Ben Jackson

Benjamin "Ben" Jackson was a companion of the First and Second Doctors.

An able seaman on a shore posting, Ben met Polly Wright and helped the Doctor defeat WOTAN, later entering the TARDIS just before it dematerialised. Ben and Polly witnessed the Doctor's regeneration into his second incarnation and travelled with him and Jamie McCrimmon before returning to their own time.

After Ben and Polly lost their respective spouses, they got married and ran an orphanage together in India.

Early life
Ben was born in London (PROSE: The Murder Game) in December 1942 to James Jackson (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People; AUDIO: The Forsaken) and his wife. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) According to one account, he had an older brother who taught him and his school friends swear words. (PROSE: Ten Little Aliens)

He grew up opposite a brewery (TV: The Power of the Daleks) and, as a child, often searched wreckage left by bombs from World War II with his friends, sometimes finding the corpses of animals trapped by the explosions. (AUDIO: Lost and Found) He believed that his grandfather had "lost a few marbles" in the trenches. (PROSE: Ten Little Aliens)

Following his father's death from a heart attack, (AUDIO: The Yes Men) Ben's mother married Alfred, whom he did not get along with. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) He once had a headmaster who "got nicked" for not paying his bus fare. (TV: The Power of the Daleks) He found that he was not cut out for acting and said that, when parts were being sorted out for a school play, he would be lucky to be given the role of the back end of a donkey. (PROSE: The Murder Game)

In 1956, at the age of fourteen, Ben sneaked onto his father's ship (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) and hid under tarpaulin, sleeping and dreaming of being discovered and of being attacked by sharks. (PROSE: The Murder Game) When he was found out, the captain promised him a job in four months when he turned fifteen. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) He joined the Royal Navy (TV: The War Machines) and served in the Atlantic Ocean. His uncle, too, served in the navy. (AUDIO: The Mouthless Dead)

Meeting the Doctor
In 1966, Ben was given a shore posting whilst his ship, HMS Teazer, went to the West Indies. (TV: The War Machines) He was deeply unhappy with having to stay at barracks and drank a lot of alcohol, (PROSE: The Murder Game) often spending time on his own in Inferno. One night, he briefly met Polly Wright.

The next week, Ben defended Polly from Flash and danced with her and Dodo Chaplet, meeting the First Doctor after Dodo disappeared. When Polly did not show up after offering to buy Ben lunch, he found her conditioned by WOTAN and helped save her, later entering the TARDIS with her to return the Doctor's key. The TARDIS dematerialised with them inside, (TV: The War Machines) angering the Doctor. (TV: The Savages)

According to some accounts, Ben and Polly began travelling with the Doctor in the 1970s rather than 1966. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, Doctor Who and the Cybermen)

With the First Doctor
The TARDIS materialised in 17th century Cornwall, although Ben refused to believe that they had time-travelled before meeting Joseph Longfoot, initially suggesting that the Doctor might be a hypnotist. He was knocked out by Cherub when he kidnapped the Doctor and, after being arrested Edwards, he and Polly went looking for him. Once they were reunited and Samuel Pike was killed, they departed, with Ben hoping that they would land in 1966. (TV: The Smugglers)

Although they landed in Antarctica (TV: The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet) a timeline distortion meant that they instead found themselves in 1950s Lewes. After he and Polly were attacked by the Bonfire Boys, Ben and the Doctor went to find out what was going on on the streets. (AUDIO: The Bonfires of the Vanities)

On Apresar IV, Ben, Polly and the Doctor explored a deserted city and encountered the Mollusi, who ate the TARDIS and had Ellis Melthorpe under their control. (COMIC: Food for Thought) They went on to defeat the Ten-Strong and the Morphieans, with Ben teaming up with Adam Shade. (PROSE: Ten Little Aliens) With Harry Houdini's help, the trio were able to free the Ovids in 1890s New York City. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors)

After the TARDIS crashed, they found themselves in a hospital run by Continuity. Ben formed a brotherly relationship with Allie Kay. (AUDIO: The Crumbling Magician) Near Wild Heath, Ben was affected by a psychoactive virus which made him dream of pirates until the Player cured him. (AUDIO: The Plague of Dreams) On the TARDIS, before their final adventure with the Doctor in his first incarnation, Ben and Polly found that they both had the same nightmare. (AUDIO: Falling)

In Snowcap 1986, Ben killed a Cyberman with its own weapon, something that distressed him (TV: The Tenth Planet) and which he would later have nightmares of. (PROSE: Mondas Passing) He disarmed the Z-Bomb to stop General Cutler and found that the Cybermen were vulnerable to radiation. Ben and Polly returned to the TARDIS to find the Doctor unconscious and witnessed his regeneration. (TV: The Tenth Planet)

With the Second Doctor
Ben showed more scepticism than Polly toward the newly-regenerated Doctor, suspecting him of being an impostor. But on the planet Vulcan, which the three time travellers visited next, a Dalek recognised the Second Doctor. Ben then accepted the Second Doctor as the man he had known. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)

The Doctor, Ben and Polly landed on the English coast in the 23rd century. He was annoyed that Polly was more interested in the dog they had encountered and not the Brontosaurus. He went off with the Doctor to capture an escaped dinosaur. (AUDIO: The Curator's Egg)

Ben continued to travel with the Doctor, facing foes such as the Cat-People (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People) and the Selachians. (PROSE: The Murder Game) In London in 1948, the trio briefly met Polly's six-year-old self, who remained ignorant as to their identities. (AUDIO: Lost and Found) He and Polly were then joined by Jamie McCrimmon after an adventure in the Scottish highlands in 1746. (TV: The Highlanders) He later helped defeat the plans of Professor Zaroff in Atlantis (TV: The Underwater Menace) and met the Cybermen again on the Moon in 2070. (TV: The Moonbase) At one point in Ben's travels, he was mind-controlled by the Macra, but ultimately he fought against their control and saved his friends. (TV: The Macra Terror)

When they landed in 1920, he had to explain to Jamie what a train was. He thought that someone was following them after Jamie, Polly and him left the signal box. He was the only one to see this man when he saw it again. After seeing the man more clearly he realised that they looked how they thought the people who died at the Battle of Jutland. (AUDIO: The Mouthless Dead)

The Doctor decided to teach Ben and Polly how to pilot the TARDIS. After the TARDIS faltered in the vortex they landed in New Houston. He took advantage of a Yes Man before they kidnapped him. They brought him to an underground city and made him work like the humans on the surface did to them. Ben was forced to relive his experience against the Daleks on Vulcan in order to learn how to fight. (AUDIO: The Yes Men)

Landing in London in 1648, Ben was separated from his friends and was press-ganged onto a different ship called the Teazer captained by a rather unpleasant Dutchman called Stanislaus. While ashore in Amsterdam Ben met Captain Sal Winter and joined her crew. Despite a raid on Sal's ship, the Demeter, by Stanislaus' crew and almost being trapped and killed in the boggy marshes on the English coast Ben made it back to London and his friends. There he helped to foil the plot involving Stanislaus and the smuggling of King Charles I out of the country. (PROSE: The Roundheads)

When the Selachians arrived at the Galacti-bank he managed to escape which helped the Doctor in his plans. He devised a plan to stop the Selachians by blocking their gills. (AUDIO: The Selachian Gambit) He managed to find some casino chips when the Doctor took them to one and decided to play one of the futuristic games. He opened a line of credit in the casino and when he couldn't repay it he had to play a game of chance where the looser would die. (AUDIO: House of Cards)

Polly, Ben, Jamie and the Doctor landed in Kenga, Singapore during World War II. When Clive Freeman took them to the nearby hotel where he met his father, James Jackson. He later found Andrews dead. He helped to capture the Forsaken. Whilst searching the jungle he noticed the body of Freeman who had been dead for days. (AUDIO: The Forsaken)

Departure
Throughout his journeys, Ben never lost sight of his desire to return home, and to his ship, HMS Teazer. Before leaving, Ben and Polly insisted that they would stay if the Doctor needed them. The pair departed from the Doctor at the same time, having discovered they had arrived back on Earth on the very same day they left. (TV: The Faceless Ones) Unbeknownst to Ben, Edward Waterfield had been blackmailed by the Daleks into finding the Doctor. Ben, as one of his companions, was originally factored into the plan and a photograph of him was given to Waterfield. However, when Waterfield learned that both Ben and Polly had left the Doctor's company, he decided not to involve them further. (PROSE: The Evil of the Daleks)

Later life
At some point, Ben was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have his record as a companion of the Doctor taken. His memories of the visit were subsequently erased and he was sent on his way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Ben proposed to Polly at the top of the Post Office Tower in 1966, which was witnessed unbeknownst to them by the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler. (COMIC: The Love Invasion) He was taken home to meet Polly's parents, but they were shocked by him. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)

However, the relationship did not last. Whilst Polly married Simon, (PROSE: Graham Dilley Saves the World, etc.) Ben married a woman whom he did not tell of his dreams of Polly and his nightmares of killing a Cyberman. On New Year's Eve 1986, Ben and Polly secretly met in a hotel room and reminisced about their adventures, almost kissing before a drunk man distracted them and Polly left, saying that they would not see each other again. (PROSE: Mondas Passing)

By 1999, Ben's wife was "gone" and he was running a pub in Sydenham. That New Year's Eve, he was taken by the Second Doctor and Jamie to wake Polly up following an ordeal, after which the four of them happily discussed their adventures. Ben told Polly that he loved her and the two kissed. (PROSE: That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress) They were married by 2009. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)

In 2010, Sarah Jane Smith stated that Ben and Polly were running an orphanage in India. (TV: Death of the Doctor) The pair still lived in India at the time of Sarah Jane's passing but attended her memorial where they discussed Sarah Jane with the other guests and helped fight the Jackals of the Backwards Clock. (WC: Farewell, Sarah Jane)

Undated events
At one point, Ben was abducted by Adam Mitchell as part his plan to get revenge on the Doctor, in collaboration with. He was placed in stasis alongside the Doctors' multiple other companions, before being released by the Doctors first eleven numbered incarnations with the help of Frobisher. (COMIC: The Choice, Endgame)

Personality
Ben was practical and a realist. It took him a while to believe that the TARDIS really travelled through time and space. He was also more sceptical than Polly when the Doctor regenerated, believing that the new incarnation was an impostor. It took a Dalek recognising the Doctor to finally convince Ben of the truth. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)

Despite being uncomfortable in groups of strangers and prone to shyness, Ben was adept at taking charge of situations and giving orders and would always dedicate himself fully to a task, completing it to the best of his ability. (PROSE: The Murder Game)

Ben was clever and never shirked danger or action. He was sensible enough to realise that taking on a Cyberman with a screwdriver would be a big mistake, and managed to dazzle one with the light from a film projector before killing it. Ben also worked out that the Cybermen were avoiding radiation, and helped devise a plan to destroy them using the Snowcap Base's reactor fuel rods. (TV: The Tenth Planet)

Ben might have been headstrong and impetuous, but he proved to be mentally weaker than his companions when they faced the hypnotic processing of the Macra. However, he did struggle against it, failing to report Jamie for having taken Officia's keys. (TV: The Macra Terror)

Though they came from different backgrounds, Polly, whom he nicknamed "Duchess" because of her upper-class accent, and Ben became good friends during their travels. They trusted each other, and their relationship was punctuated by good-natured teasing and banter. They complemented each other well, making a good team. When Polly created a chemical potion to kill the Cybermen on the Moonbase, Ben worked out its practical application of it — using fire extinguishers to deliver "Polly Cocktail". (TV: The Moonbase)

During their travels together, he and Polly thought of Jamie as being like their "baby brother." (AUDIO: The Forbidden Time)

Ben took his tea with milk and no sugar. He did not much care for the drink but was able to drink it even when he did not want it, which he often had to do in the TARDIS due to Polly. (PROSE: The Murder Game)

Appearance
Ben was skinny, blond and had the face of a "disreputable cherub". (PROSE: The Roundheads) His hair was usually straight and neat. He considered himself to be fit, but was in better shape prior to his time in barracks and drinking alcohol. (PROSE: The Murder Game)

Behind the scenes
The role of Ben in the Big Finish plays has been portrayed by Elliot Chapman, as Michael Craze had died a year prior to the company's first Who audio.

Jared Garfield also portrayed Ben in Twice Upon a Time during the scenes recreating The Tenth Planet.

Бен Джексон