Adam Kendrick reports on Sophie Aldred’s panel at Bedford Who Charity Con 2025.

Ever since she was a small girl, Sophie Aldred has loved dressing up and playing pretend. One of her early childhood memories consists of her wearing a pink satin shirt and a velvet hat, pretending to be Prince Charming, and galloping around the climbing frame in her garden on her hobby horse. A few years later, she would convince her brother and the local kids to take part in various plays that she wrote, directed, and starred in, including an adaptation of Cinderella. While the other kids were fairly relaxed about each performance, Sophie took her role very seriously and always remained in character. Each ticket cost a sixpence and all the profits were donated to the Blue Peter Appeal. (This wasn’t how Sophie received her Blue Peter badge, however – she earned hers by submitting a design for a space rocket which included a washing up bottle and a garden hose.)

Two decades later, Sophie was playing the Seventh Doctor’s companion Ace on Doctor Who. There, she performed most of her own stunts, to the extent that her own stunt double, Tracey Eddon complained about being put out of a job. Despite her eagerness to tackle any challenge (and by Sophie’s reckoning, the benefit of reducing production costs from not having to hire a stunt person), there were two exceptions which were considered too risky for Sophie herself to perform. The first stunt was Ace climbing down the ladder outside the church in The Curse of Fenric (1989), which was performed by Tracey with no safety harness and a camera strapped to her helmet for the POV shots. The second was Ace crashing through the classroom window in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), which required a lot of force to break the sugar glass panes and was followed by a large drop onto some crash mats below. Everything else in the episode was performed by Sophie herself, although not everything went to plan: while filming the iconic baseball bat scene, Sophie unknowingly started attacking a real Dalek prop before the crew could replace it with the stunt Dalek. Then, after these action sequences had been filmed, Sophie was told by the stunt director to sit down, perform her breathing exercises, and wait for the adrenaline to wear off – only to hear the voice of an actor who was stuck inside a nearby Dalek and everyone had forgotten to let out.

When Doctor Who went on hiatus in 1989, Sophie didn’t have any problems with being typecast, thanks to her versatile background in presenting children’s television and performing as a singer. Sadly, the main reason why she keeps returning to the role of Ace isn’t simply because she loves playing such a feisty character, but because of ageism in the television industry – in fact, she hasn’t even been offered an audition or screen test in the last eight years. Fortunately, she has managed to forge a post-Who career as a voice-over artist, such as appearing in television adverts and voicing The Beano’s Dennis the Menace in Dennis and Gnasher (2009).

When Sophie eventually returned to Doctor Who in The Power of the Doctor (2022), she was surprised at how similar the production was to how the show was made back in the 1980s. There were automatic doors which were simulated by one of the crew members sliding a large piece of cardboard (which often got stuck), or how a very long stick was used to push Tegan’s bag off a table in UNIT HQ. She had nothing but praise for Jodie Whittaker, who was generous, knew everybody’s name, and made everyone laugh.

Despite appearing in one of the most successful science-fiction franchises in the world, Sophie doesn’t earn a cut from Doctor Who merchandise and the salary she earned from appearing on the show was less than what she earned from touring the country doing children’s theatre. The royalties she earns from repeats is low, with one royalty cheque that she received from Papua New Guinea reaching a grand total of six pennies. Hence, her advice to wannabe actors is that if you’re only in it for the money or fame, then you should forget it and consider pursuing a different career. You need to be prepared to be rejected over and over, and use criticism as future direction instead of taking it personally. Since the vast majority of actors will be out of work at any given time, sometimes it’s best to simply go with the flow and see what happens.