N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Not strictly speaking Doctor Who, of course, as it was part of Adrian Mourby’s Whatever Happened to … series, but since it was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Whatever Happened to Susan? just about falls under my remit to cover things the casual Who fan might well have stumbled upon during Doctor Who‘s years in the wilderness.

“My parents were concerned about the education I was getting on Gallifrey … I was fine on astronomy, thermonuclear dynamics and warping, but my French wasn’t very good.”

Susan, Whatever Happened to Susan?

It’s an irreverant and at times amusing take on what happened to Susan after she is abandoned by her grandfather in 22nd post-Dalek apocalyptic Earth. I particularly like the idea that Susan’s parents ran a shop that sold concepts — ‘philosophical, religious, metaphysical, you know the kind of thing.’

And it’s fun to imagine that Ian did develop a form of bloodlust after the violence on Skaro and that Barbara’s back-combing influenced the Aztecs’ acceptance of her as the goddess Yetaxa.

Whatever Happened to Susan? plays fast-and-loose with actual Doctor Who lore, but that’s fine in an extended mockumentary sketch such as this. For one, continuity should never get in the way of a good joke, but also, if you were being serious about it, in 1994 there was perhaps not quite the industry of DVDs, books and websites available for Mourby to use as research. After all, some of Susan’s stories would not have been seen for thirty years!