In the first episode of Doctor Who, way back on November 23, 1963, the first Time Lord character we meet is not the Doctor. Instead, perhaps the most underrated Time Lord (or Time Lady) in all of Who history is the Doctor’s granddaughter, and very first companion, Susan Foreman. Played by the brilliant Carole Ann Ford — who had already starred in the sci-fi hit Day of the Triffids in 1962 — Susan was the audience surrogate for our first steps into the TARDIS. And now, 62 years after her first appearance, and 59 years after the 1st Doctor (William Hartnell) parted ways with her, Susan is very much back in Doctor Who.
But what does it mean? Here’s why the appearance of Susan in the latest Doctor Who episode raises more questions than answers.
Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 6, “The Interstellar Song Contest.”
Written by Juno Dawson, “The Interstellar Song Contest” clearly has some huge influence from showrunner Russell T Davies. Although the trailers suggested this episode would be a goofy one-off, in which the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) explored a far-future version of Eurovision, the episode actually contains a huge hint at both the future and the past of the entire series.
At two points in the episode, the Doctor gets a vision of Susan Foreman, who is played by Carol Ann Ford today, at 84 years old. Susan refers to the Doctor as “grandfather” and in the first vision says to him, as the Doctor is about to freeze in space, says, “Grandfather, go back!” and then, in the same scene, says “Find me!”
Later, when the Doctor is about to exact his revenge on Kid for trying to murder trillions of people, Susan again returns to the Doctor’s mind, insisting, “Grandfather, stop!” This, and the arrival of Belinda, prevents the Doctor from taking out Kid, which could imply that Susan is, after all of these years, the Doctor’s conscience. The idea that the Doctor thinks of Susan as a kind of north star isn’t new, of course. In the 2017 episode “The Pilot,” the 12th Doctor (Peter Capaldi) had a photo of Susan from 1963 on his desk, and even seemed to converse with it, proving that Susan has never been far from the Doctor’s mind.
But why has she physically returned now? By the end of the episode, the Doctor tries to shake off the visions of Susan, nothing more than hallucinations. But, Ford literally hasn’t appeared in an episode of Doctor Who since the 1983 episode “The Five Doctors.” Why is Susan back now?
One reason might be somewhat obvious: Since 2005, it’s never been made clear if Susan was on Gallifrey, or somewhere else, when the Time War wiped out all the Time Lords. Then, since the Master destroyed Gallifrey again in the 13th Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) era, the question still stands: Was Susan there when that happened?
And in addition to just revealing if Susan is alive or not, the origin of Susan is still very much in question. Although we always assumed that Susan’s parents existed somewhere in the Who canon, the final episodes of the most recent 2024 season threw that into question. In “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” when Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) asks the Doctor if he has children, he replies cryptically, “Well, not quite. Not yet.” At the time, many fans thought Susan was returning, a fact which Susan Triad (Susan Twist) mocked in “Empire of Death.” Basically, last year, Doctor Who teased the idea that the existence of Susan is caused by some sort of predestination paradox, but then, the season finale treated that notion as a sort of fake-out that hid the return of Sutekh.
But now, Susan is very much back. This isn’t a fake-out or an Easter egg. Susan’s return to Doctor Who is a touching and cool tribute to the show’s humble beginnings. But this revelation also means that one mystery, six decades in the making, might finally have an answer.
