Susan Foreman

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Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by actress Carole Ann Ford.

Susan is the granddaughter and a 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 during their time in London in 1963. The original outline for the series did not originally intend for the pair to be related, but writer Anthony Coburn created the family tie as he was disturbed by the possible sexual connotations of an old man travelling alone with a teenaged girl.

The Doctor explained in "An Unearthly Child" (the very first episode of Doctor Who and the title generally used for the first four-part serial) that he and Susan are exiles from their own people. Susan added, "I was born in another time, on another world" (presumably Gallifrey). Susan claimed to have coined the name for the TARDIS, the Doctor's time machine, though later episodes seemed to indicate that it was a widely used term among Time Lords. (The unbroadcast pilot version of "An Unearthly Child" contained different dialogue including a statement that Susan was born in the 49th century.) It is not known if Susan is the character's real name, or another alias to make her appear more human.

Susan's age is given as 15, although given the longevity of Time Lords, it is also not known if this is her actual age. 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.

Contents

1 Character history
2 Relation to the Doctor
3 Other appearances
4 Serials

Character history

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Doctor and Susan had been already travelling for a time before they decided to settle in London to make repairs on the TARDIS; evidently this took longer than expected, as Susan states that she and her grandfather had been in London for five months. Susan began to attend the Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, where her advanced knowledge of history and science attracted the attention of schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. Attempting to solve the mystery of the "unearthly child", Chesterton and Wright followed Susan back to the junkyard, where they heard her voice coming from what appeared to be a police box. When they investigated further, they discovered that the police box exterior hid the much larger interior of the TARDIS, and were whisked away on an adventure in time and space with the Doctor and Susan.

Susan continued 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 fell in love with David Campbell, a freedom fighter in the 22nd century. However, Susan felt that she had to stay with and take care of her grandfather. The Doctor, realising that Susan was now a grown woman and deserved a future away from him, locked her out of the TARDIS and left after a tearful farewell. 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.

In The Curse of Fenric (1989), the Seventh Doctor stated that he did not know if he had any family, which may indicate uncertainty of Susan's whereabouts. In 2005's The End of the World the Ninth Doctor stated that his homeworld had been destroyed and that he was the last of the Time Lords. Whether this included Susan, however, is uncertain, although in Father's Day the Doctor said his "whole family" died, and in The Empty Child some dialogue implied that he was no longer a father or grandfather. In Fear Her, the Tenth Doctor stated he "was a Dad once", but did not elaborate further.

Relation to the Doctor

Susan and the Doctor regularly refer to each other as "grandfather" and "granddaughter", and it is clear that the original programme-makers' intent was that the two were biologically related. However, some later fans of Doctor Who, uncomfortable with the implications that the Doctor was sexually active at one point, have suggested otherwise. Susan is, however, generally assumed to be Gallifreyan like the Doctor. Although it has never been explicitly established whether she can regenerate, she does display telepathic abilities on one occasion (The Sensorites).

In the commentary to the BBC's DVD release of An Unearthly Child, actress Carole Ann Ford points out that these suggestions that Susan was not the Doctor's biological 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.

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 Rassilon, unrelated to the Doctor. Later Doctor Who spin-offs have generally ignored this account.

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 was 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, which are of unclear canonicity.

Other appearances

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 risked 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 was ever apprehended by their people, she would still be free.

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, met and named the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, after Jill's mother. The canonicity of these stories, like all Doctor Who spin-offs, is unclear.

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.

Susan reappeared in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel, which took place after the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. At the end of that novel, Susan came into possession of the Master's TARDIS after he tried to capture her, and was once again able to roam time and space.

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 that version of Susan is also human. No last name is given for this version of the character; some movie listings infer that her name is "Susan Who".

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 was portrayed by Jane Asher.

Ford herself played an alternate version of Susan in the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who Unbound audio plays Auld Mortality and A Storm of Angels, where Susan has become President of Gallifrey. In the Doctor Who Unbound play Exile, an alternate Doctor, whose latest regeneration was female (played by Arabella Weir), settled 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 to English.

Serials

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