Ace of Hearts (short story)

Ace of Hearts was the fourteenth short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips. It was written by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry. It featured the Seventh Doctor.

Summary
The Doctor takes a job as an entertainer at an annual reunion dinner hosted by Dorothy's family. After the reunion he stays over at their house for the night and creeps into Dorothy's room.

He lets baby Dorothy play with his scarf whilst he talks to her, admitting that he had betrayed her trust in him and played with her emotions after seeing how fragile she was underneath her tough exterior. He apologises to the baby for the events with Gabriel Chase and Fenric and says he is sorry for knowing he will manipulate her again: something he finds much easier to say to the baby Ace than it would be to the teenage Ace he knows.

Before leaving, the Doctor steals a baby photograph of Ace from a picture frame and replaces it with a playing card - the Ace of Hearts - so that when Kathleen Dudman comes looking for her granddaughter in the middle of the night, she realises where she has seen him before and understands who Ace really was.

Characters

 * Seventh Doctor
 * Kathleen Dudman
 * Audrey Dudman
 * Dorothy McShane

Continuity

 * The Doctor visits the infant Ace to apologise to her for the Gabriel Chase (DW: Ghost Light) and Fenric incidents (DW: The Curse of Fenric).

Timeline

 * Ace of Hearts occurs after ST: Stop the Pigeon.
 * Ace of Hearts occurs before ST: Monsters.