Indeed she was. She was also a teenager (or the equivalent) and I'd assume she's matured. I would like some word on what she was and what happened to her in the future.
As to her name, I've always imagined it was one of those long, pretentious names like Romana's was before the Doctor shortened it (to Fred )...something like Susannadvtrelandatar...Susan for short.
Susan talked about her homeworld once that it had silver trees and burning skies. She was most certainly not human or from that time period from Ian and Barbara's bitching about her being odd in an Unearthly Child. Living on a cursed earth she'd probably have tens times her husbands life expectancy even before she regenerates because of all the fallout and poison.
It does seem they've had plenty of opportunities, but go out of their way NOT to mention her in the new series. What, the Doctor doesn't want people knowing he's old enough to have a granddaughter? Only thing is it pretty much contradicts what we've seen of Gallifrey in Invasion of Time and The Five Doctors.
Well, the only exterior shots we saw in The Five Doctors was The Death Zone and my impression of it was it was entirely separate from Gallifrey. As for The Invasion of Time, it was really gloomy day.
Because it's a more immediate emotional impact to the audience (at least, that large percentage of the audience that isn't a bunch of die-hard fans of the classic series because they weren't even BORN when it went off the air) if the Doctor mentions he lost a child in the Time War than a grandchild? Just a thought. It's only important to mention Susan specifically if she's going to actually show up.
I'd be really gloomy if I thought my species were absolute masters of Time and Space and we got invaded by sentient tinfoil.
The Time Lords aren't mentioned till the end of season six. But in Five Doctors she realises they're on Gallifrey, so she must have been there earlier.
In the draft script for episode one Susan and Doctorwho are both the start of their names. I often suspect that the producers had the abandoned bits of the first script in mind, via a bit of Chinese Whispers between producers ("He's a Time Lord, but we'll only explain that in the final episode.")
The show has been (both thankfully and annoyingly) abstract and vague on any number of issues, which in turn allowed a ton of inconsistencies - generally ignored, but from the 1980s onward there've been various times to weave an intertwining thread to tighten up all this. Often to the lore's dismay, and after "The War Games" the Time Lords should have been avoided and never returned to... and I say that despite being a fan of "Mawdryn Undead" and "The Five Doctors". Terrance Dicks wrote the latter and managed to reintroduce some of the mystery, but after Holmes put in the regeneration limit, later stories in the 70s and 80s coasted on it way too much. But anyhoo, the closest we got are: Gallifreyans don't regenerate, yet Time Lords do. (unless various scripts interchanged both terms) Is Susan really a Time Lady? Or even Gallifreyan? Why can't she be a person he rescued in the past, who accorded him "grandfather" the same way Ace endears him with "professor"? Or is it simpler to coast on "she was with grandfather so obviously she's just a product of a nuclear family"? Sci-fi can allow a lot more creativity, or at least allowing multiple possibilities other than the most obvious, corny and lamentable (e.g. the nuke family trope as if adopted families or other ideas can't exist or be possible) The first Doctor did say in "An Unearthly Child" that they were cut off, but that may not have been the entire or actual truth. The second Doctor tells his companions a bit of a different story, which feels more accurate. I recall the novelization has more material for Susan, though I remember none of the details. It may have addressed that. They did pick up the name "Foreman" while on Earth. They may have stuck with "Susan" to placate Ian and Barbara, already reeling from everything else. Does this need to be a plot point for a new story? Who'd be the target audience and will they be interested in the minutiae? Spoiler: Susan The part human moment from the 1996 TVM seemed more like a corny "sweeps week EPIC MOMENT" . It didn't land well in 1996 either... It bugged me more that Susan had been traveling with the Doctor for a long time, regaled stories of how they almost lost the ship, seems more advanced... and yet still remains more screamy and less developed than the humans. Yet she was able to help and save the Doctor on those occasions? (It's clear the Doctor wasn't a total nasty from the start; we only see him mid-journey. Slowly, we'd see signs in the first 13 episodes that retroactively build up a paranoia that Ian and Barbara were tearing down in a running theme. Most of which is brought up in "The Edge of Destruction", but anyone sticking with the show that long would get all the puzzle pieces then. Even in "The Daleks" the Doctor is spitting in anger over the Daleks' "senseless, evil killing".)
Incidentally, Big Finish has done some solid stories with Susan in the audio dramas including a box set (hopefully with more to come) showing what she's up to in the early days of the Time War.
Blimey, necro-thread. I wonder how many grandparents Susan has, since the Doctor mentioned seven grandmothers in "It Takes You Away".