Talk:Susan Foreman

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Relationship to Jenny

This article states that Jenny must be Susan's aunt. It forgets the possibility that Jenny is Susan's mother. 96.45.196.227 20:45, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

But then wouldn't the Doctor have known about Jenny beforehand? If I remembered the episode clearly, he was fairly surprised about Jenny.98.220.223.197 14:10, May 15, 2010 (UTC)

Well, of course, strictly, unless Jenny is actually Susan's mother, she would only be Susan's half-aunt. Best for the article to say that the relationship between Jenny and Susan was simply unknown. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:22, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Uh, at what point in Doctor's Daughter is it ever even implied that Jenny is Susan's mother? Are we getting fanon mixed up with canon again? All we know is Jenny is the Doctor's offspring. Ergo that makes her Susan's aunt by any legal definition. 68.146.81.123 03:11, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

There's really no such thing as a "half-aunt". I have a half-brother and a half-sister, and to all of their kids I'm simply their aunt. The three of us share a parent, that's as far as it needs to go. wannablessedbe ^{talk to me} 11:19, February 15, 2012 (UTC)

Note at top of the page

As the canon policy has been completely rewritten and its under-construction "successor" Tardis:Valid sources hasn't mentioned the pilot, what's a better way of phrasing why we don't include images of The Pilot Episode? -- Tybort (talk page) 11:10, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

Larna

This links to the Larna article - but is that the same as "Lady Larna" ? -- Beardouk ☎ 21:12, July 19, 2012 (UTC)

Good point. Larna needs editing in light of Forum:Is The Infinity Doctors canon? anyway. I'll try to take care of that in the next day or two, and when I do I'll add a note about Susan as the "Lady Larna" in Birth of a Renegade. —Josiah Rowe ☎ 03:51, August 10, 2012 (UTC)

Upon checking Birth of a Renegade, it turns out that the name given to Susan there is "Lady Larn", not "Larna" at all. Which tidies things up a bit. —Josiah Rowe ☎ 05:17, August 15, 2012 (UTC)

Arkytior?

Is the "original" name of Arkytior actually canon? I know some books have tried to give the master's name, but it is not accepted as cannon. Shouldn't this be treated the same way? I recommend removing that name as fact and only listing it as a possibility that has not been confirmed. Whosethebestwho ☎ 10:13, January 21, 2013 (UTC)

This wiki does not deal with "canon" as a concept, and all sources are treated with equal weight. Therefore to this wikia, Arktior is regarded as a possible name for Susan, along with Lady Larn. --Revan\Talk 12:49, January 21, 2013 (UTC)

Seriously??? When did that change? I've been away a while. You all really don't care about canon here? So I can publish a Doctor Who book, make any wild claims and it will be treated as gospel here? That doesn't seem right. Whosethebestwho ☎ 02:00, January 22, 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately you've misunderstood Revan's comment about canon. The idea is not that the wiki doesn't care about canon, it's that all stories (under certain guidelines) count, and therefore the name Arkytior is accepted in the article. For a better description than I could give, check out Tardis:Canon policy, Tardis:Valid sources, and Tardis:Neutral point of view (especially the in-universe section), all of which should be helpful. Shambala108 ☎ 02:20, January 22, 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the info. This place has changed. I'll keep all that in mind in the future. Whosethebestwho ☎ 05:10, January 22, 2013 (UTC)

It's not really a change. I've been here on and off since very close to the wiki's inception, and we've always been inclusive of officially licensed Doctor Who in all media. Things have become a bit more formalized lately, but the principles have always been the same here. TV, novels, audios, comics, short stories: it all "counts", or nearly all. (A few things are excluded, by discussion-based consensus.) But we try to treat it all the same. —Josiah Rowe ☎ 05:24, January 22, 2013 (UTC)

I beg to differ, Josiah. It used to be that books, comics, et al, were not given the same weight as the TV shows. To use the example of the Master, his page used to show that he was given a name in one of the books, but that it was not known if that was truly his name or not. Now said name is being listed on his page as gospel truth, even though it is still questionable. That, coupled with the entry on Susan's page show a mared shift. Namely, that books are being given equal, if not greater weight, than the TV shows. That is a change in this wiki. As I mentioned above, I had been away for a while, so I was not aware of the shift. Shambala was kind enough to point me to the documents, and I will keep the information in mind. Whosethebestwho ☎ 05:44, January 22, 2013 (UTC)

The Name of the Doctor

Who played Susan during the Gallifrey scene when they steal the TARDIS? -- 65.94.76.126^{talk to me} 14:03, May 21, 2013 (UTC)

• Herself, or more specif Carole Ann Ford; it's archive footage from the TV: Aztecs

Sabovia ☎ 00:33, July 5, 2013 (UTC)

"An Adventure in Space and Time"

What's wrong with adding the actor from the docudrama? Sge obviously acted as "Susan Foreman" in the scenes where they recreated scenes from the original episodes. -- 70.24.244.51^{talk to me} 06:43, November 24, 2013 (UTC)

There is a difference, though it can be hard to see. The docudrama actor never acted as Susan, she only acted as Carol Ann Ford. While in character as Carol Ann Ford, she acted as Susan, but she never acted as Susan in any DW story. Shambala108 ☎ 15:19, November 24, 2013 (UTC)

Stealing the President's daughter

Clarifying this removal, because of how factually wrong it really is after first glance.

In season 9s "Hell Bent", the 12th doctor tells Clara he ran away with the president's wife in a stolen tardis then says he was lying. He ran away with the presidents daughter. Since Susan was the only one with him when he took the tardis, the implication is that she was the president's daughter and imply the president was his son-in-law.

No, he didn't. He said no such thing. He said he stole the President's daughter. That's it. You don't have to leave a planet to do that, whatever that specifically means. And considering what Missy said about the President's wife/daughter and the moon in The Magician's Apprentice and how he knew her for that long, it's pretty much spelled out that this was during his time at the academy, not when he was greying and centuries old. -- Tybort (talk page) 17:12, January 24, 2016 (UTC)

Susan a Time Lady or Just a Gallifreyan?

I was re-watching The Dalek Invasion of Earth and wanted to double-check what happened to Susan after she left the Doctor, but side-tracked by the intro statement at the top of her page. The page claims that Susan was a Time Lady who travelled with the Doctor. However, my question is this: do we know for sure that she was a Time Lady, or is she just a Gallifreyan? In other words, while we know Susan was from Gallifrey, are we sure she was one of the Time Lord elite? Does this make sense? --Bold Clone 22:36, June 5, 2016 (UTC)

Really, the franchise isn't really consistent as whether Time Lord is the name of the race more or less synonymous with Gallifreyan or if they're "the elite" of a race called Gallifreyans (although as far as I can tell, outside of the likes of the Interference books and the comic strip The Stolen TARDIS, the TV series calls them a race, in stories such as The War Games, School Reunion, Smith and Jones and The Sound of Drums, along with secondary sources like The Making of Doctor Who and Russell T Davies' production notes in Doctor Who Magazine). It's something I've been meaning to amend to the lead of Time Lord for ages, but have yet to finish investigating stories from various eras of the franchise. -- Tybort (talk page) 23:58, June 5, 2016 (UTC)

Hm. Ok, that's good to know. Thanks for the clarification...that there isn't a clarification? Oh well. :D --Bold Clone 00:51, June 6, 2016 (UTC)

Yeah there is some disparity, as she can pilot a TARDIS something only Time Lords can do, but she didn't go to the Academy Adric♥Nyssa∩Talk? 06:00, June 6, 2016 (UTC)

Page move

Was there a discussion about moving this page from Susan Foreman to Susan that I missed? I presume it was moved either to be neutral on the Foreman vs English matter (which seems strange given that Foreman is far more common and policy is to use TV names over those in novelisations anyway) or because she changes her name to Campbell later on (which again seems strange given that Jo goes from Grant to Jones but hasn't been moved to simply Jo). Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 15:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)a

User:NateBumber added a rename tag on July 18th last, I think under the assumption that there would be a discussion, and then User:Doug86 just did the rename the very next day. I'm a little puzzled too. I suspect Nate's original reasoning may have been something else entirely, though: that "Susan Foreman" (or indeed "English") was just a temporary alias adopted during An Unearthly Child for paperwork purposes, which she never uses again, and that for most of her tenure her name really is simply "Susan". But that's overlooking that "Susan Foreman" continued to be used in credits throughout the TV Hartnell era. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:43, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, the credits thing is a strong argument which I wasn't aware of when I proposed the rename, which would have hopefully come up in the discussion I meant to start with the proposal. – n8 (☎) 15:54, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] Okay. I definitely see the merit in that, but I do think a discussion would be best, if only for posterity.

I proposed moving Tish Jones to Letitia Jones a few years ago and you [Scrooge] pointed out that "we don't like to stray from TV characters' credits without good reason", which I agree is the right way to do it. Carole Ann Ford's credited as "Susan Foreman" on TV as you've pointed out but, with the exception of After the Daleks, I believe she's always been credited as "Susan" or "Susan Campbell" by Big Finish.

I would argue that the TV credits would trump this but you might very well disagree. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 15:59, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not just the Hartnell era - she was also credited as Susan Foreman in The Five Doctors. And the BBC radio play "Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman" also shows that audiences 30 years later generally understood the character to be named Susan Foreman. (Edit: She has also been credited as "Susan Foreman" in Big Finish audios set after the Dalek Invasion - example.) The TV credits should settle the matter, but if people are concerned for some reason about the name being an alias, the eighth Doctor angrily tells I.M. Foreman in Interference that "My granddaughter even named herself after you," so it's evidently a meaningful choice that characters are discussing emotively centuries later rather than some trivial bureaucratic decision. PintlessMan ☎ 22:04, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Jack did say "with the exception of After the Daleks". But I'm in favor of moving her back. Najawin ☎ 22:13, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, I agree the page should be moved back. "Foreman" is a part of the character's identity both in-universe and out. But also, I just noticed that T:DAB still uses Susan as an example of a page which should be a disambiguation page! While that policy does have a section on primary topics, I don't think that applies here. It first says common English names should always be disambiguation pages. So not only do I think Susan Foreman is a better page title, but we should not even be using the page Susan for her— both because that page is supposed to be a disambiguation, and because she actually has a last name to use. The concept of primary topics is much about what readers would search for, and I'd argue that's more likely to be Susan Foreman than just Susan. Chubby Potato ☎ 00:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

It's past time we did the move back. But I have to disagree on the other thing. T:DAB can just be updated with a different example. There's no reason the dab page can't just stya at Susan (disambiguation); indeed, when we're through with more urgent matters, I am of a mind to put forward a motion in the Temp Forums to make the "(disambiguation)" dab term mandatory for all disambiguation page, like story dabs, rather than the inconsistent hodgepodge we have now. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 00:27, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, thanks for moving it back. I got a unique error saying "there is no section 9" since I tried to submit this on Talk:Susan after you had moved it! Anyways, my point about T:DAB was not that we should move it because it specifically uses "Susan" as an example, but because it says "Common English names and titles are retained for use as a disambiguation page". This also contradicts the page's own specification of (Queen) Victoria later on. Because of this and your idea about the disambiguation (disambiguation), as well as other concerns I've seen, I think a thread about disambiguations would be well deserved. Chubby Potato ☎ 00:41, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Part of my original reason for suggesting the move (a suggestion which I've withdrawn, for the record) was that dozens of pages were linking to the disambiguation page Susan where they meant Susan Foreman, in contexts where using her terrestrial surname wouldn't make sense. I'm happy that this page has been moved back, but I agree with Scrooge that T:DAB is out-of-date compared to current practice. – n8 (☎) 01:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)