Ace McShane: Shaping the Modern Companion
Guest contributor Michael Perera on how Sophie Aldred set the template for the modern companion.
Even as Doctor Who plunged into oblivion at the end of the 1980s, its final couple of seasons saw an upswing in the writing and characterization within the show. Central to this was the casting of Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, and Sophie Aldred as his companion Ace. While producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel used McCoy to introduce a more sinister and mysterious edge to the Doctor, Ace was not only completely different from any of her predecessors, she set a template for companions that became the standard when the show was revived 16 years after its effective cancellation.
A New Companion for a New Era
Traditionally, Doctor Who treated companions as mere devices. They presented reasons for the Doctor to explain plot and backstory, they wandered off, got captured and/or hypnotized, screamed, and wore revealing and completely impractical clothing. Aside from the exposition requirements, Aldred’s Ace was afflicted by none of these. Remarkably for a (female) companion, she never once screamed. Even more remarkably for a companion, she was given actual character. Her immediate predecessors, Mel Bush and Peri Brown, were blank slates, having no conceivable background that influenced their respective depictions on screen (Mel was a computer programmer who didn’t do a thing with computers, and Peri was a botanist whose knowledge of botany used twice in her two years on screen). Ace, on the other hand, saw her emotional baggage and love of arson made into pivotal plot points, giving us the only fleshed out companion in 26 years of the classic Doctor Who series.
It’s my belief that Ace directly influenced a number of aspects that have defined the modern-day companions, all the way up to Clara Oswald. Perhaps many of those aspects would have been realized regardless of Sophie Aldred’s portrayal, since the modern companions were conceived in an era of better depictions of women; but Ace brought an unprecedented dynamic to Doctor Who, and, 16 years after her first appearance, the show still bears her fingerprint.
The Evolution of a Companion
The development of Ace is more akin to the revived series than the classic series of which it is a part. Previously, the Doctor’s companions would be the same person from the time of their first voyage to their departure. Ace, however, went from a sullen, rebellious teenager in Dragonfire (1987) to outgrowing her streetwise facade her final appearance, 1989’s Survival. Compare to Rose Tyler starting “Rose” as a disillusioned shopgirl, and parting company with the Doctor two years later as an intergalactic Dalek destroyer; or even Donna Noble, going from a self-centered temp worker to a compassionate woman who restores the Doctor’s moral compass.
The Doctor’s Doctor
Ace’s influence on the Doctor bears strong similarities to the Doctor’s more recent companions grounding his Time Lord instincts. Rose talked him out of destroying the last Dalek. Donna convinced him to save a family from death in Pompeii. Clara reminded him that he was not a hero, not a warrior, but a Doctor. And before all that, Ace forced his humanity out through his layers of schemes, deceptions and traps. Never before had a companion had such an impact on the Doctor’s personality. Today, we define the companion’s role as not just the Doctor’s traveling partner, but the person who prevents him from straying too far. We have Ace to thank for that.
Companions on a String
McCoy’s Doctor is infamous for being devious and sinister, and, almost perversely, that made him and Ace work closer together than he had with any of his other companions dating back to Romana. Part of that is down to the Doctor’s observation and manipulation of Ace – similar to how the Doctor observes (and, to a smaller degree, manipulates) Amy Pond and Clara Oswald. The Seventh Doctor was a much more cerebral figure than most of his predecessors, but it was the deft connection he had with Ace that laid the groundwork for the complex relationships between the Doctor and his companions that we have come to understand today.
Ace’s short tenure on Doctor Who was not just defined by her interplay with the Doctor, her love of blowing things up, or her emotional scars. While Steven Moffat has almost made a habit out of female characters who have a secret about them (Amy Pond’s cracks in time, the identity of River Song and Clara “the Impossible Girl” Oswald), Ace predates them all. In an era when companions were still shaking off the ‘eye-candy’ tag, Ace had a mystery to her that wasn’t revealed, let alone explicitly mentioned, until almost two years after her first appearance. The Doctor spends those years guiding Ace into becoming a confident and mature young woman, but also keeping an eye on her and investigating her presence behind her back. In the same way that he took Ace to the secret naval base in The Curse of Fenric to use her as his pawn to defeat Fenric, he took Amy Pond to the acid-mining factory in “The Rebel Flesh” knowing full well that she was a Ganger, and, later, Clara to Caliburn House in “Hide” to ask the psychic Emma Grayling if she could sense anything amiss about the woman twice dead.
The closest the show ever came to doing that kind of story before Ace was Vislor Turlough on assignment to kill the Doctor, but the Doctor remained largely ignorant of Turlough’s plans. Starting with Ace, the Doctor was always in control and always one step ahead, a trait Steven Moffat brought back with Matt Smith in the 2011 series.
Throw in Ace creating her own future in Fenric, wearing a fez (Silver Nemesis) and shouting “Geronimo!” before doing something dangerous (Battlefield), and you could well argue that Sophie Aldred played the first modern companion in Doctor Who history.
“Wicked!”
It’s overstating the case to say that there would be no Rose Tyler, no Donna Noble, no Clara Oswald, etc. if not for Ace. It does those characters a disservice, and takes away from the sheer novelty of what Sophie Aldred did with her character. At a time when Doctor Who was shrugging off the controversy of the Colin Baker years, when ratings were abysmally low and the BBC had all but pulled the plug on the show, Aldred, Sylvester McCoy and John Nathan-Turner came up with a radical idea: What if we made the new companion different? Not eye-candy, not a mouth on legs, not a screaming damsel in distress, but what if we actually wrote a character? Yes, some of the “Dude, it’s the 80s!” references (big boombox, badges everywhere and her initial victory cry of “Ace!”) still make us cringe, and Aldred occasionally struggled with her character’s working class accent.
But look deeper, and you’ll find the first companion who actually brought something new to the table. Ace wasn’t just destroying Daleks with baseball bats and blowing up Cyberman ships. Her development – conquering her childhood fears, addressing her troubled relationship with her mother – became central to Doctor Who rediscovering itself at the end of the 1980s, and lit a spark that would be carried by the companions of the future.
