Sophie Aldred’s Ace was set to have a role in The Sarah Jane Adventures

The tragic death of Elisabeth Sladen in 2011 still feels incredibly unfair. Not least because she was headlining one of the best ever Doctor Who spin-off series, the terrific The Sarah Jane Adventures. In the show, she was reprising the role of Sarah Jane Smith, and in all five series were produced. The fifth series was cut short due to her illness.

Sophie Aldred, who played Ace alongside Sylvester McCoy in classic Doctor Who, has been chatting to Digital Spy about her character. And she’s revealed a surprising The Sarah Jane Adventures crossover. For it turns out we were going to learn what happened to Ace following her otherwise last screen appearance in Survival back in 1989.

“I didn’t know [at the time] but Russell T Davies had a whole couple of scenes planned out”, she told the site. “This sports car was going to draw up in front of Sarah Jane’s house, the door opens and this very smart, besuited woman would get out – and it’d be me, as I am now”.

Aldred added that “Sarah Jane, of course, would have no clue who Ace was! But sadly that was not to be, because I would’ve absolutely loved to have worked with Lis Sladen. We knew each other very well from conventions and signings and so on, but I would’ve loved to have actually worked with her on a story”.

Aldred hinted that Ace would possibly have been working as a sort-of intergalactic Greenpeace activist, “hanging off the back of spaceships, righting wrongs in the universe”.

The full interview with Digital Spy is here.