Exile
Trapped by the Time Lords and tried for the crime of interfering in history, the Doctor is scheduled to be exiled to Earth - but he escapes into his TARDIS and leaves Gallifrey. Not that this really does him much good, as he winds up trapped on Earth anyway. A few incarnations later, the Doctor’s situation has become even more unsettling - he has not only changed bodies, but changed gender as well. Without her TARDIS, the Doctor becomes bored, listless, and - with the help of two friends she makes on a job she takes to eke out a meager existence - perhaps just a little bit alcoholic. Or perhaps a lot - the Doctor begins to see and hear her previous (male) incarnation, warning her of alien invasions and labyrinthine plots against modern-day Earth. When the Time Lords send two agents to track the Doctor down and bring her back to justice (though they don’t know that the Doctor is now a woman), the only thing standing between the Doctor and her doom is an increasing reliance on the bottle. When it comes right down to it, which oblivion will the Doctor choose?
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsCast: Arabella Weir (The Doctor), Hannah Smith (Cherrie), Jeremy James (Cheese), Toby Longworth (Time Lord #1), David Tennant (Time Lord #2), Graham Duff (Mr. Baggit), Nicholas Briggs (The previous Doctor)
Timeline: after Logopolis - the Doctor’s sacrifice in that episode is said to be a suicide, and a non-fatal suicide attempt triggers not only a regeneration, but a gender change, in Time Lords!
Review: I try to avoid spoilers and discussions about Big Finish’s Doctor Who audios before I have the chance to hear them myself, but it was almost impossible to do so where Exile was concerned. Message boards and mailing lists glowed white-hot with speculation of which actress would make a good Doctor, then whether or not comedienne and author Arabella Weir was a good choice, and then just how bad everyone seemed to think that Exile was. I had to set aside some personal distaste for stories treating alcoholism as something less than serious, until I realized that the story actually addresses that and takes a game swipe at resolving it. The point of all this is: it was hard to listen to Exile with zero prejudice. But I was so stunned by the fan reaction that I was determined to get through the story and find something good about it. (more…)
Martin Bannister, in 1961, was voted one of the Times‘ ten most promising young writers for his innovative stage plays. But he tried to venture into television, and was recruited for a new BBC science fiction program called Doctor Who. Despite his extraordinary efforts to define the show’s characters, themes and parameters, Martin watched as Doctor Who made it as far as one failed pilot episode before being abandoned by the BBC. Now, 40 years later, Martin is confined to a nursing home, subjected to unsettling visits by his adult son, who’s still bitter that Martin divorced his mother when he was only six. Martin isn’t sure what is the truth and what isn’t from what his son tells him, and this isn’t the only place he’s having problems with reality - he imagines a burgeoning romance with a nurse, he imagines that he’s being tapped to write the celebratory 40th anniversary comeback of Doctor Who (but why celebrate a show that was never made?), and he imagines that he is the Doctor, that most mysterious traveler in time and space. Will Martin Bannister trade his unpromising reality for an unrealized fantasy?
During his trial, the Doctor struggles with the Valeyard and becomes trapped in the Matrix as Melanie watches in horror - and the other Time Lords, including a newly elected Lord President, watch with distant interest and no desire to interfere. Mel insists on trying to rescue the Doctor, but finds no interest from the Time Lords, who plan to watch the unfurling of the Doctor’s history with detached curiosity should the Valeyard win. And indeed the Valeyard does win, but he doesn’t limit himself to the Matrix - and he doesn’t stop with killing the Doctor. The Valeyard interferes with time and destroys Gallifrey itself, and even goes back and kills the fourth Doctor en route to Logopolis. That act begins to unravel the Valeyard’s own history, however - and in trying to go back and restore his past timeline as the Doctor, he may destroy the web of time itself.
2039 A.D.: After encountering rumors of illegal genetic experiments being conducted by the U.S. military under the cover of the Deep-sea Energy Exploration Project, the Doctor drops in with the TARDIS and confirms his worst fears. The ruthless General Flint has been using Professor Vollmer’s ecologically friendly energy experiments, harnessing power from undersea geothermal vents, as a cover for experiments that even the Army has now disavowed. Faced with the impending end of his secret project, Flint has Vollmer injected with a cocktail of accelerated DNA cultivated from sea creatures, his last chance to prove the value of his project. To prevent Vollmer’s mutation into an amphibious life form, the Doctor kills him, but not before Vollmer makes the Doctor promise to look after his daughter. General Flint confiscates the Doctor’s TARDIS key, forcing the Time Lord to abandon the seabase in an escape submarine before Flint’s plan comes to a deadly end: radioactive dirty bombs detonate around the DEEP base, ensuring that even the most curious and determined explorer can’t get near it. 
On the eve of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, the TARDIS materializes near a traditional English pub. The Doctor, reeling from his ordeal at the hands of the Time Lords after his trial for interfering in the course of history, wanders into the pub to find that it’s run by the retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - embittered after years of having to run UNIT’s fight against the unknown without any help. Just as the two become uneasily reacquainted, they hear a low-flying jet smash into something nearby, and yet they never see it. When they arrive at the hillside into which something has crashed, the Doctor and the Brigadier realize it’s a Chinese spy plane using some sort of stealth technology that renders it invisible, not just to radar but to the human eye. UNIT quickly arrives, under the command of the brash Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood - an old adversary of the Brigadier’s - and takes over a nearby monastery, monks and all, to use as a temporary command post. The Doctor slowly grows to realize that something more than espionage is going on here - but by the time he realizes who’s behind it, it will already be too late…and this time even the Brigadier doesn’t trust him enough to lend a hand.
On the planet Gallifrey, oblivious to the coming inauguration of the new President of the High Council, an author known only as the Doctor spends most of his days in an illegal Possibility Generator, researching and reliving events from the history of a primitive world called Earth, upon which his books are based. As his robotic drudge Badger tends to his needs, the Doctor stays in seclusion and fends off the recurring visits of his dreaded great-grand-uncle, Ordinal-General Quences, who has long harbored an ambition of maneuvering the Doctor into the presidency to gain prestige and influence for their family. Another member of the Doctor’s family, claiming to be his great granddaughter Susan, appears, and the Doctor learns that Susan is the new President-elect, and Quences hopes to follow her into a life of prestige. Having dreamt for years of stealing a TARDIS and fleeing Gallifrey with Susan under his wing, the Doctor finally rebels against Quences by overloading the Possibility Generator and flooding the Capitol with its alternate realities. Now, at last, perhaps the Doctor can escape his staid life - or perhaps he won’t. And perhaps Susan will come with him - or perhaps she won’t.