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Susan
(1963 - 1964 & 1983) |
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Carole
Ann Ford |
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| Born
in 1940 Carole Ann Ford was only 8 when she appeared
in her first film The Last Road. She appeared
in various commercials and walk on work before she
secured a major role in the film Women of the
Streets. Other theatre, television and films
followed including the 1963 film The Day of the
Triffids and in television on Emergency Ward
10 and the soap opera Compact. After Doctor
Who she continued working in theatre as well
as playing a schoolteacher in the 1966 film The
Great St Trinian's Train Robbery. She returned
to Doctor Who as Susan in the 20th anniversary
special "The
Five Doctors" in 1983 and also in the
Children in Need special "Dimensions in Time" in
1993. |
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 Susan was The Doctor's first travelling companion.
She was also his granddaughter. Because of this she has a very
special relationship with The Doctor and her travelling experiences
started long before they arrived on Earth. By the time of his fifteenth incarnation, The Doctor noted that he had never had children even if he affirmed that Susan was his grandchild, speculating that he would father Susan’s parent at some point in his relative future ("The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death"). The events
of "Lungbarrow"
revealed that Susan is actually the granddaughter of the Other,
a mysterious figure from the
dawn of Gallifreyian history who sacrificed himself to create
the genetic looms that allowed Gallifrey to continue despite
the curse of sterility imposed by their old ruler, the Pythia.
One of the last naturally-born children on Gallfirey before
the Pythia’s curse sterilised the planet - her mother
apparently died giving birth and her father was lost on a bowship
fighting the Vampires - Susan was hidden away from the rest
of the Time Lords while the Other continued his work, only to
be left wandering the streets after he sacrificed himself and
she was separated from her guardian while trying to leave Gallifrey.
Having been forced to wander the streets for a year following
the destruction of the spaceports, Susan encountered the First
Doctor when he accidentally travelled back in time
to Gallifrey’s
distant past after connecting the TARDIS to
the Hand of Omega. The two ‘recognising’ each other
- despite having never met themselves - Susan subsequently left
Gallifrey with
The Doctor, who concluded that, even if he didn’t know
how he knew her name, he would appreciate her company on his
travels.
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| An Unearthly Child |
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At the start of the television series, the
viewer is given the impression that Susan, along with her grandfather,
are exiles from their own planet travelling in the TARDIS and that
they have lived a rather nomadic lifestyle. In the story "Marco
Polo" she announces 'I have had many homes in many places'. Possible
it is because of this that The Doctor decided to spend sometime in
20th Century London and so give Susan the opportunity to attend Coal
Hill School and it is here that we first see her. The novel "Time
and Relative" gave more information on Susan’s life at
this time, revealing that, initially after arriving on Earth, The
Doctor was almost unable to break the ‘blocks’ his peoples’ rules
regarding interference had imposed on his mind, with Susan unable
to recall much details about her life on Gallifrey before her departure
herself, the ‘blocks’ only lifting when The Doctor was
inspired by a young boy who Susan baby-sat for to defeat a being
of sentient ice known as the Cold. During this time, Susan befriended
a few of her fellow students, but they all went their separate ways
after the Cold was defeated, Susan’s friends unable to cope
with the truth about her even as they acknowledged that she herself
had done nothing wrong.
Her outward appearance was that of a fifteen
year-old schoolgirl. However, Susan demonstrated on a number of occasions
that she was no ordinary teenager - hence the title "An
Unearthly Child" of the very first episode. She showed flashes
of her grandfather's intelligence and even evidence of non-human
mental abilities, on one occasion placing herself in a death-like
healing coma when she was injured in the collapse of a building,
but more often than not she behaved like any ordinary young person
thrust into situations with which she could not hope to deal with.
In contrast to her grandfather’s more closed-minded attitude
at this point in his life - when he refused to consider such ideas
as the TARDIS being alive - Susan was far more open to possibilities,
such as when she was the first member of the TARDIS crew to access
the ‘magic’ - later revealed to be the result of alien
nanotechnology that allowed the user to manipulate their environment
- on the seemingly mystical planet of Avalon while imprisoned in
an enemy fortress ("The
Sorcerer's Apprentice").
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| The Edge of Destruction |
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Two of
Susan's schoolteachers, Barbara
Wright and Ian
Chesterton, become curious about their pupil's lack
of knowledge in some areas and outstanding ability in others.
As Ian comments to Barbara 'She lets her knowledge out a
bit at a time so as not to embarrass me. That's what I feel
about her. She knows more science than I'll ever know'.
It becomes clear to them that she is no ordinary fifteen
year-old teenager even though she tries to act like one.
With her knowledge being extremely patchy and because some
of the answers she produces seem rather far fetched for
the 1960's her two school teachers decide to investigate
her home and her grandfather. In doing so they find themselves
in the TARDIS ("An Unearthly Child").
Susan
was certainly very headstrong and it is also clear that
The Doctor holds a deep affection for his granddaughter.
He was always protective towards her and was always concerned
for her safety. This feeling was not just one sided as there
was definitely a strong bond of affection between them and
she was able to prompt a gentler, more good-humoured side
to him. Whereas The Doctor tried his best to protect and
teach Susan it was clear that she felt that she had to be
there to care for The Doctor in return.
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| Marco Polo |
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Susan
did lack the ability to judge some of the people and situations
she found herself in. She had an open mind and she formed friendships
very easily. She had great courage and determination, although
her bravery sometimes faltered. She could though be stubborn
and during one incident she refused to listen to The Doctor
who was very concerned for her safety ("The
Sensorites"). Despite this, she proved to be a very
capable companion when the situation called for it; indeed,
a robotic duplicate of Susan - possessing all of Susan’s
memories and her personality up to the point where she was created
- once voluntarily ‘sacrificed’ herself to pilot
a ship that would take the survivors of a dying Earth colony
to another planet, despite knowing that the new society would
lack the necessary resources to maintain her once they arrived,
sacrificing herself to genuinely accomplish something with her
life ("City
at World's End").
Susan's role was very important when the show started
as viewers had no idea who The Doctor was or where he came from.
Susan helped to give him a bit more background and a logical
reason for his travelling. Susan was also a vital element in
the chemistry of the first TARDIS crew and she gave the younger
viewers somebody they could relate to.
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| The Sensorites |
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However,
Susan was quickly growing up and no longer wished to be
treated as a child. The Doctor realised this and he was
also aware that unless she found somebody else to care for
then neither of them would part company. It was therefore
The Doctor's decision for Susan's leaving him and the TARDIS.
He achieved this by locking her out of the TARDIS when he
realised that she would be better off starting a new life
of her own, on Earth, with a resistance fighter who she
had fallen in love with ("The
Dalek Invasion of Earth"). (It has been suggested
that The Doctor wanted Susan to leave after the events of "The
Time Travellers", when he drastically altered Earth’s
history by preventing the creation of a renegade time-travel
experiment in the twentieth century, finding a safe location
for her to remain in order to protect her from the Time
Lords if they caught up with him).
Much later Susan is reunited with the First
Doctor again, along with some of The Doctor's other incarnations
and companions in the 20th anniversary special "The
Five Doctors". Albeit much older she seemed to have changed very
little and she still feels that she still has to protect
'her Doctor', helping him defeat a Dalek and subsequently
accompanying him in the exploration of the Death Zone. Despite
this, she had very little real interaction with her grandfather’s
other selves, due to her twisting her ankle and having to
remain in the TARDIS with the Fifth Doctor’s companion Turlough while the various Doctors investigated the crisis
with the aid of their other companions. The situation resolved,
Susan subsequently departed Gallifrey with the First Doctor,
who presumably took her home before continuing on his travels.
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| The Dalek Invasion of Earth |
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Susan’s life on Earth was eventually witnessed
in greater detail during "Legacy
of the Daleks", when the Eighth
Doctor, receiving a telepathic scream from her shortly
after losing track of his current companion Samantha
Jones, attempted to trace the origin of the scream by
travelling to Earth to investigate. Since marrying David,
Susan had allegedly tried and failed to become pregnant
on several occasions, with Time Lord and human interbreeding
failing more often than it succeeded. Despite this notable
handicap - as well as the fact that Susan, as a Gallifreyan,
had barely aged at all since The Doctor left her while David
was now in his fifties - the two were apparently happy together,
even serving as parents to three orphans whom they had named
Ian, Barbara, and David Junior. Working as a Peace Officer
to protect the under-populated human race from the remaining
Dalek weapons, Susan was captured during an investigation
by Estro, the mysterious military advisor to Lord Haldoran,
the current ‘ruler’ of England. Investigating
Susan’s disappearance, The Doctor learned that ‘Estro’ was
actually The Master,
seeking control of a Dalek weapon by pitting the two ‘Lords’ of
Britain against each other (The situation being made more
complicated by the fact that The Doctor had encountered
The Master out of sequence; The Master he now faced was
the version that had more regularly encountered the Third
Doctor).
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| The Five Doctors |
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In the subsequent confrontation, The Master had
attempted to gain control of a matter transmuter, capable
of turning any element into any other element, but was driven
off Earth by The Doctor and his allies from the remainders
of the original Dalek resistance force, although David died
in the struggle when he took a shot intended for The Doctor.
The Master tried to take Susan as a hostage, but although
he escaped to his TARDIS, he didn’t realise she was
also a Gallifreyian until she incapacitated him with a telepathic
shriek through his TARDIS’s telepathic circuits. Having
disarmed The Master, Susan subsequently left him badly burned
and lacking any further regenerations when she destroyed
the matter transmuter with his TCE, abandoning him on the
distant planet Tersurus before she left with his TARDIS.
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An Earthly Child
(Marc Platt) |
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It would appear that Susan eventually returned to Earth with a son, Alex Campbell; the most likely explanation is that she found a civilisation who could help her conceive a son using a sample of David's DNA, as Alex only had 17% Gallifreyan DNA rather than a more even balance. Now more visibly older, Susan attempted to help human civilisation rebuild after the Dalek war, attempting to make contact with alien allies despite a rising anti-alien sentiment, but her initial contacts, the Guldreasi, intended to make Earth a slave planet for their war machines, before the Eighth Doctor showed up and exposed their plans ("An Earthly Child"). Explaining her true history to Alex, Susan was able to reconcile with her son, the two spending Christmas with The Doctor and his current companion Lucie Miller ("Relative Dimensions"), Alex expressing his plans to be an architect while Lucie joined him on a trip around Europe. However, these plans were cut short when The Doctor's old enemy, The Monk ("The Time Meddler") returned to Earth, unleashing a new plague of viruses on Earth as part of his new alliance with the Daleks to try and pay back The Doctor for his recent defeat of The Monk's plans ("Deimos/The Resurrection of Mars"). Although The Monk was able to delay The Doctor's return by jamming Susan's call for help, he returned in time to prevent the Daleks from turning Earth into a time-travelling plague planet, but Alex and Lucie both died in the process, Alex sacrificing himself to get The Doctor and Susan to safety while Lucie gave her life to destroy the Daleks' equipment by crashing a ship into it ("Lucie Miller/To the Death").
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Susan's War
(Eddie Robson, Lou Morgan, Simon Guerrier and Alan Barnes) |
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After grieving her losses while living in a converted block of flats that used to be Coal Hill School, Susan was briefly distracted by minor problems, such as an apparent alien ship that vanished from radar and a malfunctioning Dalek device that just produced a mass of custard, before she was reunited with her grandfather again ("All Hands on Deck"). Realising that The Doctor had been trying to prevent her receiving a hypercube from Gallifrey, Susan learned that the Time Lords were engaged in a war with the Daleks, although The Doctor was acting as a conscientious objector to the War as he wanted to find another solution to the war beyond just fighting. However, despite respecting her grandfather's view, Susan was determined to make the Daleks suffer for killing Alex and departed Earth to rejoin her people. Her first step saw her recommend Ian Chesterton to help negotiate an alliance with the Sensorites to gain the aid of their telepathic abilities against the Daleks ("Sphere of Influence"), with later missions including capturing a Dalek agent on Florana ("The Uncertain Shore") and preventing a plan to configure the vortex-dwelling Orovix as a weapon against the Daleks as Susan recognised that they were too dangerous ("Assets of War"). She was briefly manipulated by a Dalek agent to go back to 1963 to try and help them retrieve the Hand of Omega before the Hand could be used to destroy Skaro
("Remembrance of the Daleks"). Tricked into believing she was acting on behalf of the Time Lords, Susan was able to use a Time Ring to bypass the time lock around Earth by basically tricking the lock into thinking she was her younger self who was already on Earth. (Fortunately, the Eighth Doctor found out about the plan and was able to warn Susan in time, tricking the Daleks into taking a fake Hand without alerting the Renegade Daleks of that era to the presence of the Time War Daleks), leaving the Dalek ship to be destroyed by the fake Hand while he and Susan returned to their own time ("The Shoreditch Intervention").
When last seen, Susan had returned to the Time Lords and her presence had been requested by Lord President Rassilon, who was known to have a vendetta against The Doctor ("Zagreus", "The Next Life" and "The End of Time"), but her final fate in the conflict is unknown, However, during "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" the Ninth Doctor displayed a strong sympathy for Doctor Constantine, who stated 'Before the war I was a father and a grandfather; now I'm neither, but I am still a doctor', suggesting that Susan perished in the Time War like so many others of The Doctor's race. Although The Doctor has since learned that Gallifrey and at least some Time Lords survived ("The Day of The Doctor" and "Heaven Sent/Hell Bent"), the lack of contact from Susan appears to reinforce the idea that she died during the War.
When the Fifteenth Doctor took his companion Ruby Sunday to 1963 ("The Devil's Chord"), he mentioned that his younger self was ‘currently’ living in Shoreditch with Susan, but also affirmed that he was fairly sure Susan had been another casualty in the genocide of the Time Lords. During a later investigation into Susan Triad, a tech CEO whose appearance had been seen across various time periods ("The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death"), The Doctor wondered if the name ‘Susan Triad’ was a hint that she was some version of Susan. However, it was soon confirmed that the choice of name was a trick to mislead The Doctor by making him think of his granddaughter, when the true enemy was Sutekh, last of the Osirans ("Pyramids of Mars"). The Doctor later observed to Kate Stewart - the daughter of his old friend The Brigadier - that he had never gone back for Susan because he was afraid of her falling victim to the death that seemed to follow him in his travels, although this likely just refers to The Doctor never seeking Susan out after the Time War.
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