Susan Foreman

(This article is about grand-daughter of the Time Lord, 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.

Profile
The Doctor, then in his first incarnation, first met (from his point of view) Susan 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 Pythia's Curse, and to have been the Other's granddaughter. (NA: Lungbarrow) Adopting her as his own grand-daughter, the Doctor and Susan (who did not, at that time, go by that name) left Gallifrey together. ((NA: Nightshade, DWM: Time & Time Again) On the planet Iwa, a Human colonist, Jill gave the traveler the Human-sounding name Susan, after Jill's mother. (TN: Frayed)

Susan appeared to be a typical girl attending Coal Hill School, where Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright worked as teachers. She, like all teenagers, loved pop groups like 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 not knowing how many shillings made up a pound. (DW: An Unearthly Child)

Amongst Susan’s character 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 the planet Skaro. (DW: The Daleks)

When Barbara and Ian 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. (DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

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)

The Doctor realised that Susan would never leave him of her own free will, as she believed that he was dependent on her. So, in an emotional move, he locked her out of the his 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. (DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

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 the Doctor, again, around 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. As the first incarnation of the Doctor went with her into the TARDIS, it is probable that he personally took her back to her own time before returning himself to whatever time period and place he had himself been plucked from. If this is so, it would mean that he did indeed return to Earth as he had promised Susan (from her perspective) twenty years earlier. (DW: The Five Doctors)

Quotes

 * Susan Foreman - Quotes