Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants Read Online Free PDF Page A

secretary of Professor Brett, who takes her to the Inferno nightclub where they both meet Able Seaman Ben Jackson. WOTAN, an intelligent machine, brainwashes Dodo in an attempt to remove the Doctor, but the Doctor sees through the conditioning and is able to break it. He sends Dodo to a house in the country to recover, and she is never seen again.
    After showing such enthusiasm for her travels, and growing attached to the Doctor, it is very odd that she doesn’t return to at least say goodbye to him. Instead she passes on a message to him through Ben & Polly, saying that she has decided to remain in London. What is the reason for such a drastic shift in her character? We never find out on television, but several other reasons have been offered up in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe.
     
    As with Ian & Barbara the next companions came as a ‘couple’ – they joined together, they left together and, according to Sarah in 2010 they are still together.
    Ben Jackson & Polly – Michael Craze & Anneke Wills ( The War Machines to The Faceless One s)
     
    Polly is the secretary of Professor Brett, a young ‘dolly bird’ with an active social life, enjoying the night life of the Inferno club. When Polly meets Ben Jackson she takes it on herself to cheer him up, with mixed results. Despite this, Ben defends Polly against the attentions of an unwanted admirer, a trait that continues throughout their time together.
    Polly has a tendency to tease those she likes, Ben in particular. He soon gets used to this and takes to calling her ‘Pol’. After assisting the Doctor in defeating WOTAN and the War Machines, it is Polly who is curious as to why the Doctor enters a Police Box. Ben is less bothered, more concerned about returning to his own ship, but Ben remembers the key that had fallen out of the Doctor’s pocket earlier. At her urging, Ben joins her and they both enter the Police Box mere seconds before it dematerialises.
    Both are somewhat sceptical of the Doctor’s claims about the TARDIS, but Polly adapts to things a lot quicker than Ben who is, upon arriving on a beach in Cornwall, sure that the Doctor is a hypnotist or something. Throughout their harrowing adventures in the seventeenth century ( The Smugglers ), Polly finds herself enjoying the notion of time travel, while Ben is more concerned about getting home and back to his ship. Even when the Doctor insists they have to stay and sort out the problem with the pirates and the smugglers, it takes both him and Polly to convince Ben that it is the right thing to do. Polly’s humour is also something Ben takes a while to get used to, coming across as positively miserable next to her cheekiness. But he does take some pleasure in her horror at seeing a rat, despite them both being imprisoned at the time and facing a likely death sentence, a fact that does not seem to bother Polly too much. The humour soon infects Ben, too, when he begins to turn on his own cocky charm, even to the point of quipping, ‘Polly, put the kettle on?’ when he has to leave her for a short while.
    By the time the TARDIS brings them to the South Pole some twenty years after their own native 1966, both seem to have adapted nicely to travelling with the Doctor. Faced with the emotionless Cybermen, in The Tenth Planet , it is Polly who first challenges them, while Ben tries to hold his ‘duchess’ back, fearing for her safety. Ben also stands up to the Cybermen, making inventive use of a projector to blind one, and then using its own weapon against it. It is an act Ben is not proud of – but he knows it is necessary. His courage is never far away, and when the Cybermen intend on taking Polly prisoner, Ben soon stands forward insisting he go in her place.
    Ben & Polly are the first companions to meet the Cybermen, but also at the end of The Tenth Planet they are on hand to witness the most remarkable thing about the Doctor. His body wearing thin, the Doctor staggers back to the TARDIS, and it is