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The Doctor's first companion was a teenage girl known as "Susan", and I submit that she's the most mysterious character of all.

We are told that she's the Doctor's granddaughter, and we have no reason to doubt that because Verity Lambert, the original producer was very adamant on that point when a later producer, John Nathan-Turner, insisted that she was not. I'll take Verity Lambert's word for it since she was there at the beginning.

Obviously, then, the Doctor had a family about which we know almost nothing. The 9th Doctor said that they were all dead. The 8th Doctor spoke of his father showing him the stars. This is all we have.

We can assume she is a young Time Lord, and she is clearly quite taken with London of the 1960's, and a big fan of the Beatles. The Doctor is not. The Doctor has almost always shown a preference for the 19th century, and was clearly uncomfortable in the 1960's.

The last time we saw Susan, or whatever her real name is, she was leaving the Doctor to stay with a human scientist she'd fallen in love with, and they were going to help rebuild the Earth, which had been decimated by the Daleks. As we are also told that the Daleks were gone by the time Rose and the Doctor found them, we can assume this is another example of the vagueries of time travel, as once discussed by Adric and Doctor #4.

So where is Susan "today" (if "today" even applies to a Time Lord who is somewhen/somewhere in time!), what is she doing, and how many times has she regenerated since then?

How did she come to travel with the Doctor in the first place, and what is the story of their family?

We eventually did learn that the Doctor was a Secret Agent for the CIA, pretending to be just a renegade Time Lord in a stolen TARDIS, but we know nothing of Susan.

Any ideas on this?

well no matter she is as much his grand daughter as the saying goes your parents are the ones who raised you

im in tunisia atm going home tonight using an arabic keybord when you normaly touch type is an experiqnce in its self

Well isn't the Doctor half human or something...? I heard that from somewhere and I'm not positive if it's true, but if it is, then Susan is only an eighth Time Lord. So all the things that apply to Time Lords might not apply to her. Also, the ninth Doctor mentions ALL the Time Lords are gone. He would sense if they were there. Susan he would probably be able to sense if she was enough Time Lord, but apparently he doesn't. So maybe she burned along with all the Daleks? What exactly happeend is never explained. It might have been that the only way to get rid of the Daleks was to target the Time Lords, too. So maybe she died then. Or maybe she did fight in the war and got killed that way. Oh well, I guess it will just stand unexplained. I would love to see Rose's reaction, though, if he told her he was a grandfather. Hehe.

It seems from Wikipedia that no-one's really sure. I would suggest that she probably isn't a blood relation but that perhaps she was one of the other species on Gallifrey (The Shobogans isn't it?) who the Doctor liked and spent time with. Maybe she was all or part one of them and was adopted by the Doctor as a favour to his friends when her family died or whatever happened happened.

I don't actually know much about the Shobogans so maybe this is impossible. But it might explain why she wouldn't have died with the Timelords and why she can't regenerate but at the same time why she had some telepathic powers and was born on another planet.

The business with the Doctor having a human retina has never been satisfactorily explained because there had never before been any question that the Doctor was a full Time Lord. This never seemed to have been in question, although we do know that Susan stayed on Earth to marry a human and Leela (a human) stayed on Gallifrey to be with a young Citadel Guard, though she is never seen again and it would not be surprising to find she was unable to adjust to Gallifreyan life.

Yet we can't rule it out entirely! The Doctor never exactly fit in with his own people and was always strongly attracted to humans, always fascinated by them, even in love with the species.

We have almost no glimpses of his personal background except that his father was always showing him the stars (doctor cool , and as a boy, before he went to the Prydonian Academy for years of training, he found an old hermit living in the hills who told him ghost stories(Doctor 4), and whom later left the planet to live as a Tibetan monk for a time (Doctor 3). It was a long time before we found out more about the Time Lords living in self-imposed exile in the cold hills of Gallifrey (Doctor 4).

After that, we learn nothing except that he graduated from the Prydonian Academy under the tutelage of his ambiguous mentor, Lord Borusa. His gardes were not good, but he was a self-taught man in many ways. He had a friend at school named Dax, who reminds me of a Ferengi, and the 4th Doctor wasn't too proud of admitting they'd been friends - although the 9th Doctor was a lot like Dax. Another of his friends was a guy named Runcible, who became a media announcer on Gallifrey, and who in turn wasn't too proud of admitting he'd once known the Doctor.

The Doctor has all of the physical attributes that other Time Lords have. He has two hearts, a low body temperature, a respiratory bypass system, the ability to put himself into suspended animation, a high resistance to heat and cold, the ability to telepathically link to his companions, and of course the ability to regenerate - although it has been noted that his regenerations are often less smooth than other Time Lords'.

As for Susan, we are told nothing about him having had a wife or a child to give him grandchildren. It was John Nathan-Turner's contention that she was simply a companion and not a relative at all, but this is because he had a completely different view of the characters than Verity Lambert, the show's original producer, and one of the main creators of the series and of the Doctor himself. Verity Lambert has repeatedly stated over the years that Susan was in fact the Doctor's biological granddaughter, but she has never offered any other details that I'm aware of. Therefore, if she is indeed Gallifreyan, there is surely a fascinating story to be told, and while she may be an adolescent, she's hardly 15. I think I remember Romana saying she got a hovercar for her 125 birthday, indicating she was a "teenager" by Time Lord standards.

If indeed the Doctor is half human, I would strongly suspect that it was his mother who came from Earth. It is all up to speculation, of course, but I once wrote a piece of fan fiction where Sarah Jane was secretly his mother, and she never learned the truth.

That's a pretty good write up, though I heard it from the outh of Verity Lambert herself that Susan ws always intended to be the Doctor's granddaughter, and was it intended for the kids in the audience to identify with her.

I also suspect that the given age of 15 was an approximation, especially since Romana spoke of herself as an adolescent at the age of 125. Presumably, a Gallifreyan year is about the same as an Earth year. I suspect that Susan (also, probably not her real name but one she adopted while on Earth) is around that same age or slightly less, and only gives out her age as 15 so as not to confuse her earthling friends and teachers. And she was obviously not as much a child as she looked, staying behind to marry her new-found human lover.

I'm not sure I buy into the idea of things looking bad for the Doctor to be running around with a teenage girl, because that sure didn't stop him from running around with a girl called "Dodo" Chaplet shortly after Susan left him. Dodo resembled a slightly brainless Susan, and was clearly more vulnerable and not as savvy as the young time lord had been. A case for awkward reltionaships would have been a lot easier to make with her than with Susan.

The Doctor has long had a custom of attracting mostly companions in their teens and 20's, probably because they are still full of adventure and not yet settled by life. The list is long: Ace, Jamie McCrimmon, Peri Brown, Jo Grant, Nyssa, Adric, Tegan Jovenka, Zoe, Ben jackson, Victoria Waterfield, Polly, Chang Lee, and of course, Sarah Jane Smith and Rose Tyler. His more mature companions are no less brave and loyal, but they are a different sort.

There are several novels written that Susan was taken in by the Doctor. Lots of them comment that Susan is half human and half Time Lord.

She doesn't regenerate, but one of the books I read said that she has a longer life span than a human. A few Short Trips stories and some BBC novels has the Doctor visiting an older Susan or commenting about her to his compainions.

Yet, if Susan is half human/half Time Lord and the Doctor is supposed to be as well.....why can't she regenerate?

That could also go back to why people like to discredit the 8th Doctor. Since this movie was being played in America, the writers added many things to try to sell the idea of Doctor Who. I can't really say I enjoyed this movie, but the BBC novels and audios are great. There is never a mention again of that human side.

I suppose that his backround and the true nature of Susan just adds to his Time Lord mystery, eh? wink

Well I seem to have found proof that The Doctor says that Galifray is Susans homeworld as well...
-At minute 3:34
-http://www.gaiaonline.com/gaia/redirect.php?r=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsiycdVhqhM

He implys that Galifray is Susans home world thus Implying that Susan is posably a time lord. Although there are alot of implicataions there is still one strong fact that stands, Susan is a Galiafrayan, there "MIGHT" also be another specise on Galifray but there may not so there isnt going to be a 100% correct answer, unless somthing is said.