you
can
remember’, but the fact is she often refers to him as such – often when she is stressed or in danger. Once the Doctor defeats the Gods of Ragnarok (responsible for corrupting the Physic Circus), Ace is very impressed to discover that the Doctor had planned their downfall from the moment the junk mail arrived in the TARDIS. She is equally impressed by his plan to defeat the Daleks in
Remembrance of the Daleks
, and will later be so when he wipes out the entire Cybermen fleet in
Silver Nemesis
. This awe and respect will wane somewhat, however, when he begins to interfere in her life later on.