{"id":103682,"date":"2025-10-25T16:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T16:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/103682\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T16:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T16:44:06","slug":"heres-what-carole-ann-fords-doctor-who-return-originally-meant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/103682\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s What Carole Ann Ford’s Doctor Who Return Originally Meant"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, talking about all the things that are controversial, or kind of bad, or just downright weird about the Doctor Who<\/a> season 15 finale kind of feels like beating a dead horse. \u201cThe Reality War\u201d<\/a> is just not a great episode. It\u2019s fully apparent that the ending we got wasn\u2019t the ending Russell T. Davies initially set out to write, and it certainly seems as though Ncuti Gatwa\u2019s Doctor wasn\u2019t originally meant to regenerate <\/a>quite this early in his run. The stunt casting of former companion Billie Piper as\u2026 whatever role she\u2019s meant to be currently playing<\/a> is basically the definition of a last-second Hail Mary. And that\u2019s before we even get to the fact that the show finally seemed poised to solve a 60-year-old mystery\u2026 before whiffing on it entirely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The endless questions surrounding Susan, the Doctor\u2019s granddaughter and original companion<\/a>, have been a topic of fierce debate for many years: What became of her after she departed the TARDIS? Was she also a Time Lord? If so, who are her parents? And it seemed as though Doctor Who was finally ready to offer up some answers \u2014 even bringing back original actress Carole Ann Ford for her first appearance onscreen since the 1993 charity special \u201cDimensions In Time\u201d. But her return ultimately amounted to little more than a glorified cameo, as a vision of Susan urged her grandfather go back and find her. What that means is anyone\u2019s guess, as the character is never mentioned again in the season, despite featuring a two-part finale that was hyper-focused on convincing the Doctor he had a child. But now we know there was meant to be more to the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The news comes courtesy of Ford herself<\/a>, who was recently interviewed by former companion Katy Manning at Club Parramatta in Sydney, Australia. During their conversation, Manning asked about Susan\u2019s origins and whether Ford knew who her character\u2019s mother was. Her answer, which describes what appears to be \u201cThe Reality War\u2019s\u201d original ending, is a fascinating one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t see the episode, which was to sort of introduce my coming back, where I was holding hands with a little \u2014 beautiful little tiny Black child, three years old. And we were watching through the window somewhere where the audience wasn\u2019t supposed to know where we were supposed to be,\u201d Ford said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd we were watching my newly embodied grandfather, who was now Ncuti [Gatwa], and watching him have a wonderful time singing and dancing in a party in a shop opposite where we were. And obviously, I, my character Susan, was longing to just go there and fling her arms around her grandfather and say, \u2018Grandfather, how lovely to see you after all this time and how did you survive your floating about in space\u2026 and why have you changed?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this point, talking about all the things that are controversial, or kind of bad, or just downright…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-103682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}