Doctor Who's Carole Ann Ford: "I wanted to leave much earlier – but now I don't know what my life would be without it"

Despite her original run on Doctor Who spanning just two seasons, Carole Ann Ford has lived with her trail-blazing character, Susan Foreman, for more than 62 years.

"I can't imagine not having her in my head," she tells RadioTimes.com, as she sits down for an in-depth interview at her London home. "I haven't been apart from her."

Ford first appeared as Susan Foreman, the first ever Doctor Who companion and the Time Lord's granddaughter, in the iconic first serial An Unearthly Child, broadcast in 1963. Starring alongside William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor, she paved the way for every single companion that would come after her.

Looking back on her memories of filming An Unearthly Child all those years ago, Ford recalls: "It somehow cemented Susan within me. I think, when I walked through the junkyard and saw the TARDIS, it was a feeling of home."

Part of the magic of the early days of Doctor Who was also the chemistry between Ford and her co-stars, including the late great Hartnell, who Ford spent hours with on set creating their own backstory for their characters. There was also the "adorable" William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton ("I suggested to them that maybe Susan could have crush on him") and the "kind and thoughtful" Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright).

"They're very much missed. I can't believe that they're no longer here," Ford says. "[Hill] would love to have seen how it progressed and and Russ was there to see the big time happening for us and being part of it.

"It's always difficult when you lose mates like that. And as we were just the four of us for a long time, we were like a family. We knew how the other person worked and what made them tick.

"It's very important to know how your fellow actor is going to react if you make a slight change in the dialogue...We were all so relaxed with each other. We knew each other so well. You had to jolly well trust each other, because there's so much potential for it to go wrong."

Of course, despite Doctor Who's incredible success, plenty did go wrong. While Ford remembers bloopers like wobbly scenery and lighting issues, one issue is still impacting Doctor Who's legacy today - the episodes that are still missing after the BBC erased or reused tapes in the 1960s and 1970s to save storage space and costs, before archiving policies were in place.

Marco Polo, one of Ford's serials, is still missing in its entirety, with just some audio surviving. Ford says she's "mortified" by the idea that the story can't be watched by fans, adding: "Marco Polo! Such a beautiful one, so beautiful. Such a loss. Well, hopefully it’s not lost forever."

While nothing has been proven, some fans believe the story exists in a private collection, with Ford issuing a plea if that is the case and saying: "Please, if there's somebody out there who's got Marco Polo, return it because we're suffering... please, let us have it back just for a while so we can see again what that loveliness was."

Ford also wasn't always happy with how Susan was portrayed on screen, admitting it "wasn't an immediate yes" when she was asked to take on the role.

"It sounded to me as though she was going to have loads of wardrobe changes, loads of character changes, mixing in with whatever period, whatever time, whatever place I was..." she says. "The initial description of her didn't match up with what finally happened. I was promised quite a lot of different things were going to be happening with her, which didn't. But we had fun doing it, and 60 years later, I suppose we did something good!"

Ford adds: "I was very frustrated, because at the time, I was super fit, I was a trained dancer, and I was a very good swimmer and horse rider, and I would have thought they could have brought some of those skills into her character and made her much more interesting," Ford recalls. "I was lucky if I got to sort of climb up a one-foot wall or something. It was disappointing."

It's a situation that Ford admits led her to be envious of later companions, most notably of Billie Piper, whose first appearance as Rose Tyler in 2005 saw her swing across a fiery pit.

Speaking about how companions were portrayed in Doctor Who, Ford added of Piper: "She, I think, made a big difference to it.

"Until then, I think they were almost trying to recreate Susan.... what they envisaged was Susan to be the sort of young girl next door watching Doctor Who and. I can see it's worked, because I've been to quite a few conventions where a couple of girls have come up and said, 'I always wanted to be you.'"

But a lot also went also went right with Doctor Who, something that one person in particular foresaw. "The one who who had the highest hopes and aspirations for it was Bill, and he said to everybody, 'This can run for ever, ever and ever and ever. Because why wouldn't it? We can be anywhere at any time.'"

"The part was so important to him. It was everything to him," she says of her late co-star. "And because of that, he was a real perfectionist with it.

"I think if people were a little bit off about the idea of Bill, it may be because he was such a perfectionist, and if he saw people fooling around with the part, not taking it all seriously... but he was right.

"Unless you're doing it seriously, it doesn't mean anything to the audience. If you're thinking, 'Oh, a load of rubbish', then how are the audience going to ever accept what's going on and be entertained by it?

"We got rid of all our giggles about the various monsters in rehearsals, and just as well we did, because sometimes I look back and I think, 'How did I ever keep a straight face?!'"

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One particular serial Ford recalls finding that challenging on was Planet of the Giants, which she describes as her favourite experience on Doctor Who.

"We had a lot of laughs on that because, of course, there's no CGI involved there. It was great, huge pieces of furniture that were mountainous, and we had to actually climb up a huge chain, which was the chain of the plug to go in the sink, and enormous, mountainous sized cats and insects, especially the ant, was not at all nice - it gave me the creeps - but it was great fun."

But despite having a blast on the show, Ford couldn't help feeling that Doctor Who was holding her back in some ways.

"I was wanting to leave much earlier [than I did]," she admits. "The thing that happens to all actors is that when they're in a successful thing, suddenly you get lots of offers from other people. And I was having quite a few lovely offers from other people, which I couldn't do because of Doctor Who for one thing, but also it was getting a bit repetitive.

"In spite of what we'd say at the first day reading it, it was getting very repetitive. There was the same thing happening. We'd go off, perhaps in a hurry from somewhere, and so perhaps not set the dials for the correct time, and we'd arrive somewhere and the doors would open, and I was told not to rush out and get lost. And I always used to rush out and get lost or get captured or whatever.

"So I was always the one who was in trouble, and the others would come and find me, and then it would start again... My character just wasn't expanding, certainly not in the directions I wanted."

So, the time came for her to leave Doctor Who, with Susan bidding farewell to her grandfather and Ford going on to play a variety of different roles that she hoped would separate her a little from her breakout role.

"In Public Eye, they wanted me to play a prostitute," she says, cheering at the thought. "I thought, 'That'll do it! That'll stop them thinking of me just as Susan from Doctor Who,' but no way. I had furious parents getting in touch, saying, 'What on earth were you doing playing that part? I allowed my children to stay up late to watch you, and there you were playing a prostitute. How can you do that?' Well, sorry, I'm an actress!"

But, over the years, she kept tabs on Doctor Who, praising the fans who "stuck with it through thick and thin over the years".

"When the BBC weren't producing it, they were producing it themselves. I mean, there's a huge love out there," she points out, adding that the broadcaster has a "duty" to the fans.

Ford has also returned to the character of Susan in the form of Big Finish audio dramas, telling us: "They stretch my character. They make her older and more responsible and do all sorts of things - the sort of things I wanted to do before, they allow me to do."

As for when Doctor Who came back in 2005? "I thought it was absolutely brilliant, and I was longing to be part of it. I mean, obviously they had money to spend on this thing. I thought it was fantastic."

It might have taken another 18 years, but Ford finally got her wish when she ran into Russell T Davies in 2023: "I ran into his wide-open arms, and he picked me up and swung me around and said, 'I think it's time you came back.'"

True to his word, Ford returned to Doctor Who in The Interstellar Song Contest - but some fans felt that, by the end of the latest season, Susan's story hadn't quite been finished.

"I think enough people out there know by now that something extra was filmed and wasn't shown," Ford points out.

"So yes, of course, there were a couple more [scenes], which, because of some changes that had to be made, didn't make sense once the changes have been made. So they obviously had to film something else that went with those changes.

"It's a shame though - I'd loved to have done it, and the bit I did do, I really enjoyed doing, and I loved seeing it. I sort of looked as I was floating in space."

Now, at the age of 85, Ford has no considerations of retirement. After all, there are things she hasn't ticked off yet, including her hope of starring in a big-budget period drama.

Plus, after feeling like the writers didn't quite do Susan justice, she's taken matters into her own hands, writing a short story for the anthology Doctor Who: The Adventures after, in which she very much saves the day.

"It's the sequel to The Edge of Destruction," Ford explains. "When it seemed as though the TARDIS was attacking everybody in the ship, and Susan in particular was attacking Ian and trying to kill him... And in our story, this creature has invaded the ship, and invaded the controls of the TARDIS. It's quite a story."

Of course, Ford has made no secret of the fact that she'd relish the opportunity to return to Doctor Who to finish Susan's story, declaring with a twinkle in her eye: "You've still got to find me, Grandfather! I'm waiting for that..."

And, despite initially feeling she wanted to distance herself from Doctor Who, her feelings have now very much changed. Reflecting on her relationship with the beloved series, she admits: "I don't know what my life would have been without it."

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