TV Club has reached Susan’s final TV story The Dalek Invasion of Earth and now seems a good time to share the ups and downs of the Doctor Who’s first ever companion.
What are her best and worst stories?
How well was the character of Susan written for and performed?
I love her SO much and I get why people don’t, and indeed the Susan that lives in my mind isn’t exactly the one we always see on TV, but fundamentally I imprinted on her being a weird teenager as a weird teenager so she is special to me forever for that. And when she gets the chance to sparkle, she really does. Sensorites is great for her, and of course Invasion, though I adore her in An Unearthly Child as well
I mentioned it in the DIoE thread - the writer’s didn’t seem particularly joined up on who Susan was. Some definitely wrote her as a normal Earth teenager and only some of them got the memo that she was an alien of some sort. I honestly believe Peter R Newman did it the best (and John Lucarotti did it the worst although Dennis Spooner wrote her whole character badly in The Reign of Terror).
Now I’m interested. My only experience with Dodo was The Celestial Toymaker and since three episodes are loat so it’s mostly animation. It’d be so much fun when I get to her!
I think Susan falls into a weird spot, mostly not of the actor’s making.
She is a one-to-many companion, so she tends to get relegated to crappy storylines. When she is given the chance to shine, she pulls it off great, The Sensorites and Dalek Invasion being examples.
Also the original intent of having a character be very young, to be the young viewer analog, leads to them not being ‘adult’ enough to actually do anything of substance. This also leads to poor storylines and the stigma of screaming “Grandfather!” in a shrill tone.
The actor does a great job with what she was given, which wasn’t much for the most part. If she was portrayed as being late teens, early twenties, it would have been a lot better. As we see with the next ‘young’ companion, Vicki , those couple of extra years really help.
That’s my ramble. I enjoy Susan for what she is, but poor base character design and writing make me happy when she is out of the story.
This is it, in a nutshell. Carole Ann Ford was fantastic casting and really portrayed the slightly off-kilter girl out-out-of-time but was seldom written with that in mind. The character was much more than we often got on screen. Ford’s portrayal, with so little to go on much of the time, is a big reason Susan is still fondly remembered.
Quite so. Though, as this is a Susan thread, I shall resist the temptation to derail and start a Dodo conversation. It is worth noting, though, that much as Carole Ann Ford was given little to work with, Susan DID have an identity that was well established in An Unearthly Child. Poor Jackie Lane never even had that!
Surprised The Daleks hasn’t been given a shout so far. The best is very much yet to come for her but it’s an early success, I like that she’s the one tasked with getting the anti-radiation gloves- drugs. Her and the Doctor in the scene where they sabotage the city in episode six is peak grandfather/granddaughter dynamic too, something I feel they don’t really get the most out of until Vicki.
Susan’s best outfit is in Planet of Giants, by the way.
I’ve never been a Susan fan. I’ve watched her stories multiple times, but I’ve never warmed up to her. Mostly, it’s the inconsistent writing style and lack of character development; however, her intended role as a teenage alien girl in a 1960s TV show could potentially explain this.
I have nothing against Carole Ann Ford, though. I haven’t seen her in anything else, but she does a decent job with what she’s given.
I agree that The Sensorites and Dalek Invasion are her best performances. The rest are kind of naff. In the EU, I thoroughly enjoyed her role in After the Daleks, a fantastic sequel to Dalek Invasion.
I like Susan, but her tv stories really do not have a consistent characterization. Carole Ann Ford really does her best though and given that Susan’s return is still speculated on and waited for sixty years years later, clearly something was done right. I adore the version of her that we see right at the beginning of the show and wish we could see more of her time with the doctor on earth (though maybe that does exist, there’s so much doctor who stuff out there after all)