Favorite Characters: Polly Wright (Doctor Who)

Subsequent classic Doctors, especially Two and Four, have more companion variety on a very upfront level, but I also think many of One’s companions are nicely varied in subtler ways.  Polly, who begins as One’s companion and then carries over into Two, manages to always feel like her own person without a lot of specificity, which is a pretty commendable feat.

Polly (along with Ben) meets the Doctor and Dodo in London during the swinging ‘60s.  She’s not quite the put-together woman Barbara was, but she’s not really a girl like Susan or Dodo either.  She’s very self-assured, cool as a cucumber, and she both has a decent job and likes to have a good time.  She’s naturally curious – always a must for any good companion – and has a take-charge attitude with a head for creative problem-solving.  The Doctor may not have intended for her to be a companion, since she and Ben wind up on the TARDIS as unintentional stowaways, but she’s certainly a good fit for it.

Traveling with the Doctor and Ben, and with Jamie later making a fourth in the TARDIS, Polly is the only woman on the bunch, but she holds her own pretty well.  Even though a big part of the companion’s job is getting into trouble/getting captured, it’s easy for the balance to feel skewed when there’s a mixed TARDIS crew with only one female.  It’s hard to tell if the woman is actually the one who does the lion’s share of the getting captured or if it just seems that way.  Polly, though, generally makes a good showing.  She gets captured on occasion (and when she does, it can feel like she’s more likely to need rescuing than to rescue herself,) but just as often, she’s scheming to rescue her friends, like when Ben, Jamie, and Two are arrested by the redcoats in “The Highlanders.”  And when she’s captured alongside one of her friends, like when she and Ben are nabbed in “The Smugglers,” she’s usually good for a clever idea to get out of it.

Polly really enjoys life with the Doctor.  I always love the brief moments after the TARDIS has landed where the companions just get to have a good time – before everything inevitably goes crazy – and Polly always makes the most of these moments.  Whether it’s basking in a spa resort, leaping around the surface of the moon, or just strolling along a beach, I feel her enthusiasm for traveling and seeing new things, which is always a plus.  She’s also pretty quick to roll with the punches where her new friends are concerned.  She becomes very in-sync with Ben very quickly, she has a lot more patience than Ben for Jamie’s 18^th-century knowledge gaps, and when the First Doctor regenerates into Two, it doesn’t take her long at all to adjust to the idea of him still being the same man, just different.

If Polly gets flack as a companion, it’s largely over the tea/coffee.  There are numerous instances where she’s sent out to make/fetch tea or coffee for the others, and at least one serial ends with Ben urging her to put the kettle on.  Yes, it is conspicuous that it’s the only woman who consistently winds up with tea-making duty, but for me, I think these complaints are generally overmagnified.  Sometimes, it feels like they suggest that’s all that Polly does, and that’s far from the truth.  She’s a smart cookie who contributes a lot, and I’m glad a few of the series 4 serials have been recovered so I’ve had a chance to see her in action more.