Tony meets up with an old friend.
We all want to know what
happens to our favourite companions once they leave the Doctor (assuming of
course they’re that lucky).
Ace, the companion who was
with the Seventh Doctor when the axe fell on the continuous run of Classic Who,
is in a particularly odd situation as far as her ultimate destiny is concerned,
in that because she was never given a proper destiny on-screen, she’s been
given, ultimately, several in different alternative media.
In comic-books, she died a
hero’s death at the hands of one of her own cans of Nitro-9 explosive in Ground
Zero. In books, she stayed behind with a population she felt the Doctor had
betrayed, ending her time with the Seventh Doctor somewhat acrimoniously. And
in audio, she’s done several things – been trained at the Time Lord Academy,
popped back for adventures with the Doctor now and then, and so on.
But those who believe only
on-screen references count as canon – and then, only sometimes – probably did a
bit of a squee when, in an episode of The Sarah-Jane Adventures, she got
a destiny reference point when Sarah-Jane said ‘That woman, Dorothy McShane?
You know, the one who runs A Charitable Earth…’
Boom.
There it was, on-screen.
Ace’s name had been established elsewhere, but even if it hadn’t, the
co-incidence of ‘A Charitable Earth’ being ‘A C E’ would have been quite enough
of a giveaway, thank you. So there she was, in our imaginations, growing away
quite nicely, running a charitable organization to probably, knowing Ace, save
the world in a thousand ways at once, every day in every way.
Of all the destinies of
Ace, this is one which has been gradually climbing towards legitimacy ever
since that episode of The Sarah-Jane Adventures. Older Ace, now Dorothy,
running her charitable foundation. It was used as the basis for a
fandom-melting trailer to the blu-ray release of Season 26. It’s recently been
added to the Big Finish canon in stories like Dark Universe, and now
there’s this. A novel of Ace and the Doctor, written by Sophie Aldred, who has
always been the face, the voice and the body of Ace, not only showing us some
of the things she’s been getting up to in the decades since we last saw her on
screen, but also bringing the relationship between Ace and the Doctor slap bang
up to date.
Awesome – sounds like a
must-buy. But does it work?
Well, yes, it does.
There’s a certain degree of formula followed, a formula more or less laid down
by the recent Doctor Who Meets Scratchman novel by Tom Baker (with help
from a Big Finish author). But while there’s absolutely a story, and more or
less one as convoluted as you’d expect of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, including,
for all you continuity-fans, a fairly mind-blowing additional revelation about
how Ace was spirited up to Iceworld through the influence of Fenric, it’s
important to understand one key thing. In Doctor Who, there are stories where
the plot is the key thing and the characters serve the action, and then there
are stories where the plot is more or less just the thing that reveals the
characters and their journeys.
At Childhood’s End is very much the second kind of story –
the plot’s there, and it’s suitably bonkers, with New Whoish centaur aliens and
more Classic Who relatively incorporeal aliens, and a network of transport
stations to zip people across vast distances, without, as Douglas Adams would
have said, all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. There’s a plot which
resonates all the way back to Fenric and Iceworld and which threatens to twang
forward into a new era of transgalactic kidnappings and much much worse, but
it’s all more or less the stuff which needs to be worked through to show us Ace
as she was, Dorothy as she is, her relationship with the Doctor then and now,
and how Dorothy deals with both her 21st century life with A
Charitable Earth, and the understanding that the Professor has got some new
help in.
It’s absolutely glorious,
frankly.
Yes, there’ll be moments
when you peer behind the character development at the plot and go ‘Wait. Hang
on, what’s happening now?’ but for the most part, you’re with Ace, and
Dorothy, and both of them are brilliant and will keep you as safe as they can.
It’s a tale of growing up,
coming back from ‘over the rainbow’ and living your life tinged with the magic
of the trip, in spite of some darker moments along the way. A tale of making
the most of your abilities, putting yourself between slimebags of every sort
and the people just trying to get on with their lives, and how you might have
the best teacher in the universe, but what happens to you depends on your
synthesis of their teaching and your application of it in your real life. Just
as much though, it’s a tale of reawakening, reconnection with a side of
yourself you might have put behind you. Not so much a journey to find your Inner
Child as a journey to find your Inner Teenager Quite Prepared To Hit Things
With Sticks, appreciate the broken bits of her, realise you’ve healed those up,
but rediscover the bolshy energy of that girl when faced with a universe of
sleazeballs and bilgebags.
As with the Scratchman
novel, there’s an almost too liberal scattering of casual references to Who
stories and villains and elements in At Childhood’s End, and they’re
there both to tie the story into the continuity of the Who universe but also, let’s
face facts, to give your Inner Fan a bit of a thrill when you recognise them.
And it’s important to note that they’re almost scattered too liberally –
but not quite. By the end of the book, your inner fanboy or fangirl has been
tickled to the point of spangles and giggling, but never quite to the point of
wishing it would all just stop.
There’s one biggie in
terms of references, and without spoiling it for you, it’s really difficult to
talk about much of the second and third act character developments. But we’re
not going to break that moment for you, because when it happens, it’s
absolutely glorious, and you don’t want to go into it knowing or expecting it.
Suffice it for now to say that the Dorothy we meet in this story has seen the
breakdown of Torchwood, and is in a very particular relationship to the
development of UNIT, which has consequences for meeting up with the Doctor
again after all those years.
And in a very sensitive
moment, the multiple destinies of Ace and Dorothy are actively addressed,
rather than swept under the carpet of storytelling, leaving us with a Dorothy
McShane who’s utterly modern, properly at home in this 21st century,
and entirely believable as a potential anchor to her own spin-off series. The
Inner Ace might be worth re-igniting in this novel, but Dorothy McShane has a
centred worth all of her own, and it’s that that’s really hypnotic in this
story.
The audiobook reading is
of course by Sophie Aldred (Who else would it be? Even during her TV time as
Ace, Aldred was in demand as a voice actress and reader). Her reading ties
everything together, the writing and performance, and it’s fun to hear what she
makes of some of the other voices in the story. More or less, she makes joy out
of them. Joy is very much the sense with which this book and its audio reading
will leave you – some of it pure nostalgia, some of it sparkling fresh and as
current as can be.
Childhood may have its end,
absolutely. But the blend here between the pleasure and the power of childhood,
the not-knowing when you’re outclassed or outgunned and stepping forward
anyway, and the more grown-up assessments we need to make, the power and the
pleasure that comes with having things sorted out and still stepping
forward anyway, turns At Childhood’s End into more than just a nostalgic
catch-up with a favourite companion. It turns it into a hymn both to having the
right kind of role models in your life, and having to take the responsibility
to make your mark on the world, your way.
At Childhood’s End is a thing of beauty, a thing of joy, a
thing of centaur aliens and backgrounded mysteries and at its beating heart the
story of someone we know, someone we loved for her spirit when she was young,
and someone we love now for the way in which she’s melded her experiences
together to make the right kind of difference in the world.
It’s absolutely Ace, but
much, much more besides.
No comments:
Post a Comment