Exile (audio drama)

Exile
Big Finish Productions audio drama
Series	Doctor Who Unbound
Release number	6
Featuring	Arabella Weir as the Doctor
Writer	Nicholas Briggs
Director	Nicholas Briggs
Producer	Jason Haigh-Ellery John Ainsworth
Executive producer	Jacqueline Rayner
Production code	DWUN6
Length	1 hr 7 mins
Release date	November 2003

Exile is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Doctor Who Unbound dramas pose a series of "What if...?" questions.

Plot

Premise: What if the Doctor had escaped the justice of the Time Lords at the end of The War Games?

The Doctor commits suicide and regenerates into a female form. She then departs for Earth and begins a mundane life of working all day in a supermarket and spending all night in the pub. Her previous form haunts her, trying to remind her who she is and not to give up. Meanwhile, two other Time Lords have been sent to find and arrest the Doctor.

Cast

• The Doctor — Arabella Weir
• Cherrie — Hannah Smith
• Cheese — Jeremy James
• Time Lord 1 — Toby Longworth
• Time Lord 2 — David Tennant
• Mr Baggit — Graham Duff
• The Previous Doctor — Nicholas Briggs

Man in Pub, Royal Personage, Ethel, Scarecrow, Savoy Doorman and other parts played by members of the cast.

Notes

• David Tennant, who features in a supporting role as "Time Lord 2", was formerly Arabella Weir's lodger and is godfather to one of her children. He later went on to star as the Tenth Doctor in the television series.
• Toby Longworth who plays one of the Time Lords, stars in the Big Finish productions versions of Judge Dredd.
• Arabella Weir is the second woman to play an incarnation of the Doctor. The first was Joanna Lumley, in the 1999 Comic Relief spoof The Curse of Fatal Death.
• When the Previous Doctor lists various names for the Master to use as aliases, he says the name Eric, then Robert then Sam in quick succession, forming the name 'Eric Roberts' a reference to the actor of the same name who portrayed the Master in the 1996 TV Movie.
• The idea of putting on a costume mask and interrupting a TV broadcast is a reference to the infamous Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion, which occurred during an American airing of Horror of Fang Rock.
• The pub featured at the end of the story where the proprietor has nothing in stock except for an obscure brew called "Speckled Goat" is an homage to the Cheese Shop sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• The robotic scarecrows used by the Time Lords to hunt down the Doctor are a reference to the 1969 TV Comic story The Night Walkers. In this comic, the Second Doctor also escapes at the end of The War Games and hides on Earth, only to be captured by the Time Lords' scarecrows and forced to regenerate.

External links

• Big Finish Productions - Exile
• Exile at the Doctor Who Reference Guide

Reviews

• Exile reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• Exile reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide