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The Dalek Invasion of Earth! Part 3 Gallifrey Gals Get Wibbly Wobbly! Classic edition Part 3

🕑 Added 2021-09-16 17:00:05 +0000 UTC

Comments

Keith Goodnight

I don't know if you're going to see a comment added so long after you posted this, but anyway: Susan's departure actually caps off an aspect of her character that was there from the start of the series. In the first episode, "An Unearthly Child," we meet her as she's attending Coal Hill School as a student (that's how she knows Ian and Barbara, who were teachers there) and had been for some months. During the scene in the TARDIS console room at the climax of that first episode, dialogue between her and the Doctor makes clear that they've stayed on Earth because she doesn't want to keep traveling and has wanted to settle down, while the Doctor has been trying to talk her into moving on. He pretends that he intends to keep Ian and Barbara prisoner but it's really just a ploy to finally persuade Susan to leave: Doctor: If I do let them go, we must go too. Susan: No, Grandfather, we've had all this out before. I won't leave Earth, I won't leave the Twentieth Century, I'd rather leave the TARDIS and you. She likely doesn't mean that any more than he really means to keep Ian and Barbara prisoners but it's a sign of how much she did not like the wandering life that he craves so much. It says a lot about their relationship that he stayed in one place as long as he did— and perhaps reveals that he already knew a time was coming when she would indeed stay behind somewhere. (I don't think the writers had any plan for Susan to later depart the series, but when the time came that Carole Ann Ford wanted to go, they found that element in Susan's character was already there to pay off.)

Martyn Hill

When they moved the Earth in "The Stolen Earth" in David Tenants time they referred back to this story

Martyn Hill

Terry Nations episode titles rarely relate to what is actually in the episode, a feature of his stories

Lloyd B

I definitely count the Big Finish story An Earthly Child with the 8th Doctor as canon! 😀 it’s a great story, and Carole Ann Ford is wonderful in it, as is Paul McGann’s son Jake as Susan’s son (and therefore the Doctor’s great grandson!). Highly recommended. 👍

Nicole Mazza

Such a great story! And so glad to see you guys react to it. <3 I still think Susan's goodbye is one of hardest and saddest in the history of the show and while I also hate the Doctor taking agency from his companions -- see: Rose, for example -- and making a Big Life Decision FOR them instead of WITH them, I think it was ultimately what was good for Susan in the end and the Doctor knew that. Still, it's heart-breaking to watch, especially because he never really did go back to check up on her, as far as we know (well, unless you count Big Finish, but still). Then again, the Doctor never really looks back and just moves on from things as a coping strategy, so that tracks.

hrcaffee

at 39:05 I thought "Leroy Jenkins"? it's so passe now, I don't know why I went there :)

Dryfesands

A lovely reaction to a real keystone for the shows eerly years. Series 9 next, or is it "Tomb Of the Cybermen" next?

Brian Gilliver

Thanks girls, first time I had watched it, emotional ending

Mark Ten

It was a terribly romantic scene... with fish!

Bob Hughes

I swear if you two had a couch you would have been hiding behind it, just like the kids in 1964.

Lloyd B

Thanks for this. The Doctor's first goodbye to a companion is such a powerful moment. It's sad Carol Ann Ford felt she had to leave, having till then been given very little of substance in the writing of her character. Susan had more character growth and complexity in this one story than she'd been given for almost the whole of her run since the show began. You can just imagine the shock of the young audience in 1964, though, seeing such a major character leave the show for the first time. By the way, you may recall in The Stolen Earth, series 4, when the Earth had disappeared, Tennant's Doctor musing that "someone tried to move the Earth before". This is what he was referring to. So this was the Daleks' first attempt to create their reality bomb.