One Classic Doctor Who Companion Completely Reinvented The Show

Doctor Who was transformed by the Seventh Doctor’s companion Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, who blazed the trail for the entire modern series. Every incarnation of the Doctor has been accompanied by companions, and in narrative terms they typically stand in as audience surrogates. The companion is typically there to ask questions, to prompt the Doctor to explain just what’s going on. A lot of companions are attractive women as well, with many showrunners using them as eye-candy to encourage dads to tune in with their kids.

Neither of these roles is particularly conducive to good character development, and consequently a lot of the older Doctor Who companions are relatively two-dimensional. All that changed in 1987, when a young actress named Sophie Aldred was cast for the Doctor’s new companion, Ace. Ace made her debut in the story “Dragonfire,” and over the next two years she became one of the most well-developed companions in the history of Doctor Who, a refreshingly modern character who had a very different relationship with the Doctor to anything that had been seen before.

Though showrunner John Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel didn’t know it, they were unwittingly reinventing the format of Doctor Who. And the format they had designed would actually prove the key to bringing Doctor Who back decades later, when showrunner Russell T. Davies successfully persuaded the BBC to relaunch the show.

Ace Was A Mystery For The Doctor To Solve

Most traditional Doctor Who companions have an origin story in which they join the TARDIS, and from that point on their backstory becomes rarely referenced. That was not the case with Ace, who was immediately introduced as something of a mystery. When the Doctor first encountered Ace, she was working as a waitress on a distant planet, but he soon learned she actually originated from Earth in the present day. She’s apparently been caught up in some sort of time storm, a supposedly freak event that swept her through the time-space vortex and conveniently stranded her where she would eventually cross paths with the Doctor.

The mystery of Ace subtly transformed the dynamic between the Doctor and his companion, because the Doctor became deeply invested in exploring Ace’s backstory. In “Ghost Light,” he took Ace to a place that had terrified her as a child, but a century earlier so she could learn the truth behind the horrors she had sensed. And then in “The Curse of Fenric,” the Doctor revealed Ace was a pawn of a cosmic entity called Fenric who had been working against him for millennia. That story forced Ace to confront her family background, because she unwittingly created a time loop by ensuring her own existence when she saved her own mother’s life years before her birth.

It’s not hard to see how Ace’s story has affected Doctor Who. Both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat learned to focus in on the companions, introducing them but then using later stories to explore their backstories. Moffat literally went for the idea of the companion as a mystery to solve with Clara, who the Eleventh Doctor memorably described as “a mystery wrapped in an enigma, squeezed into a skirt that’s just a little bit too tight.“

Ace Changed The Role Of The Companion

This necessarily changed the dynamic between the Doctor and his companion, because the focus lay upon Ace’s development as a character. Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor is actually a somewhat static character, frequently shown as a manipulative chess-master who already knows how things are going to play out; that trope is particularly notable in “Silver Nemesis,” “Remembrance of the Daleks,” and “Ghost Light.” Ace begins as his pawn, with the Doctor eking out the knowledge she needs for a given moment, trusting in her judgment. Ace’s character is tested time and again, and she learns more about herself in every story, until ultimately you get the sense the pawn has been promoted to a queen. But this meant Ace became more than just the person who asked the Doctor for explanations, listened patiently, and passed him a cup of tea; rather, she was the one through whom viewers experienced the story, and she became the lens through which the Doctor was interpreted.

Again, this mirrors the relationship between the Doctor and his companions in the Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat eras. Both Davies and Moffat treated the Doctor as almost a force of nature, an Oncoming Storm that would sweep away his enemies. To be a companion of the Doctor is to be caught up in that adventure, to experience the thrill of that wild ride. Like Ace, these companions become the lens through which viewers catch a glimpse of the strange, young-old being who is ostensibly the star of the show.

Ace Was Surprisingly Progressive As A Character

Looking back, one of the most striking aspects of Ace’s character is just how progressive she was. The script for “The Curse of Fenric” included a reference to her having lost her virginity, a line showrunner John Nathan-Turner cut because he felt it was inappropriate for a family TV series. Writer Rona Munro deliberately placed lesbian subtext in the story “Survival,” a response to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s anti-gay policies. The subtext was partially obscured by costuming, much to Munro’s displeasure, but many viewers caught on. Doctor Who was sadly cancelled in 1989 – “Survival” was the last story to air – but Ace’s stories continued in Virgin’s popular “New Adventures” range of novels. There, Ace continued to grow as a character, embracing her sexuality in a way Doctor Who had never explored before. Aldred herself even returned for a “New Adventures”-related photoshoot, donning a tight leather catsuit.

Doctor Who had always been political – “Survival” was hardly the first story to take shots at Margaret Thatcher – but Ace was a step beyond anything normally seen in British television in the late 1980s. Looking to the relaunch, the modern Doctor Who is far more boldly progressive, with characters such as Captain Jack Harkness and Bill Potts – companions and friends of the Doctor who would have never been signed off by the BBC of Nathan-Turner’s time. In this, as with everything else, Ace pointed the way to the Doctor Who to come. She truly did blaze the trail for the BBC’s most important science-fiction TV series.

About The Author

Thomas Bacon
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Tom Bacon is one of Screen Rant’s staff writers, as well as a Peer Mentor for new writers and a member of the Care Team, offering support and a listening ear to members of the Comics group. A lifelong fan of major franchises including Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Marvel, Tom is delighted his childhood is back – and this time it’s cool. You can find him on Twitter @TomABacon.

A graduate of Edge Hill University, Tom remains strongly connected with his alma mater as a volunteer chaplain. He’s heavily involved with his local church, and anyone who checks him out on Twitter will swiftly learn he’s into British politics too.

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