10 Most Useless Doctor Who Characters

10. Susan Foreman

This might be a controversial choice, but in retrospect, the Doctor's granddaughter is a bit useless. When Doctor Who was first conceived by Sydney Newman in the early '60s, he envisioned a 740-year-old senile alien time traveller, who whisked two schoolteachers and a teenage girl across all of time and space. In essence, this is what happens in the very first episode, but with one key difference - Susan.

In the finished version of Doctor Who's pilot episode, Susan isn't a contemporary teenage girl. She's the Doctor's granddaughter, and, therefore, also an alien time traveller with superior knowledge. The problem is that many of the people who wrote for Susan mostly forget this key detail and wrote her as an ineffectual teenage girl.

Therefore, rather than continuing to dazzle and intrigue her schoolteachers Ian and Barbara with her advanced knowledge of science, history, and technology, Susan instead rolls her ankle at regular intervals. She also frequently loses her head in the face of various intergalactic terrors as if she hasn't been travelling to alien worlds with her grandfather for ages prior to the show starting.

It's hardly surprising that Carole Ann Ford left the role at the start of Doctor Who's second season. She was replaced by Vicki, an orphan from the future who was generally written as a far more savvy character, one who essentially became the Doctor's surrogate granddaughter.