What Ever Happened To… Susan Foreman? | Doctor Who TV What Ever Happened To… Susan Foreman? June 16, 2013 Guest contributor Gustaff wonders what happened to Susan. “Well, I made up the name TARDIS from the initials: Time And Relative Dimension In Space.” – Susan This Time Lady was born Arkytior, which incidentally means ‘Rose’ in High Gallifreyan, but later adopted the alias Susan Foreman and maintained it throughout the rest of her life. Susan was the granddaughter of the Doctor, his first travelling companion. Her departure from the TARDIS was forced onto her by her grandfather who thought that she needed to leave to pursue a normal life with a man she fell in love with. Roughly twenty years after being left behind on earth, Susan was briefly reunited with the Doctor in the Death Zone and met several of his future incarnations. Susan’s life after the Doctor also contains contradictions of all sorts. The novel Legacy of the Daleks reveals that she told David she wasn’t human. Legacy of the Daleks also tells us that Susan adopted three war orphans because she was unable to conceive.

She worked as a peace officer and had to disguise herself later in her life to look younger because she didn’t age as nippily as everyone else. The Earthly Child contradicts the above account and establishes that she and David Campbell married and had at least one child together, a boy named Alex. This account also contradicts the statement that Susan told David that she wasn’t human. Susan and Alex continued to live on earth after David died. She briefly encountered the Eighth Doctor and wondered if Alex would be allowed an education on Gallifrey, but the Doctor expressed worry that Alex’s ‘half-human’ heritage would cause problems. After the Doctor left, Susan and Alex stayed on earth to make peace with humanity. The Doctor, still in his eighth body, returned six months later and had Christmas dinner with Lucie, Susan and Alex. Afterwards, Lucie elected to travel the world with Alex and the Doctor left. The Daleks invaded and he returned. Susan helped her grandfather, along with Lucie and Alex, defeat the Daleks, but the battle resulted in the deaths of both Lucie Miller and Alex Campbell. Susan was offered the chance to travel with the Doctor again, but refused. The eventual fate of Susan Foreman is also contradicting.

The Doctor explained to Rose that his ‘whole’ family was dead after the Time War. Whether or not he was including Susan is left up to speculation as there is still a debate over Susan being the biological granddaughter of the Doctor. The Forgotten tells us that the Doctor, now in his Tenth body, wasn’t sure if Susan was still alive or not as he hadn’t checked. This seems to imply that she wasn’t part of the Time War at all. So Which Is The Real Susan Foreman? Unfortunately, the television series has yet to give reference to Susan, though some fans believe that the Doctor will indeed go back for Susan in the upcoming 50th Anniversary or feel that she should be included in the special in some way. So without any television references, the bits and pieces from the various media may be used to conceive a coherent aftermath for Susan Foreman. This Author’s Take Personally I am against the Legacy of the Daleks approach as I count both the television series and the Big Finish stories as canon first before expanding into other media. Therefore, I accept that Susan had a child named Alex. As for her fate, I cannot be sure. I’d like to accept The Forgotten theory as it leaves the possibility of a Susan Foreman return open.

I still haven’t forgotten that Susan still has all of her regenerations left, unless, like River Song, she regenerated into the Susan form prior to The Unearthly Child. Although this author believes that this theory would probably enrage some (I mean a lot of) fans. /p> This has been the ‘What ever happened’ article on Susan Foreman. What do you think happened? Novel or Audio? Time War or The Forgotten? Thank you for reading. Susan Foreman | Neo Encyclopedia Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia No Title No information Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who . The granddaughter and original companion of the First Doctor , she was played by actress Carole Ann Ford from 1963 to 1964, in the show's first season and the first two stories of the second season. She returned for the feature-length 20th anniversary episode The Five Doctors in 1983. Contents [ show ] Background Susan was the first ever on-screen companion of the Doctor and she stayed on Earth after the Dalek Invasion in the 22nd century. Susan is the granddaughter of the Time Lord known as the Doctor .

Her last name of Foreman is an alias taken from the junkyard, owned by an "I. M. Foreman" at 76 Totter's Lane, where she and the Doctor lived (in the TARDIS ) during their time in London in 1963. The original outline for the series did not intend the pair to be related, but writer Anthony Coburn created the family tie. According to founding producer Verity Lambert , “...Coburn felt there was something not quite proper about an old man travelling around the galaxy with a young girl for a companion.” [1] The Doctor explains in " An Unearthly Child " (the very first episode of Doctor Who and a title often used for the first four-part serial) that he and Susan are exiles from their own people. Susan adds, "I was born in another time, another world". Susan claims to have coined the name for the TARDIS, the Doctor's time machine, [2] though later episodes seemed to indicate that it was a widely used term among Time Lords.

(The non-broadcast pilot version of "An Unearthly Child" contained different dialogue, including a statement that Susan was born in the 49th century.) Susan's age is given as 15. In The Sensorites (1964), the Doctor, when encountering an unconscious young human woman, remarks that "she's only a few years older than Susan," suggesting that Susan is the age of a normal secondary school student. [3] Character history The Doctor and Susan had already been travelling for an unspecified amount of time, before they decide to settle in London to make repairs on the TARDIS; Susan states that she and her grandfather have been in London for five months. Susan also alludes to several previous adventures to Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright in the course of their shared adventures; both on various alien planets and on Earth in various past time periods (such as encountering a wrathful King Henry VIII ). Susan begins to attend the Coal Hill School in Shoreditch , where her advanced knowledge of history and science attract the attention of schoolteachers Barbara and Ian.

Attempting to solve the mystery of the "unearthly child," Ian and Barbara follow Susan back to the junkyard, where they hear her voice coming from what appears to be a police box . When they investigate further, they discover that the police box exterior hides the much larger interior of the TARDIS, and are whisked away on an adventure in time and space with the Doctor and Susan, against their will. Susan continues to travel with the Doctor and her two teachers until the 1964 serial, The Dalek Invasion of Earth . During the events of that story, Susan falls in love with David Campbell, a young freedom fighter in the 22nd century. However, Susan feels that she has to stay with and take care of her grandfather. The Doctor, realizing that Susan is now a grown woman and deserves a future away from him, locks her out of the TARDIS and leaves after a tearful farewell. [4] Carole Ann Ford had expressed a desire to leave the series as she felt the character of Susan was too limiting.

Ford reprised the role of Susan on television in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983), but no mention of David, or what became of him, was made. [5] In The Curse of Fenric (1989), the Seventh Doctor states that he does not know if he has any family, which may indicate uncertainty of Susan's whereabouts. [6] In 2005's " The End of the World " the Ninth Doctor states that his home world has been destroyed and that he is the last of the Time Lords. [7] Although Susan is not mentioned by name, the Doctor says in " Father's Day " that his "whole family" died, [8] and in " The Empty Child " a character remarks he has been a father and grandfather, but no more, and the Ninth Doctor replies "I know the feeling." [9] In " The Age of Steel ", Mrs Moore asks the Doctor if he has any family, to which he replies "Who needs family? I've got the whole world on my shoulders." [10] In " Fear Her ," the Tenth Doctor states he "was a dad once," but does not elaborate further.

In " The Doctor's Daughter " the Tenth Doctor says that he had "been a father before" and is still hurt by their deaths. In " The Sound of Drums ", the Tenth Doctor discusses with the Master the fact that they each chose their own names. [11] In Susan's case, it is unknown where hers comes from. In " The Beast Below ", Amy asks the Eleventh Doctor if he has any kids. The Doctor does not reply, but the question clearly makes him very uncomfortable. In " A Good Man Goes to War ", Amy asks again if the Doctor has children, to which he replies 'No'. When Amy rephrases the question and asks if he ever had any children, the Doctor quickly changes the subject, again looking very uncomfortable. Relationship to the Doctor Susan is generally assumed to be Gallifreyan like the Doctor as well as his natural granddaughter. Her description of her home planet in The Sensorites (1964) matches the Tenth Doctor's much later descriptions of Gallifrey, [3] and she is fully familiar with the history and landscape of Gallifrey's Time Lord society when she and the First Doctor are transported to "the Death Zone" in The Five Doctors.

[5] Although it has never been explicitly established whether she can regenerate (it is usually assumed that she can), she does display telepathic ability on one occasion (The Sensorites). [3] In the commentary to the BBC's DVD release of An Unearthly Child, actress Carole Ann Ford points out that suggestions that Susan was not the Doctor's natural granddaughter were only first put forward in the 1990s. She reveals that little background information on Susan's character or past history was provided to her by the production team, and so to inform her performance, she would often discuss and invent ideas about Susan with co-star William Hartnell. Appearances in other media Terrance Dicks ' novelisation of his serial The Five Doctors states that Susan has been taken from a point twenty years after The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and that she and David have three children. A marketplace scene was considered for the broadcast version of this story, but never filmed. In 1983, Doctor Who's then-script editor Eric Saward wrote a short story dealing with the Doctor's departure from Gallifrey for the Radio Times Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Special.

This story, "Birth of a Renegade", depicts Susan as a descendant of Time Lord founder Rassilon and the last surviving member of Gallifrey's royal family, unrelated to the Doctor. Later Doctor Who spin-offs have generally ignored this account, though the story depicts Susan collapsing the Master's TARDIS around him with his own tissue compression eliminator, leaving him in a state very similar to the one in which he is found in his next televised appearance, Planet of Fire (albeit with a throw-away line giving a different explanation of it). A later script editor, Andrew Cartmel , had another explanation of Susan's origins. This account, part of the " Cartmel Masterplan ", was not used in the programme, but was used as background for several of the Virgin New Adventures novels, most notably Lungbarrow by Marc Platt . In this version, Susan is the granddaughter of the mysterious Gallifreyan founder known as the Other , who may have been reincarnated as the Doctor. The Doctor had travelled back to the dawn of Time Lord civilisation and rescued Susan, who recognised him as her grandfather. The Doctor did not initially recognise her, but knew that this was somehow true.

This version of Susan's origins is reflected in many other Doctor Who spin-offs. On 9 July 1994, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? , a humorous investigation into Susan's background. In this radio drama, Susan is portrayed by Jane Asher . Ford herself reprised the role of Susan in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time . Ford also played an alternate version of Susan in the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who Unbound audio plays Auld Mortality and A Storm of Angels , in which Susan has become President of Gallifrey. In the Doctor Who Unbound play Exile , an alternative Doctor, whose latest regeneration was female (played by Arabella Weir ), settles on Earth in 2003 using the identity and 1963 school records of Susan Foreman. In a 1964 novelisation of the serial The Daleks , written by Doctor Who script editor David Whitaker , Susan's last name is changed from "Foreman" to "English". A version of Susan, portrayed by Roberta Tovey and much younger than her television portrayal, appears in the two Doctor Who film adaptations: Dr.

Who and the Daleks and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD . The film Doctor (named " Dr Who ") is a human inventor, so one may infer this Susan is also human. Rather than being her teacher, Barbara is her older sister. Ian Chesterton is portrayed as Barbara's somewhat comically inept boyfriend, and also not a teacher. No last name is given for this version of the character; some movie listings[ citation needed ] imply that her name is "Susan Who". Big Finish Productions released an audio drama in December 2009 titled An Earthly Child , that featured Susan (played by Ford) reuniting with her grandfather, in the form of Paul McGann 's Eighth Doctor ; also appearing is Jake McGann as Susan's son, Alex. Susan appears twice during the course of IDW Comics' "Doctor Who: The Forgotten" series, first in a flashback to the First Doctor's lifetime, then at the end, as the TARDIS' matrix takes her form at The Doctor's request. BBC Books The Past Doctor Adventures novel The Time Travellers by Simon Guerrier gives an explanation for why the Doctor left Susan.

During the events of that novel, the Doctor becomes involved in the British Army's time travel experiments, which risk him being noticed by the Time Lords. He then resolves to begin looking for a place where Susan can be safe and content so that if he is ever apprehended by their people, she will still be free. Susan reappears in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel , which takes place after the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. At the end of that novel, Susan comes into possession of the Master 's TARDIS after he tries to capture her, and is once again able to roam time and space. In the Eighth Doctor Adventure Sometime Never... by Justin Richards , the Eighth Doctor's adopted daughter Miranda reappears with her own daughter Zezanne. At the novel's end, Zezanne and another character, Soul (who has duplicated the Doctor's identity), escape in a time machine which lands in 1963 London, taking the form of a police box. Zezanne, her memory hazy, accepts the "Doctor" as her grandfather.

Whether this is the Doctor and Susan's origin story or that Soul and Zezanne have landed in an alternate universe is uncertain, even within the continuity of the novels. Telos novellas According to the Telos novella Frayed by Tara Samms (a pen name for Stephen Cole ), which takes place prior to the serial An Unearthly Child, Jill, a young girl in a besieged human medical facility on the planet Iwa, meets and named the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, after Jill's mother. The Telos novella Time and Relative by Kim Newman takes place just prior to An Unearthly Child. It involves Susan and several of her classmates from Coal Hill School trying to survive an alien invasion of Earth by a race of ice beings called the Cold and at the same time convince the Doctor to stop the attack. Other mentions Susan is mentioned by the Third Doctor in Planet of the Daleks , the Sixth Doctor in Attack of the Cybermen and the Seventh Doctor in The Curse of Fenric , and a vision of Susan is seen along with every other companion up until that point aside from Leela and Kamelion on the scanner screen in Resurrection of the Daleks .

List of appearances "Susan Foreman" | Tardis | Fandom powered by Wikia Carole Ann Ford You may wish to consult Susan for other, similarly-named pages. "Susan" was the assumed name of a Time Lady who was the original companion and granddaughter of the Doctor . She travelled with him during his first incarnation and reunited with him during his fifth ( TV : The Five Doctors ) and eighth incarnations . ( PROSE : Legacy of the Daleks ; AUDIO : An Earthly Child , et al.) At different times in her life she was known as "Susan Foreman", "Susan English" and "Susan Campbell", but she was usually called simply "Susan". According to one source, all of these names were aliases; her birth name was Arkytior. ( PROSE : Roses ) Contents Edit On her home planet of Gallifrey , she was born with another name. ( PROSE : Frayed ) Arkytior was her real name. It meant " rose " in High Gallifreyan .

( PROSE : Roses ) Susan specifically identified the Doctor as her grandfather, ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ", " The Escape ") as did Barbara Wright , ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ", " Hidden Danger ") Ian Chesterton , ( TV : " The Ambush ", " Kidnap ") Ping-Cho ( TV : " The Wall of Lies ") and the First Doctor himself, ( TV : " The Brink of Disaster ") while the First Doctor considered Susan to be his grandchild, ( TV : " The Rescue ", Marco Polo , The Sensorites , " Flashpoint ") as did the Fifth Doctor , ( AUDIO : The Toy ) the Eighth Doctor ( AUDIO : Relative Dimensions ) and the First Elder . ( TV : " Hidden Danger ") In his eleventh incarnation , the Doctor later recalled coming to the Rings of Akhaten "a long time ago with my granddaughter". ( TV : The Rings of Akhaten ) Though she appeared a teenager to human eyes she met Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, one account stated Susan was older than Ian and Barbara combined.

( AUDIO : Here There Be Monsters ) However, according to the First Doctor, by the time she was on Maitland's ship with Ian and Barbara, she was a few years younger than the young human Carol Richmond . ( TV : " Strangers in Space ") Susan herself told Ping-Cho that she was "in [her] sixteenth year". ( TV : " The Roof of the World ") However, there were other accounts which cast doubt on their biological relationship. One, related by the Master , described Susan as Lady Larn, a contemporary of the Doctor whom he had rescued from civil strife on Gallifrey. ( PROSE : Birth of a Renegade ) Another intimated that she was one of the last children born on Gallifrey before Pythia's Curse . She was sent away from Gallifrey by the Other — her grandfather — during the Great Schism to Tersurus . She later returned to Gallifrey to search for him, where she met the Doctor, whom she recognised as her grandfather, reborn. ( PROSE : Lungbarrow ) A different account said that the Doctor was indeed the Doctor's granddaughter. In his "original" fifth incarnation, he was present when she was born.

( PROSE : Cold Fusion ) Susan attended a ritual with the Doctor in Arcadia where the Master gave her a toy. The toy was in reality a communication node in which the Master intended to use to locate the Doctor if he ever left Gallifrey. ( AUDIO : The Toy ) Departure from Gallifrey The First Doctor and Susan left together when they purloined a faulty TARDIS from the repair shop beneath the Capitol. ( TV : The Name of the Doctor , AUDIO : The Beginning ) The Doctor had brought the flying trunk containing the Hand of Omega with him and Susan had brought basic luggage from her house. Armed guards chased the fugitive Doctor and Susan into the repair shop, where the only place for them to hide was a line of TARDISes. Susan walked into one TARDIS, but the Doctor didn't follow her inside. After Susan heard voices outside, the Doctor urged her to go inside the cylinder next to it instead. ( AUDIO : The Beginning ) The Doctor was being advised by a version of Clara Oswald to steal the Type 40 with a faulty navigation system instead of the one Susan had walked inside, as it would be much more fun.

This account also showed the Doctor already wearing Victorian era dress before he visited Earth . ( TV : The Name of the Doctor ) The Doctor speculated that the TARDIS was deregistered, and that was how it slipped through Gallifrey's transduction barrier and how they evaded the Time Lords. This account stated the Doctor and Susan already went by these names when they left Gallifrey. ( AUDIO : The Beginning ) Their initial trip in the TARDIS was the first time the Doctor had ever piloted a TARDIS. ( PROSE : The Exiles , AUDIO : The Beginning ) According to one account, the Doctor chose to travel through time , rather than just space . During that first bumpy flight, Susan could not sleep, and began to explore the TARDIS interior. She found a mirror in the wardrobe room that reflected the image of a young man. He stepped out of the mirror, bared a pair of fangs at her, told her she was "not the one", and disappeared. The Doctor speculated that she had seen an echo through the vortex of something happening in another time.

( PROSE : The Exiles ) According to another account, the Doctor and Susan were thrown onto the TARDIS control panel as the TARDIS was seemingly being torn apart. When the Doctor was able to reach for the button marked "flight stabiliser", Susan collapsed shortly after the engines were stabilised. The Doctor tended to Susan as she slept, and used his jacket as a makeshift pillow for her before she reawakened. Susan then explored the TARDIS as the Doctor tended to the ship's controls. She tripped over a rigger's work case and brought it back to the Doctor when the TARDIS had run out of power. Inside the work case, the Doctor found an artron cell and attached it to the drive system to power an emergency landing. After finding a nearby world, the TARDIS appeared to take over and brought them to the Moon . ( AUDIO : The Beginning ) Long after she had stopped travelling with her grandfather, she described herself as "an accidental passenger" and "a hanger-on" in this first journey from Gallifrey. ( AUDIO : Here There Be Monsters ) Meeting humans Edit According to one account, the Doctor and Susan's first destination was a vivarium beneath the surface of the Moon.

Before walking outside, they were confronted by Quadrigger Stoyn , who had become an unwitting passenger and had part of his face burned when the TARDIS took off. Stoyn's job was to take apart the TARDIS' engines before it was sent to be vaporised, but the TARDIS had run out of power, stranding them. The Doctor took the dematerialisation circuit so Stoyn wouldn't leave them behind and they explored the strange location. The Doctor, Susan and Stoyn were taken out of the tank and realised they were in a massive cavern filled with vivariums carefully-preserved specimens. The Archaeons had been seeding primitive planets such as the Earth with life by firing red lightning from the Moon, creating an established order out of the chaos and nurturing the early lifeforms under controlled conditions. While checking to see if the TARDIS was a threat, the Archaeons began taking it apart. They took the TARDIS' temporal stasis capacitor while it was still attached to the power source. This caused the stasis field to breach, freezing the Doctor, Susan, Stoyn and the Archaeons in time, allowing the TARDIS to recharge itself.

450 million years later, humans had evolved on the Earth until they established a lunar colony, Giant Leap Base . A group of humans from Giant Leap Base broke the stasis field, taking the Doctor and Susan on board their lunar rover , where they came to. According to one account, the Doctor and Susan learnt about the Earth's history through a " first contact induction video" Susan had been provided while on board the rover. With the dematerialisation circuit still in the Doctor's possession, the Archaeons had sent nematodes , which didn't affect the Time Lords, to kill all of the humans on the rover. When the Archaeons, found the life they had "seeded" had become disorderly and "run rampant", no longer matching their carefully-planned vision, they "purged" the humans on the lunar base and on the Earth with lightning . The Doctor, who was blamed for the disruption of the Archaeons' experiments, was brought back to the cavern. Meanwhile, the humans retaliated against the Archaeons with missiles . After the Doctor went inside the TARDIS, evading the distracted Archaeons, Stoyn tried taking Susan with him, but she refused and ran inside the TARDIS.

With the dematerialisation circuit in place, the Doctor and Susan left without Stoyn, as the Doctor felt that he was just as willing to abandon them. Another barrage of missiles breached the atmosphere of the Archaeons' cavern, destroying their weaponry; the Archaeons were pulled outside, though Susan saw Stoyn struggle to reach the rover. Afterwards, the Doctor continuously watched the video about the Earth's history and evolution inside the TARDIS, marvelling at the planet's abundance. He promised it would be his next destination. Instead, his next stop was a place with a blue sun and air like wine. It took several trips before he reached the Earth again. ( AUDIO : The Beginning ) According to another account, the first time "Susan" and her grandfather met humans was on the planet Iwa . They were separated. In his search for Susan, the Doctor found a human medical colony. The principal work of the facility, called " the Refuge ", was to rehabilitate patients identified as " Future Deviants ". By undergoing dream therapy, it was hoped that such individuals would not become criminals. The Doctor soon learned the residents were besieged by fox-like aliens who could disintegrate and reconstitute their bodies.

Taking him inside their compound, the humans stripped him of his clothes and burned them, citing possible contamination by the "foxes". They gave him new clothes drawn from their own supply. This meant that he was now wearing the garb of a doctor. When they assumed that he was sent by Earth to help them, he agreed. Not wishing to give them his real name, he referenced his new clothes to derive a title: "the Doctor". He agreed to help them with their "fox problem" if they would help him find his granddaughter. They discovered "Susan" had become trapped in the colonists' "dream chambers", medical devices that put patients into deep sleep and linked them in one communal dream. Inside the dream chamber, the Doctor's granddaughter met a human colonist named Jill, who promptly gave the young girl the name "Susan", after Jill's own mother. Eventually the newly named Doctor and Susan were reunited. They helped the colonists broker an uneasy peace with the foxes. They left the colony, deciding to retain the names they had gained there. The Doctor was deeply impressed by humans during this initial encounter.

He told Susan they should find a way to settle amongst them for a while, so that he could study them and they could maintain a low profile on the run from the Time Lords . ( PROSE : Frayed ) The Doctor and Susan travelled to Quinnis where she was interested in a local type of fish. She met Meedla who told her why Bridgetown was on stilts, due to the dangerous ground. When the Doctor was asked to make rain, she spent most of the time running backwards and forwards to the TARDIS . She found out that Meedla was a bird of omen who delighted in the misfortune of the town. After they found the TARDIS after it had been swept away in a flood the Doctor gave her the Blitzen fish that she was interested in. ( AUDIO : Quinnis ) At one point Susan had to adventure out of the TARDIS to find medical help for the Doctor when he became ill. When she landed on Rua she discovered that she couldn't find any anti-biotics because they had superseded such medicines using nano-technology. She was later chased by a robot, but was in fact a police man Kendrick .

Because of her expertise in nanotechnology she helped Kendrick to stop the Butcher but she became upset when Kendrick killed the Butcher. ( AUDIO : The Sleeping Blood ) Giving humans a try Edit Some time after this first meeting with humans , but before taking up residence at 76 Totter's Lane , Susan and the Doctor began to study Earth and humans more closely. The precise order of these events was unclear. One of their first trips to Earth was to the British coastal town of Keelmouth in 1933 . There, they vacationed at a bed and breakfast called " Bide-a-Wee ". Another of its guests was a time traveller named Prentice . He had used his technology to displace Keelmouth in time; the village was in 1933, but the surrounding world was in 1999 . The Doctor and Susan had to convince Prentice to reverse the effect, because his retirement fantasy was not fair to the people he had trapped alongside him. ( PROSE : Bide-a-Wee ) Susan was saved from drowning in a boating accident by the then- retired Brigadier near his house.

( PROSE : The Gift ) The Doctor and Susan went to ancient Rome , Antioch , and Jerusalem . ( PROSE : Byzantium! ) On 16 August 1979 , the dematerialisation circuit was fried while the TARDIS was orbiting Earth. The TARDIS was taken on board a Slarvian transport, and the duo learned that the snail-like species planned to conquer Earth by hatching their eggs all over the planet. Their plan failed because the Slarvian ship crashed into the English Channel , making the threat localised to England . With the help of the humans Linda Grainger and her grandfather Edward , Susan and the Doctor stopped the Slarvian eggs from hatching. ( PROSE : Childhood Living ) At an unknown point before her schooldays, the Doctor took Susan to see the Rings of Akhaten . ( TV : The Rings of Akhaten ) During their travels, she and the Doctor met Noël Coward . ( AUDIO : The Sleeping City ) Shortly before they settled on Totter's Lane, they unwittingly travelled to Paris in the 22nd century .

They became embroiled in political intrigue in the run-up to an election in the city of Urrozdinee . Departing after the incumbent had been killed, they never quite understood that the city they had visited was what had once been known as EuroDisney . ( PROSE : Urrozdinee ) The Doctor and Susan visited Peking during the Boxer Rebellion and used smoke bombs to escape. ( AUDIO : The Flames of Cadiz ) Soon after this, they made a short trip to the planet Tacunda . There, they uncovered a jewel called a " Blessing Star ". This crystal altered the laws of probability around the holder, essentially making their dreams come true. The Doctor tried the device, wishing that he could pilot the TARDIS to 20th century Earth . He was successful at piloting the ship for one of the only times in that incarnation 's existence. Unfortunately, it completely fried the navigational system, stranding the Doctor and Susan in I.M. Foreman 's junk yard in Totter's Lane , London . ( PROSE : The Rag and Bone Man's Story ) Several months before March 1963 , Susan and her grandfather took up residence in London so the Doctor could effect repairs.

( PROSE : Time and Relative ) They travelled to Berlin in 1932 where they went to see Fitz Haber in a scientific institute. She found Berlin confusing. When The Doctor visited the scientist she met Pollitt in a local cafe, but was drugged by him. After the Doctor was kidnapped she enlisted the help of the SA to locate them. She was later interrogated by Pollitt thinking the Doctor was involved in extracting into gold and wanted to know the secret. ( AUDIO : The Alchemists ) Before starting school Edit Susan had a number of adventures before she formally started classes. The Doctor and Susan got lost at night in the dense fog. They met a girl named Joan Calder who sheltered them at her home, where they met her mother and grandfather. During the visit the house burst into flames. On the Doctor's instruction, Susan broke a mirror in the house. The elder Calder crumbled into ash and the fire abated. Although the Doctor never was able to adequately explain the event, it was related to the fact that the house had in fact been levelled during the London Blitz two decades earlier. The Doctor postulated that Susan's action likely saved the lives of Joan and her mother.

( PROSE : Ash ) Just before starting classes at Coal Hill School , Susan and her grandfather took a couple of trips to the European mainland. On one occasion, they went to central Europe in the 16th century . On the way out of the TARDIS, Susan noticed what looked like a meteorite . She tossed it out, thinking it unimportant, but soon came to realise that it was in fact a part of a Liciax ship. When she tried to find what she had carelessly discarded, it was gone. With the help of a man named Lovey, they traced it to Prague , where they found it had been shaped into a golem. It was definitively alive. It was also on a murderous rampage. The Doctor and Susan trapped it in the attic of a Jewish synagogue, placing it under a security system, to which only they knew the access codes. Some four hundred fifty years later, the Fourth Doctor and Romana I returned to retrieve the golem, hoping to take it back to the Liciax homeworld. ( PROSE : Life from Lifelessness ) At another time, they accidentally landed at the BBC 's Paris studios in 1955 because transmissions there had disabled their dematerialisation circuit .

They met a radio comedian named Max Wheeler, the star of a programme called Anyway, As I Say. His recordings were plagued by a distinctive background "hum" caused by ghostly aliens known as the Shakers. These aliens could kill people with sonic resonance — the thing manifesting itself as a "hum" on BBC broadcasts. During World War II , the British saw the Shakers as a useful ally. They recruited the Shakers into the French resistance. In 1955, the Shakers were unaware that the war had ended and were unable to clearly understand who their enemies were. Unfortunately, the audiences laughter during the performance of Anyway As I Say was, because of its precise harmonics, resonating them out of their "homes" in the walls of Broadcasting House, reawakening them to their murderous task. The Doctor and Susan used canned laugh tracks to force the Shakers out of the walls. Though she and her grandfather tried to explain the current reality to them, the Shakers continued to kill indiscriminately. The only course of action was for Susan and the Doctor to alter the harmonics of the canned laughter and kill them with it.

( PROSE : Losing the Audience ) Life as a schoolgirl Susan was enrolled at Coal Hill School ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") in Shoreditch , ( TV : The Day of the Doctor ) where Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright were teachers. Susan took the last name "Foreman" from I.M. Foreman , the name on the gates of the junkyard where the Doctor had hidden his TARDIS. She eagerly sampled the cultural fads of British teenagers. She came to love pop groups such as John Smith and the Common Men . ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") She was also interested in beat poetry . This interest led to two adventures with her grandfather, only one of which she remembered. After witnessing a man explode into a protoplasmic mass at a beat poetry reading, she and her grandfather traced the unusual death to a British government project, Operation Proteus . They discovered the project was being run by an alien named Raldonn , who was mutating humans to turn one into his own species so that he would have a co-pilot to help him fly his ship back home. Unfortunately, his efforts relied on a lethal virus that threatened all London .

After reversing the effects of the virus, the Doctor and Susan returned to the TARDIS in Totter's Lane , whereupon she was taken and then returned to his side without their knowledge. ( COMIC : Operation Proteus ) Susan was taken from her time stream to the year 2082 by the Threshold . They had been hunting time travelling humans to send to their clients, the Lobri , who fed on humanity's base emotions until they could break free of their psychic plane of existence. Because time travellers could survive the journey to the Lobri's "realm", the Threshold had been particularly interested in the Doctor's former companions , like Peri , Sarah Jane , and Ace . Unfortunately, the Threshold didn't realise until after they had captured her that Susan wasn't human. The seventh incarnation of her grandfather had to rescue all his companions from the Threshold's sinister scheme. He was only successful in this effort because Ace sacrificed herself by blowing up the Lobri and herself with Nitro-9 . Grieving the loss of Ace, the Doctor wiped his remaining companions' minds of the event and returned them to their proper times. Susan was returned to the side of her grandfather as they walked back to Totter's Lane after the incident.

( COMIC : Ground Zero ) In October 1963 , Susan made friends with Cedric Chivers and helped her grandfather to destroy a Nazi weapon which distorted sound waves to turn young people against foreigners. ( AUDIO : Hunters of Earth ) Susan enjoying 1960s British music. ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") Susan continued her life as an ordinary teenage girl at Coal Hill School. She tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to fit in with her classmates. ( PROSE : Time and Relative ) This was especially difficult during lessons. There was an obvious imbalance in her knowledge compared with her classmates. She understood advanced physics and chemistry beyond the abilities of her teachers, yet did not know how many shillings made a pound ; she thought the United Kingdom was on the decimal system, which only the United States had in 1963 and hadn't yet been introduced to the UK. Ian claimed Susan would gradually tell of her knowledge to ensure she didn't embarrass her teachers. ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") During this time, she used the Blessing Star , hoping it would help her fit in. Instead, it made her extraordinarily lucky, which only further emphasised the differences between her and her fellows.

In a fit of pique, she buried the Blessing Star in I.M. Foreman's junkyard — an act that would inadvertently help England win the 1966 World Cup . ( PROSE : The Rag and Bone Man's Story ) Travels with Ian and Barbara Edit Susan pleading with her grandfather to release Ian and Barbara from the TARDIS. ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") Susan's individuality may have been more a problem for her teachers than for her. Susan called her five months on Earth "the happiest of [her] life". When Ian and Barbara followed her home one night to find out more of her mysterious home life, they found the TARDIS. The Doctor kidnapped Ian and Barbara and took a reluctant Susan too, travelling to Earth in the Stone Age . The Doctor was taken by Kal , who had seen him produce fire . The others tried to rescue the Doctor, but were taken to the Cave of Skulls . The Old Mother released the Doctor and his companions and they escaped into a nearby forest . Za was injured by an animal when he tried to chase after them. Ian and Barbara took care of Za, but the group were still sent back to the cave.

Ian produced fire for the tribe and devised a way of scaring the cavemen by setting the skulls on fire. The group escaped to the TARDIS, which took off again. ( TV : An Unearthly Child ) When the TARDIS landed on Skaro , the Doctor lied about the fluid link needing more mercury , when there was nothing wrong, so he could explore a nearby city . The Daleks imprisoned the Doctor and his companions inside the city, confiscating the fluid link they brought along. Susan helped the Daleks write an agreement for the Thals , but once they arrived, the Daleks ambushed them, killing the Thal leader, Temmosus . Having escaped, they assisted the Thals in their attack on the Dalek city. The Daleks' power supply was damaged in the attack. The Daleks died and their plans to flood the atmosphere with radiation failed. ( TV : The Daleks ) With the fluid link retrieved, the Doctor left Skaro for Earth, using the fast return switch . The spring in the switch was damaged, causing it to be stuck. The TARDIS was sent to the beginning of a solar system and everyone was knocked out in the trip.

The TARDIS tried warning the crew about the atoms forming around them when they came to, but the Doctor assumed that this was Ian and Barbara's sabotage of the ship. Susan had been affected the worst by what had happened. Once Barbara figured out what was going on, the Doctor fixed the spring, ending the fault. ( TV : " The Rescue ", The Edge of Destruction ) Still heavily damaged and malfunctioning, the TARDIS found its way to Earth, but did not make it to Ian and Barbara's time, instead landing in the Plain of Pamir in 1289 . There, the Doctor and his companions met Marco Polo . Polo took the TARDIS and its keys on his caravan the breadth of Cathay to hand to Kublai Khan as part of a bargain for his return to Venice . During this time, Susan formed a strong friendship with a young girl named Ping-Cho . Along the way, the Mongol warlord Tegana , also part of Polo's caravan, tried to take the TARDIS for Nogai as part of his plan to assassinate Kublai.

In the chaos of Tegana and Polo's duel in Peking , the Doctor and his companions escaped in his repaired TARDIS. ( TV : Marco Polo ) The Doctor landed on an island on Marinus . Arbitan asked them to search for the keys to the reprogrammed Conscience of Marinus to regain control over the Voord , as all of his other followers and family members failed to retrieve them. Arbitan trapped the TARDIS in a forcefield, preventing the Doctor and his companions' escape. They used Arbitan's travel dials to reach Morphoton . Barbara released Arbitan's daughter, Sabetha , and the rest of the city from the Morpho 's mind control, and retrieved the first key. While Ian and Barbara searched for the second key, Susan and Sabetha were trapped inside a mountain cave. Ian, Barbara and Altos rescued them and found the third key deep inside the caverns guarded by Ice Soldiers . In Millennius , Ian was framed for murder. The Doctor stood as defence at Ian's trial, but he was sentenced to death .

While Susan was held hostage by Kala , the Doctor learnt from her that one of the conspirators in the murder, the prosector Eyesen , was ready to collect one of the keys. Ian was spared execution. The guards captured Eyesen and the last key was found in the mace that killed Eprin . The Doctor and his companions returned to Arbitan's island, where Arbitan had been murdered. Ian handed the Voord a fake key, which destroyed the Conscience, along with the Voord. They were able to leave in the TARDIS once more. ( TV : The Keys of Marinus ) Susan discovers she is to be married to the Perfect Victim against her will. ( TV : " The Bride of Sacrifice ") The Doctor and his companions arrived in an Aztec temple in Mexico . They went through a one-way passage that prevented access to the TARDIS. Barbara posed as the Aztec god , Yetaxa , with the others as her servants, to find a way back. For interrupting the first victim 's human sacrifice , Susan was sent to a seminary .

Susan was to be punished for denying marriage to the Perfect Victim of the Aztecs' sacrifice and Ian to be executed when he was framed by the High Priest of Sacrifice , Tlotoxl , for attacking the High Priest of Knowledge , Autloc . Autloc's faith in Yetaxa was shattered, and he left for the wilderness. The Doctor, Ian and the Doctor's accidental fiancée, Cameca , distracted Ian and Susan's guard to escape. They worked on a pulley system to open the doorway back to the TARDIS. As they departed, the sacrifice of the Perfect Victim continued as planned. ( TV : The Aztecs ) The Doctor landed inside a spaceship in the 28th century , where two crewmembers were suspended in a state resembling death and another, John , had had his mind opened and turned insane, following an attack on their minds by the Sensorites . The Sense Sphere , which the ship had been trapped around, had its aqueducts' water supply poisoned with atropine by survivors of a previous human expedition whose ship had been destroyed. On the Sense Sphere , Susan recalls life on her home planet .

( TV : " A Desperate Venture ") The TARDIS' lock was taken by the Sensorites, leaving the Doctor and his companions trapped on the spaceship. After the Doctor and his companions resisted the Sensorites, the Doctor, Ian and Susan agreed to go down to the Sense Sphere, where the Doctor worked out the cure for this "disease", which had also afflicted Ian, while the Sensorite scientists treated John. When the Doctor and Ian had gone to the aqueduct to investigate with broken weapons, Susan held a telepathic link with Barbara to help her way through the aqueduct. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara found the human expedition and pretended to be a welcoming party for them and that the "war" against the Sensorites was won. The expedition were taken into custody on Maitland's ship . Maitland's ship was free to leave and the TARDIS crew had regained their lock. ( TV : The Sensorites ) When the Doctor thought he had landed the TARDIS on 1960s Earth, Susan was sceptical as Barbara, Ian and herself found 18th century furniture in a nearby building. In fact they had landed in revolutionary France.

She noted that this was one of he grandfather's favourite eras of history. Whilst there she was suspected of being a traitor to the revolution and was sentenced to death. On the way to their execution, Susan and Barbara were rescued. However, in the protection of her rescuers she became ill, and learned how primitive medicine was in revolutionary France. The Physician that treated her reported her as an escaped prisoner. Back at the prison, and the Doctor facilitated her second escape, by impersonating an official. ( TV : The Reign of Terror ) At some point during her travels with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, they visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton , Hampshire on 23 November 1963 . ( AUDIO : The Light at the End ) When she found out that they had landed Library of Alexandria she looked it up in the TARDIS Library and discover it's fate. ( AUDIO : The Library of Alexandria ) When in Seville she helped the Doctor impersonate a cardinal to help Ian get out of prison before he was sentenced to death. With Barbara she rescued him from the flames.

( AUDIO : The Flames of Cadiz ) When the TARDIS landed on the doomed planet Sarath , Susan was taken to hospital after she was injured in a building collapse. When she entered a healing coma, Susan was replaced by an android duplicate as part of a plan by the city's supervising A.I., Monitor , to ensure his own survival, but the original Susan recovered in time to escape incineration. After the truth about the android and Monitor's plan was revealed, the android's connection to Susan allowed her to resist and disrupt Monitor's control, allowing him to be destroyed. With the last few survivors of the planet needing a controlling computer to take the last ship to Mirath , the android volunteered to take on the role, despite knowing that the society on Mirath would be unable to sustain her ( PROSE : City at World's End ). 01:39 The First Doctor bids adieu to his granddaughter. ( TV : The Dalek Invasion of Earth ) In a London devastated by the 22nd century Dalek invasion , Susan fell in love with the freedom fighter David Campbell . The Doctor realised Susan would never leave him of her own free will; she thought him dependent on her.

Rather than let her choose to stay with him or with David, he forced her hand and locked her out of the TARDIS, bidding her farewell and saying that one day he would return. Meanwhile, she had a place where she could belong, and a home which she confided to David she had never really had. ( TV : The Dalek Invasion of Earth ) Ian came to believe that locking Susan out of the TARDIS was the bravest thing that he ever saw the Doctor do. ( AUDIO : The Revenants ) Adult life One account suggested that she never told her husband that she was not human. ( AUDIO : Here There Be Monsters ) However, others contradicted this. ( PROSE : Legacy of the Daleks , AUDIO : An Earthly Child ) Susan and David adopted three war orphans and named them Ian , Barbara and David Campbell Junior ; Susan was not able to conceive with David. She worked as a peace officer who made Dalek artefacts safe. The years she spent on Earth caused problems for them. She did not age as fast as humans and was forced to disguise herself to look thirty years older. In 2199 , she encountered the Master whilst investigating a Dalek artefact, and was captured by him.

Susan was taken in the Master's TARDIS to the planet Tersurus , where she believed that she killed him. Afterwards she took his TARDIS. ( PROSE : Legacy of the Daleks ) A conflicting account held that Susan was able to have a child with David. Her son, Alex Campbell , had only one heart. ( AUDIO : An Earthly Child ) She sent the Doctor a hypercube after his birth to tell him of what she had achieved with her life. ( PROSE : Ghost of Christmas Past ) When Alex was a teenager, Susan asked the Doctor if Alex could be educated on Gallifrey. The Doctor expressed doubts about David's acceptance when told that Alex had only one heart. After David's death, Susan became one of the leaders of the Earth council to help with the planet's recovery. She contacted the Guldreasi , a seemingly peaceful race that wanted to help Earth. About this time she met with her grandfather in his eighth incarnation and helped stop the Guldreasi enslaving the human race. ( AUDIO : An Earthly Child ) Six months later, Susan had Christmas dinner with the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller in the TARDIS.

She was unhappy when the TARDIS suddenly dematerialised and to find the Doctor was planning on having Alex travel with him. The Doctor was able to return them to the right place and Alex then departed on a tour with Lucie. ( AUDIO : Relative Dimensions ) During the tour a plague spread over the Earth, infecting Lucie, though Susan and Alex's Gallifreyan heritage made them resistant. Susan was able to use her influence to get Alex and Lucie from Thailand to England. Soon after this the Second Dalek Invasion of Earth occurred. Lucie sent a message to the Doctor when she was infected before the Invasion, but he failed to come till 2 years later. Susan kept her TARDIS Key, thinking she could detect the TARDIS with it. After a failed attack on Dalek operations in North America she realised the TARDIS had arrived. The Doctor was in a Dalek Saucer when it was hit by torpedoes and found unconscious, however Susan realised he could be revived inside the TARDIS, and found her way there. She was able to fly a Dalek Saucer to America with a bomb, Alex and Lucie, hoping to stop the Invasion.

However Alex was killed by the Daleks after which Lucie Miller destroyed the Daleks by detonating the bomb, at the cost of her life. Susan and the Doctor were saved by the Meddling Monk , but the Doctor, upset at the deaths, left, leaving Susan to deal with her son's death alone. ( AUDIO : Lucie Miller / To the Death ) Fate Edit The Ninth Doctor told Rose Tyler , "My entire planet died. My whole family." ( TV : Father's Day ) During World War II , the Ninth Doctor encountered Dr Constantine , taking care of carriers of the Empty Child plague , who told the Doctor, "Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I'm neither. But I'm still a doctor." The Doctor replied, "Yeah. I know the feeling." ( TV : The Empty Child ) The Tenth Doctor once said that he had left Susan on a future Earth with a freedom fighter with whom she had fallen in love and he was unsure if she was alive, as he simply had not checked. ( COMIC : The Forgotten ) The Eleventh Doctor reaffirmed this, and said that Susan was "lost", and that he hadn't looked for her.

( COMIC : Dead Man's Hand ) While masquerading as the Doctor ( TV : Death in Heaven ) after the revelation of Gallifrey 's survival at the end of the Time War, ( TV : The Day of the Doctor ) Clara Oswald stated that all of his children and grandchildren were assumed dead. ( TV : Death in Heaven ) The name "Foreman. S." appeared on a list of both dead and missing staff and students at the renovated Coal Hill Academy. ( TV : For Tonight We Might Die ) Undated events Edit At some point, Susan was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. ( TV : The Day of the Doctor ) Personality Edit Susan loved her grandfather, as he did her. She was fond of 20th century England , so she enrolled in school there. Despite the Doctor's warnings, she still endangered their secrets. Susan understood contemporary technology and was familiar with historical events, but knew very little about ordinary things, like money. ( TV : " An Unearthly Child ") Susan considered the Doctor to be a "great man".

( AUDIO : Domain of the Voord ) The Doctor once commented that Susan was "very precious" to him. ( AUDIO : Masters of Earth ) She was quick to show fear, either by screaming or calling for her grandfather. She quickly befriended Ian and Barbara but did not accept their claims the Doctor had intentionally damaged his own TARDIS. ( TV : The Daleks ) When the fast return switch was stuck, it was Susan who suffered the worst from its effects. She very nearly killed Barbara and Ian. At first she sided with her grandfather, blaming the teachers for the problems. However, she soon recognised their innocence. ( TV : The Edge of Destruction ) On Marinus , Susan travelled ahead of the others and was frightened by the jungle and the screams that emanated from it. Despite her earlier truthfulness, the others did not take this seriously. ( TV : The Keys of Marinus ) On 22nd century Earth, Susan developed a relationship with David Campbell . The Doctor recognised this and decided it was best to leave her behind so that she could live a normal life. Susan was reluctant, but the Doctor seemed to convince her it was for the best.

( TV : The Dalek Invasion of Earth ) She had a son Alex whom she loved dearly. ( AUDIO : An Earthly Child et al.) Behind the scenes Edit No televised episode has ever explored Susan's origins. The unbroadcast pilot episode features a line of dialogue in which Susan states she is from the 49th century . However, the final televised version broadcast as the first episode of An Unearthly Child contains no such reference. The contradicting stories regarding Susan's origins predate the BBC Wales version of Doctor Who. The 2005 version establishes the fact that the Doctor had a family on Gallifrey and intimates, though never explicitly states, that Susan was in all likelihood his biological granddaughter. As of May 2015, there has never been an indication given in any TV episode to suggest otherwise. Name Edit According to the Brief Encounter story Roses , Susan's real name is (the Gallifreyan word for) "Rose". This allows a subtle connection between the first companions of the 1963 and 2005 versions of Doctor Who . It's unclear why David Whitaker chose to change the character's name to Susan English for his novelisations.

The later unofficial novel Campaign reinstated this use in tribute, but all other novelisations and original novels have used the Susan Foreman name. Other matters Edit According to The Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, among other young actresses considered for the role in 1963 were Anneke Wills and Jackie Lane , who each later played companions in the series. Director Waris Hussein is credited with recommending Carole Ann Ford for the part. According to the authorised scholarship of David J. Howe and friends, however, there is no evidence of Lane or Wills actually having read for the part, at least not for Rex Tucker , the original director assigned to the first serial . Lane doesn't even appear on the audition list that has survived in the archives, and Wills was marked as a no-show. ( REF : The First Doctor Handbook ) Carole Ann Ford's hairstyle as Susan was created by famed stylist Vidal Sassoon . Susan was dubbed in the German version of The Five Doctors by voice actor Marion Hartmann . Footnotes Susan Who? | Doctor Who TV Doctor Who TV Email Guest contributor Zachary Bernstein on the mystery of Susan and her potential return.

A recent report out of Doctor Who Magazine stated that words were exchanged between Peter Capaldi and Carol Ann Ford about the latter’s return to the program. At the very beginning of Doctor Who, Carol Ann Ford had the honor of portraying the first companion, the Doctor’s granddaughter. After the TARDIS malfunctioned (naturally), the two were stranded on earth. This is of course the age of William Hartnell to those unfamiliar with Classic Who. This is when the TARDIS took on the iconic phone booth image, as it attempted to blend into early 1960s England. Living in a junkyard on Totter’s Lane, the Doctor and his first companion understood the need for discrepancy. Susan’s thirst for knowledge led her to the nearby school, Coal Hill, where she stood out to her teachers as a genius discussing the Fourth dimension while in class. Otherwise, the two were undisturbed in their stay. That is, until two school teachers named Ian and Barbara decided to go nosing around. Driving a car to Susan’s home address, the two arrived at 76 Totter’s Lane facing a gate that read the area belonged to I. M. Foreman.

There hasn’t been any significant discussion about “Susan Foreman” as an adopted name. Furthermore, why did the Doctor not call himself Dr. Foreman? The audience is left wondering what Susan’s true name is, and this in itself leads to certain ideas as to why it is still a mystery. Despite the fact that the prose “Interference – Book Two” revealed I. M. Foreman to be another Time Lord monk, the story is itself non-canon. More importantly, the explanation as to the name Foreman was created long after the fact of the original production of the first episode, The Unearthly Child 1963. One would therefore assume that other Time Lords hadn’t been conceived of this early on in the show’s life. In an attempt to go back to the perspective of the original showrunners, why would they choose I. M. Foreman and have the Doctor’s granddaughter (whose true name is also unknown to the audience) take on that name for her run on the show? The name Foreman means overseer or observer, as in someone who stands above the grit and grim of the world due to status, and thus tells others how to live their lives.

The Doctor is in many ways portrayed as an omnipotent outsider in multiple situations; his knowledge of the universe unparalleled. The Foreman of 76 Totter’s Lane is a brilliant man looking to escape the destitute experience of daily life. At this moment, the Doctor represents the impoverished, as he is literally stuck in an English junkyard. In a manner of declaration, it seems that the creators of this program named the Doctor, saying, “I Am Foreman.” A patronizing grandfather figure is a simple way of explaining one side of William Hartnell’s memorable portrayal of the Doctor, but it should also be remembered that Sydney Newman (the show’s creator) intended for Doctor Who to be an educational program for the kids. In this sense, the name Foreman seems incredibly significant. The idea that Susan could return is terribly exciting, as her return would not only be significant for the Doctor, but for the show to come full circle. As of today, the Doctor has used up all of his regenerations and is now starting off his new cycle as a grumpy old man. The Doctor is also currently travelling with a teacher from Coal Hill School (Clara), where Susan was “educated” on earth.

Instead of running away from Gallifrey, the current incarnation of the Doctor is trying to find it. I am seeing a few parallels here, and if I have learned anything about the schemes of our current showrunner, it is that he has a flair for acknowledging the past. Part of the parallel being established here is the return of Gallifrey, so wouldn’t the full cycle of the show be complete with a Susan-led event heralding the Time Lords? Seeing as production this season is reaching its final episodes, it seems unlikely that such an event would happen in Series 9. However, I have the feeling that such a huge occasion will not go gently by in a single out-of-place episode. Gallifrey will have its glory, so to speak, only too soon. Instead of hyping up expectations, I am more than content witnessing how Series 9 will unfold due to the recent aftermath with Missy. It is the first time the Doctor has had interacting with a Time Lady since before his 800 year stay on Trenzalore. There is a huge chunk of his life that was explained away in minutes during the Time of the Doctor 2013, Matt Smith’s swansong.

I would hope that the Time Lords earn their own few episodes and not just during another plotline. The reason that the Doctor’s first companion was simply named Susan is because she is more relatable as an earth girl rather than another alien. The town of Christmas on Trenzalore was so familiar in resonating a central theme of the show, which I believe to be the magic of everyday life. Yet, before our familiar annual Christmas special, the show had a long way to go in 1963. It must have been strange enough to cheer on the Doctor, who to this day is a total mystery, but to have two completely abnormal protagonists in space-age sci-fi would have had difficulty earning high ratings. It is crucial for the audience to connect to the characters in a story. Susan Foreman, like all of her successors, is the linchpin to connect the Doctor to the audience. One other idea concerning the name Foreman is that there simply was no explanation, and details were just left out as extraneous information. However, as a devoted fan base, and especially as bright and inquisitive human beings, I certainly speak for myself when I say I desire answers.

Though I may never know more about Susan and characters like her, it is in the pursuit of knowledge that my interests in this show will never fade away. Does Susan have a fancy Time Lord name like Romanadvoratrelundar (Romana) and Rassilon, or a renegade name like the Doctor, the Master, or the Rani? Will the audience get any answers? Who knows, only time will tell.

Question: In the original UK television series ‘Doctor Who’, Susan Foreman is what relation to the Doctor?
Answer: Granddaughter