Doctor Who actress Carole Ann Ford has been speaking about the scenes she shot for this year’s season finale, which were ultimately scrapped, where she played Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter. The episode was titled “The Reality War,” but after airing, many noticed that she wasn’t in the episode much at all – and it appears that much of her role was excised from the final edit.
The original plan for the series finale was to end on a party scene with Ncuti Gatwa continuing in the role of the Doctor, which was seemingly confirmed by photos of the scene being filmed released by Disney+, but it never made it to broadcast and was seemingly ditched when the show underwent reshoots earlier this year.
Ford has been speaking with Cult Box about the finale and has confirmed that the original party scene she filmed would have “further explored” her character and link to the child Poppy, saying:
“You didn’t see the episode, which was to sort of introduce my coming back, where I was holding hands with a beautiful little tiny black child [Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipp], three years old. And we were watching through the window somewhere where the audience wasn’t supposed to know where we were supposed to be.
And we were watching our 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, my character Susan was longing to just go there and fling her arms around her grandfather and say, ‘Grandfather, how lovely to see you after all this time and how did you survive your floating about in space…and why have you changed?’”
In the final episode, Poppy’s upbringing was changed, making her the daughter of Belina and a human man, and the time shift leads to Billie Piper regenerating as the new Doctor, taking over from Gatwa. Since Piper’s appearance, nothing official has been announced as to when she will first appear in a series or special.
