Doctor Who drops a bombshell: The original companion is back

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) seems to be heading for a family reunion of some kind on Doctor Who — and it's about time.

In a surprise twist, first revealed halfway through his season 2 episode "The Interstellar Song Contest," Doctor number 15 has been having visions of the first person to travel in the TARDIS with Doctor number one (William Hartnell): his still-mysterious granddaughter Susan, played then and now by Carole Ann Ford.

Ford, age 84, is the last surviving member of the original TARDIS team. Susan was the "Unearthly Child" for whom the first-ever episode of the show, broadcast on November 23, 1963, was named. Other than a one-off appearance in a 1983 anniversary special, she hasn't been seen in the show since becoming the first companion to leave the TARDIS — the very name of which, we were told, was Susan's creation — in 1964.

Susan, a pupil at Coal Hill school, was the reason her teachers Ian (William Russell, who died in 2024 age 99) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill, who died in 1993) strayed into that bigger-on-the-inside police box in the first place. Like the Doctor's latest companion, Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), they were effectively kidnapped.

Ford felt trapped herself; as promising a character as the mysterious granddaughter sounded, she wasn't given much to do week to week besides scream and faint. So she was written out at the end of "The Dalek Invasion of Earth," the second serial to feature the Doctor's infamous enemies. Hartnell's Doctor locked her out of the TARDIS so she would start a new life with her Earthling beau David, and left with a speech about how he would come back one day.

Spoiler alert: The Doctor didn't come back. But that speech was reused at the beginning of "The Five Doctors" (1983), in which Ford's Susan appears in several scenes alongside the second actor to play the first Doctor, Richard Hurndall (William Hartnell died in 1975) — Ford having made her peace with the show by then.

Technically, that adventure took place before Susan left the TARDIS — so in a timey-wimey kind of way, this is the first time we've seen Susan in 61 years.

But to quote another Doctor, the moment has been prepared for.

How Doctor Who led up to the Susan reveal

Carole Ann Ford in 1964, showing a Dalek what she thinks of it. Credit: Victor Drees / Evening Standard / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

In the second episode of Gatwa's first season, "The Devil's Chord," the TARDIS lands in 1963 to visit the Beatles at the suggestion of then-companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). Off-handedly, the Doctor tells Ruby that his earlier incarnation is living in a junkyard across London with his granddaughter Susan.

"I put that in as a test," Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies told Mashable in a pre-season interview. "She hasn't been mentioned in the show since 1964, so I wondered how my bosses at the BBC would take that, and thought, 'I'll take it out if no one likes it.' But everyone loved it."

The success of that Susan test brought us to the cold-open cliffhanger of "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," the penultimate episode of season 1. That's when the Doctor wondered if the reason for multiple appearances of characters played by Susan Twist was that his granddaughter had survived the genocide of his people, the Time Lords, and regenerated herself.

In that same episode, the Doctor casually revealed more about his family than ever before. "If you've got a granddaughter, that means you've got kids," Kate Lethbridge-Stewart said. But the Doctor denied it. "Not quite, not yet," he said, waving away the obvious chronological issue with this all-purpose explanation: "Life of a Time Lord."

Mention of his granddaughter appeared to be a fake-out; Susan Twist's multiple characters were in fact created by the Doctor's old enemy Sutekh. "Did you think I was family, Doctor?" laughed the ancient god. But as we said at the time, bringing up Susan may yet mean Ford's return to the show: "Could there be one final Susan twist at the end?"

Why is Susan returning now?

Carole Ann Ford alongside a Dalek, and Frazer Hines, who played "Doctor Who" companion Jamie, in 2022. Credit: Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

In "The Interstellar Song Contest," the Doctor revealed that he'd seen Susan in his head after the Time Lord genocide. But the scene where he is frozen in space, close to death, is the first time we see the vision too.

"Grandfather," says Susan, in what appears to be a TARDIS very much like the Doctor's. "Come find me," she adds, in another vision towards the end of the episode.

That may be all that showrunner Russell T Davies wrote for Ford, at least; given her age, a regeneration may be necessary if and when the Doctor finds her. But if he has shot scenes with her on the TARDIS set, it's more likely that Ford's version of Susan will appear again at some point in season 2's final episodes, "Wish World" and "The Reality War."

More concerning, in the meantime: the effect on Ford herself. "I don't know if I could survive the excitement," she said of a then-theoretical return to the show at Luton Comic-Con in 2024, according to the BBC. "It would be intense beyond all intensity."

Doctor Who Season 2 premiered April 12 on Disney+ and BBC. New episodes air weekly on Saturdays at 3 a.m. ET.