By Sophie Aldred

BBC Books, out now

Dorothy McShane, a reclusive millionaire philanthropist who heads global organisation A Charitable Earth (ACE), is troubled by nightmares. When an alien probe arrives in the Moon’s orbit, she reverts to a previous persona.

Can it really be 30 years ago that we last saw Ace and the Doctor strolling away into the sunset at the end of Survival (I’m ignoring Search out Science (1990) and Dimensions in Time (1993))? Most of us assumed that the duo drifted apart amicably some time between then and the events of the TV Movie, but as Sophie Aldred’s first novel reveals, the split was anything but friendly.

Ace may have only been in nine serials, but her legacy continued in Virgin New Adventures novels and Big Finish audios. If we are to believe what Sophie Aldred has written (alongside Steve Cole and Mike Tucker, the latter having co-written the non-fiction account Ace! with her) the young companion chose to leave the Doctor after a significant event in 1990. It’s something that haunts her to today, and we revisit the unexpected moment in two interludes.

The novel serves two masters, being both a story about Ace and about the 13th Doctor and her companions. Ace is of course first and foremost, the Doctor not turning up until page 68, but we don’t immediately identify with her. She’s initially described in third person as Dorothy, and it’s only after she’s awoken the Ace inside her that she begins to be referred to by that name. The wearing of the bomber jacket and the wielding of her super-charged Dalek-killer baseball bat (now in the same league as Thor’s hammer) brings her back to life as she faces the causes of her lost childhood.

As you’d expect, there’s plenty of references to previous monsters and locales, and her cat is even called Sorin as a cheeky reference to her short-term love interest in The Curse of Fenric. The modern issue of what to do with so many companions is compounded with the addition of further humans, who pair up with Ace, the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan as they zip between planets and face the multiple threats that are warring above Earth. It was so much easier when it was just the two of them.

It all cracks along at a pace, flitting between the different episodes of high drama. The scenes between the Doctor and Ace work particularly well, the Time Lord having matured between 7th and 13th incarnation, and there’s a real sense of sadness that things went sour.

Verdict: It’s a great time to be a fan of Ace, with the recent release of the Season 26 Blu-ray boxset, and now a novel from the lady herself. It’s a thrill when she’s back in business and this will serve as a fitting coda to the character, but I suspect she’ll be back again one day. Wicked! 8/10

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