Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? (audio story)
Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? was an audio drama which aired on BBC Radio 4 as the fifth instalment of Adrian Mourby's Sony Award-winning first series of Whatever Happened to ...? in 1994. Like the other episodes, it examined the life of a fictional character through the realistic lens of a researcher conducting an interview with a subject — in this case, the original Doctor Who companion herself, Susan Foreman, as played by Jane Asher, offering a satirical look at her life following the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
Upon its initial release, it is doubtful that the story was necessarily intended as a serious expansion of the Doctor Who universe, notably committing multiple "continuity errors". However, its events were explicitly cited in Gallifrey: A Rough Guide six years later as one of multiple conflicting accounts of Susan's origins.
Summary
A researcher interviews Susan Foreman, and various people connected with her, about the true history of her travels in time and space, and how she went from there to her current, rather unexpected position as EC Commissioner for Education.
Plot
A researcher investigates the personal history of Susan Foreman, interviewing her as well as multiple other people who knew her or the Doctor. Confessing that she "doesn't remember Gally very well", Susan begins with her and her grandfather's moving to London, 1963. She explains that she had previously been living with her parents, but they grew to think that the "very science-based" education she was getting on the planet was insufficient, particularly as regarded learning French. However, they were too busy with their concept shop to take her to Earth themselves, and instead had her move there with the Doctor, who had recently retired.
As Ian does recall, Susan's relaxed attitude about advanced science and history led him and Barbara to follow her home one night to 76 Totter's Lane, where they were confused to discover that she had apparently been living inside her police box. However, as far as Ian recalls, he woke up the next morning with Susan having disappeared; he would only see her again eight months later, when Susan, back in the 1960s, came to see him "with some… tale that Barbara Wright and [him] ha[d] been travelling in time with her, and that in two hundred years the Earth [wa]s going to be over-run by little men in metal boxes". When she is told by the researcher that Ian still disbelieves her stories about the Daleks, Susan advises the researcher to go talk to Temmosus Skyedron, a Thal who has also taken up residence on 20th century Earth, having become the EC Commissioner for Overproduction in 1987. Temmosus is quite open about his recollections of Ian and Barbara's part in his people's battle against the Daleks.
Susan then goes over the substance of her travels in time and space with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, which eventually led them to a 2164 Earth that had been invaded by the Daleks. According to Susan, these Daleks came from the future, following the battle on Skaro; they'd intended to go back to before Ian and Barbara's time to destroy humanity and therefore undo their earlier defeat, but were prevented from doing so when their their TARDIS suffered a fluid link leak and they had to land in 2164 instead. There, the Doctor ended up locking Susan out of the TARDIS, advising her to marry freedom fighter David Campbell. Susan recounts how the Doctor had, by then, learned how to regenerate, and bitterly speculates that he got rid of her more because he'd had enough of being a grandfather than because he actually thought that was what was best for her.
Jo Jones, interviewed about the Doctor and his rejuvenations, later tells the interviewer that contrary to Susan's speculation about the nature of her grandfather's attachment to his later companions, "nothing ever happened" between her and her Doctor although there was "a certain sexual tension in the air". She speculates that Susan was simply projecting due to her feelings of rejection. When the researcher quotes this statement to Susan, she angrily responds that "of course I felt rejected! Imagine, your nearest relative throws you outside into a post-holocaust wasteland, and claims it's because your true path lies in the arms of some urban guerrilla". She explains that she briefly considered helping David rebuild even so, but couldn't find the courage, and instead contacted Gallifrey. Her godfather's brother, Terry, agreed to pick her up "next time he was inspecting that part of the time waft". Insisting that she had to obey "real time" and thus return to Earth eight months after she'd left, he dropped her off in 1964.
She returned to Coal Hill School, where, much to her later regret, she quickly told the truth about her time-travelling adventures to her schoolmates. The Daily Sketch, who were doing a series of lurid stories about teenage runaways, sent a reporter, Joey Oxford, to try and get the "real story" out of Susan, who was, by then, staying in a YWCA until she got her life figured out. Oxford refused to believe her, even after she showed him trinkets she had retained from her travels in time and space. Desperate for someone to believe her, she visited Ian Chesterton, trying to jog his memories, but the space-time amnesia had not abated, and he instead called the police on her, hoping they'd simply warn her off. Instead, they searched her belongings, and misidentified the historical souvenirs as artefacts stolen from the British Museum. Sent to an "approved school" in Barking, Susan later decided to put her space-time-travelling life behind her and try to build herself a life as a "normal girl", entering the British civil service as a typist around 1972 and subsequently becoming more and more involved with the European Commission.
Surprised to learn that there were many other former time- and space-travellers in the E.C., she ended up marrying one, though they later divorced due to Susan's culturally-ingrained inability to lie preventing her from successfully concealing an extramarital affair from her husband. She subsequently became EC Commissioner for Education in her own right, intending to make the education system more robust to change history in time for the 2164 Dalek invasion so that Earth will be better-prepared.
Cast
- Susan Foreman - Jane Asher
- Ian Chesterton - James Grout
- Claire Rayner - Herself
- Temmosus Skyedron - Andrew Sachs
- Members of the cast (Ian Chesterton, Jo Grant, Barbara Wright, Joey Oxford, Researcher) - June Barry, Eva Haddon, Peter Woodthorpe and Becky Harrison.
Worldbuilding
- Susan was a member of Class 5B at Coal Hill School.
- Susan claims that "everyone in our galaxy speaks some French", including in such systems as Alpha Centauri.
- In her education on Gallifrey, Susan successfully studied such subjects "astronomy, thermonuclear dynamics and warping".
- Had she not resumed travelling through time and space instead, Susan was meant to sit her "mock O-levels".
- Susan describes the Time Lords as "the people who control the space-time continuum". According to Susan, the Doctor spent his original lifetime as a commercial time traveller after being "blackballed" from becoming a proper Time Lord over his suspected interventionist leanings. After retiring, he studied for a doctorate in botany. Because he was never officially made a proper Time Lord, he had to "hack into how it was done". Susan's account suggests that orthodox Time Lords regularly travel through time, but that many areas of particular historical importance are "restricted".
- In the 1960s, Claire Rayner "did a spell" as an agony aunt for the teenage magazine Petticoat. She received multiple letters from Susan, including one final one written from 1794, which Susan arranged would reach her through time.
- Susan is aware that the Doctor has travelled with Zoe, Sarah Jane, Jo, Ace and Romana.
- Susan claims that she "always [fell] in love with someone" as a sixteen-year-old girl in her circumstances might be wont to do, with David Campbell in 2164 not having been at all unique; she notably mentions having been in love with a Menoptera
- Susan understands that the Doctor is now in his seventh incarnation.
- Skaro is allegedly located "six billion light years away" from Earth.
Story notes
- This story contains a few minor departures from TV continuity, which are not flagged in such ways as to suggest that they were intended for comedic effect; these include Susan somehow knowing about Ian being knighted in The Crusade, which post-dated her time in the Doctor's TARDIS, and her similarly knowing about Mechanus, which again apparently contradicts The Chase. It is also asserted that Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright were returned to 1963, the day before they left, rather than 1965.
- The story also presents some contradictions with other non-TV accounts of the Doctors' companions' fates. Ian and Barbara are shown to have had their memories of their travels in time locked at some point after returning to Earth as a result of space-time amnesia, in contrast to Ian Chesterton: An Introduction and The Power of the Doctor (among others) where an elderly Ian was shown to recall his adventures perfectly well.
Continuity
- A tour operator in the post-War universe acknowledged the accounts claiming that Susan's parents ran a concept shop on Gallifrey as one of Susan's possible origins. (PROSE: Gallifrey: A Rough Guide)
- This account claims that the First Doctor moved to Earth as part of his retirement. Chronotis similarly moved to Earth when he retired. (TV: Shada)
- Susan and the Doctor settled on Earth in 1963, until they were followed back to the TARDIS by Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. (TV: An Unearthly Child) They then travelled to Skaro, participating in a battle, (TV: The Daleks) and then continued travelling "backwards and forwards in time" with the Doctor claiming that he had no control over the ship, although in retrospect Susan speculates that he might have been lying because they "always set down somewhere with a breathable atmosphere and compatible gravity". (TV: Marco Polo, The Keys of Marinus, etc.)
- Susan recalls that Barbara became "very distant and superior" after "the Aztecs proclaimed her a reincarnation of the high priest Yetaxa". (TV: The Aztecs)
- Susan recounts how in 2164, the Daleks "were trying to mine out the Earth's core and replace it with a propulsion unit that would enable them to fly this planet round the galaxy", and how, following these events, she was locked out of the TARDIS by the Doctor, who advised her to start a family with young freedom fighter David Campbell. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
- Susan mentions the Menoptera. (TV: The Web Planet)
CD and other releases
- It is available as a special feature on the DVD release of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
- It was included on the CD Doctor Who at the BBC Volume 3.
- It was included on the CD boxset The BBC Radio Episodes Collection.
- It has been periodically rebroadcast on BBC Radio since its initial release. Its most recent airing was on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 23 November 2013.
2011 CD cover.
2011 CD Boxset cover.
