REVIEW: Doctor Who: Wicked!

The Seventh Doctor and Ace head back to the start, as her early days are explored in three TARDIS trips full of character and emotion

 

Ace has long been had one of Doctor Who’s most mysterious personal timelines. In large part due to carrying the flag of the ‘current’ companion in comics, novels, and audios through the so-called Wilderness Years, her history is largely multiple choice. Even within Big Finish’s own contributions, you can take your pick from several different endings to her story. But Wicked! isn’t about endings. Rather wonderfully, it’s about beginnings.

Ace’s later years have been such a flame for moth-like writers, seeking to fix the inconsistencies, or provide a final, definitive statement on them, it’s been easy to forget how little we know about her early days aboard the TARDIS. She joins Sylvester McCoy’s impish wizard in the closing moments of Season 24. Yet by the time of Season 25’s premiere it’s clear script editor Andrew Cartmel has decided all the typical explanations would only slow things down.

So by Remembrance of the Daleks she’s clearly already been travelling with the Doctor for some time. They have their own private in-jokes about her definitely not having that nitro-9 he definitely told her not to bring. Meanwhile Ace clearly adores her Professor, like the bestest, maddest, uncle a family could ask for. Fans often regard her as the first ‘modern’ companion – the young woman who walked in Doc Martens so Rose Tyler could run in head to toe Punkyfish. How strange then, that Ace’s story effectively skips from Rose to The Empty Child. Or at least it did, until Wicked! arrived to rather neatly close the gap.

 

Ace’s journey from wide-eyed newbie to confident time traveller echoes many of the beats of Rose Tyler’s arc back in 2005

If Ace helped inspire Rose, then it’s appropriately timey wimey that those early Billie Piper episodes inspires her predecessor here. We get many of the same beats. The teenage girl suddenly realizing that grabbing a ride from a mysterious older man was perhaps not her safest ever decision. Challenging the Doctor in ways he’s not used to, determined not to be ‘just an assistant.’

Meanwhile, under her bravada she’s confused why he thinks a ‘nobody’ like her would be useful. But most of all, the dawning realization that this is more important than some substitute father figure or intergalactic joyride. It’s a better way to live her life – to never be cruel or cowardly; to never give in, and never give up.

 

Each of the three stories keeps the new friends’ developing relationship at their heart, as the wary Ace learns just how amazing the Doctor can be

Each of the three stories approach these themes in their own way. Alison Winter’s Backwards and in Heels starts moments after the end of Dragonfire. As such, it gets to reveal some of the juiciest unseen moments (“This is a time machine!?“) but also establishes something deeper about Ace’s reasons for staying with the Doctor. After all, she mainly just wants to avoid going home to Perivale and her mother. So when she finds herself in the fabulous London of the 1920s, isn’t that as good a place as any to escape to? It’s only as the Doctor starts to reveal that he’s something better and deeper than an aimless thrill seeker that Ace truly accepts her role as her companion.

Middle entry The Price of Snow is Ace’s introduction to the way the Doctor does things. His refusal to simply blow up the monsters, or discount the villains as undeserving of mercy, may be frustrating. But by the end, his young companion has begun to realize that high explosives can’t solve every problem. Just most of them.

Most powerful, however, is finale The Ingenious Gentlemen by Alan Ronald. The Doctor, Ace, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza make up a heroic quartet as they chase down an alien enchanter rampaging across the Spanish countryside. The parallels between the two pairs are obvious. Yet Ace bristles at the idea she and Sancho are at all alike. After all, Quixote’s loyal(ish) squire is the answer to that other space wizard’s question “who’s more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?.” Until she comes to realize there’s more to Sancho, and her own place by the Doctor’s side, than she thought.

 

Fairly ordinary Doctor Who fare in the first two stories allows Ace herself to take centre stage

If Wicked! is a brilliant new introduction for Ace, what of the stories in their own right? Backwards in Heels is probably the most familiar of the three. A mysterious gamesmaster, the Treasurer, assembles players for a treasure hunt across 1920s London. It’s a quest filled with the usual bewilderingly specific clues for which the Doctor’s wild, improbable, guesses wind up being entirely correct. Meanwhile, the game has an ulterior motive behind it, and someone is playing for keeps. The result is a story which plays out pretty much exactly as you knew it would. However, if it allows the plot-centric part of your brain to listen on autopilot, it leaves more space to focus on that lovely character work for Ace.

The Price of Snow shifts the action about a century into Ace’s future, where there are some more unexpected twists in a story where nothing and nobody are quite what they seem. Welcome to the playground of the super-rich, where the top 0.01% enjoy skiing on the last natural snow on a post-climate change Earth. Yet money won’t save these trust fund teens from what’s lurking in the shadows if they wander off piste. The messages about the nature of privilege and family are rather muddled, and the evil plan of the Bond villain at the heart of it all doesn’t really bear scrutiny.

It’s all worth it though for Tom Anderson’s wonderful Teddy. On television, Hugh Skinner would be top of every casting director’s list for Teddy, but Anderson is a terrific substitute. His good natured falling in with the Doctor’s investigation is extremely charming, as is his general energy like a befuddled puppy dog.

 

The Ingenious Gentlemen is Wicked’s stand out story, mixing the bittersweet emotion of Vincent and the Doctor with the rare fun of the Doctor geeking out over his literary hero

The jewel in the crown of Wicked! though is undoubtedly The Ingenious Gentlemen. Taking its title from the full name of Cervantes’ novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de La Mancha is just the first sign of the wit and intelligence at work in Alan Ronald’s script. It’s a treasure trove of references, both overt and obscure, to delight every fan of the novel.

The Doctor himself being a huge fan of Don Quixote is incredible fun. The knight errand turns out to be one of the Time Lord’s inspirations. And certainly, departing his life of noble privilege for one wandering in search of good deeds and adventure fits neatly with that. While there’s a superficial parallel with The Unquiet Dead, this is a much significant moment for the Doctor than having simply liked the book.

The Doctor always hoped Don Quixote would be “one of the ones who turns out to be real.” Indeed, the concept takes full advantage of Cervantes’ claims his novel was based on real events. Unquiet Dead’s Charles Dickens Simon Callow makes a brilliant Don Quixote (or “Don! Quixote! DE LA MANCHA!” as he consistently refers to himself with glorious relish.) Irascible but kind; foolish but wise; conceited yet selfless – it’s practically an audition piece to play the Doctor. No wonder it’s so easy to imagine mini-Billy Hartnell tucked up in his barn, sneaking a late night read of a couple of chapters.

 

The mad man on a horse and the mad man with a box are so perfect together it’s slightly incredible this is their first meeting

The story doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that Quixote is, by modern standards, mentally ill. However, while Cervantes was pressured to repudiate the knight’s worldview at the end of his sequel, with shades of Vincent and the Doctor this version also embraces his heroic example. A man who’ll stand against the whole world of naysayers if he must. Never wavering, no matter how they mock him, from his goal to protect the weak and help the helpless.

There’s no direct shout to the musical Man of La Mancha that Blogtor Who can detect. But it’s a clear influence on this interpretation of the character. After all what is to dream the impossible dream, fight the unbeatable foe, bear unbearable sorrow, and to run where the brave dare not go, but never being cruel or cowardly; never giving in and never giving up, by a different form of words?

The only thing missing is a return performance by Tom Baker as Rosinante the horse. Still, you can’t have everything.

 

McCoy and Aldred continue their recent run of top form performances as they smoothly recreate those early television characterisations

Wicked! benefits hugely from the clarity about exactly when and where it takes place. Not only the writers, but also Sophie Aldred herself have sometimes struggled to place exactly how jaded or bright eyed Ace should be in any given story. This set, though, allows her and McCoy to slip seamlessly into the characters as they played them on television. No dark manipulations, or cynical suspicions. Just a excitable young woman grabbing onto the question mark umbrella of her oddball best mate as he leads her on a wild race down the corridors of the universe.

All in all, it’s simply Wicked! Here hoping for more from this era soon.

 

Doctor Who: Wicked!

The Doctor has a new friend. Ace has just joined the TARDIS, and is a long, long way from home.

Hunting treasure, solving snow-covered mysteries and meeting heroes of legend, a partnership is formed. The Doctor starts to see his protégée’s potential – while Ace thinks their adventures are nothing less than ‘wicked’…

 

Doctor Who – The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Wicked! is available to purchase now for just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition 3-disc CD box set) exclusively here. Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed.