Susan Foreman - Relationship To The Doctor

Relationship To The Doctor

Susan is generally assumed to be Gallifreyan like the Doctor as well as his natural granddaughter. Her description of her home planet in The Sensorites (1964) matches the Tenth Doctor's much later descriptions of Gallifrey, and she is fully familiar with the history and landscape of Gallifrey's Time Lord society when she and the First Doctor are transported to "the Death Zone" in The Five Doctors. Although it has never been explicitly established whether she can regenerate, she does display telepathic ability on one occasion (The Sensorites).

In the commentary to the BBC's DVD release of An Unearthly Child, actress Carole Ann Ford points out that suggestions that Susan was not the Doctor's natural granddaughter were only first put forward in the 1990s. She reveals that little background information on Susan's character or history was provided to her by the production team, and so to inform her performance, she would often discuss and invent ideas about Susan with co-star William Hartnell.