Ace Returns! (webcast)

 was a trailer for the Blu-ray release of season 26 of Doctor Who.

Like Jo Grant Returns before it, this was a narrative trailer, set around the present day, featuring a companion from the season who has now long since departed the Doctor's company. However, due to this Wiki choosing not to consider trailers and commercials, narrative or otherwise, to be full in-universe sources in their own right, this story is not currently considered valid by this Wiki.

Synopsis
Ace is standing in her office reminiscing over her past adventures with the Seventh Doctor, when suddenly the sound of the TARDIS is heard and the Doctor knocks on her door and she runs off.

Plot
In the middle of the streets of London is a building standing tall, belonging to A Charitable Earth. In an office with a large wall-length window overseeing the Thames is a woman. Ace.

Ace thinks about what happened thirty years ago. How she was just a kid who thought she knew it all when she met him and he showed her the universe full of adventures: monsters, demons, friends, enemies, fights, justice and so much more...

The Doctor and Ace... teammates.

When suddenly, he let her go to make the world a better place. She says she loves what she does for a living now. But that she some times still look for him from her office-window because he left her with a promise that he would return one day.

Then she hears the sound of the TARDIS and sees a familiar silhouette behind the door and a question mark handle knocking on the door. She exclaims "Wicked".

Ace grabs onto her trademark jacket and heads out the door of her office.

Cast

 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Seventh Doctor - Matthew Sweet (uncredited)

Crew

 * Written by - Pete McTighe
 * Director - Pete McTighe
 * Production assistant - Jasmine Allodi
 * Camera operator - Matt Patrick

Story notes

 * Pete McTighe wrote and directed this webcast under the title of The Promise. (DWM 545)
 * Participants to the story, including Sophie Aldred, consider it as the true closure to Ace. (DWM 545)
 * Throughout the webcast, clips from Sophie Aldred's time on Doctor Who in season 26 are shown while she is talking about her adventures in-character. (Battlefield, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Survival)
 * This is the first actual depiction of Ace's organisation, A Charitable Earth, which was mentioned by Sarah Jane Smith at the end of TV: Death of the Doctor in 2011, and which was later expanded upon by Ace herself in the 2018 audio story In Remembrance.