The Seventh Doctor and Ace get themselves aboard the last ship fleeing a planet – but does the Time Lord have an ulterior motive?
This being the Seventh Doctor, the answer of course is yes. Narrated by Sophie Aldred, and told from the point of view of her character Ace, this adventure comes quite early in the young girl’s travels with the Time Lord – it’s after season 25, given references to Daleks and Cybermen, but before her disillusion with the Doctor’s manipulations has set in. This neatly avoids any continuity problems with either Big Finish or the New Adventures continuations of the characters’ relationship, and allows James Swallow to write Ace’s still-present wonder at the universe. The version of Ace we’re used to hearing at the moment is quite cynical, and it’s rather pleasant to have that less complicated version back, albeit for one short story.
As ever with these stories, Matt Smith’s Doctor has to make an appearance, needing something from his earlier self, and Aldred (who puts on a great Scots burr to portray Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor) gets the quizzical tone of Smith’s Time Lord. His intervention means that the earlier Doctor is wrong-footed just when it seems as if things are going to work themselves out, although in story terms, what transpires is what’s been built towards from the start – and there’s some nice ambiguity about the ending.
Verdict: A solid enjoyable tale. 7/10
Paul Simpson
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