Uncanny Magazine Issue Sixty

I creep into the guest room where William’s friends are fast asleep and try to pull out cardboard boxes full of At Childhood’s End and Origin Stories from under the bed. I’m proud to have contributed to both these books in a big way, and I’m thrilled to be asked to take my books to sign and sell at my first book festival today. There’s some stirring and murmuring from the prone bodies, but I manage to get out without anyone actually waking. I should have done this all last night, but hey, Netflix you know. Bother! My Ace jacket! It’s in the wardrobe! I creep back in and this time someone starts and sits up looking at me fuzzily…“It’s ok, just getting something…go back to sleep,” I soothe. I wrap the books in various cloth bags, including a beautiful Ace one that a talented fan made for me to look like my jacket, complete with orange lining, and put them in a big wheelie case. I sift through my piles of photos and select a few shots I know people love to get autographed at conventions and signings and add them to the bag.

Aylesbury Book Festival. A beautifully English day in a marquee in a pretty garden behind the little museum there. And it’s actually sunny! Not many people, but those who have come along stay and we chat for hours. Katie (who is wearing a very fine Ace jacket) is a prison officer; Ieuan has not long been out of school and is a teaching assistant in a primary school. Sui, who lives round the corner and who I met last week at the Utopia convention pops home to change into her magnificent new TARDIS dress once she sees Katie in her jacket and gets lots of compliments from the other stall holders.

An email from Andrew Cartmel inviting me to a play he’s written—a naughty comedy! Vince and I have been to a couple of his plays in the last few years, and I’m so glad he’s ventured into writing for the stage. Looking forward to seeing this next one.

Lots of messaging to and fro with my friend-who-is-also-a-fan Liz who lives in the village near Sheffield where Jodie Whittaker grew up. We met last year at a convention in Scarborough, got on like a house on fire and seem to message each other most days about…stuff! Today it’s the last episode of this season of Doctor Who we’re on about, but it can include gardening, her work, family, friends…

Zoom with Shawn with whom I’m collaborating on a book about my Ace jacket. He had this great idea to help cosplayers get accurate information about making the jacket and which will include stories about each of the badges and patches. I’ve got a great book outline to show him, courtesy of our editor and publisher at Chin Beard Books, Barnaby Eaton-Jones. Shawn seems really excited and has some more great ideas and contacts who are willing to help us with the essential information we need. He spends the afternoon designing logos for the front cover with his kids’ crayons and texting me more ideas for promos and publicity.

I message Keith (Barnfather of Reeltime Pictures and the Myth Makers range) who is in Greece with his family, as I have a question for him about camera operators and editors for a new project I’m doing about family memories. As usual we have a good catch-up and he gives me some really helpful advice.

Zoom with another Liz in Australia for a podcast about her company, Intergalactic Business Solutions. I met Liz during COVID at an online convention and she bravely asked Sylvester and me to help her name her brand new accountancy and bookkeeping venture. Liz is not your average accountant. She wears a steampunk hat, adores science fiction, and wants to make a difference to pop culture fans. Her strap line is “Remember, the only thing stopping you from reaching the stars is yourself and not having a good Accountant!” She’s so fun.

I message my friend Andrew who is an extremely talented and wonderful standup comedian. They are off to Glastonbury, which is where we first met a year ago. I was standing with my son and his girlfriend in the Green Futures Field having just attended a brilliant talk about a new form of collaborative government when we hear someone bellowing “VEGAN! VEGAN!” from a small tent across the field. Upon investigation, we find the funniest and most interesting person I’ve seen on stage since Suzy Eddie Izzard. At the end of the set, we are pondering where to go and what to do next when Andrew rushes towards me gibbering and gushing about Doctor Who, Ace, their seal of Rassilon tattoo…we click. We hang out. We have become great friends, and I am doing a gig with them in Oxford at their Dead Leg comedy club in a few weeks’ time.

An email from Nik, my fan-who-is-also-a-friend in Adelaide who is dealing with all sorts of health issues and yet remains incredibly stoic and upbeat most of the time. Today they are understandably frustrated at not being able to do the wonderful creative work they normally get up to such as 3D printing and making an entire Ace/Mandalorian mash up cosplay, or decorating their wheelchair with the Ace logo, or painting sneakers with Ace badge designs.

Janet Fielding texts me to say her recent bout of COVID is over and that she’s out the other side. I love that we got to know each other so much better during “The Power of the Doctor.” I cherish time with Janet. Always fun, always interesting, mostly funny, and we talk about good stuff.

Ian Kubiak (he of Cygnus Alpha) calls to finalise arrangements for the Tom Baker event that he’s organised against all the odds in Rye, Sussex in a few weeks’ time. He sends me a photo of the place I’ll be staying—the Mermaid Inn—a place straight out of a film location finder’s dream manual. Think quintessential English pub/coaching inn. I’m already looking forward to the beams, low ceilings, and crooked floors.

I wake up remembering that I haven’t yet texted Bonnie to say how fabulous she was in those final Ncuti episodes. So I do. I tell her I particularly liked the scene where she tells the Doctor to get on with it and stop grizzling! And l love that she got to be a baddy as well! She texts me back straight away. She’s so great.

Keith (Barnfather) texts me from Greece to ask if I can call the Everyman Cinema in Salisbury about our plan to have a screening of our documentary about the making of an animation project that never got shown called Saffron, which we want to have in September. I do. I’m so glad that thanks to Keith, this project is seeing the light of day at last, and it will be a lovely event for Doctor Who fans who are so supportive of all our “extra-curricular” projects.

Rounding off the week with a call to Liz fan-who-is-also-a-friend. She’s been struggling with her garden today to get it ready for her impending housewarming party next weekend. I want to reassure her that her newly planted pots look fabulous and that up North, it’ll probably be raining or snowing or something by then anyway!

Who would have thought that thirty-seven years ago, as I stepped into that building on Shepherd’s Bush Green, West London for my first ever TV audition, my life was about to change forever and that it would be so enriched by all the amazing people I would meet over the years. People like Katy Manning and Lis Sladen, Louise Jameson and Nicholas Courtney, who I had watched on my telly when I was little, never dreaming that one day we would be friends. Fans who I’ve known for more years than my husband and many people who weren’t even alive when I was beating up a Dalek and chucking cans of Nitro-9 around. The people of Doctor Who, fans, actors, crew, producers, writers, convention organisers, all of them, have continued to be a central and very important part of my wonderful life.

The name of that building in which I auditioned was Threshold House. An apt name for my stepping into a whole new world…a Whoniverse if you like, that I continue to love and embrace and for which I will be eternally grateful.

Born and raised in South East London, Sophie Aldred studied drama at the University of Manchester and worked in children’s theatre, working mens’ clubs and musicals before being cast as Ace, Doctor Who number Seven’s feisty companion. She is also well known for her work on programmes like Jackanory, Words and Pictures, Melvin and Maureens’ Music-a-grams, Corners, Tiny and Crew, and ZZZap! Her extensive voice work includes hundreds of audiobooks of many genres, dramas and animations such as Dennis and Gnasher, Bananas in Pyjamas, Peter Rabbit, Piku and Tuki, and Tree Fu Tom. Sophie has appeared in over one hundred audio dramas with Big Finish. In 2020 Sophie wrote her first novel, At Childhood’s End (published by Penguin Random House) which became an Amazon best seller. She also contributed a short story, “Chemistry,” to the anthology Origin Stories, published in 2022. Sophie reprised her role as Ace in “The Power of the Doctor,” Jodie Whitaker’s farewell story, which was chosen to celebrate the Centenary anniversary of the BBC and transmitted on 23rd October 2022. In Autumn 2023 she recorded Tales of the TARDIS with Sylvester McCoy for BBC iPlayer as part of Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary.

It’s a Wonderful (Doctor Who) Life