Relationship Spotlight: Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright, the Doctor & Ian Chesterton (Doctor Who)

Can’t argue with the very first Doctor-companion relationships the show ever gave us. While Doctor Who has had many truly-exquisite dynamics between the Doctor and their companions over the years – and the One era itself features some other good groupings – there’s something magical about this unlikely quartet wandering the fourth dimension together (a few spoilers.)

Elephant in the room first. This is not your typical Doctor-companion meetcute in which the companions meet the Doctor at the onset of some sort of alien crisis, impress the Doctor with their cleverness/heart/bravery/etc., and get a TARDIS invitation by the end of the story. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ian and Barbara have all those things in spades. Case in point, they both recognize something’s off about Susan, are concerned enough for her that they want to investigate, and poke around an eerie junkyard at night looking for clues. It’s not until a bit later that they have their respective 20^th-century minds blown by TARDISes and time travel, but even in a situation that barely hints at the fantastical, they prove themselves to be companion material.

But at the time, the First Doctor isn’t in the market for companions. His only company is Susan, and that’s the way he likes it. When Ian and Barbara do some snooping and discover the TARDIS, he’s angry at them for learning his secret and is prepared to go to extreme measures. And yes, he straight-up abducts them in time. That is a thing that happens.

And so, the relationship does not start well. Ian and Barbara are two ordinary schoolteachers who’ve been forced against their will on a bewildering journey in time and space, the Doctor is the distrustful, mysterious alien who’s taken them, and Susan is the “unearthly child” caught in the middle, trying to help her teachers and her grandfather see the best in one another. As such, the early episodes are filled with Ian and the Doctor clashing over authority, Barbara taking the Doctor to task for how he treats them, and the Doctor doing sneaky things to get his way.

But even as this friction is going on, very gradually, the Doctor, Susan, and the two humans are beginning to understand, respect, and even like each other. Getting into tight situations together (because it’s Doctor Who – no matter where the TARDIS takes them, they’re going to end up in a tight situation pretty quickly,) they need to collaborate and come up with plans to stay alive/save the day/whatever’s required of them, and that means discovering what each of the others brings to the table. Before too long, almost without realizing it, these four people become a group, one that grows closer with each passing adventure.

One thing I really enjoy about this era of the show is the “hanging-out” scenes that tend to come at the start of a new serial. While stories of six or more episodes usually wind up dragging at some point, it does leave space for these low-key moments of the original team TARDIS exploring a new era/planet: examining local fauna, finding appropriate clothes for the era, and just generally enjoying poking around a new time and place. I like that, not jumping straight into the crisis/mystery within the first few minutes of the story and spending a little time just showing these four having a good time together. It’s a nice way to establish their ever-evolving relationships with one another, and while Who still squeezes in moments like this, they tend to be a lot more condensed than they are in these earliest seasons of the show.