“Backwards and in Heels” is the first story in the “Wicked!” boxset that takes place directly after Ace’s debut TV story “Dragonfire”, which is weird that it’s taken this long to get around to it when you think how long they’ve been doing Seventh Doctor audios… Anyway, the story being the first in the set means this is Ace’s first ever adventure and for that we get a very odd and not particularly exciting story. Let’s take a look…
The story opens with Ace’s (but definitely not Sophie Aldred’s!) TARDIS introduction scene, complete with her finding out it’s a time machine as well as space ship and all that jazz before The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) receives a call inviting him to take part in a game at the behest of “the Treasurer” (a barely audible Paulo Vieira), a game that could lead to dire consequences should he refuse to play. In order to complete the treasure hunt The Doctor competes with another time traveller called Lucian (Luke Barton) in 1920s London, and to make sure Ace stays safe he claims she’s his daughter, much to her distress. While The Doctor and Lucian work out blatantly un-work-out-able clues Ace runs away thinking her new father figure is just like the rest of her family and can’t be trusted and is just in it for wealth and status, soon meeting local young girl Wendy (Alexandra Barredo) and thinking about staying put, but its never that easy…
The story works in that this being Ace’s initial reaction to everything is in character as we know her, but it doesn’t work in that it’s a very nothing story. The Treasurer is just a nondescript powerful entity and Lucian is extremely bland and underdeveloped, the whole thing holds your attention but the moment it ended I thought to myself “I’d better write a few notes quickly” because I wasn’t going to remember much even ten minutes later.
The Continuity:
Good cover, if you’re wondering why Charles Dickens is riding a horse in the background you’ll have to wait for the second review!
Not much to add here, beyond the obvious and already stated fact that it takes place directly after “Dragonfire”.
Overall Thoughts:
“Backwards and in Heels” is a story that had a lot of potential, “Ace’s first ever trip in the TARDIS” and all that, but in the end it wasn’t all that interesting. The Doctor hardlines from his happier Season 24 self into his more manipulative later self like a light switch and the villain is dull and vague. Ace shows some immaturity as she should at this point which is good but that doesn’t help the hour-long story to achieve much. Oh well, I was never bored or anything at least, so it’s a middling story, but that’s still a shame given its placement in the timeline.
It turns out that The Treasurer actually wanted access to the Doctor’s TARDIS and is intentionally manipulating Ace in order to lure The Doctor into a trap. As Ace hides away in the TARDIS she is greeted with a hologram version of The Doctor from the future, with the older Seventh Doctor being his little bit more manipulative self (though given its an AI projection, not quite…) and given Ace still hasn’t gotten to know the Doctor at all, she initially rejects what he’s saying, and believes that The Doctor won’t rescue her. Of course it all turns out that The Doctor was the in on the whole thing and used this opportunity to seal away and multi-dimensional being for good, therefore using Ace intentionally as a pawn right from the get-go, seemingly. Ace naively believes The Doctor was just coming to her rescue, while we the listener know it’s just the beginning, of both his manipulative ways and his side-hobby of sealing away God-like beings…
Hogan Reviews 