The Exiles (short trip)

For our second foray into the "Whoniverse", we travel the best part of 40 years forward into mid-2003, and the release of the third Big Finish Short Trips anthology. Short Trips were a series of books containing short stories, generally with one for each incarnation of the Doctor. The Exiles is the first story in the Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors release, and featured the First Doctor and Susan, immediately after leaving Gallifrey, and was written by Lance Parkin.

Our story begins as the Doctor and Susan sprint into the unlit TARDIS, attempting to avoid detection by the Time Lords. The Doctor sets the TARDIS into flight (while in the dark!), and lights an everlasting match -- which, interestingly, he claims to have invented. Our dear Type 40 TARDIS has been in long-term storage, or as the Doctor calls it, "hibernation", and thus requires time to acclimatize to traveling again... Or does the Doctor need time to acclimatize to operating one? At any rate, he seems troubled about exploring further than the console room, and insists Susan sleep on a chair in there.

Susan also mentions the Doctor's past as a Time Lord ambassador -- a role in which we assume the previous adventures in our journey took place. Anyway, in standard companion style, Susan ignores the Doctor and heads off to explore the TARDIS while he's sleeping. Typical. Now, the TARDIS apparently turns into a homage to Harry Potter... Which I blame on the First Doctor's poor piloting skills. Susan encounters the mirror of erised, which shows her how bloody awful Time Lord robes look. Lovely. So, of course, in true Room of Requirement fashion, Susan immediately discovers the TARDIS wardrobe, which we later see in... Most regeneration episodes from the 80s onward.

Ah! Now we have Susan discovering and putting together her iconic (and a tad drab) outfit of the early seasons. In her endless and overwhelming vanity, she immediately returns to the mirror... Only to reveal a creature that oddly resembles a vampire inside of it! Lovely. He seems to have lost his watch, since he says it's not the time, and kisses Susan's hand in what we can only assume is a creepy way to glance at her watch. And, well, that's pretty much it. Susan runs off back to the control room, the Doctor gives a timey-wimey explanation about how the mirror-creature is an echo of time, and off they head on adventures!

What's particularly interesting here is how the mirror-creature ties into a later Short Trip (Echo) by the same author, featuring Ace. I won't spoil it here (we've got many years of posts to go before we get that far), but the creature has apparently been inhabiting the TARDIS for hundreds of years between these points. Perhaps the Doctor needs a good spring clean? But all in all, The Exiles is an interesting take on the Doctor's departure from Gallifrey, and focusing on Susan is a refreshing change.

Stay tuned, as tomorrow we'll be discussing The Beginning, a Big Finish Companion Chronicle (read: hour-ish long audio) set during this first voyage! As always, this blog is in memory of and dedicated to Robert Quine, the best guitarist ever to exist. More on him on Saturday.