Portrayed by: Anneke Wills
Doctor(s): First Doctor, Second Doctor
Tenure: 9 stories, from The War Machines (June, 1966) to The Faceless Ones (May, 1967)
Background: We meet Polly when she’s out at the Inferno nightclub, where she meets Ben, a sailor who’s shipping out the next day. They become embroiled in the Doctor’s battle against WOTAN when he comes looking for Dodo at Inferno and at the end of the story, they end up entering the TARDIS just before it takes off, becoming Companions. Polly is a contemporary young woman who is very fashionable and, for the time, independent.
Family/Friends: Polly doesn’t mention much about her family, but she develops a very strong bond with Ben, who she eventually leaves with. It’s implied they will stay together when they leave and perhaps get married.
Personality: Polly is fun and lighthearted, intended as an audience surrogate and a departure from the quirkier Dodo, who leaves in the same story Polly arrives. While a far cry from the more assertive Companions that will come later, she is decidedly more together than her scream queen predecessors Susan and Vicki and immediate female successor, Victoria.
Special Skills: Polly is very much designed to be an audience surrogate, so she has few particular skills outside of her typing and office skills, intuition, cheerful personality, and gumption.
Best Story: The Power of the Daleks, though the video is lost, remains a great story in reconstruction and audio form. It’s one of the best Dalek stories and as the first ever post-regeneration story, it was a crucial moment for the series, as Polly and Ben (along with the audience) decide if they’ll accept this strange new (Second) Doctor.
Worst Story: The Smugglers is a fairly lackluster story that doesn’t earn its four episode runtime. It’s Ben and Polly’s first story traveling on the TARDIS and the writers don’t yet have a strong handle on the characters.
Highlights of tenure: Using her assets to her advantage (and in general being a more sexually empowered woman, comparative to her time) in The Highlanders, taking out Cybermen with nail polish remover in The Moonbase, and rapport with both Ben and Jamie
Lowlights of tenure: Over reliance on Ben and general lack of identity separate from him. She isn’t even given a last name onscreen, though her love interest Ben does have one. Polly may be a step in the right direction, but the series still had a long way to go.
Memorable quotes:
[re: regeneration] Ben: “But it’s impossible!”
Polly: “Not so long ago we’d have been saying that about a lot of things.” Power of the Daleks
“You’re not turning me into a fish!” The Underwater Menace
Other notes: Ben and Polly, though they are only barely dating when they come aboard, are the last couple to travel in the TARDIS until Amy and Rory. Also, on happenstance, Ben and Polly leave the TARDIS on the same day they initially left. This is often called the Doctor’s busiest day, as in Earth’s timeline, he battles Wotan in The War Machines, foils the Chameleons’ invasion in The Faceless Ones, and uncovers the Daleks’ scheme to capture the Human Factor in The Evil of the Daleks all on July 20th, 1966.