Susan Foreman
(This article is about the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, in the television stories and in prose stories based on the Doctor Who television series. See the article Susan (Dalek movies) for information about the human scientist Dr. Who's granddaughter.)
Susan Foreman was the first known companion to travel with the Doctor. Susan appears to have taken her surname from the Owner of the Junkyard the TARDIS lands in during the 20th Century, I.M. Foreman. Susan was the Doctor's granddaughter, and had been travelling with him since he left Gallifrey.
Profile
Susan appeared to be a typical teenage girl, and insisted – despite the Doctor’s reservations – to go to school at Coal Hill School. Her grandfather was proved right in his reservations as her knowledge was noticed by her teachers – her comments to Barbara Wright about the inaccuracies of the French Revolution text book being just one such incident. She, like all teenagers, loved pop music, but despite in general passing as an ordinary teenage girl, Susan’s alienness was hinted at in the fact that she read the thick French Revolution text book in just one evening.
Amongst Susan’s character traits were her ability, under certain circumstances, to communicate telepathically – as seen when the travellers met the Sensorites. She was an adventurer, and braved the petrified jungle and mutated Thals to get the anti-radiation drugs the travellers needed while they were on the planet Skaro.
When Barbara and Ian Chesterton first met Susan, she was enjoying ‘normal’ life, and over their adventures together she grew up. Initially Susan had a crush on Ian, although this passed, and she grew to see Barbara as her mature confidente. Ultimately Susan fell in love with freedom fighter David Campbell on Earth in the 22nd Century.
Throughout her travels Susan mentioned other planets she had visited – the ‘metal seas of Venus’, the planet Esto (where plants communicate telepathically) – and talked of her own planet. She told Ping-Cho that her home was “as far away as a night star”. She also described her planet to the Sensorite leader. She was obviously home-sick.
The Doctor realised that Susan would never leave him of her own free will, as she believed that he was dependant on her. So, in an emotional move, he locked her out of the TARDIS and promised that one day he would return. On this goodbye he left her to finally find a place she could belong, and the home which she confided to David she had never really had.
After her grandfather left her on Earth with David, Susan settled down to marry and be a wife in the new order. She was, with others of the rebel group, a founder of the reborn human race on Earth. Finally she had the home, and family, she’d never known before.
Susan crossed paths with her grandfather again, 20 years after they’d parted company. Borusa collected Susan in a time scoop, and placed her with her grandfather, in his first incarnation, in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. After Borusa was defeated by The Five Doctors Susan was returned to her home.
The Doctor first met Susan (from his perspective) during a visit to Ancient Gallifrey; she recognized 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 the Pythia's Curse, and to have been the Other's granddaughter. (Lungbarrow)
Quotes
Ian: "She lets her knowledge out a bit at a time so as not to embarrass me... she knows more science than I’ll ever know. She’s a genius."
Barbara: "I don’t know how you explain the fact that a teenage girl does not know how many Shillings there are in a pound... she said she thought we were on the decimal system."
"I love your School. I love England in the twentieth century. The last five months have been the happiest of my life..."
"I was born in another time. Another world."
"I like walking in the dark, it’s mysterious."
"It’s ages since we’ve seen our planet. It’s quite like Earth... but at night the sky is a burnt orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver."
"I never felt that there was any time or place that I belonged to. I’ve never had any real identity."
