Doctor Who began airing on November 23, 1963, but it looked completely different. Not only was it in black and white, but the story wasn’t focused on The Doctor. In the very first episode, the main focus of attention was a character who only appeared in the series for a year but left a lasting mark on the entire show — one that is still present 61 years later, even after more than a dozen Doctors and two separate reboots.
Now, that introductory character wants to make a return — sixty years after she left the TARDIS on December 26, 1964. And if it happens, it’s something that would finally make good on a fan theory from the most recent season. Mild spoilers ahead for Doctor Who Season 1 (2024) and Doctor Who Season 2 (1964).
The pilot episode of Doctor Who, “An Unearthly Child,” opens not with William Hartnell as the First Doctor but a teenager with a hip Swinging Sixties haircut listening to a transistor radio. She’s introduced as Susan Foreman, the strange student at the local school who seems to know about the fourth and fifth dimensions and what happens in the future. Her teachers follow her back to her home: a police box that is bigger on the inside.
She’s revealed to be Susan Foreman, the granddaughter of the mysterious man known only as The Doctor. The two traveled together with the schoolteachers, but after the episode “The Dalek Invasion of Earth: Flashpoint,” Susan stayed on Earth while her grandfather continued on his adventures. This episode contained the Doctor’s famous and tender speech, in which he said to Susan: “One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”
Fascinatingly, in the world in which the Doctor left Susan behind, she was basically becoming a freedom fighter alongside other humans, making her a truly underused hero of the entire Who franchise.
Now, Carole Ann Ford, the actress behind Susan Foreman, is contemplating a return to the series, mentioning her run-ins with the current showrunner. “I've met Russell [T Davies] a few times and I absolutely adore him,” she said at Luton Comic-Con. “He is the man that would be the boss man to say yes or no - so hopefully it's going to be yes.”
If she does return, it wouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the Doctor did promise a return in 1964! But, more recently, the newly-rebooted Doctor Who Season 1, which premiered on Disney+, contains countless references to Susan, with the episode “The Devil’s Chord” even showing The Doctor (now played by Ncuti Gatwa) and his new companion Ruby Sunday traveling back to the era where we first met Susan in 1963.
There was even a popular fan theory that Susan would return by the end of the season. After multiple appearances by the actress Susan Twist, fans theorized there would be a literal “Susan twist” and Carole Ann Ford would reprise her role in the season finale. This didn’t actually turn out to be true — the real “Susan twist” was a reappearance of the Classic Doctor Who villain Sutekh.
But now we know that Ford is down to return, anything is possible: even making good on all that speculation from Season 1. But how would Susan react to seeing the Doctor again for the first time in 60 years? “He said he'd come back and get me and never did. I'd give him a good telling off if I saw him again,” she said.
