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.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Susan Foreman (Doctor Who)

Getting started on my classic-companion Big Damn Hero moments.  Susan is first up, and I’ll admit that she was kind of a tough one.  But despite her reputation for only crying and twisting her ankle, I managed to find some valuable contributions from her.

The Flaming Skull (“An Unearthly Child:  The Forest of Fear” – Series 1, Episode 3)

Technically, it’s Ian who applies the idea toward a plan (frightening the cavemen so they can escape,) but it’s Susan who hits on the notion of how to scare them:  putting a skull on top of a torch so it looks like flames are emanating from the bones.  Pretty clever and highly effective!

Going Through the Forest (“The Daleks:  The Survivors” – Series 1, Episode 6)

Now, I’m not arguing that Susan is terrified throughout this adventure – in fact, that’s part of the point.  She’s a nervous, freaked-out girl making her way through the creepy-ass Skaro jungle alone at night, all while suffering under the effects of radiation poisoning, to get the medicine she and the others need to counteract the effects.  No small task, but Susan gets the job done.

Crossing the Stalactite Bridge (“The Keys of Marinus:  The Snows of Terror” – Series 1, Episode 24)

While searching for one of the keys, Susan and her friends wind up in a tight spot in a frozen cave with Ian fending off the key’s guardian.  If one of them can get across a deep chasm, they can reattach a rope bridge so the others can get across.  They’ve bridged the gap with what looks like stalactites, reasoning that, given time, they’ll freeze together and someone can cross on them, but there’s no time to wait.  What I like about this moment is how determined Susan is throughout.  She’s completely focused on the task at hand, and even when one of the stalactites breaks off and she nearly falls, she doesn’t falter.  It’s not often we get to see her being so steady.

Protecting John (“The Sensorites:  The Unwilling Warriors” – Series 1, Episode 32)

“The Sensorites” is probably Susan’s best story.  I like how her latent telepathic energy is heightened by the Sensesphere and how receptive she is to mediating between the humans/Doctor and the Sensorites.  Here, seeing how the Sensorites are weaponizing their telepathy against John, Susan gets the idea to do the same thing to them, with her and Barbara amplifying the same thought – “We defy you” – to drown out their own message.

Guiding Barbara through the Aqueduct (“The Sensorites:  A Desperate Venture” – Series 1, Episode 36)

And more telepathy for the win!  Susan mentally guides Barbara through the aqueduct in the hopes of recovering the Doctor and Ian, with Barbara using one of the Sensorites’ mental devices and Susan kicking it old school.  This is a neat plan; Susan has a model of the aqueduct and some Sensorites (who know the aqueduct but are ill-equipped to enter it themselves) to help her out, and she serves as a go-between giving Barbara the instructions she needs to get through.

Character Highlight: Susan Foreman (Doctor Who)

Back where it all started.  Susan’s far from my favorite companion – the conceit in the early years of always having one adolescent companion puts Susan in the “needs to be saved” column too often – but she’s special because she’s the first.  Even though we technically meet Ian and Barbara before we meet her, she’s the first to travel with the Doctor, and as Ian and Barbara struggle to come to grips with what’s happening, she bridges the cultural gap between her grandfather and her teachers.

There’s this idea of Susan as constantly screaming/crying, getting captured, and spraining her ankle as she flees the bad guys, and like the idea of most generally less-liked companions, it’s not strictly true.  Yes, she does all these things, and yes, the other three tend to come up with solutions to their assorted scrapes and crises far more often than she does, but she isn’t useless.  She can help, too, and even if she’s cast more as the student following the “lessons” of her teachers and grandfather, she is capable of her own initiative.

Susan is smart and curious, taking joy in seeing new things and sometimes letting that enthusiasm get her into trouble.  She’s friendly, kind, and entirely devoted to her grandfather.  She feels a tug-and-pull between the itinerant life she’s led traveling with the Doctor and the thought of something steadier, like what she has at Coal Hill School; she loves visit new places and meeting new people, but she also has moments when she desires a home that doesn’t dematerialize.

As I said, in early episodes she functions as a sort of go-between for the Doctor and Ian and Barbara.  Susan is a definite peacemaker, and she tries to help the Doctor and the two teachers understand one another, almost like she’s trying to get the two halves of her life to get along.  She educates Ian and Barbara on the rudiments of TARDIS travel and makes explanations for the Doctor’s more obstinate actions, and she tries to make the Doctor see that these humans can do and understand more than he thinks they can.

I like Susan best in the scenes when we’re reminded how, typical teenage girl or not, she’s an also alien from another planet.  I love references to her travels with the Doctor from before Ian and Barbara are brought along with them, and I like her little hints of alienness, like her ultrasensitivity to the psychic atmosphere that allows her to communicate using her thoughts in “The Sensorites.”  Speaking of “The Sensorites,” I also like that, in that story, Susan is the one to give us our first description of Gallifrey.  It’ll be years before we see the Doctor go back again, but as Susan remembers the sights of her home, we see how she’s wholly alien but thoroughly “human,” as we would say, with the same appreciation for beauty and longing for where she comes from.

And not for nothing, that very first shot of her remains a classic.  The pixie cut, the stylish ‘60s dress, holding a pocket radio to her ear and swaying with a far-away look in her eye, the soft twist of her arm to the music strange and beautiful.  Every inch an unearthly child.