N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Ah, Ace! The quaint swearing, the inability to remember that the Doctor’s title is not Professor, the teenage terrorism …

“Don’t come all clever dick with me. What’s going on?”

Ace, Dragonfire: Part Three

As much as she provides as stark a contrast to Mel as you could imagine, you can’t help but feel Ace is as much of her time as so many of the Doctor’s human travelling companions. There’s the jacket, her use of slang which suggests she too went to school with ‘the only kids in Britain who never say fu-‘ and the worrying love of explosives that would have had her on the Perivale constabulary watch list faster than you can say ‘Ace!’ I think, even in the 80’s a spot of casual terrorism in Britain would not have been taken lightly, but this was the era of the ultra-violent, blow-everything-up Hollywood action movie after all.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Dragonfire. Iceworld’s café may not be Mos Eisley’s cantina but it tries and mostly succeeds in conveying a sense of cosmopolitan alien-ness. And speaking of aliens it’s hard not to be reminded of Giger’s Xenomorph when you see the titular dragon. If hints of Star Wars and Alien weren’t enough, there’s even a spot of Indiana Jones-style face-melting (not to mention how Fortress of Solitude it all feels).

Elsewhere, it’s good to see lovable rogue Sabalom Glitz again. It doesn’t make a huge amount of sense why Mel would want to go off travelling with him, but she gets a great leaving scene out of it.

Indeed, it’s fun to speculate, had she and Glitz recognised each other when the Master sent them to the Doctor’s trial, just how much it would’ve screwed with the timeline if the events of Dragonfire were set before the events of the trial segments of The Trial of a Time Lord.

Dragonfire is by no means perfect. It has a frankly ludicrous and almost literal cliffhanger at the end of Part One, but it continues the trend of season twenty-four insomuch that you sense the Seventh Doctor era is moving towards its own style. Despite the slippery surfaces of Iceworld, feet have been found!