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Post by sailorhaumea on Apr 8, 2017 23:57:52 GMT
There's something that's been bugging me for a while.
Namely, is Hex before or after Benny? Sometimes it seems like Ace is TV Ace - immature. She starts going by her last name. Sometimes it seems like she's New Ace. She demonstrates knowledge of military tactics that suggests she's already been through the New Adventures, or at least Deceit. But then we get Signs and Wonders, which indicates that, at the very least, the ending of Set Piece (which has an older Ace meet up with Seven) is in the future.
So, is Hex before Benny or after?
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Apr 9, 2017 0:00:27 GMT
There's something that's been bugging me for a while. Namely, is Hex before or after Benny? Sometimes it seems like Ace is TV Ace - immature. She starts going by her last name. Sometimes it seems like she's New Ace. She demonstrates knowledge of military tactics that suggests she's already been through the New Adventures, or at least Deceit. But then we get Signs and Wonders, which indicates that, at the very least, the ending of Set Piece (which has an older Ace meet up with Seven) is in the future. So, is Hex before Benny or after? Oh, tricky one actually. Which Benny is the other thing. Novels Benny doesn't quite line up with BF Benny, so...hmmm. Good question.
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Post by sailorhaumea on Apr 9, 2017 0:03:09 GMT
There's something that's been bugging me for a while. Namely, is Hex before or after Benny? Sometimes it seems like Ace is TV Ace - immature. She starts going by her last name. Sometimes it seems like she's New Ace. She demonstrates knowledge of military tactics that suggests she's already been through the New Adventures, or at least Deceit. But then we get Signs and Wonders, which indicates that, at the very least, the ending of Set Piece (which has an older Ace meet up with Seven) is in the future. So, is Hex before Benny or after? Oh, tricky one actually. Which Benny is the other thing. Novels Benny doesn't quite line up with BF Benny, so...hmmm. Good question. Because BF Benny is....you know, older? Unless you're saying that the Novel Adaptations Benny is slightly different from the source material.
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Post by constonks on Apr 9, 2017 0:55:44 GMT
Posted this in the topic "Ace's death" a while back. I'll spoiler it cause it's long: Here's my version of Ace's entire life with the Doctor. The only thing I don't include here is Death Comes to Time - other than that, every TV story, audio drama, novel and comic is represented.Not long after his run-in with the Master on Cheetah World, the Doctor decided to clear out his memory a bit. Unfortunately, in doing so, he wiped that of his companion, Ace. He restored it fully and they continued to travel together. ( Timewyrm: Genesys) They travelled to many different worlds, occasionally accompanied by a safecracker named Raine Creevy. ( Crime of the Century) Not long after her departure, the Doctor began to show signs of fatigue and even considered settling down to retire. ( Nightshade) However, it was not to be, and the Doctor and Ace continued their travels, eventually finding themselves on the planet Heaven. On Heaven, Ace fell in love with a traveller named Jan, who ended up dying as a result of the Doctor's machinations. ( Love and War) She left the Doctor and found a new life in the 26th century, before rejoining him three years later and eventually forgiving him and becoming friends (or at least less bitter enemies) with his new travelling companion, Bernice. ( Deceit etc.) When she was 26, ten years after joining the Doctor, Ace finally left. ( Set Piece) The Doctor visited her in her adult years time and time again. Even after Ace had moved on, the Doctor kept going back for her. ( Happy Endings, Lungbarrow, etc.) One day, he sent her on a mission to a planet called Erratoon. There, Ace's memory was lost. She remembered bits of her travels with the Doctor, but had forgotten large chunks - even their friend Bernice. Ultimately, she was still the Ace she had become, but had no idea how she had gotten there. ( The Prisoner’s Dilemma) The Doctor returned for Ace and helped her regain her memories, using the same blueprint he had used before when he accidentally wiped her memory all those years ago. Thus, Ace was given the memories of her former self from the days following the Cheetah World incident. They continued travelling together, the Doctor never hinting that Ace had lost around eight years of her life. She witnessed atrocities ( Colditz), changed her name (and back again) and made new friends in Bev Tarrant ( Dust Breeding) and Hector Schofield ( The Harvest). To the latter, she admitted that she had been travelling with the Doctor for an unbelievably long time and that she didn't even know her own age anymore. Eventually, they lost a friend and the Doctor fell back on an old solution, offering to wipe her memory clean once more. This time, Ace refused. Ace instead showed how much she had grown since the incident with Jan – she did not leave and instead demanded that the Doctor face the consequences of his actions. ( Afterlife) And so, the Doctor and Ace travelled on, reuniting with old friends along the way and making new ones. At one point, Ace caught a glimpse of her potential futures - being surrounded by giant fleas, ending up on Gallifrey, dying of old age in the TARDIS and riding a motorbike through Paris. The Doctor had already averted one of these timelines by taking Ace out of Paris, but dismissed them as alternate timelines. ( Signs and Wonders) But finally, they found themselves facing an enemy too great for them. The Threshold, a powerful force unfamiliar to the Doctor, had gathered companions from his past, and used their collective minds to unleash the Lobri - a monstrous race of giant fleas - on the late 21st century. Ace struck out against the Lobri and was killed in the process. ( Ground Zero) The Doctor took Ace's body back to the TARDIS and when she awoke, she found herself on Gallifrey. She could not remember how she got there, but she was alive and knew the Doctor had to be connected. She remembered many different pasts and understood many different timelines, and once again recognised Raine Creevy and Bernice Summerfield. ( Intervention Earth, UNIT: Dominion, The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield) No-one yet knows what happened to Ace after this, during the many crises that faced the Time Lords in the years following the Second Romana's Presidency. Some claim she found her way to Earth, where she is running a charity. ( Death of the Doctor) Whether this is a front for the Time Lords or for UNIT or just an unsubstantiated rumour remains to be seen. Basically my answer is as far as Ace knows, Hex is near Survival, but really a whole series of books came between.
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Post by Digi on Apr 9, 2017 1:05:13 GMT
My understanding of it, from a primarily Big Finish-centric read, is that the chronology from Seven's POV runs like so. Or if you prefer less detail/just text: 7 + Mel 7 + Ace 7 + Ace and Raine 7 + Ace and Hex 7 + Sally 7 + Ace, Hex, Sally, and Lysandra 7 + Ace and Hector 7 + Ace (for only one or two stories) 7 + Ace and Mel 7 + Ace/Benny (Love & War: Ace leaves, Benny joins) 7 + Benny 7 + Benny and Ace (after Ace rejoins, I believe the novel fans refer to this period as "Space Bitch Ace") 7 + Benny (after Ace departs again) 7 + Benny, Chris, and Roz 7 + Chris and Roz 7 - alone 7 + Raine/Klein (Klein appears but isn't exactly a companion) 7 + Klein and Will 7 + Benny/Ace (BF New Adventures of Benny Vol 1: Ace appears, but not as a companion) 7 + Benny and Ace (BF New Adventures of Benny Vol 2) 7 - alone 7 - alone, but has 2 adventures meeting River 7 - alone
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 1:12:34 GMT
I think it would be best to check out the timeline section and look at the 7th doctor's. I think that Billy's timeline's are one of the best guides to continuity out there. However if you are looking for an answer why, I don't know exactly, but there is a sense that I get that this is a younger Ace before her departure in Love and War. Also the cover art, while not always reliable does always have her in her tv costume, while the Shadow of the Scrooge has the New Adventures costume as that's when it takes place. So I do think that can be a point towards the before Benny argument.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 1:14:50 GMT
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Post by Digi on Apr 9, 2017 1:19:12 GMT
I think that Billy's timeline's are one of the best guides to continuity out there. Yeah I feel I should echo this. There's a bare handful of spots where I differ on Billy's timelines, but by and large they are a fantastic piece of work. This links to his page of Doctor chronologies. the Shadow of the Scrooge And this I just wanted to quote for posterity, because I love when autocorrect changes a perfectly correct phrase into hilarious nonsense
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Apr 9, 2017 1:32:37 GMT
Oh, tricky one actually. Which Benny is the other thing. Novels Benny doesn't quite line up with BF Benny, so...hmmm. Good question. Because BF Benny is....you know, older? Unless you're saying that the Novel Adaptations Benny is slightly different from the source material. No, I'm referring to Benny's own series, some of which is changed from the original novels, ie series 1, but all the better for it IMO. And how THAT lines up with the later adaptations is open to question, which then queries when she did what she did with who. I blame Braxiatel!
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Apr 9, 2017 1:40:57 GMT
Posted this in the topic "Ace's death" a while back. I'll spoiler it cause it's long: Here's my version of Ace's entire life with the Doctor. The only thing I don't include here is Death Comes to Time - other than that, every TV story, audio drama, novel and comic is represented.Not long after his run-in with the Master on Cheetah World, the Doctor decided to clear out his memory a bit. Unfortunately, in doing so, he wiped that of his companion, Ace. He restored it fully and they continued to travel together. ( Timewyrm: Genesys) They travelled to many different worlds, occasionally accompanied by a safecracker named Raine Creevy. ( Crime of the Century) Not long after her departure, the Doctor began to show signs of fatigue and even considered settling down to retire. ( Nightshade) However, it was not to be, and the Doctor and Ace continued their travels, eventually finding themselves on the planet Heaven. On Heaven, Ace fell in love with a traveller named Jan, who ended up dying as a result of the Doctor's machinations. ( Love and War) She left the Doctor and found a new life in the 26th century, before rejoining him three years later and eventually forgiving him and becoming friends (or at least less bitter enemies) with his new travelling companion, Bernice. ( Deceit etc.) When she was 26, ten years after joining the Doctor, Ace finally left. ( Set Piece) The Doctor visited her in her adult years time and time again. Even after Ace had moved on, the Doctor kept going back for her. ( Happy Endings, Lungbarrow, etc.) One day, he sent her on a mission to a planet called Erratoon. There, Ace's memory was lost. She remembered bits of her travels with the Doctor, but had forgotten large chunks - even their friend Bernice. Ultimately, she was still the Ace she had become, but had no idea how she had gotten there. ( The Prisoner’s Dilemma) The Doctor returned for Ace and helped her regain her memories, using the same blueprint he had used before when he accidentally wiped her memory all those years ago. Thus, Ace was given the memories of her former self from the days following the Cheetah World incident. They continued travelling together, the Doctor never hinting that Ace had lost around eight years of her life. She witnessed atrocities ( Colditz), changed her name (and back again) and made new friends in Bev Tarrant ( Dust Breeding) and Hector Schofield ( The Harvest). To the latter, she admitted that she had been travelling with the Doctor for an unbelievably long time and that she didn't even know her own age anymore. Eventually, they lost a friend and the Doctor fell back on an old solution, offering to wipe her memory clean once more. This time, Ace refused. Ace instead showed how much she had grown since the incident with Jan – she did not leave and instead demanded that the Doctor face the consequences of his actions. ( Afterlife) And so, the Doctor and Ace travelled on, reuniting with old friends along the way and making new ones. At one point, Ace caught a glimpse of her potential futures - being surrounded by giant fleas, ending up on Gallifrey, dying of old age in the TARDIS and riding a motorbike through Paris. The Doctor had already averted one of these timelines by taking Ace out of Paris, but dismissed them as alternate timelines. ( Signs and Wonders) But finally, they found themselves facing an enemy too great for them. The Threshold, a powerful force unfamiliar to the Doctor, had gathered companions from his past, and used their collective minds to unleash the Lobri - a monstrous race of giant fleas - on the late 21st century. Ace struck out against the Lobri and was killed in the process. ( Ground Zero) The Doctor took Ace's body back to the TARDIS and when she awoke, she found herself on Gallifrey. She could not remember how she got there, but she was alive and knew the Doctor had to be connected. She remembered many different pasts and understood many different timelines, and once again recognised Raine Creevy and Bernice Summerfield. ( Intervention Earth, UNIT: Dominion, The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield) No-one yet knows what happened to Ace after this, during the many crises that faced the Time Lords in the years following the Second Romana's Presidency. Some claim she found her way to Earth, where she is running a charity. ( Death of the Doctor) Whether this is a front for the Time Lords or for UNIT or just an unsubstantiated rumour remains to be seen. Basically my answer is as far as Ace knows, Hex is near Survival, but really a whole series of books came between. Including that story mentioned would be difficult beyond belief.
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Post by sailorhaumea on Apr 9, 2017 1:49:58 GMT
Posted this in the topic "Ace's death" a while back. I'll spoiler it cause it's long: Basically my answer is as far as Ace knows, Hex is near Survival, but really a whole series of books came between. Including that story mentioned would be difficult beyond belief. It's not that hard to place Death Comes to Time - particularly as they make it explicit that they don't find the Doctor's body, just his umbrella. Perhaps he faked his death...
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Apr 9, 2017 2:04:17 GMT
Including that story mentioned would be difficult beyond belief. It's not that hard to place Death Comes to Time - particularly as they make it explicit that they don't find the Doctor's body, just his umbrella. Perhaps he faked his death... Well, I was more thinking of the content rather than the eventual outcome!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 2:18:46 GMT
Including that story mentioned would be difficult beyond belief. It's not that hard to place Death Comes to Time - particularly as they make it explicit that they don't find the Doctor's body, just his umbrella. Perhaps he faked his death... Certainly wouldn't be the first time. I'm still of the opinion that it isn't the Seventh Doctor at all, but his final incarnation's penultimate story. The universe is a very different place, the remaining Time Lords have joined together in a pact that swears they will defend the lesser races from the greater harms of the cosmos. The Kingmaker is also an entity that doesn't appear to exist anywhere else, she's a bit of an oddity in the kind of power she represents. She doesn't have any connection with the Sisterhood or the Pythia, she's something else... The "NA -> The Prisoner's Dilemma -> Hex -> Ground Zero -> Gallifrey" progression certainly seems the most reasonable nowadays. An alternative posited in the past had a lot to do with Ace's sudden maturation in Warhead (she's leading a group of Kurdish mercenaries in a strike force), placing the Big Finish stories with Hex between the Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle stories. She and the Doctor go through absolute hell in Revelation (Ace in particular, her lungs explode in vacuum) and it's not unreasonable that the two of them would have grown up significantly in the interim.
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Post by sailorhaumea on Apr 9, 2017 2:23:45 GMT
It's not that hard to place Death Comes to Time - particularly as they make it explicit that they don't find the Doctor's body, just his umbrella. Perhaps he faked his death... Certainly wouldn't be the first time. I'm still of the opinion that it isn't the Seventh Doctor at all, but his final incarnation's penultimate story. The universe is a very different place, the remaining Time Lords have joined together in a pact that swears they will defend the lesser races from the greater harms of the cosmos. The Kingmaker is also an entity that doesn't appear to exist anywhere else, she's a bit of an oddity in the kind of power she represents. She doesn't have any connection with the Sisterhood or the Pythia, she's something else... The "NA -> The Prisoner's Dilemma -> Hex -> Ground Zero -> Gallifrey" progression certainly seems the most reasonable nowadays. An alternative posited in the past had a lot to do with Ace's sudden maturation in Warhead (she's leading a group of Kurdish mercenaries in a strike force), placing the Big Finish stories with Hex between the Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle stories. She and the Doctor go through absolute hell in Revelation (Ace in particular, her lungs explode in vacuum) and it's not unreasonable that the two of them would have grown up significantly in the interim. I actually just overhauled my timeline a few minutes ago to put Hex between Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle. Also, I love the idea that Death Comes to Time is actually the War (from the EDAs) rippling back and affecting Seven, and the remaining Time Lords are the ones who survived the War.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 2:37:42 GMT
Certainly wouldn't be the first time. I'm still of the opinion that it isn't the Seventh Doctor at all, but his final incarnation's penultimate story. The universe is a very different place, the remaining Time Lords have joined together in a pact that swears they will defend the lesser races from the greater harms of the cosmos. The Kingmaker is also an entity that doesn't appear to exist anywhere else, she's a bit of an oddity in the kind of power she represents. She doesn't have any connection with the Sisterhood or the Pythia, she's something else... The "NA -> The Prisoner's Dilemma -> Hex -> Ground Zero -> Gallifrey" progression certainly seems the most reasonable nowadays. An alternative posited in the past had a lot to do with Ace's sudden maturation in Warhead (she's leading a group of Kurdish mercenaries in a strike force), placing the Big Finish stories with Hex between the Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle stories. She and the Doctor go through absolute hell in Revelation (Ace in particular, her lungs explode in vacuum) and it's not unreasonable that the two of them would have grown up significantly in the interim. I actually just overhauled my timeline a few minutes ago to put Hex between Timewyrm and Cat's Cradle. Also, I love the idea that Death Comes to Time is actually the War (from the EDAs) rippling back and affecting Seven, and the remaining Time Lords are the ones who survived the War. Huh, a nice bit of serendipity. That's a theory I've never thought about before. It certainly has merit. I had a very similar idea about The Final Chapter from the comics, Merlin has disappeared (to my mind, banished to the magical continuum after finally having his hand caught in the cookie jar) and the Order of the Black Sun have taken his place, which would imply that they're late enough down that track of investigation to learn that they weren't responsible for the sabotage attempts on Qqaba. So, the question there is... Who is? The answer is likely one of their enemies and seeing that Merlin is off dealing with Catavolcus and similar problems from that dimension, it's most likely the Enemy.
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Post by constonks on Apr 9, 2017 2:48:22 GMT
My problem with putting all of Big Finish between Revelation and Time's Crucible is that Ace feels so young in Love and War. Even Sophie Aldred mentioned "playing a younger Ace again" in the extras for the audio version. Nightshade has a similar problem for me and even some of the post-Spacefleet stories show an Ace who's still suuuuch a moody teen.
Add to the fact that she's grown into someone who can mentor companions like Hex and fly the TARDIS (kind of), and I just can't see BF Ace becoming the VNA Ace.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 3:11:24 GMT
My problem with putting all of Big Finish between Revelation and Time's Crucible is that Ace feels so young in Love and War. Even Sophie Aldred mentioned "playing a younger Ace again" in the extras for the audio version. Nightshade has a similar problem for me and even some of the post-Spacefleet stories show an Ace who's still suuuuch a moody teen. Add to the fact that she's grown into someone who can mentor companions like Hex and fly the TARDIS (kind of), and I just can't see BF Ace becoming the VNA Ace. I can see your point there. Hold on, let me unpack this... Her abandoning the Doctor and Benny (and more symbolically her bomber jacket) on Heaven can be interpreted as her running away from home, joining the military and reaping the terrible consequences of it. She was eighteen when she went and battled the Daleks without the Doctor to back her up, so she saw and experienced a lot of things that an eighteen-year-old really shouldn't have. NA!Ace is certainly harder, but there are a lot of stories where she's deeply conflicted about who she wants to be. Lucifer Rising has this nice little moment where she recounts to Benny how she and a Dalek ended up at a stand-off with neither capable of destroying the other and it was begging her to kill it. She was supposed to despise these things and despite herself, she felt sorry for it, so she warned Bernice not to make her feel any more divided than she was already. She was never comfortable in herself whereas the Big Finish Ace... Hmm... By the time of A Death in the Family she feels more like a girl in her mid-twenties at the very least. That jacket's probably starting to fit her, if she still wears it. I suppose Ace was always very good with military hardware, but the problem is that her characterisation keeps fluctuating. She has a very mature reaction to the events in LIVE 34, but The Rapture still occurred after Colditz. She's youthened by Project: Destiny again as well. I guess you could make the argument that there are aspects of her life that push to the surface of her mind depending on the situation. Weird to think that the Doctor went through her memories in the TARDIS and picked out "just the good bits" of who she was.
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Post by omega on Apr 9, 2017 3:14:08 GMT
Big Finish have been rather inconsistent with Ace's characterisation, especially the late and post-Hex periods. In last year's trilogy she was more of the season 25 Ace, which was surprising after all the character development she'd gotten during the travels with Hex. Enemy of the Daleks has Ace who'd be more at home in the New Adventures.
Prisoner's Dilemma is a harder story to place in Ace's timeline. There are references as far into the New Adventures as Happy Endings (she remembers her mother bringing an older Robin from Nightshade to Benny's wedding), yet the cover shows the teenage Ace instead of the older Ace from the NA's at the time. She'd concluded her travels with the Doctor at that point anyway (she left in Set Piece). In the extras Simon Guerrier says he put all the obscure continuity he could into the story, like Cheldon Bonniface (the village from Timewyrm: Revelation and where Benny married Jason in Happy Endings), so maybe in his desire to score continuity points he muddied the chronological placement.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 3:42:11 GMT
Big Finish have been rather inconsistent with Ace's characterisation, especially the late and post-Hex periods. In last year's trilogy she was more of the season 25 Ace, which was surprising after all the character development she'd gotten during the travels with Hex. Enemy of the Daleks has Ace who'd be more at home in the New Adventures. Prisoner's Dilemma is a harder story to place in Ace's timeline. There are references as far into the New Adventures as Happy Endings (she remembers her mother bringing an older Robin from Nightshade to Benny's wedding), yet the cover shows the teenage Ace instead of the older Ace from the NA's at the time. She'd concluded her travels with the Doctor at that point anyway (she left in Set Piece). In the extras Simon Guerrier says he put all the obscure continuity he could into the story, like Cheldon Bonniface (the village from Timewyrm: Revelation and where Benny married Jason in Happy Endings), so maybe in his desire to score continuity points he muddied the chronological placement. Well, as much as I'd hate to say it, I reckon the New Adventures weren't exactly exempt in that respect either. It was just varying levels of angry ranging from the deeply unhappy interpretation in Falls the Shadow to the largely at peace with herself depiction in Parasite. One immediately after the other. I'd discount the cover though, Spaceport Fear has the Sixth Doctor in his blue outfit despite it taking place during his time with Mel and The Children of Seth is missing Siris's beard and Anahita's, erm... Well, put bluntly, she shouldn't have a face. The Prisoner's Dilemma works very well as a "Get Out of Jail, Free" card for linking up the Big Finish stories should they ever need it. In fact, you can still use it to link up Ground Zero with The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield later in his timeline. Failing that, it just means that the Doctor depicted on every cover from Colditz to Signs and Wonders is incorrect. He's supposed to look virtually identical to his TV Movie persona by the time President Romana has assigned him to retrieve the Master's remains. It's like the quandary of the changing console room. In theory, according to DWM comic at least, the NAs use a different design for the white console room to the one we see on television, so no problem there. How it sounds and what it looks like could be very different.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2017 7:25:09 GMT
Ace's apparent age is so inconsistent. My own theory is that the Doctor is messing with her mind in some way, seeing it as "healing" her after various traumatic events, and so she keeps resetting to young Ace. Witness the change from the later Hex stories to the following Mel stories.
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