From: jblum@next00clab.wam.umd.edu (The Maven)
Subject: Re: Ace? More like deuce... here's a new slant
Organization: Workstations at Maryland, University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 22:06:39 GMT

In article <1992Nov13.175103.18475@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>  
as010b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (andrew david simchik) writes:

Hmm, some new points to ponder.  Let's see...

>Leela knew when to trust someone and when not to.  Ace just seems to have
>knee-jerk reactions that aren't based in any sort of cunning or 
>streetwisdom or anything.

What exactly is the distinction here?  I can't really see where you're
drawing the line between Leela's "instinctive" reactions and Ace's
"knee-jerk" ones.  Aside from her judgement of Mike Smith, who really
did like her, Ace hadn't really been wrong too much either.

>Leela was an effective ally of the Doctor, whereas Ace just got in the  
way. 

Examples?  I'd say single-handedly distracting an entire Cyber-army
in "Silver Nemesis" seems pretty effective.  And rallying the Pipe
People in "Happiness Patrol", the human survivors in "Survival", and
so on.

The only time I think you can really say Ace screwed up was in telling
Judson about the computer program in "Fenric".  And in that case, the
Doctor had kept her too in the dark to know what she should or shouldn't
do.  Compare that with, say, Tegan single-handedly screwing up the
TARDIS in "Four to Doomsday".

>and Ace's mindless bashing of Daleks and Cybermen, yes, but
>everything else, too.

What else did she mindlessly "bash"?  She blew up an ice-jam in
"Dragonfire", but didn't attack the Dragon itself until after it
shot at her several times.  She had problems with the military, but
then so does the Doctor.  Could you give me cases of mindlessness?

>Finally, Leela was an alien.  I know the rest of you like to relate to 
>the characters, but I find it much more interesting to take a character 
>from an entirely different world with entirely different views and 
>abilities and put them in familiar situations to see how they react.  

Well, I'd say that for most of the American viewers of the show,
working-class Perivale is almost as alien as Traken.  Ace certainly
can't be described as completely typical of anyone's life in this
world.  (Even the British teenagers / American high-schoolers who have
been cited so far in this debate probably don't have Ace's inner focus,
her belief in goodness, or her skill with high explosives.)

>It's not hard to
>predict how Ace will act (even if we merely predict that she will act
>unpredictably); it's interesting to watch the Doctor or Leela because 
>they are aliens.

Well, if "predicting that they will act unpredictably" is such a sin,
then I'm afraid that you must have found Tom Baker very boring.  That
was one thing you could always be sure of about him.

>I disagree wholeheartedly with the statement that Ace and Leela are
>counterparts.  The only thing they had in common was the ability to fight
>back and not just scream.  As individuals, they were highly disparate.

True.  Which is why I'm defending Ace on her own merits, not those of
someone else.

>...whereas Ace--as we've mentioned ad nauseam--is simply a brat.

Sigh.  And here I thought we were finally getting this debate beyond
the name-calling.  Why on EARTH do you (not "we") keep throwing this
in at every opportunity?  If someone on this net had called you a brat
as many times as you've called Ace one, you'd be out for bloody
murder.  Would it really hurt you -- or the debate -- to lose the B
word?

..and now, one more thing for Drewcifer.  I'm trying not to make
this sound like a flame, Andrew, but it's not a good habit to quote
entire messages simply to add

>Well, now you know someone who hates her.

or

>Yay!

or

>Gorden Bennett, I *couldn't* believe anyone does like her!

or your most recent one,

>YES!!!  SOMEONE WITH SENSE!!!

Quoting the whole article wastes bandwidth and processing time for
the systems that handle the mail.  That's why Siobahn suggested that
you cut down the messages whenever possible.

Also, little throwaway messages don't exactly enrich the debate much.
So they say Andrew David Simchik doesn't like Ace.  We'd kinda picked
that up by now.  And asserting it at every opportunity -- the net
equivalent of shouting "I HATE ACE I HATE ACE I HATE ACE" through a 
megaphone -- gets in peoples' faces in a really bad way.

Of course you're entitled to express your opinion.  I've never said
you should shut up if you're holding an unpopular opinion.  But there
are plenty of ways of expressing your opinions that don't get peoples'
goats so much.  Usually it's a good idea to stop once you begin to
repeat yourself, it cuts down on flames that way.

Which is why I'll stop now.  :-)
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