Exile (audio drama)
| Exile | |
|---|---|
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| Big Finish Productions audio drama | |
| Series | 'Doctor Who Unbound' |
| Release no. | 6 |
| Featuring | Arabella Weir as the Doctor |
| Written by | Nicholas Briggs |
| Directed by | Nicholas Briggs |
| Produced by |
Jason Haigh-Ellery John Ainsworth |
| Executive producer(s) | 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.
Reception
American alternative weekly Houston Press's Jef Rouner described Weir's portrayal as "one of the most melancholy of all the Doctors."[1]
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. On 16 July 2017, Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the Thirteenth Doctor, becoming the first woman to be officially cast in the role of the Doctor.[2]
- When the Previous Doctor lists various names for the Master to use as aliases, he says the names "Roger, Peter, Geoffrey, Tony, Eric, Robert and Sam in quick succession - a reference to the actors who had previously played the role, though the last of these had hitherto only appeared in an earlier title in the Unbound range, Sympathy for the Devil and the previous two referred to the same person.
- 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
Reviews
- Exile reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
- Exile reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
- ↑ Rouner, Jef (September 20, 2013). "Doctor Who: The 10 Best Alternative Universe Doctors". Houston Press. Voice Media Group. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
- ↑