Well, they...did things to Ace. Probably in a misguided attempt at being gritty and grown-up. I don't want to drop any spoilers on you in case you read them one of these days, but after a while she wasn't really the same character any more. I'm not saying she wasn't interesting or well-written some of the time, because she was, depending on the author, but it wasn't Ace anymore. You know, as if she hadn't already gone through her big growing-up character arc in the course of her TV stories.
Anyway...I think Benny is all sorts of amusing and a likeable companion (and I like the couple of her solo adventures I've caught up with just fine), but I don't know if she was the bestest companion ever as she was often thought of back in the 90s; she may well not be as overrated any more as she perhaps was then. She is in the Dying Days though, my possibly-second-favourite NA; my first favourite is Timewyrm:Revelation by Paul Cornell, which was early on in the range, before the "character-development" Ace went through. I like it because firstly, it's a twisty-turny hallucinatory sort of story, a bit like the Mind Robber or something, and secondly it's possibly the definitive portrayal of Seven and Ace, in any medium. And it has cameos from One, Three, Five, Four that I can think of, and I think Two and Six at least get a couple of lines. So, it's great all round, really. Or so I think, anyway...
Mind you, I also really like Transit, which is the NA that sort of split the fandom; all of the guns and violence and non-stop swearing put a lot of people off, but it was a cracking story, and Seven was great in it.
Anyway, enough of that. If I drop any cash on secondhand Who books in the near future, I think it'll be on some of the Missing Adventures/Past Doctor Adventures, because I never kept up with them as well as I did with the NAs (and my NA keeping-up-with was patchy after the first couple of years), and it has come to my attention that there are some crackers there too.
no subject
Anyway...I think Benny is all sorts of amusing and a likeable companion (and I like the couple of her solo adventures I've caught up with just fine), but I don't know if she was the bestest companion ever as she was often thought of back in the 90s; she may well not be as overrated any more as she perhaps was then. She is in the Dying Days though, my possibly-second-favourite NA; my first favourite is Timewyrm:Revelation by Paul Cornell, which was early on in the range, before the "character-development" Ace went through. I like it because firstly, it's a twisty-turny hallucinatory sort of story, a bit like the Mind Robber or something, and secondly it's possibly the definitive portrayal of Seven and Ace, in any medium. And it has cameos from One, Three, Five, Four that I can think of, and I think Two and Six at least get a couple of lines. So, it's great all round, really. Or so I think, anyway...
Mind you, I also really like Transit, which is the NA that sort of split the fandom; all of the guns and violence and non-stop swearing put a lot of people off, but it was a cracking story, and Seven was great in it.
Anyway, enough of that. If I drop any cash on secondhand Who books in the near future, I think it'll be on some of the Missing Adventures/Past Doctor Adventures, because I never kept up with them as well as I did with the NAs (and my NA keeping-up-with was patchy after the first couple of years), and it has come to my attention that there are some crackers there too.