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Polly
(1966 - 1967) |
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Anneke
Wills |
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| Born
in 1941 Anneke Wills began acting at the age of
11 in the 1954 film Child's Play. After attending
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) further
film and television appearances followed including
an episode of The Saint "The Helpful
Pirate" in 1967 and 2 episodes of the The
Avengers. "Dressed to Kill" in 1963
and "£50,000 Breakfast" in 1967.
After Doctor Who she had a regular role in
the crime drama series Strange Report. She
then gave up acting and moved to Norfolk to run
a craft shop. During 1979 she left the UK and stayed
in a number of countries, including a length of
time in India, before finally settling in Canada
working as an interior decorator. |
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 Polly
was perky, cheeky, and an extremely attractive, trendy fashion
conscious secretary working for the misguided scientist Professor
Brett who has designed a futuristic computer called WOTAN. While
at a London night club Polly meets Ben and Dodo. After Ben had
helped The Doctor defeat WOTAN and rescue Polly from its influence
- WOTAN having constructed deadly War Machines which go on the
rampage through the streets of 1966 London -, Polly and Ben
meet The Doctor outside the TARDIS to inform him that Dodo has
decided to stay behind. After saying good bye they turn and
walk away together. Ben suddenly realises that they still have
Dodo's TARDIS key so they quickly enter the police box to return
it just as the TARDIS dematerialises ("The
War Machines").
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| The War Machines |
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The
characters of Polly and Ben played a very important role in helping
the viewers accept that William
Hartnell had been replaced by Patrick
Troughton when The Doctor regenerated. While Ben tries to trick The
Doctor into proving that he is an intruder, and not The Doctor that
they once knew, Polly is much quicker to accept that this is in fact
The Doctor - albeit now a totally different man in body and personality
- and not some ghastly intruder. She managed to cope with this dramatically
different Doctor without too much of a problem despite his being
more unpredictable which meant that she could never tell what he
was going to do next. ("The
Power of the Daleks").
Polly
is very forward and outgoing and with her good nature she is able
to get along with people and especially with Ben. During the time
they spent aboard the TARDIS together there was a lot of good hearted
jibes between them and she occasionally made fun of Ben's Cockney
accent. In return she allowed Ben to nickname her 'Duchess'. Along
with Ben she instantly strikes up a good rapport with The Doctor,
and, despite The Doctor’s apparent anger when he realised that
he had two new companions, he generally seemed to get along well
with them, teasingly informing Polly that he had ‘excellent
hearing’ after she jokingly described him as an ‘old
buzzard’ - having previously pictured herself as a cat person
and Ben as a dog - when she thought he wasn’t in the room ("Ten
Little Aliens").
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| The Power of the Daleks |
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Polly
was a fairly intelligent companion and this was demonstrated when they meet
the Cybermen while they are trying to invade a moon base. It was during this
story that she realised that the Cybermen's chest units were made of plastic
and so could be dissolved by the use of solvents, which Ben decided to call
'Cocktail Polly' ("The
Moonbase"). Her morality was also a prominent
part of her personality, Polly reflecting once that she had felt great pride
when her country abolished the death penalty when she was still a young girl
("The
Murder Game") and feeling guilty when she was responsible
for the death of actor Caleb Rochfert despite the fact that he had been trying
to influence her to shoot The Doctor ("Dying
in the Sun"). Although
she had attempted to once give something back to the community on Earth by
working in a charity shop, she had found the experience too drab and repetitive
after only a couple of weeks, walking out and donating a pile of the previous
year’s fashions to make up for her lack of commitment ("Ten Little
Aliens"), finding in the TARDIS an excellent opportunity to help others
on a larger scale.
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| Moonbase |
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Despite
often relying on The Doctor and her fellow companions in
times of trouble she frequently proved that she was more
than capable of looking after herself in difficult situations.
Ben though very much saw himself as her protector. Polly
was a screamer, but she was by no means a coward. She showed
great resourcefulness and stamina, although this was known
to backfire on her at times, such as when she attempted
to independently investigate the quasi-religious group FOCAL
- a front for an alien race known as the Selyoids who sought
to gain control of humanity to make them help the Selyoids
regain corporeal form - only to become a Selyoid host herself,
although Polly rejected the Selyoids when she realised that
their enhancements of her body had also left her emotionally
distant from her friends ("Dying in the Sun").
On another occasion, she was even tricked by an alien into
activating a set of psychically -powered beacons which compressed
Earth’s life-essence into a small energy sphere using
her previously-dormant psychic powers, although The Doctor
was able to recover the globe ("Invasion
of the Cat-People").
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| The Faceless Ones |
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The
relationship between Polly and Ben was without doubt a case
of opposites attracting each other, and the differences between
them spilled into plenty of disagreements. But underneath
there was an ever-growing closeness between them - even if
both parties were reluctant to acknowledge it ("The Murder
Game") -, which was why they both decided to leave the
TARDIS together. When the TARDIS materialised back in 1966,
Polly and Ben realised that it was exactly the same day as
when they left in the TARDIS so they both decided to stay
on Earth. This was the obviously the best time for Polly to
leave and continue where she had left off albeit slightly
older then when she left (The
Faceless Ones").
Although
Ben and Polly subsequently went their separate ways and
married other people, the two spent the day together when
Mondas came to Earth in their lifetimes to wait out the
experience as their past selves dealt with the crisis ("Short
Trips - Mondas Passing"). Following this, Polly married
someone else and became pregnant, but an argument with three
women at a cricket match during her pregnancy - coincidentally
the Fifth
Doctor’s companions Tegan
Jovanka, Peri Brown and Erimem (Peri and Erimem visiting that location
to stop Tegan making a crucial mistake, their Fifth Doctor
naturally staying away to avoid accidentally meeting his
younger self) - resulted in Polly re-evaluating her life
and throwing away comfort, stability and love for an exciting,
glam but ultimately shallow lifestyle, to the extent that
she became head of the GEZ record company but had minimal
contact with her son Mikey. This continued until she collapsed
at the funeral of a reality TV-show host at the turn of
the millennium and was attacked by an unidentified hostile
force that sent her to different locations in history to
disrupt the timeline. Although the Time Lords stepped in
to halt the jumps by sending the Second
Doctor and Jamie to assist her, her ‘travels’ helped Polly realise
the mistakes she’d made in her past before Ben was
able to give her the kiss of life and restore her to her
body. With Ben and Polly having finally admitted their love
for each other, they subsequently spent New Year’s
Day with their old friends as they began their new lives
("Short
Trips: Past Tense - That Time I Nearly Destroyed
the World While Looking For a Dress").
While
searching the Internet for other old friends of The Doctor,
Polly made the acquaintance of The Doctor's long-time
friend Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier telling
her all about The Doctor's exile on Earth in his third incarnation
("Spearhead
From Space") after they confirmed
their shared knowledge of his first two selves. They also
made contact with Thomas Brewster during his temporary theft
of the TARDIS, helping him recover the stolen ship from
The Doctor's old foe, Gerry Lens, and defeat the powerful
being known as the Coffin Loader who sought to consume the
supposedly dying Earth ("The Three Companions").
During the Game of Rassilon ("The
Five Doctors"),
Polly was reunited with The Doctor when she was abducted
along with previous companions Ian
Chesterton, Steven
Taylor and Sara
Kingdom, as well as later companion Nyssa ("The
Five Companions"), and trapped in an alternative Death
Zone, where they were caught up in a conflict between the Daleks and the Sontarans.
Despite her own fears in the face of these two powerful
enemies, Polly's spirits were revived
when the Fifth Doctor reminded her of her old courage in
facing the Cybermen, later killing a Sontaran with her stilletto
because he was too busy focusing on The Doctor to pay attention
to her.
In "Death of The Doctor" - an episode of spin-off
series The
Sarah Jane Adventures, looking at the modern
adventures of the Third and Fourth
Doctor’s companion Sarah
Jane Smith -, Sarah Jane mentioned that her research
into other companions had included reference to Ben and
Polly as a couple who ran an orphanage in India.
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