Creator / Anneke Wills

Anneke Wills (born 20 October 1941) is an English actress. She is best known for playing Doctor Who companion Polly from 1966-67, alongside William Hartnell's First and Patrick Troughton's Second Doctors. She joined the show in "The War Machines" and left in The Facless Ones". She also had a starring role as Evelyn McClean on Strange Report in 1969-70.

Wills began her acting career in 1954, aged just 13. Early appearances included Roberta in the 1957 TV adaptation of The Railway Children, and two episodes of the cult classic The Strange World of Gurney Slade in 1960. In the mid-1960s she made multiple guest appearances in the enduringly popular ITV shows The Avengers and The Saint.

In 1962, Wills married to Michael Gough, who would later find fame as Alfred Pennyworth. They would divorce in 1979 after 17 years of marriage.

Wills made her debut as companion Polly in Doctor Who in "The War Machines", the final story of Season 3. She joined the show at the same time as Michael Craze as fellow companion Ben Jackson. Their characters were both young Londoners from 1966, designed to capture the mood of the Swinging Sixties and appeal more to contemporary audiences than previous companions had done. Their characters sometimes clashed onscreen, but Wills and Craze would form a lifelong friendship.

William Hartnell was nearing the end of his tenure as the Doctor, with growing health and memory problems making it impossible for him to continue playing the role. Two serials later, Hartnell regenerated into Patrick Troughton, with Wills as Polly and Craze as Ben therefore going down in history as the first companions to witness a regeneration on the show.

Two stories into Troughton's tenure, Frazer Hines was introduced as new companion Jamie McCrimmon. His presence led to the production team deciding that Ben was redundant and writing him out of the show after one year. Wills was offered the chance to stay on as Polly, but she opted to leave at the same time as Michael Craze, so Ben and Polly departed the show together one year after they had joined it together.

A starring role as Evelyn McClean on Strange Report, a crime drama series produced by ITC Entertainment, soon followed, but Wills opted to quit the show after one season, unwilling to relocate from London to the United States as the show had planned to do.

Wills left acting thereafter to dedicate herself to motherhood and gardening. In 1980, after her divorce, she left the UK and spent the next decade-and-a-half living in a wide variety of places including Belgium, Laos, Vietnam, India, the USA and Canada, before returning to Britain in the mid-1990s.

Decades after leaving the role on television, Wills has reprised her role as Polly in audio form for Big Finish Doctor Who from 2009 onwards. She has also been called upon to provide linking narration for the audio releases of the soundtracks to many of the missing episodes in which she appeared. Unfortunately, her time on the show was one of the hardest hit by the BBC archive purges of the 1960s and 1970s, and today only 12 of the 36 episodes in which she appeared still exist in the archives.

Her roles include:

Television

• The Avengers episodes:
  • "Dressed to Kill" (1963) — Pussy Cat
  • "The £50,000 Breakfast" (1967) — Judy
• The Likely Lads, episode "Other Side of the Fence" (1965) — Judith Francis
• The Saint, episode "The Helpful Pirate" (1966) — Fran Roeding
• Doctor Who, 36 episodes / 9 stories^{show list} "The War Machines", "The Smugglers", "The Tenth Planet" , "The Power of the Daleks", "The Highlanders", "The Underwater Menace", "The Moonbase", "The Macra Terror", "The Faceless Ones" (1966-67) — Polly
• Strange Report, 16 episodes (1969-70) — Evelyn McLean
• An Adventure in Space and Time (2013) - Party Guest (cameo)

Audio Play

• Big Finish Doctor Who stories:
  • Bernice Summerfield: "Beyond the Sun" (1998) — Doctor Kitzinger
  • Doctor Who Main Range: "The Sandman" (2002) — Nrosha
  • 3 Doctor Who Main Range stories^{show list} "Zagreus", "The Next Life", "Memory Lane" (2003-06) — Lady Louisa Pollard
  • 10 The Companion Chronicles stories ^{show list} "Resistance", "The Forbidden Time", "The Three Companions", "The Selachian Gambit", "The House of Cards", "The Mouthless Dead", "Bonfires of the Vanities", "The Plague of Dreams", "The Curator's Egg", "The Crumbling Magician" (2009-19) — Polly Wright and various other characters
  • 2 Special Releases stories^{show list} "The Five Companions", "The Light At The End" (2011-13) — Polly Wright
  • Charlotte Pollard: "The Fall of the House of Pollard" (2014) — Lady Louisa Pollard
  • 6 The Early Adventures stories ^{show list} "The Yes Men", "The Forsaken", "The Night Witches", "The Outliers", "The Morton Legacy", "The Home Guard" (2015-19) — Polly Wright/Narrator
  • 2 Short Trips stories^{show list} "Lost and Found", "Falling" (2016-17) — Polly Wright

Tropes related to her career include:

• Actor-Inspired Element: Wills wore her own clothes on Doctor Who and Strange Report.
• Stage Name: She was born Anna Katarina Willys. Early in her career, she was credited first as "Anneke Willys" (1954-58), then as "Annika Wills" (1959-63), before settling on "Anneke Wills" from 1964 onwards.
• You Sound Familiar: In addition to reprising her role as Polly for Big Finish Doctor Who, she has also voiced Director Nrosha and Lady Louisa Pollard.
• What Could Have Been: She was considered for the role of original Doctor Who companion Susan Foreman in 1963, which eventually went to Carole Ann Ford.

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