Susan Foreman


 * This article is about granddaughter of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. You may be looking for the Susan of the 1960s Dalek movies, or for any one of a number of other Susans.

Susan Foreman (later Susan Campbell) was the granddaughter of the Doctor and travelled with him during his first life.

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

Two different accounts exist to explain how the Doctor and Susan came to travel together. One, related by the Master, described Susan as Lady Larna, a contemporary of the Doctor whom he rescued from civil strife on Gallifrey. (RT: Birth of a Renegade) In another account, the Doctor first met Susan 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. 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) Both of these accounts may be contradicted by statements by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors that the Doctor had been married and had a family on Gallifrey, making it entirely possible that Susan was in fact his actual granddaughter.

The Doctor and Susan left Gallifrey 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. Against his better judgment, 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 many teenagers, Susan loved pop groups such as John Smith and the Common Men. She was also interested in beat poetry. This interest led her on two adventures with her grandfather, only one of which she remembered. After withnessing a man explode into a protoplasmic mass at a beat poetry reading, she and her grandfather traced the unusual death to a British government project known as Operation Proteus. They discovered that the affair was being run by an alien named Raldonn, who was mutating Humans in order to turn one of them into his own species, so that he could then have a co-pilot to help him fly his ship back home. Unfortunately, his efforts at mutation relied upon a lethal virus that threatened the whole of London. After reversing the effects of the virus, the Doctor and Susan went back to the TARDIS in Totter's Lane, whereupon she was taken and then returned to his side without their knowledge. (DWM: Operation Proteus)

Susan had been taken from her time stream by the Threshold and taken to the year 2082. They had been hunting down time traveling Humans to send to their clients, the Lobri, who needed to feed on humanity's base emotions until they could break free of their psychic plane of existence. Because time travelers could survive the journey to the Lobri's "realm", the Threshold had been particularly interested in the Doctor's former comapnions, like Peri, Sarah Jane, and Ace. Unfortunately, the Threshold didn't realize until after they had captured her that Susan wasn't, in fact, Human. An older version of her grandfather had to rescue all his companions from the Threshold's sinister scheme. He was only successful in this effort because Ace sacrificed herself by blowing up both the Lobri and herself with Nitro-9. Grieving from the loss of Ace, the Doctor wiped his remaining companion's minds of the event, and returned them to their proper time. Susan was thus returned to the side of her grandfather as they walked back to Totter's Lane after the incident with Operation Proteus. (DWM: Ground Zero) Susan then continued her life as an ordinary teenage girl at Coal Hill School. There, she tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to fit in with the rest of her classmates. This was especially problematic during lessons, as there was an obvious imbalance in her knowledge. For instance, she understood advanced physics and chemistry beyond the abilities of her teachers, yet did not know how many shillings made a pound. This may have been more a problem for her teachers than for her, however. Susan called her five months on Earth "the happiest of (her) life". When her two teachers, Ian and Barbara, followed her home one night to find out more of her mysterious home life they found the TARDIS.

The Doctor kidnapped Ian and Barbara and took a reluctant Susan too. (DW: An Unearthly Child) Susan acted as an intermediary between her teachers and the Doctor who did not trust each other at first. After a detour they landed on Skaro where they met the Daleks. (DW: The Daleks) In 1289 Asia she met Ping-Cho, a Chinese girl her own age. (DW: Marco Polo)

Susan displayed less knowledge about the workings of the TARDIS than her grandfather and was even naive to dangers that existed on the planets they visited. Also while she showed knowledge beyond earth science she did not display the advanced knowledge that was seen in other people of Gallifrey. It is likely that Susan was as young as she pretended to be at Coal Hill School and was living through her very first life. This would have made her a kind of Time Lady In Training and she hadn't completed her education or gained the knowledge and experience other time lords had. 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 stay with him or with David, he forced her hand and locked her out of the Tardis, 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)

Life in the 22nd century with David
Around 20 years after being left on Earth, Borusa captured Susan using a Time Scoop and placed her with the Doctor in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. She met her grandfather in his fifth incarnation (and, briefly, his second and third incarnations). She accompanied the Doctor back their time streams. (DW: The Five Doctors)


 * Based upon later references, it would appear the Doctor returned Susan to 22nd Century Earth after the Borusa incident, rather than returning her to Gallifrey or resuming their travels together. This may be due to her having family commitments back on Earth as detailed below.

While on Earth, Susan and David adopted three Dalek war orphans and named them Ian, Barbara and David Campbell Junior. Susan was not able to become pregnant with David. She later worked as a Peace Officer who made Dalek artifacts safe. The years she spent on Earth caused problems for herself and David as (being a Gallifreyan) she 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. (EDA: Legacy of the Daleks) In 2199 she encountered the Master whilst investigating a Dalek artifact, and was eventually taken and captured by the Master. Susan was taken in his TARDIS to the planet Tersurus where she believed she killed him. Afterwards she took his TARDIS. (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)

A conflicting account shows that Susan was able to have a child with David, the child was named Alex Campbell who maintained Susan's Time Lord features (two hearts). After David's death, Susan became one of the leaders of the Earth council to help with the recovery of the planet after the Dalek Invasion, she met up with the Doctor again and helped stop a seemingly peaceful race from enslaving the Humans. (BFA: An Earthly Child)

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, in discussing his family with Victoria Waterfield early in his incarnation, strongly implied that his family was already dead by the time of their conversation. (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) However the Doctor told Martha Jones that he left Susan on a future Earth with a freedom fighter with whom she had fallen in love and is unsure if she is alive as he simply hadn't checked. (IDW:The Forgotten)

Some doubt has been raised as to whether Susan was called into action in the Time War at all, as she left Galifrey as a teenager and had not completed her Time Lady training she would not have possessed any knowledge or skills that would have been useful to the Time Lords. It is more likely that Susan is in an alternate future, or parrallell universe; the one in which the Daleks invaded earth in the year 2000 and is cut off from the Doctor completely due to the number of changes his adventures have made to the timelines of the universe, earth especially. Changes which meant that the Daleks did not invade earth in the year 2000 in the Doctor Who canon timeline.


 * Some people believe her to have been the timelord who contacted wilf from the End of Time

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, if Susan is in fact the Doctor's biological grand-daughter. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter) The Doctor has also made occasional references to other family members, including a brother (DW: Smith and Jones) and children. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter, The Empty Child, The Tomb of the Cybermen, et al) Assuming a true biological link exists between her and the Doctor, this makes these individuals her relations, too.
 * There is speculation (fuelled by production team comments and The Writer's Tale but not confirmed by on-screen evidence) that the unidentified woman in DW: The End of Time is the Doctor's mother. If this is the case, then Susan would be her great-granddaughter.

Aliases

 * For reasons unknown, some written accounts suggest Susan might at one point have used the name Susan English. (DWN: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks; CP: Campaign)

Quotes

 * Susan Foreman - Quotes

Behind the scenes

 * No televised episode has ever explored Susan's origins. The unbroadcast pilot episode features a line of dialogue in which Susan states she is from the 49th century. However, the final televised version broadcast as part 1 of An Unearthly Child contains no such reference.
 * It's unclear why David Whitaker chose to change the character's name to Susan English for his novelisations. The later unofficial novel Campaign reinstated this use in tribute, but all other novelisations and original novels have retained the Susan Foreman name.
 * The contradicting stories regarding Susan's origins predate the current series of Doctor Who. The series establishes the fact that the Doctor had a family on Gallifrey and that Susan was in all likelihood his biological granddaughter. As of 2010 there has never been an indication given in any TV episode to suggest otherwise.
 * Gavin and Stacey actress Joanna Page has been confirmed to star in 2 episodes of Doctor Who as a long lost relative of The Doctor. It is unconfirmed which relative she is playing exactly but it's possible that she could be playing a regenerated Susan. It is unknown if she is going to be in series 5 or series 6 of Doctor Who.