Susan Foreman

Susan Foreman
Place of origin:	Gallifrey
Appearances:	Full List of Appearances
Main actor:	[[actor::Carole Ann Ford|Carole Ann Ford]]

(This article is about grand-daughter of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. See the article Susan (Dalek movies) for information about the grand-daughter of the Human scientist Dr. Who.)

Susan Foreman was the grand-daughter of the Doctor and travelled with him during his first incarnation.

Biography

Early life

On her home planet of Gallifrey, the future Susan Foreman did not originally go by that name.

Two different accounts (which may or may not contradict each other) exist to explain how the Doctor and Susan began their travels through time and space. One, related by the Master, described Susan, as Lady Larna, as a contemporary of the Doctor's who he rescued from Gallifrey during a civil strife on that world. (RT: Birth of a Renegade) Another account show that the Doctor first (from his point of view) met her during a visit to the Dark Times of ancient Gallifrey; she recognised him as her grandfather, who had come to rescue her from the breakdown of society during that era. She appeared to have been one of the last children born on Gallifrey before Pythia's Curse, and to have been grand-daughter of the Other. (NA: Lungbarrow)

The Doctor and Susan left Gallifrey at the same time, together, in the Doctor's TARDIS. (NA: Nightshade, DWM: Time & Time Again)

Travels

On the planet Iwa, a Human colonist, Jill bestowed upon her the name Susan, after Jill's mother. (TN: Frayed)

Susan and the Doctor eventually came to 1963 London. The Doctor enrolled Susan at Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, where Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright worked as teachers; Susan adopted the last name "Foreman" from the name of the junkyard where the Doctor had chosen to hide his TARDIS. Like all teenagers, Susan loved pop groups such as John Smith and the Common Men, but despite in general passing as an ordinary teenage girl, she had astonishing knowledge of advanced physics theory beyond the abilities of her teachers, while at the same time not knowing how many shillings made up a pound. By her own reckoning, she had spent five months on Earth, "the happiest of (her) life" when her two teachers, Ian and Barbara, following her home one night to find out more of her mysterious home life, found the TARDIS.

The Doctor kidnapped them into time and space with him, taking an unwilling Susan, too. (DW: An Unearthly Child) After a detour, the four of them landed on Skaro, where they met the Daleks. (DW: The Daleks) Susan would often act as intermediary between the two Humans and the Doctor, who at first, did not trust each other at all. In 1289 Asia she met Ping-Cho, a Chinese girl her own age. (DW: Marco Polo)

In a London devastated by the 22nd century Dalek invasion, Susan fell in love with the freedom fighter David Campbell. The Doctor realised that Susan would never leave him of her own free will, as she believed that he was dependent on her. Rather than let Susan make up her mind to choose staying with him or with David, he forced her hand and locked the door to her, bidding her farewell and saying that one day he would return. Meanwhile she had a place where she could belong, and the home which she confided to David she had never really had.(DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

Adult life

Through the years she spent on Earth caused problems for herself and David as (being a Gallifreyan) did not age at the same rate as regular humans and was forced to disguise herself to give the appearance of being 30 years older than she appeared. (EDA: Legacy of the Daleks)

Sometime (around 20 years after being left on Earth) Borusa time scooped Susan using a Time Scoop and placed her with the Doctor again in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. She met her grandfather in his fifth incarnation (and, briefly, his second and third incarnations. She accompanied her grandfather in his first incarnation back to be returned to their time streams. (DW: The Five Doctors)

During her time on Earth she and David adopted three children Dalek war orphans naming them Ian, Barbara and David Junior, as she was not able to become pregnant with David. Susan worked as a Peace Officer making safe Dalek Artefacts; Dalek technology left on Earth following the invasion. However, her appearance and lack of change after 30 years of time passed began to put a strain on her marriage to David. In 2199 she encountered the Master whilst investigating a Dalek Artefact, and was eventually taken and captured by the Master and taken in his TARDIS to the planet Tersurus where she (believed) she killed him, she took his TARDIS following this encounter. (EDA: Legacy of the Daleks)

The Doctor whilst present on Earth at the time of these events was not aware of much of Susan's part in the events. (EDA: Legacy of the Daleks)

Ultimate Fate

Susan's ultimate fate is not known. Repeated references by the ninth incarnations and tenth incarnations of the Doctor to his family all being killed in the Last Great Time War suggests Susan may now be deceased (DW: The Doctor's Daughter, et al); oddly, however, the Second Doctor told Victoria Waterfield early in his incarnation that his family was already dead by that time (DW: The Tomb of the Cybermen). Additionally, whilst in his tenth incarnation, he remarked that (in relation to being a father) he "lost all that a long time ago". (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)

Other information

There is a possibly apocryphal account that Susan might at one point have briefly adopted the last name "English" (DWN: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks).

Relatives

The identity of Susan's biological parents is ambiguous, though she may be related to The Other (biologically or not) (NA: Lungbarrow). Jenny, an artificially created offspring of the Doctor's tenth incarnation, is technically Susan's aunt. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)

Quotes

• Susan Foreman - Quotes

See also

• John and Gillian, the Doctor's other grandchildren.