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Oh, it's just a knack, you know. Any time you want a bit of brightness in your life, just ask Pol.
~ Polly, The War Machines.

Polly Wright is a supporting protagonist in Season 3 and one of the two deuteragonists (alongside Ben Jackson) of Season 4 of the Classic series of Doctor Who and a minor character in the 2017 Christmas Special, Twice Upon a Time in the revived series.

She was portrayed by Anneke Wills, who has voiced the character in the Big Finish audio plays, and also, in a flashback in "Twice Upon a Time", by Lily Travers.

Biography[]

Polly was the secretary to the scientist Professor Brett, creator of the super-computer WOTAN. She first met the Doctor when he and his companion Dodo Chaplet visited Brett's office. She and Dodo went to the Inferno club together where she made the acquaintance of Ben Jackson, a seaman who saved her from a drunk's unwanted attentions. Not long after, she fell under the hypnotic control of WOTAN and joined the workforce building its War Machines. However, she still felt enough loyalty to Ben to keep quiet when he escaped. Ben returned the favour by getting her to safety when the Doctor sent a reprogrammed War Machine to destroy WOTAN. Polly and Ben went to see the Doctor to tell him Dodo had decided to stay behind. They entered the TARDIS, unaware of its true nature just before it dematerialised.

As a result, the pair ended up accompanying the Doctor to 17th century Cornwall, where they became caught up in various parties' search for Captain Avery's treasure. Polly was mistaken for a boy named Paul and managed to secure her and Ben's release by convincing a stable boy that the Doctor was a warlock. They then ended up at the South Pole some twenty years after her and Ben's time, where she became caught up in an invasion by the Cybermen, being held hostage aboard their ship. At the climax, she and Ben witnessed the Doctor's first regeneration.

Polly was more ready than Ben to believe that this apparent stranger was still the Doctor. During their next trip to the Earth colony on Vulcan, they encountered the Daleks. Polly was held prisoner by the colony's rebels for a time and tried to convince them of the danger of the Daleks. Journeying to 1746, Polly teamed up with Scottish girl Kirsty McLaren after the Doctor and Ben were arrested by English soldiers along with Kirsty's father Colin and their friend Jamie McCrimmon. They managed to capture English officer Lieutenant Ffinch and blackmail him into helping them, eventually having him arrest the slaver Solicitor Grey. Afterwards, Jamie joined the Doctor, Polly and Ben in the TARDIS.

Polly was nearly turned into a Fish Person during a visit to Atlantis and managed to impersonate the goddess Amdo to save the Doctor from being sacrificed. She again encountered the Cybermen on the moon in 2070, where she devised a solvent that dissolved the Cybermen's chest plates. During a visit to a holiday planet controlled by the Macra, Polly was put to work in the mines along with Jamie until the colony was freed.

Arriving at Gatwick Airport in her own time, Polly witnessed the murder of a policeman, Inspector Gascoigne, by two of the Chameleons, aliens who were stealing human identities. Polly managed to alert the Doctor and Jamie but was then captured and duplicated by the Chameleons herself. She missed the Doctor's subsequent battle with the aliens, after which she and Ben learned they had returned to the day they first entered the TARDIS and elected to go back to their old lives.

The short story "Mondas Passing" shows Polly and Ben, both now married to other people, meeting up in 1986 at the same time their younger selves are battling the Cybermen. This was seemingly overwritten by the Sarah Jane Adventures story "Death of the Doctor", in which Sarah Jane Smith mentions they are running an orphanage together in India. The audio play "The Five Companions" also mentions them as having married.

Trivia[]

  • Polly's surname was given in contemporary behind-the-scenes documents but not mentioned on screen. For many years, a fan myth was that her surname was Lopez, a result of mishearing the alias of her Chameleon duplicate Michelle Leuppi as Michelle Lopez and mistakenly believing it to be Polly's real surname. The surname Wright was uncovered by research in the 1990s and has since been used in much licensed tie-in fiction.

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