Polly Wright
Polly Jackson (née Wright) was a companion of the First and Second Doctors.
She was one of the very first people to witness the Doctor regenerating but she was initially unsure in believing that the Doctor was still the same man. She travelled in the TARDIS with Ben Jackson, whom she would later marry, and Jamie McCrimmon. She also became acquainted with Dodo Chaplet before she left the Doctor's company.
Biography
Early life
Polly was born in London in 1942. (PROSE: The Murder Game; TV: The War Machines) She was the second child of Dr Edward Wright and his wife and had four brothers, (AUDIO: Resistance) the youngest of whom was Miles. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) The family lived in a "big, old house in the country" (AUDIO: Resistance) in Hampshire (AUDIO: Lost and Found) or in Devon. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) They had a Golden Retriever named Belle. (AUDIO: Lost and Found) Dr Wright told Polly stories of her uncle Randolph, who died after being imprisoned in a Nazi prisoner of war camp in 1944. (AUDIO: Resistance)
In 1948, when she was six, Polly was separated from her mother on a shopping trip to Fortnum & Mason. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) In the same year, Polly saw baked beans for the first time on a visit to Henrik's. During the same trip, she lost her teddy bear and, later that day, she briefly met the Second Doctor, Ben Jackson and her future self, although she remained ignorant as to their identities. (AUDIO: Lost and Found) At seven years old, she was given a vaccine for polio by the school doctor, who lied and told her that it would not hurt. She screamed. (PROSE: The Underwater Menace)
In 1952, when she was ten, she attended a fair with her uncle Charles and had her fortune told by a gypsy, who warned her of a tall, dark stranger. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) She also visited the Tower of London when she was a child but otherwise only saw it through train windows. (PROSE: The Roundheads) As a girl, she went on school trips to the British Museum (PROSE: The Underwater Menace) and slept through Latin, (PROSE: The Slave War) later going to finishing school where she studied French. (PROSE: The Underwater Menace) She was proud when the United Kingdom effectively abolished the death penalty. (PROSE: The Murder Game)
In young adulthood, Polly reflected on her parents and said that she had always "taken them for granted" while she was away from home enjoying herself, but that they were always there for her when she needed them. (AUDIO: Resistance) She attended Leeds University. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) In 1963, she made it her New Year's resolution to work in a charity shop for cancer research in Notting Hill. However, she left after only a week - pleasing her mother - and instead chose to donate some of her expensive clothes which were in fashion the previous year. (PROSE: Ten Little Aliens)
Building a career
In the mid-1960s, Polly was living in Chelsea. She had a budding career as a model before leaving the industry, feeling that she was being exploited. (PROSE: The Murder Game) At age 21, she had a relationship with Roger who later broke up with her as he did not love her the way that she loved him, quickly entering into a new relationship with Lucy Miller. Subsequently, Polly accepted a job offer fixed for her by her Uncle Charles at the Post Office Tower. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) Part of her later regretted leaving the modelling industry for such a monotonous alternative. (PROSE: The Murder Game) Henceforth, Polly began working as Professor Brett's personal assistant. She maintained an active social life and enjoyed her time off work. (TV: The War Machines)
Joining the Doctor
On 12 July, 1966, Polly took Dodo Chaplet to one of her favourite haunts, the Inferno nightclub, where they met Ben Jackson, who later saved Polly from a drunken patron. They were later joined by the First Doctor, who expected to find Dodo there. Dodo later arrived back at the club, but was now under the control of WOTAN.
Polly's mind later fell under WOTAN's control. She was sent to work at the warehouse, where she was assigned to watch over Ben, who had been captured. However, Polly's mind resisted WOTAN's control long enough for Ben to escape. For punishment, Major Green sent her to Brett's office, where she assisted Brett and Krimpton with running WOTAN. Ben later freed her just as WOTAN was destroyed by one of its own War Machines.
When Ben and she found the Doctor beside an old police box, Polly told him Dodo would be staying in England. Miffed, the Doctor bid the couple adieu. As they walked away, Polly turned to see the Doctor had used a key to enter the police box. Remembering that Ben had found a key that had earlier fallen out of the Doctor's cloak, she dragged Ben back to the police box to see if it would fit. They ended up inside the ship just as it took off. (TV: The War Machines)
In his investigation of reports of a series of agent provocateurs known as "the Doctor" who had been involved in numerous unusual incidents, the journalist James Stevens discovered evidence of Polly's involvement in the C-Day fiasco. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
According to some accounts, Polly and Ben joined the Doctor in the 1970s. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, Doctor Who and the Cybermen)
Travels with the First Doctor
The Doctor first took Polly and Ben to 17th century Cornwall, where they ran into smugglers. (TV: The Smugglers)
The Doctor, Ben and Polly landed on Earth but were all dressed up for snow not rain. She chastised some boys for trying to frighten an ailing Doctor. They heard from the local librarian that the local gangs were worse this year. After one of the local gangs invaded the library and left a set of Guys in the reading room, she went to inspect that everything was locked to stop them coming in again. The Guys later attacked her. The Doctor asked her to do some research on the Bonfire gangs. She was later attacked by a cloaked creature which the later discovered to be a machine. She went to the town hall with her friends to confront what was causing the mischief. (AUDIO: The Bonfires of the Vanities)
After the TARDIS crashed, Polly was injured and was looked after by Continuity. She kept experiencing the accident and flitting back to the hospital as she became agitated. She became worried when she couldn't see Ben. Continuity intentionally harmed her. Continuity transplanted Polly into the Doctor's mind and her mind was stored in the computer's memory. The Doctor negotiated for her mind to be returned to her body. (AUDIO: The Crumbling Magician)
The Player later got her to narrate a previous adventure with him in Wild Heath. He told him that they needed to tell the story to get people to survive. In Wild Heath they were told by a local that they were suffering from the illness that brought them devils. She thought the disease was bringing the dreams to life. She saw a dragon brought to life as part of it. Back in the theatre she wanted to know what is and observed how strange it was. She observed the Doctor apparently dying. The Player infected Polly so that they could influence the dream, which was the theatre they were in. (AUDIO: The Plague of Dreams)
The Doctor, Polly and Ben later arrived in New York City in the 1890s where four Ovids — being of pure thoughts who travel from world to world in crystal spheres — had become trapped. Their presence caused people's dreams and nightmares to manifest in reality. The time travellers were able to free the Ovids with the assistance of Harry Houdini. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors)
Witnessing regeneration
In Antarctica in December 1986, Polly helped fight off an invasion by Cybermen from Mondas. After these events, the Doctor, exhausted, asked Polly and Ben to get him back to the TARDIS. As the trio took off, the Doctor collapsed and went through his first regeneration. (TV: The Tenth Planet)
On the planet Vulcan, Polly adjusted quickly to the Doctor's having changed into a new and younger persona though occasionally she had moments of doubt, while Ben was less accepting of the change, speculating that an imposter had replaced the Doctor. On Vulcan, Polly and Ben encountered the Doctor's archenemies, the Daleks. The encounter with the Daleks helped prove the Doctor was who he said he was. They helped him defeat the Daleks when they tried to conquer the Human colony there, which was already in the grip of a civil revolt. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
Early travels with the Second Doctor
The Doctor, Ben and Polly landed on the English coast in the 23rd century and spotted a Brontosaurus nearby. She was worried that Zoltan Clarkson was commercialising the dinosaurs. The Doctor asked her to spy on the Globe chamber to try and work out why the dinosaurs were escaping. She was later attacked by a Pterodactyl. With Andrew Clarkson she observed that one of the dinosaurs was talking. Zoltan wanted to eat Polly in his dinosaur form. Polly told Andrew to trust in his knowledge and in himself to help him find a solution. (AUDIO: The Curator's Egg)
Jamie joins
Polly was confident and not afraid to use her feminine wiles to enlist the help of Redcoat Algernon Ffinch while the travellers were in the Scottish Highlands. Polly also encouraged Kirsty McLaren to lure Algernon into a pit, where they took his money, identity disc and a lock of his hair. She struck up a relationship with Ffinch and teased him whenever they met, calling him "Algy". She realised that he admired her and gave him a kiss goodbye. Polly asked for the young Jacobite piper, Jamie McCrimmon, to come with them in the TARDIS, as she feared for his safety. (TV: The Highlanders) She and Ben came to see Jamie as a younger brother. (AUDIO: The Forbidden Time)
When Polly found herself in Atlantis, she was initially slated to be converted into a Fish Person. The Doctor interrupted the power supply as her operation was about to begin, allowing her to escape Damon's medical bay and rejoin her friends. She took on the disguise of an Atlantean in a seashell dress. She and Jamie escaped the rising water that flooded Atlantis, fearing that the Doctor and Ben had perished. They were relieved to find that they too had survived. The Doctor then promised them a trip to Mars. Taking off, the TARDIS went out out of control. (TV: The Underwater Menace)
The TARDIS had brought them to the Moon. When the TARDIS crew arrived on the Moonbase in 2070 and faced the Cybermen, Polly soon realised the Cybermen's plastic parts could be attacked with a mixture of solvents. She thought of the way nail polish was dissolved by nail varnish remover and concocted a mixture including acetone, benzene, ether and epoxy propane to make a substance, called "Polly Cocktail" by Ben, which was shot at the Cybermen with adapted fire extinguishers. (TV: The Moonbase)
After seeing a giant claw as warning about their next destination on the Time scanner the TARDIS landed on what appeared to be a peaceful Colony planet. There Polly and her friends had a makeover much to Polly's delight and much to the Doctor's displeasure. However all was not well as the next day Ben became brainwashed and hostile towards his fellow travellers. Polly and the others soon discovered crab like creatures called the Macra had infested the colony and were using the people for their own ends to harvest gas deep underground. Polly and Jamie were also pressganged into harvesting this gas until the Doctor found a way to defeat the Macra. (TV: The Macra Terror)
When the TARDIS had landed near a train station, Polly met with Frances, who told her about an unknown soldier. After the train that carried the soldier back stopped at the station, she tried to stop Frances but couldn't and ended up on the train. (AUDIO: The Mouthless Dead)
The Doctor decided to teach Ben and Polly how to pilot the TARDIS. After the TARDIS faltered in the vortex, they landed in New Houston. She noticed that what they had been watching on a screen was a funeral. Polly realised that Meg Carvossa was manipulating the figures in order to get more funding from Earth which could be shared out more equally. (AUDIO: The Yes Men)
When the TARDIS landed on a planet that resembled an English Village, the Master brainwashed Polly to believe she was married to Jamie, and the pair joined the home guard believing that there was a war on. The Master told them that they needed to defeat the Doctor as part of the war effort. Polly handcuffed the Doctor to a pipe thinking he had caused the invasion and was pivotal in the attack against the indigenous population of the planet they were on. (AUDIO: The Home Guard)
She became distressed when she realised that the TARDIS had brought her and her friends to Nazi occupied France, this was because her uncle, Randolph Wright, died in the war. The Doctor and Polly met with the resistance who wanted to get them to escape to Spain. (AUDIO:Resistance) She warned Jamie about touching the force field that surrounded the TARDIS. The Doctor managed to organise her release as a hostage after the Selachians attacked the bank. (AUDIO: The Selachian Gambit) She didn't like Casinos when the Doctor landed them in one. She was threatened by a member of the Sidewinder Syndicate when she was found with a time band. (AUDIO: House of Cards)
Arriving in 1648 just after the Roundheads victory in the English Civil War and being separated from her friends, Polly found herself inveigled in a plot to rescue King Charles I from captivity. This plot was ultimately unsuccessful and the King was recaptured by the Roundheads and Polly was reunited with her friends. (PROSE: The Roundheads)
Polly, Ben, Jamie and the Doctor landed in Kenga, Singapore during World War II. Soon after arriving she saw something the looked like the Grim Reaper. Clive Freeman found them looking around and took them to the local hotel. She got annoyed when the Doctor told her to stay behind when they went to search for the killer in the hotel. After Maggie Bishop was killed she helped the Doctor search for clues. When the Forsaken was attacking her she started chucking the contents of the hotel's bar at it and ran away from it. (AUDIO: The Forsaken)
The Doctor allowed Polly to pilot the TARDIS to their next destination, which was supposed to be Russia in the 18th century, but they landed in 1942 instead, arriving shortly before a battle between the German army and the Soviet air force. Polly discovered that she was a doppelganger for Tatiana Kregki, who asked her details of her life and then left her to die in the snow whilst she went to impersonate her. However, Polly managed to find her way back to the camp. (AUDIO: The Night Witches)
On an asteroid in 7691, Polly was able to use her computer skills to show Barbara Goro that the data she was using had been manipulated to artificially lower the true missing-persons rate. After the Doctor went missing, she was assigned to data management where she found out that everybody had shares in the mine and that's why they were ignoring the disappearances. The Doctor and his friends were taken to a cell deep under water. (AUDIO: The Outliers)
Planning to take Ben and Polly home, the Doctor landed the TARDIS in the 1860s instead of the 1960s. Upon visiting Josiah Morton's museum, Polly became intrigued with a strange necklace. She was kidnapped by Copeland and was forced to tell them about Mortan's house for them to steal from it. Ben and Jamie rescued her. (AUDIO: The Morton Legacy)
Leaving the Doctor
Although Polly enjoyed her adventures, she couldn't hide her desire to return home. After an adventure with the alien Chameleons in 1966, the travellers found the TARDIS had returned to London just before they had departed. With Ben, Polly left the TARDIS and returned to her life, appearing never to have been missing. (TV: The Faceless Ones)
Edward Waterfield, forced by the Daleks to track down the Doctor, originally targeted Polly as part of the plan. He had a photograph of her to identify her. However, when his agent informed him that Polly, as well as Ben, had left the Doctor's company, Waterfield decided not to involve them further. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)
Failed relationship
At some point, Polly was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Polly brought home Ben, much to the horror of her parents. Of particular note was her father's face. (AUDIO: The Five Companions) Ben proposed to Polly in 1966 at the top of the Post Office Tower, which was witnessed unbeknownst to them by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. (COMIC: The Love Invasion)
When the time came that Polly and Ben were to move house, Polly feared letting go of the past. After she recalled a time during her travels with the Doctor, Polly spoke to Ben and told him she was ready to let go, and told him she loved him. Afterwards, green feathers fell from the sky, notably from the Angel encountered in the adventure she had previously recalled. (AUDIO: Falling) Their relationship did not last. (PROSE: Mondas Passing, That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress)
Marriages and career
Polly was a glamour girl during the '60s, "Queen of the Disco" in the '70s and gave up smoking in the '80s. She married Simon and, by December 1981, was pregnant with his child. During her pregnancy, she and Simon watched the Ashes and she realised that she was unhappy with her life. She gave birth to a son, Mikey. (PROSE: That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress) On New Year's Eve 1986, Polly met with Ben in a hotel room - something that she kept secret from Simon - and reminisced about Snowcap and their time with the Doctor. They almost kissed but, after a distraction, Polly decided to leave. (PROSE: Mondas Passing)
Following Simon's death, Polly had a difficult relationship with Mikey, who refused to speak to her for three months after he walked in on her with a sailor that she met whilst drinking in Soho. In 1992, she was hired as John Maurice's personal assistant at GEZ and became a socialite, being given the company by his wife after Polly found him dead on top of a nineteen-year-old in 1996. She became a public figure, resumed smoking and struggled with bulimia, something that was well-publicised. She also had a brief marriage with "the gay one out of Boyzzzz".
Polly often attended the funerals of celebrities to get her face in the newspapers: she went to Versace's, where she comforted Diana Spencer, and Diana's, where she comforted Elton John. She once had a stalker whom she described as "a lovely young estate agent from Tunbridge Wells".
At Jane Vapid's funeral in 1999, Polly was manipulated into travelling through time and interfering in history. However, the Second Doctor and Jamie were able to resolve the disturbances and reunited her with Ben. The four of them drank Sauvignon and reminisced about their adventures together. With his wife "gone", Ben admitted his love to Polly and they kissed. (PROSE: That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress)
Later life
By 2009, Polly was working in a government office. At that time, Polly went onto the Internet to search for others who had known the Doctor. However, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had had all information about the Doctor deleted. Nevertheless, they corresponded by e-mail and were joined by another former companion, Thomas Brewster. At first, Polly did not believe that their "respective" Doctors were the same person when she saw a UNIT party photo with the Doctor in his third incarnation. Then they realised they had known him during his first and second incarnations. The three former companions rescued the TARDIS from Garry Lendler and saved the Earth from dying and from a Coffin-Loader, a beast which fed on dying worlds. (AUDIO: The Three Companions) Polly gave a presentation on her experiences with time travel to a disbelieving audience. She hung on to her secretarial Dictaphone recordings of Jamie, which had chronicled their adventure with the Vist. (AUDIO: The Forbidden Time)
Still married to Ben, Polly was later transported to an alternative version of the Death Zone on Gallifrey by Borusa using a Time Scoop. She came into contact with the Fifth Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Steven Taylor, Sara Kingdom and Nyssa.
She was soon caught in the middle of a fight between the Daleks, the Sontarans and a Tyrannosaurus rex. She killed a Sontaran by stabbing her stiletto heel point into his probic vent. Polly voiced her feelings of inadequacy and called herself not courageous, until the Doctor reminded her of having stood up to the Cyber-Leader Krail. Polly and the others expressed their hopes that the Doctor might visit them some day, though they doubted if he ever would. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)
In 2010, Sarah Jane Smith said that Ben and Polly were running an orphanage together in India. (TV: Death of the Doctor)
Polly remained friends with the Doctor on Bookface. She liked some of the Eleventh Doctor's status updates. (COMIC: Timeliney Wimey)
Ben and Polly attended Sarah Jane Smith's memorial on a "bright, cold Spring day", where they discussed Sarah Jane with other guests, and helped fight the Jackals of the Backwards Clock to foil the Trickster's revenge plot. (WC: Farewell, Sarah Jane)
Alternate timeline
When the Cybermen allied with Rassilon to take over history, they manipulated the encounter at the Moonbase leading to the Second Doctor being partially cyber-converted. (COMIC: Prologue: The Second Doctor)
In an aborted timeline created by the Decayed Master, the Doctor, Ben, and Polly were taken to the same date and location as the Doctor’s other selves and companions. Soon, Polly’s first encounter with the Doctor, as well as her adventures, were erased. This timeline was later negated primarily by the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and First Doctors. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
Personality
Polly teased and bantered with those she cared for. She hid her affections, particularly for Ben, behind this façade. She chatted him up when they met and she was still chatting him up when they left the TARDIS. When her friends were in trouble, Polly was completely serious — particularly if Ben was in trouble. Polly would drop the banter and flippancy to work towards practical solutions.
Like the earlier Wright to travel in the TARDIS, she hoped to find her way back to her own time period, thinking, "Please let it be Chelsea, 1966," when guessing what would be outside the TARDIS doors after it landed on the extinct volcanic island where Atlantis was located. (TV: The Underwater Menace) On the first landing in mid-1960s London, Polly left the Doctor with Ben, just as Barbara had left with Ian Chesterton. (TV: The Faceless Ones)
During their travels together, she and Ben thought of Jamie as being like their "baby brother." (AUDIO: The Forbidden Time) In the 2000s, she described Jamie as being "brawny and reckless but lovely" and "a bit slow on the uptake" to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. (AUDIO: The Three Companions)
Polly had an aptitude for languages, being able to speak Spanish, French and German. (TV: The Underwater Menace)
Appearance
Polly was a tall and pretty girl with long blonde hair, blue eyes and a shapely figure. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet) She was about a head taller than Ben and had a number of fillings. (PROSE: The Highlanders)
Nicknames
She was also often called "Poll" by Ben; this was adapted to "Paul" when she was pretending to be a boy in 17th century Cornwall. (TV: The Smugglers) He also described Polly as "our little dolly-rocker Duchess" (TV: The Smugglers) or simply "the Duchess".
Behind the scenes
Is "Polly Wright" right?
Like Vicki Pallister before her, Polly's surname never appeared in any televised episode. "Wright" only came to Polly in stories in other media. The name "Wright" does date back to the character's creation. The name first appeared in the character breakdown created by Gerry Davis and Innes Lloyd. The audition script read by Anneke Wills and others included the character identifying herself as "Polly Wright" in a telephone conversation with the Doctor. However, the name never made it into the recording of The War Machines. (REF: The First Doctor Handbook) It's unclear why the surname was dropped, but it could have been because a previous companion, Barbara, had the same last name. Had she been called "Polly Wright" in 1966, viewers might well have wondered whether she was related to Barbara, last seen on television just a year earlier.
The matter became more complicated during the early days of organised fandom in the late 1970s, when the surname "Lopez" was applied to the character. This surname was the result of not one but two misunderstandings, both having to do with Episode 2 of The Faceless Ones. As the cliffhanger to Episode 1 suggested, Anneke Wills was not then playing Polly, but a duplicate of her created by the alien Chameleons. At the start of Episode 2, the Doctor asked Anneke Wills's character her name. She replied, "Michele Leuppi from Zurich". This name was later confirmed in the serial's novelisation.
Fans listening to off-air audio recordings of The Faceless Ones Episode 2 transcribed the name as "Lopez" and believed, for reasons obscure, this was the surname of the real Polly. Subsequently this surname was used by Doctor Who non-fiction author Jean-Marc Lofficier in 1992's The Universal Databank, in which he referred to her as "Polly Lopez". In this way, the name "Polly Lopez" came to be used in one of the most prominent Doctor Who reference works at the start of the 1990s.
Then, in a 1993 Myth Makers interview with Nick Briggs, Anneke Wills confided that Polly's surname was actually "Bettingham-Smith". However, in her 2007 autobiography Self-Portrait, Wills changed her mind and said that her character had no surname and was simply "Polly". This matched The Cyber Files, where her name was given as simply "Polly" on her fact file in the Celestial Intervention Agency's databanks, in contrast to other companions whose last names were stated.
The first story to give Polly a surname was Gary Russell's 1995 Virgin Missing Adventures novel Invasion of the Cat-People. Russell decided to reuse "Wright" from the original audition scripts and character outlines. Since then, "Polly Wright" has been universally used for the character. When Polly next appeared in the 1997 BBC Past Doctor Adventures novels The Murder Game and The Roundheads, both used "Wright".
The 2009 Big Finish Productions audio story Resistance expanded upon the business of Polly's surname by revealing that "Bettingham-Smith" was her mother's maiden name. The story also references the possible relationship to former companion Barbara by having the Second Doctor say that "Wright was a very common name". Most Big Finish audio stories to feature Polly have listed the character as "Polly Wright" in their cast lists.
Other matters
- In April 2015, Polly was added as a playable character to the game Doctor Who: Legacy. Notably, her initial costume was never actually worn by Polly, it was instead taken from Anneke Wills' guest appearance as Fran Roeding in the 1966 episode of ITV spy thriller television series, The Saint, entitled "The Helpful Pirate", which was broadcast in colour in America due to the show being picked up by NBC.
- She was originally supposed to stay on with the Doctor and Jamie, but Anneke Wills decided to leave along with Michael Craze.
- She and Ben Jackson were supposed to make a cameo in The Five Doctors, but Anneke Wills was outside the UK at the time and couldn't be contacted, so the idea was abandoned.
- She was supposed to be part of the companions group in The Power of the Doctor, but Anneke Wills wasn't available.
External links
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