Susan Denholm

Petra Elliott as Sue, as portrayed in promo images for season one

**Susan Denholm**, better known as "Sue", is one of the main characters of *Night Terrace*, portrayed by Australian actor Petra Elliott.

## Biography

### Background

Sue claims to have raised herself in a Taiwanese circus, teaching herself English by watching sit-coms. She hates them as a result. (*NT* Two: "Situational Awareness")

She spent a gap year in London, where she also learned to hate the long-running radio soap opera *The Fletchers*, competing with her housemates to turn off the radio the quickest whenever it came on. (*NT* Two: "Sense & Susceptibility")

### At the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T.

Sue joined the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T. hoping to work as a field agent, but mostly worked on internal projects, including recruitment. (*Hello! My Name is Eddie*: "The Job of a Lifetime of Death") When Anastasia Black "retired" and was manipulated into buying her house, Sue was assigned to the Night Terrace project with Paul and the computer WANDA, monitoring Anastasia and her house using data spoors and superstring resonance telegraphy. Once the house disappeared, Sue was given the task of operating the projected actuality device to manifest in a variety of forms, guiding Anastasia and Eddie with the goal of helping them to stay alive long enough to figure out how to control the house. (*NT* One: "Home") On her first such assignment, appearing as an alien on the planet Tranquillos, she was stumped for an appropriate alias and chose "Sue" as a contraction of "pseudonym". (*NT* One: "Moving House")

Sue's D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T. training included espionage, lock-picking, knowledge of aliens and alternate universes, mechanical engineering (though that might have been her university degree) and general science.

### Following Anastasia into nothingness

When the house disappeared into the alien disco reality, Sue and Bob detected anomalies in space and time that suggested something cataclysmic might happen. Sue set all the controls in the projected actuality device to zero, which worked - she was projected into Auguste Night's bubble universe. But as that universe was an empty void, it couldn't create a local analogue for Sue, and instead she was transported there in person. She met Eddie, and explained the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T.'s involvement in his travels with Anastasia. She helped the two of them will the destroyed Night Terrace house back into existence, allowing all three to escape before Auguste's universe collapsed. Having grown tired and afraid of the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T., Sue gladly removed the data spoors so they couldn't be tracked, and joined the pair on their travels. (*NT* One: "Home")

### Joining Anastasia and Eddie

Having had similar training to Anastasia, the pair mostly worked well as a team, but Sue often felt she knew better than her older colleague and the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T.'s ruthless influence hadn't entirely worn off. While investigating an alien persuasion machine at the BBC in 1955, she used the machine's influence to win an argument about whether they should destroy it(*NT* Two: "Sense & Susceptibility") - something she later seemed ashamed of, but did not own up to. (*NT* Two: "Ancient History") Sue relished the chance her new adventures gave her to use her field agent training: picking locks, examining technology and disarming guards aboard the starship *Implausible*,(*NT* Two: "Full Steam") building and fixing things quickly while the house was stuck in the Einstein-Rosen-Wimberley bridge,(*NT* Two: "Things That Go Bump in the Night Terrace") and using D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T. standard training by adopting a pseudonym and giving enigmatic answers when captured by an unknown group in ancient Gaul. (*NT* Two: "Ancient History") This camaraderie with Anastasia often made her disdainful of Eddie's idiocy and naivety, exacerbating his feeling that he had become a "third wheel". When he went missing, however, Sue was quick to leap to his defence, criticising Anastasia for seemingly abandoning him. (*NT* Two: "The Edification of Anastasia Black")

In the paradise reality created by the collision of the houses, Sue was reduced to a voice on the radio, forced to announce Eddie's ever more unlikely reign at the top of the music charts. Her personality remained strong enough that she tried to get Anastasia to wake up, though she was silenced when Anastasia decided she wanted to stay. After she, Eddie and the original house were restored, she felt very tired and went to bed...only to wake up in the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T. She was greeted by Mr King, who told her she had "never left". (*NT* Two: "Home Again")

### Personality

Sue is confident, adventurous and forthright, perhaps even a little arrogant. She generally thinks her way is best, and rarely concedes she is wrong. She dislikes chaos and nonsense, and prefers to change things to suit her idea of order.

All Sue's metaphors are margarita based - according to Paul. (*NT* One: "Home")

## Relationships

At the D.E.P.A.R.T.M.E.N.T., Sue worked closely with Paul and WANDA, and also had a friendly relationship with one of the security guards, Jeff.

## Appearances

Sue appears in every episode of *Night Terrace* except *Discoworld*, and also in the *Hello! My Name is Eddie* episode *The Job of a Lifetime of Death*. She will be the main character in the Untitled MiniSueries being made alongside series three of *Night Terrace*.

## Quotes

* "My name is...a pseudonym. A. Pseudonym. No, Psue - D'Nim. Sue D Nim. Sue. My name is Sue. It's Sue."
* "Of course we haven't [met]. That was a completely different person on the planet Tranquillos. Not me at all."
* "Sometimes blowing bad stuff up is the best you can hope for!"
* "...I don't think anyone knows what a spleen can do, do they?"
* "Or am I?", "Or is it?", "Or will you?" and every other annoying version of this you can think of.

## Trivia

* While using the projected actuality device, "Sue" appeared to the housemates as an alien(*NT* One: "Moving House"), a future human(*NT* One: "Starship Australis"), a murdered countess(*NT* One: "Time of Death"), the voice of an internal business communication system(*NT* One: "The Outsourcing"), a robot(*NT* One: "Sound & Führer"), and an ancient Australian bird. (*NT* One: "The Last Hunt")
* Though Eddie and Anastasia hear an announcer voice in the alien disco that sounds to them like Sue, it was not actually her; the projected actuality device was unable to reach Night Terrace while it was in the alien artificial universe. (*NT* One: "Discoworld")

## References

 *Auguste Night* · *Horatio Gray*