Susan Foreman


 * (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.

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. (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 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 Pythia's Curse, and to have been grand-daughter of the Other. (NA: Lungbarrow)

All accounts agree, however, that the Doctor and Susan left Gallifrey at the same time, together, in 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. 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 knowledge of advanced physics theory beyond the knowledge of Chesterton 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
She became a full-time mother to her three daughters, as well as a political aide for her husband. Years after, Borusa collected Susan in 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 returned his first incarnation back home. (DW: The Five Doctors) Then, one day, she received a telepathic summons from the Time Lords, telling her that the Daleks had discovered the route in the time-space vortex that led to Gallifrey, which was the prelude to the Time War. She was forced to reveal to Peter her children and her grandchildren her true background. When Daleks were mentioned, Peter was keen to join her on Gallifrey, but she made it clear that this fight was one she could only fight with her own people. She assured them that The Time Lords would defeat the Daleks easily, and that she would come home again. However, this was a promise that circumstances would cruelly never allow her to keep.

Whereabouts Unknown
To protect her family from Dalek reprisals, in case any of them managed to survive the apocalypse that destroyed both the Time Lords and the Dalek race, she regenerated, having sustained serious internal injuries, changed her DNA into that of a human and headed in her TARDIS to the district of London that Ian Chesterton lived in. It remains unclear whether she met up with Ian again, as UNIT have never been given information relating to any possible sightings. As far as The Doctor is aware, Susan died when Gallifrey burned up.

Personality
Amongst Susan’s traits was her ability, under certain circumstances, to use telepathy, as when the travellers met the Sensorites. (DW: The Sensorites (TV story)|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 Skaro. (DW: The Daleks)

Throughout her travels Susan mentioned other planets she had visited – the "metal seas of Venus", the planet Esto (the home of telepathic plants) – and spoke of her own planet. She told Ping Cho that her home was "as far away as a night star". (DW: Marco Polo) She also described her planet to the Sensorite Leader. She was obviously homesick. (DW: The Sensorites)

Quotes

 * Susan Foreman - Quotes