Ace and the Seventh Doctor
Dec. 1st, 2014 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayFirst day of the December talking meme, and this was suggested by selenak. That's a pretty broad topic, so I'm taking my chance to express my love for these characters.
I always say that while the Fifth Doctor is my Doctor, in the sense that he's the first one I grew up with, the Seventh is my best Doctor because he's the one who makes me think difficult things. He's the Doctor, so I always knew that he'd do something right in the end, but I never knew what that right thing would be. He always had a bigger picture in mind, something that had to be done but didn't leave much room to be comfortable and predictable. I've never been able to express why I love him so, why I trusted him, when I knew that the fate of one tiny bit of humanity--my tiny bit--wasn't his priority. But I did and I always will.
Ace is, hands down, my favourite Old Who companion. Donna Noble had to work pretty damn hard to become joint all time favourite companion, let me tell you.
Ace was what I wanted to be. She takes charge, she blows shit up, she beats up Daleks with a baseball bat, but she wasn't a hard terrible character. She was flawed and vulnerable, which made her feel real to me.
Ghostlight breaks my heart every time because of Ace.
The Curse of Fenric is, I think, the episode that showcases both the best and the worst of what those two characters were together. It's brilliant and horrible, and one of the best Seventh Doctor stories they did. It's not my favourite--that would be Battlefield--but it's what I always think of when I try to imagine what season 27 would have been like if the show hadn't been cancelled. In my head, it would have been a mixture of Battlefield's glorious rompiness and Fenric's horrible, terrible grand schemes, with Ace finally reaching her destiny as a Time Lady at the end.
(Shut up, it would totally have been that. I believe.)
Ace and the Seventh Doctor, together, are amazing. There's a moment in Silver Nemesis where the Doctor asks Ace if she disobeyed his instructions and brought some Nitro-9. She confesses that she did, and he beams and tells her to blow up the Cybership. For me, that's what was always at the heart of their relationship. It wasn't just that the Doctor would (after terrifying me that he might not) do his best for Ace, try to teach her about all her amazing potential and save her from the bad things. It was that he trusted her to have his back, too. To pull him out of the fire when he needed it, and to have the explosives on hand when he needed them. Their story is one of the few times in Old Who where we got to see a long-term, growing relationship between the Doctor and his companion, and it was wonderful. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't always pretty, but it was wonderful to watch.
(In my head canon, Ace and the Doctor traveled together until she'd learned enough to travel through time and save the world on her own. And then she set out on her time-travelling motorbike and picked up the threads he couldn't juggle, and they sometimes met and worked together when a problem was too big for just one of them. Or just because they wanted to and missed each other. And, because it's my head canon, Donna didn't lose herself in Journey's End: she's out there with Ace, saving the world and travelling through time, and sometimes they work with this little chap who plays the spoons when he should be running away.)
If I could only have one Doctor-and-companion for the rest of time, it would be Seven and Ace.
selenak. That's a pretty broad topic, so I'm taking my chance to express my love for these characters.I always say that while the Fifth Doctor is my Doctor, in the sense that he's the first one I grew up with, the Seventh is my best Doctor because he's the one who makes me think difficult things. He's the Doctor, so I always knew that he'd do something right in the end, but I never knew what that right thing would be. He always had a bigger picture in mind, something that had to be done but didn't leave much room to be comfortable and predictable. I've never been able to express why I love him so, why I trusted him, when I knew that the fate of one tiny bit of humanity--my tiny bit--wasn't his priority. But I did and I always will.
Ace is, hands down, my favourite Old Who companion. Donna Noble had to work pretty damn hard to become joint all time favourite companion, let me tell you.
Ace was what I wanted to be. She takes charge, she blows shit up, she beats up Daleks with a baseball bat, but she wasn't a hard terrible character. She was flawed and vulnerable, which made her feel real to me.
Ghostlight breaks my heart every time because of Ace.
The Curse of Fenric is, I think, the episode that showcases both the best and the worst of what those two characters were together. It's brilliant and horrible, and one of the best Seventh Doctor stories they did. It's not my favourite--that would be Battlefield--but it's what I always think of when I try to imagine what season 27 would have been like if the show hadn't been cancelled. In my head, it would have been a mixture of Battlefield's glorious rompiness and Fenric's horrible, terrible grand schemes, with Ace finally reaching her destiny as a Time Lady at the end.
(Shut up, it would totally have been that. I believe.)
Ace and the Seventh Doctor, together, are amazing. There's a moment in Silver Nemesis where the Doctor asks Ace if she disobeyed his instructions and brought some Nitro-9. She confesses that she did, and he beams and tells her to blow up the Cybership. For me, that's what was always at the heart of their relationship. It wasn't just that the Doctor would (after terrifying me that he might not) do his best for Ace, try to teach her about all her amazing potential and save her from the bad things. It was that he trusted her to have his back, too. To pull him out of the fire when he needed it, and to have the explosives on hand when he needed them. Their story is one of the few times in Old Who where we got to see a long-term, growing relationship between the Doctor and his companion, and it was wonderful. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't always pretty, but it was wonderful to watch.
(In my head canon, Ace and the Doctor traveled together until she'd learned enough to travel through time and save the world on her own. And then she set out on her time-travelling motorbike and picked up the threads he couldn't juggle, and they sometimes met and worked together when a problem was too big for just one of them. Or just because they wanted to and missed each other. And, because it's my head canon, Donna didn't lose herself in Journey's End: she's out there with Ace, saving the world and travelling through time, and sometimes they work with this little chap who plays the spoons when he should be running away.)
If I could only have one Doctor-and-companion for the rest of time, it would be Seven and Ace.
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Date: 2014-12-03 01:07 pm (UTC)