Something has come aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, and it has taken an interest in Sophie. When Lisa Bowerman arrives by Time Scoop, she seems to be carrying more than a little temporal residue. An intelligence is reaching out through her, and it knows something about Sophie that perhaps Sophie herself does not yet understand. But who, or what, is it? And what happens when something that has been calling from a distance finally finds its way aboard?

Lisa is a wonderfully versatile presence in the Doctor Who universe. She first appeared as Karra, the telepathic Cheetah Person, in Survival, the final story of the original television era in 1989. Since 1998, she has also been the voice of Professor Bernice Summerfield for Big Finish, while establishing an equally distinguished career directing audio drama, with hundreds of productions to her credit. Actor, director and storyteller, Lisa knows a thing or two about bringing extraordinary worlds to life.

In Ffantaface, Sophie meets Mark Barton Hill, one of the people who help keep Doctor Who’s physical history alive. A highly regarded prop maker and restorer, Mark worked on the restoration of the Fourth Doctor’s TARDIS console for the Doctor Who Experience, bringing a much-loved piece of television history back to life. His work is a reminder that the magic of Doctor Who is not only in the stories we remember, but in the extraordinary craftsmanship that makes those stories tangible.

So settle in, Ffantafolk. The communications array is behaving strangely, and something out there has learned how to find us.

Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey stars Sophie Aldred with James Showers as Hobbes.

Special Guests- Lisa Bowerman and Mark Barton Hill.

You can find us all over your social media.

Bluesky/Instagram/X: @aceodyssey63

Facebook: Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey

For listeners who want even more adventure, you can step inside the Ace Odyssey Patreon Community-

*Episodes released early and ad free

*Two exclusive podcasts every month

*Online meet-ups and interactive events

*Direct involvement in the evolving universe of the show

www.patreon.com/aceodyssey

Music by Graeme Allan

Sound Effects & Sound Design by Gavin Rymill

Programme Assistant Liz Whitmore

Written, Produced and Directed by Paul Carmichael

You can follow Graeme Allan on Bluesky @graemeallan and listen to more of his music at www.youtube.com/brassbandit

You can follow Gavin Rymill on Twitter & Bluesky @themindrobber, and you can watch his superb Dr.Who series Terry Nation Army on www.youtube.com/dalek6388

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are libraries full of books.

There are libraries full of knowledge.

And then, apparently, there are libraries aboard the Nosferatu 2.5 where the books have started becoming rather selective about who gets to exist in them.

This time aboard the ship, Sophie is joined by Dan Starkey, actor, writer, voice artist and one of the most recognisable inhabitants of the Doctor Who universe, despite frequently being hidden beneath several layers of prosthetics.

Dan has played a remarkable variety of characters across Doctor Who, but is perhaps best known to television audiences as Strax, the gloriously literal Sontaran warrior who became an unlikely member of the Paternoster Gang alongside Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint. He has also played numerous other Sontarans, appearing opposite several incarnations of the Doctor.

His relationship with Doctor Who extends well beyond the television screen. Dan has become a major presence in the world of audio, particularly through his extensive work with Big Finish, where he has appeared across Doctor Who and numerous other productions. He has also moved behind the microphone as a writer, co-writing Terror of the Sontarans, proving, perhaps, that having spent enough time playing Sontarans eventually leads to the inevitable conclusion that one must start writing them as well.

But Dan’s arrival aboard the Nosferatu 2.5 comes at a particularly strange moment.

The ship’s Narrative Archive has become a library, although not one that Sophie and Hobbes entirely trust. Books are present, but stories are missing. Information remains, but somehow the things that give that information meaning have begun to disappear.

Meanwhile, Mrs C and the Ffantaface provide their usual means of escaping the immediate problem, taking Sophie somewhere rather unexpected for another conversation with a very special guest.

This time, the Ffantaface brings us Laurence Scott, award-winning author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning.

Laurence has spent more than a decade writing essays and criticism for publications including The New Yorker, Financial Times, New York Times, The Guardian, WIRED, Boston Globe, New Statesman and the London Review of Books, exploring the increasingly strange relationship between technology, culture, time and the ways in which we experience the world around us.

And, perhaps most importantly for a journey aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, Doctor Who has had a profound influence on Laurence both personally and professionally.

And somewhere aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, the books are waiting.

Just be careful which one you open!

Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey stars Sophie Aldred with James Showers as Hobbes.

Special Guests- Dan Starkey and Laurence Scott.

You can find us all over your social media.

Bluesky/Instagram/X: @aceodyssey63

Facebook: Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey

For listeners who want even more adventure, you can step inside the Ace Odyssey Patreon Community-

*Episodes released early and ad free

*Two exclusive podcasts every month

*Online meet-ups and interactive events

*Direct involvement in the evolving universe of the show

www.patreon.com/aceodyssey

Music by Graeme Allan

Sound Effects & Sound Design by Gavin Rymill

Programme Assistant Liz Whitmore

Based on a short story by Soula Carmichael

Written, Produced and Directed by Paul Carmichael

You can follow Graeme Allan on Bluesky @graemeallan and listen to more of his music at www.youtube.com/brassbandit

You can follow Gavin Rymill on Twitter & Bluesky @themindrobber, and you can watch his superb Dr.Who series Terry Nation Army on www.youtube.com/dalek6388

You can follow Paul Carmichael on Bluesky @paulcarmichaeluk and on Threads @paul.carmichael.1213

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some stories are about monsters, some are about impossible planets, and some are about the rather more dangerous territory of memory, belonging and the places we still think of as home.

In this episode of Sophie Aldred’s Ace Odyssey, we welcome one of Doctor Who’s most distinctive writers, Rona Munro whose contribution to the programme spans almost thirty years, two television eras and two very different Doctors.

Rona wrote Survival, the final story broadcast during Doctor Who’s original television run in 1989. It was not intended to become the final classic Doctor Who story, but history gave it that distinction, and its closing image of the Doctor and Ace walking away together has acquired an extraordinary emotional resonance.

Nearly three decades later, Rona returned to the programme with The Eaters of Light, written for Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. Set in Roman-era Scotland, it is another story concerned with lost children, divided communities, ancient memory and the ways in which the past refuses to remain comfortably in the past. Rona became the first writer to contribute to both the twentieth- and twenty-first-century television incarnations of Doctor Who.

Rona’s work beyond Doctor Who is equally remarkable. She is one of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights, with works including Bold Girls, Iron, The Last Witch and the acclaimed James Plays trilogy. Her writing is frequently concerned with people caught between history and the present, between the lives they have inherited and the lives they might yet make for themselves.

And then there is the rose.

Somewhere aboard the Nosferatu 2.5, Sophie encounters a story about a rose. A small, apparently simple thing that becomes rather more difficult to explain the longer one thinks about it. It is a story about memory, homesickness and the peculiar ways in which an object, a place or a recollection can become charged with everything we have lost.

We shall say no more about where that story leads.

Alongside Rona, the Ffantaface introduces Martin Spellacey, whose own relationship with Doctor Who has been both deeply personal and professionally transformative. Martin’s love of the programme has taken him from being a fan to working on the convention circuit, where he now assists some of the stars of the Whoniverse. His story is a reminder that Doctor Who does not simply exist on television or in audio studios: it lives in friendships, communities, careers, memories and the extraordinary connections made between people who might otherwise never have met.

This is an episode about the things stories leave behind, and the things they bring home with them.

Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey stars Sophie Aldred with James Showers as Hobbes.

Special Guests- Rona Munro & Martin Spellacey.

You can find us all over your social media.

Bluesky/Instagram/X: @aceodyssey63

Facebook: Sophie Aldred's Ace Odyssey

For listeners who want even more adventure, you can step inside the Ace Odyssey Patreon Community-

*Episodes released early and ad free

*Two exclusive podcasts every month

*Online meet-ups and interactive events

*Direct involvement in the evolving universe of the show

www.patreon.com/aceodyssey

Music by Graeme Allan

Sound Effects & Sound Design by Gavin Rymill

Programme Assistant Liz Whitmore

Based on a short story by Soula Carmichael

Written, Produced and Directed by Paul Carmichael

You can follow Graeme Allan on Bluesky @graemeallan and listen to more of his music at www.youtube.com/brassbandit

You can follow Gavin Rymill on Twitter & Bluesky @themindrobber, and you can watch his superb Dr.Who series Terry Nation Army on www.youtube.com/dalek6388

You can follow Paul Carmichael on Bluesky @paulcarmichaeluk and on Threads @paul.carmichael.1213

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.