Anneke Wills first played Polly alongside Michael Craze’s Ben Jackson on Doctor Who back in 1966, and she’s just returned to the role yet again for Paul Magrs’ Sleeper Agents (click here to read our review), part of the Beyond the Doctor series from BBC Audio, as well as reading Nigel Robinson’s novelisation of The Underwater Menace. To mark 25 years since they first met, Wills chatted with Paul Simpson…

Why come back now?

It wasn’t really coming back. I read a book once a year with Michael [Stevens]; we’ve had that for quite a bit now – every year I’ll do one more story that I was in. So last year it was The Underwater Menace and then while I’m at it, in the studio, he loops up a few more stories to do and this one, Sleeper Agents, was one I particularly liked. I recorded them all in one go. In fact I did Underwater Menace in one day, be impressed by that.

I am.

(Laughs) And Sleeper Agents and another one, the next day.

What did you like about Sleeper Agents then?

Oh well you see, over the years people have written stories about Polly. Some of them just didn’t ring [true] for me and I didn’t want to do them, but this one I really loved because there we are leaving Gatwick Airport and going back to Chelsea and getting on with our little lives and I think that Paul [Magrs] did a lovely job. The relationship, I thought, between Polly and Ben was beautifully drawn.

He knows that when the show works at its best, it’s about the characters and that we want to spend our time with Ben and Polly. You very definitely want to know what happens next…

And interesting how many hundreds of years later [we are now] because when we hear Ben saying, ‘Oh I thought we’d get together but then, we wouldn’t would we? Because you’ve got white carpets.’ (laughs) you think, how could it have changed? In those days was that really on the table? If Polly was posh and Ben was a sailor, that they wouldn’t necessarily get together? So that was interesting, a different time.

You were there; I was three at the time so didn’t take a lot of notice of these things.

“I was three at the time.” (laughs)

Let me off for not remembering it!
Would that have been the case? Isn’t this true to what it was really like? Would a Deb’s Delight like Polly just not associate with the Michael Caine figure that Ben was?

Well there you are, you see: I could only put myself back into that moment and of course it wasn’t [like that]. There I was in the middle of the Swinging Sixties and we were all melting and merging, and there were people having black and white marriages and all the lovely things. When you think of the East End boys – Terence Stamp, Michael Caine – we were all together. But I suppose the difference is that we were actors, and actors are always much more open, so it was different for us. Maybe out there in the world of the 60s maybe that wasn’t so. Anyway that’s what he wrote so yes, something to ponder.

You’ve said there have been times where Polly hasn’t quite rung true. Was there anything in this that you thought, ‘OK, I didn’t think she’d have done that but actually it makes sense that she did’?

No, because we almost very quickly got into our adventure. What I loved was that at first Polly’s thinking ‘Oh God, he’s been seduced by this wretched woman, typical of Ben, he would.’ But of course at the end it’s ‘My hero! (laughs) He knew better all along’. That was what was so lovely about the story, that we had the doubt. And of course, in a way, by the end of it Polly and Ben would go on to be Sleeper Agents mwahaha!

And of course, Ben is absolutely convinced that Polly has been under the influence.

That was what was so well written.

There’s Polly and Ben, having had all those extraordinary adventures with the Doctor, landing back in London and imagining that their lives would carry on as they had been when they left, which for them was only the moment before. They arrive back in their own time half an hour later or something.

But of course, what’s so interesting is that the companions have come back to their original lives but they’re imagining people weren’t watching what was going on with them and the Doctor, and all the extraordinary experiences they had so, yes, [something on] the dark side would want to pick their brains.

That was the interesting part of the story, that of course they were being watched and as soon as they got back, the agents were after them. They were all innocent, at first, and not knowing, but then almost quickly all their old experiences of working with the Doctor came to the fore and they had all their antennae out…

When you were reading this, did you change how you were voicing Ben and Polly, as they realise what’s going on?

Well, not really of course, in a way no, because the voices, we’re still the same people but we suddenly realise, ‘Wait a minute, wake up. We’ve got to be fast here.’ And I think that Polly and Ben both in their own ways were aware of the possibilities that these guys are not straight up.

Polly of course gets wooed by the fact that Mr Harman is handsome… and she nearly gets carried away with that, and equally Ben gets carried away with a beautiful woman, Miss Lehman. The two of them are sort of seduced but at the same time their wisdom of being with the Doctor and having had all those extraordinary experiences come to the fore and they weren’t expecting to suddenly be thrust back into something…

There’s that feeling, isn’t there, that it’s almost like it’s all been a dream in the TARDIS…

Yes.

And now they’re back in the real world in the GPO Tower…

Yes and Ben’s got to go back and join up and yet, suddenly the next minute here they are in this extraordinary adventure flying into this island in the middle of nowhere.

It sort of throws them into the middle of James Bond, doesn’t it?

It does.

It’s Blofeld with the white pussy and the volcano lair.

Yes, very well described and also of course, I love that Mr Puss gets woven through which is really lovely. So all in all a beautifully woven story.

I must just tell you – it’s quite sweet, and I’m sure Paul wouldn’t mind me saying this. I got the script before the recording and I went through with a fine toothed comb just checking for words that would pop out for me because it wasn’t [true to the] 60s. For instance, [it said] we’ll get a cab back from the airport and I’d say, no we’d call it a taxi. Just authentic tweaks which somebody who writes now perhaps wouldn’t have known.

He wasn’t even born, he’s younger than me.

Oh Paul, in this moment of time, I’m very much remembering being a child in the Second World War, and remembering that we didn’t have enough food to eat and we didn’t have any clothes. I’m remembering all that and it’s just awful. Just awful that we’re back here again, too awful to contemplate, so things like listening to Sleeper Agents is good, it cheers you up. (laughs)

It takes away from the horrible mundanity.

The horrors, the horrors, yes.

You’ve done many of these audio books: does each one present a different challenge or are they very much ‘This is what’s in this one, there’s going to be a tongue twister of some sort’? And was there anything particularly challenging about this one?

Are we deciding between Underwater Menace which was the last one I read of the Target books or are we talking about Sleeper Agents?

Either but Sleeper Agents I was thinking of more – with The Underwater Menace you knew what was coming.

Oh, The Underwater Menace was heaven to do because what an honour, what a joy and what a challenge that after all these years, that I would be repeating Joseph Furst’s wonderful line, ‘Nothing in the world can stop me now!’ (laughs) And each time I did it when we were recording it, bless her heart, Liz [Davies] who was doing the recording with me, she’d say, ‘Excuse me, excuse me’ while I would fall off my chair in delight and then she’d say, ‘OK, do you just want to do that one more time?’

It was mad because I loved it so much. That’s what happens with the Target books, I do absolutely love going back there and doing again these amazing performances. For me, to do Polly and Ben that’s lovely but to do Patrick’s voice… I would listen to the soundtracks.

I work very hard on these things, I do.  I must tell you, as soon as Michael gives me the go, I get to work and I’m listening. I’m listening to Patrick’s voice and I’m just blown away at what a beautiful voice he had and so expressive and deep and posh and wonderful.

I have enjoyed it, I’ve nearly done them all. I think it’s just The Power of the Daleks left and I don’t think I can make it, it’s a big book. (laughs)

But it has been an absolute joy to do and when that gets looped up with other little stories, like ‘Planet of the Bones’ from the annuals, that’s just a piece of fun and I love it. I do love it. I love doing the recordings.

 

Thanks to Michael Stevens and Matt Evenden for help in arranging this interview.

Click here to order Sleeper Agents from Amazon.co.uk