Susan Foreman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Doctor Who character | |
|---|---|
 Susan Foreman |
|
| Susan | |
| Affiliated with | First Doctor |
| Race | Time Lord |
| Home planet | Gallifrey |
| Home era | Gallifrey era |
| First appearance | An Unearthly Child |
| Last appearance | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (regular) The Five Doctors (guest) |
| Portrayed by | Carole Ann Ford Roberta Tovey (film Susan) |
Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by actress Carole Ann Ford.
Contents |
[edit] Background
Susan is the granddaughter and a companion 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 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 teenage girl.
The Doctor explains 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 adds, "I was born in another time, on another world" (presumably Gallifrey). Susan claims 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.
[edit] Character history
The Doctor and Susan have been already travelling for a time before they decide to settle in London to make repairs on the TARDIS; evidently this has taken longer than expected, as Susan states that she and her grandfather have been in London for five months. Susan begins to attend the Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, where her advanced knowledge of history and science attract the attention of schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. Attempting to solve the mystery of the "unearthly child", Chesterton and Wright 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.
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 freedom fighter in the 22nd century. However, Susan feels that she has to stay with and take care of her grandfather. The Doctor, realising 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. 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 states that he does not know if he has any family, which may indicate uncertainty of Susan's whereabouts. In 2005's The End of the World the Ninth Doctor states that his homeworld has been destroyed and that he was the last of the Time Lords. Whether this includes Susan, however, is uncertain, although in Father's Day the Doctor says his "whole family" died, and in The Empty Child some dialogue implies that he is no longer a father or grandfather. In Fear Her, the Tenth Doctor states he "was a Dad once", but does not elaborate further.
[edit] Relationship 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 ability 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 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, which are of unclear canonicity.
[edit] Appearances in other media
Terrance Dicks's 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.
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, which is not generally considered canonical. 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. No last name is given for this version of the character; some movie listings infer that her name is "Susan Who".
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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. The canonicity of these stories, like all Doctor Who spin-offs, is unclear.
[edit] List of appearances
[edit] Television
- Season 1
- An Unearthly Child
- The Daleks
- The Edge of Destruction
- Marco Polo
- The Keys of Marinus
- The Aztecs
- The Sensorites
- The Reign of Terror
- Season 2
- 20th anniversary special
- 30th anniversary special
[edit] Films
[edit] Audio dramas
- Doctor Who Unbound series (outside normal Doctor Who canonicity)
[edit] Novels
- The Witch Hunters by Steve Lyons
- City at World's End by Christopher Bulis
- The Time Travellers by Simon Guerrier
[edit] Short stories
- "Birth of a Renegade" by Eric Saward (Radio Times Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Special)
- "Old Flames" by Paul Magrs (Short Trips)
- "The Last Days" by Evan Pritchard (Rebecca Levene) (Short Trips)
- "The Longest Story in the World" by Paul Magrs (Short Trips and Sidesteps)
- "Nothing at the End of the Lane (3 Parts)" by Daniel O'Mahony (Short Trips and Sidesteps)
- "The Exiles" by Lance Parkin (Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors)
- "Ash" by Trevor Baxendale (Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors)
- "The Thief of Sherwood" by Jonathan Morris (Short Trips: Past Tense)
- "Bide-a-Wee" by Anthony Keetch (Short Trips: Past Tense)
- "Categorical Imperative" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Monsters)
- "Envy" by Tara Samms (Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins)
- "The Innocents" by Marc Platt (Short Trips: The History of Christmas)
- "The Gift" by Robert Dick (Short Trips: The History of Christmas)
- "The Ruins of Time" by Philip Purser-Hallard (Short Trips: Time Signature)
[edit] Comics
- "Operation Proteus" by Gareth Roberts and Martin Geraghty (Doctor Who Magazine 231–233)
- "Ground Zero" by Scott Gray and Martin Geraghty (Doctor Who Magazine 238–242)
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| Susan | Vicki | Sara | Dodo | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ian | Katarina | Ben→ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Barbara | Polly→ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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