Favourite Companion Quotes: Susan

[shauny]

I am slowly adding pages for all the companions, we recently added Susan (description by @deltaandthebannermen) and I realised her Quotes page is sorely lacking.

What are your favourite quotes by Susan?

[SweetAIBelle]

SUSAN: Grandfather!
– An Unearthly Child

SUSAN: Grandfather!
– The Daleks

SUSAN: Grandfather?
– The Edge of Destruction

SUSAN: Grandfather.
– The Keys of Marinus

SUSAN: Grandfather!
– The Aztecs

SUSAN: You’re monsters. All of you, monsters. Oh, Grandfather. Grandfather.
– The Aztecs

SUSAN: Grandfather!
– The Sensorites

SUSAN: Argh! Grandfather!
– Planet of Giants

SUSAN: Grandfather?
– The Dalek Invasion of Earth

SUSAN: Grandfather. Oh, Grandfather!
– The Five Doctors

[SweetAIBelle]

A little more seriously (though all those are real quotes), here’s a few quotes:

SUSAN: Yes, I can see red turns to blue, Mister Chesterton, but that’s because we’re dealing with two inactive chemicals. They only act in relation to each other.
IAN: But that’s the whole point of the experiment, Susan.
SUSAN: Yes, it’s a bit obvious, isn’t it? Well, I’m not trying to be rude, but couldn’t we deal with two active chemicals? Then red could turn blue all by itself and get on with something else? I’m sorry, it was just an idea.
–An Unearthly Child

SUSAN: The TARDIS can go anywhere.
BARBARA: TARDIS? I don’t understand you, Susan.
SUSAN: Well, I made up the name TARDIS from the initials, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I thought you’d both understand when you saw the different dimensions inside from those outside.
IAN: Just let me get this straight. A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space?
SUSAN: Yes.
DOCTOR: Quite so.
IAN: But that’s ridiculous.
–An Unearthly Child

SUSAN: Barbara, I’ve got an idea.
BARBARA: What?
SUSAN: He’s quiet now, but we can’t be sure the Sensorites won’t make him help them. Look, if they can use their brains, why can’t we use ours?
BARBARA: To defend him?
SUSAN: Yes, and ourselves. Grandfather and I landed on a planet once called Esto. The plants there used thought transference. If you stood in between two of the plants, they set up a sort of screeching noise. Grandfather said it was because they were aware of another mind.
BARBARA: Breaking in on their communications.
SUSAN: Yes, exactly. I thought if we both tried together.
– The Sensorites

SUSAN: When will we get back, Grandfather?
DOCTOR: I don’t know, my dear. This old ship of mine seems to be an aimless thing. However, we don’t worry about it, do we? Do you?
SUSAN: Sometimes I feel I’d like to belong somewhere, not just be a wanderer. Still, I’m not unhappy.
DOCTOR: Good, good.
– The Sensorites

SUSAN: I was going to say, why do you trust your people?
1ST ELDER: Why do you want to make me doubt them?
SUSAN: Trust can’t be taken for granted. It must be earned. I trust you, but only because I know you.
1ST ELDER: But Susan, our whole life is based on trust.
SUSAN: Yes, and that might be your downfall. Look you don’t trust the ground you walk on until you know it’s firm, do you. So why trust your people blindly?
1ST ELDER: When I listen to you, you who are so young among your own kind, I realise that we Sensorites have a lot to learn from the people of Earth.
SUSAN: Grandfather and I don’t come from Earth. Oh, it’s ages since we’ve seen our planet. It’s quite like Earth, but at night the sky is a burned orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver.
1ST ELDER: My mind tells me that you wish to see your home again, and yet there is a part of you which calls for adventure. A wanderlust.
SUSAN: Yes. Well, we’ll all go home some day. That’s if you’ll let us.
1ST ELDER: I think I will.
– The Sensorites

DOCTOR: Most extraordinary. He ran away from me!
SUSAN: (laughs) That must have looked funny. Flip, flap, flip, flap.
DOCTOR: I can assure you he was very mobile, my child. Come along, let’s get into the First Elder’s room. Come along.
– The Sensorites

DOCTOR: My dear girl, the one purpose in growing old is to accumulate knowledge and wisdom, and to help other people.
SUSAN: So I’m to be treated like a silly little child.
DOCTOR: If you behave like one, yes.
SUSAN: Oh, look, Grandfather. I understand the Sensorites. They’re timid little people. Because their minds and mine can communicate sometimes, they trust me.
DOCTOR: Yes, and I assure you we shall make good use of that fact, but not without discussions. You will not make decisions on your own accord. Now, do you understand? Is that quite clear? Well, is it?
SUSAN: Look, I’m not saying I’m as clever as you, of course I’m not. But I won’t be pushed aside. I’m not a child anymore, Grandfather. I’m not.
DOCTOR: Oh, Susan, Susan.
– The Sensorites

SUSAN: Hey, Barbara.
BARBARA: Just the thing for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.
SUSAN: I’m rather mad about being handmaiden to a goddess.
BARBARA: Well, I must admit that this end of it isn’t too hard to take, either.
SUSAN: Isn’t that beautiful?
BARBARA: You know, that’s what gets me. I mean, take Autloc. He’s sensitive, intelligent. And then there’s
SUSAN: Tlotoxl. It’s incredible, isn’t it? Beauty and horror developing hand in hand.
– The Aztecs

SUSAN: Well, how will I know?
AUTLOC: Know what?
SUSAN: Well, that he’s to be my future husband.
AUTLOC: You’ll be told.
SUSAN: Told? I’m not going to be told who to marry.
AUTLOC: What say have you in the matter?
SUSAN: It’s my life, I’ll spend it with whom I choose, not someone picked out for me.
– The Aztecs

[BillFiler]

“Isn’t it a better thing to travel hopefully than to arrive?”
Also from The Sensorites

Edit: Should have checked the quotes page, that’s the one quote on there Nevertheless, it is a fabulous quote!

[shauny]

Wow thanks, I’ll add these.

The Sensorites is very disliked in fandom but it has a lot of good lines for Susan!

[SweetAIBelle]

Yeah, Sensorites is actually a great episode for Susan, particularly.

I’d also bear in mind that there are undoubtedly other quotes. Aside from my first post, all my quotes were from Sensorites, An Unearthly Child, and the Aztecs, and, notably, there are serials with Susan that I haven’t watched.

(And I didn’t even exhaust all the times that Susan says “Grandfather”… )

[shauny]

Yes I’m sure there are more. I’ll always be adding quotes, this is a never ending task I’ve given myself! But I’d rather have a whole bunch than just one.

When I have time I sit back and read the whole transcript of a story, edit it a bit (the person who wrote the transcript likes adding their own little comments, which I remove, and I also notice mistakes a lot) and create quotes from them, along with screencaps. I’ve done that with many of my favourite stories but it takes ages and am currently trying to concentrate on new site features.

[BillFiler]

One of the best bits from Susan for me is in The Dalek Invasion of Earth:

"David Campbell: [indicating Barbara] She says she can cook.

Dortmun: Oh! Can you?

[Barbara nods]

David Campbell: And what do you do?

Susan: I eat."

[SweetAIBelle]

Admittedly, that’s one of these spots where working on a site feature that allows other people to add quotes would help. To try to make sure it isn’t going to someone that’d use it for inappropriate purposes, you could link access to having certain badges, like “Licensed” and “Helping Hand”…

[shauny]

Yes you’re right. I’m just afraid of stuff being added that I then have to urgently go and fix. But allowing only certain people, like yourself, to add quotes would be a big win.

I’ll do it, just may take some time

[SweetAIBelle]

I figure one of the big things to screen out would be bots. Anyone “Licensed” has been spending time around the forum and probably isn’t a bot. And then, “Helping Hand” is someone that’s helped you before, so is likely to help out again.

Of course, you could just limit it to staff, but that’d basically just add delta…

[efficacy]

This is a challenge for all grownig communities.

One of the biggest communities I am part of (which had nearly a million members at its peak) runs with a hierarchical structure of moderators. It’s a ‘western’ themed site for programmers, so the titles are a bit folksy but you have the owner ‘trailboss’ with full powers, a team of ‘sheriffs’ with global moderation abilities, then ‘bartenders’ each with moderation for a single topic area.

Some other communities that I have been part of have instead had some form of ‘peer approval’ system to take the load off the main moderators.

You gain access to the peer group either by moderator nomination or an automated combination of time, activity, upvotes etc. New user-generated content then needs to be either approved by a single moderator or have some number of approvals (commonly two or three) from different people from the peer group.

This peer approach can hugely cuts down on the possibility of spam, lies, and obscenity without increasing the load on named moderators or requiring someone to be ‘on duty’ 24/7. It also reduces the power of single users to ‘veto’ content which would be otherwise acceptable.

The particular challenge with tardis.guide is the separation between the main site, which originally had no user-generated content, and the forum, which is wholly-user-generated. It would potentially be useful if the same moderation structure could be used for both sides.

[shauny]

Yes the forum works on a similar way - users are put into “Trust Levels” automatically based on their contributions, and the highest trust level users have the ability to moderate the forum. So after a while and with enough users it can become self-moderating.

I could use the trust levels from the forums to decide who can work on the site. But then some people might want to help who aren’t active on the forum (some are more active on Discord).

I’ll have a think and work it out

[shauny]

Also: I would like a million members please haha

[deltaandthebannermen]

That’s probably because it’s the only episode that dares to actually remind us that Susan isn’t a teenage girl from 1963 but an alien from a far distant planet with mysterious powers.

[shauny]

I’ve added all those quotes, thanks!

And I’ll look into making it possible to easily add them yourselves…

[SweetAIBelle]

I look forward to seeing a long list of “Grandfather! Grandfather? Grandfather.” in her quote list.

Sounds good!

[shauny]

Oh please don’t lol

[SweetAIBelle]

Actually, when I was looking for quotes, I started to write down “Grandfather!” from Unearthly Child, then said “and undoubtedly others”, then got distracted and started looking for them. I was sure she said it multiple times, but was surprised how many times I found it…

I basically had two or three of the quotes from my second post in this thread when I wrote the first one, and went back to collecting them afterwards.