Bringing Ace’s early adventures to a close, the third and final story in the Wicked boxset is The Ingenious Gentlemen. Written by Alan Roland, it follows The Doctor and Ace as they travel to 15^th-century Spain, where they encounter demons and the legendary Don Quixote.

Fiction and reality collide when a mad man with a box and a mad man with a horse encounter an ancient evil in 15th century Spain.

But the adventurer-and-companion setup is a little too familiar to Ace, and she begins to question if she is anything more than a Sancho to the Doctor’s Quixote.

Big Finish Synopsis

Over the past two adventures, Ace has become accustomed to life aboard the TARDIS. With the help of The Doctor, her brash beginnings filled with lashings of Nitro 9 have softened, and she’s grown to become more worldly. However, despite their time together, Ace is still unsure of her position with The Doctor and why someone like him would want to keep her around. By this adventure, her frustrations over this matter have gotten to the point where she even considers finishing her travels with The Doctor due to his continued reticence.   

These growing anxieties come to the forefront in this latest adventure as she spends most of its runtime alongside Don Quixote’s assistant, Sancho Panza. Whilst together, Ace is quick to realise the parallels between them, as both are left with the short end of the stick as The Doctor and Don Quixote go galivanting. While frustrated with the situation, these moments create a compelling narrative between Ace and Sancho as Ace struggles to grasp Sancho’s unwavering loyalty to his master. Sancho, however, doesn’t see it that way. Despite the unequal relationship, he’s just happy to be in the presence of someone with such passion for helping others. This starkly contrasts Ace’s relationship with The Doctor. Due to his proven fallibilities, she doesn’t see him in the same light, and her lack of hero worship is proven right by the end of the adventure, as they both need each other more than they realise.

While this story’s thematic parallels have a strong sense of depth, the same can’t be said of the adventure’s other aspects. Much like its predecessor, The Price of Snow, the story’s problems stem from the lack of complex development for its antagonist, Antiquity. Despite an interesting concept about a creature from Gallifreyan mythology that has the power to absorb anything in its path, this is never fully realised throughout the story and is often sidelined for character work.  This ultimately impacts the effectiveness of the tension it creates, as the story builds little consensus into the inner workings of the creature’s abilities.

Furthermore, while Ace and Sancho’s characters are well developed, the same can’t be said of Don Quixote. Simon Callow’s amazing performance notwithstanding, Don Quixote never quite gets the same level of transformation throughout the story, so his story arc isn’t as enjoyable.