Ben Jackson

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

He also travelled with his future wife, Polly Wright, and Jamie McCrimmon. He was also acquainted with Dodo Chaplet, briefly meeting her after Polly did.

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)

Travels with the First Doctor
By 1966, Ben was assigned to the Royal Navy vessel HMS Teazer as a radar plot third class. He made Polly Wright's acquaintance in the Inferno nightclub in Covent Garden on 12 July, having briefly crossed paths with her there a week earlier. Ben was depressed at the time because he was stuck on a six month shore posting while his ship patrolled the West Indies. He spent most of his nights at the Inferno.

He helped the First Doctor defeat the sentient computer known as WOTAN and its War Machines on 20 July 1966. Shortly thereafter, Ben and Polly, mistaking it for an ordinary police box and using the key the Doctor gave Ben, entered the TARDIS by accident. (TV: The War Machines) According to some accounts, this happened in the 1970s. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, Doctor Who and the Cybermen)

In his investigation of reports of a series of agent provocateurs known as "the Doctor" who had been involved in numerous unusual incidents, the journalist James Stevens discovered evidence of Ben's involvement in the C-Day fiasco. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)

The Doctor first took them to 17th century Cornwall, where they met Henry Avery's band of pirates. (TV: The Smugglers)

The Doctor, Ben and Polly landed on Earth but were all dressed up for snow not rain. He confronted a group of boys for setting off some fireworks near him and his friends. They heard from the local librarian, Mary, that the local gangs were worse this year. Ben and Polly were attacked by the local bonfire boys. He was told by Mary that the gangs have been getting worse and people less polite the closer they got to bonfire night. He went with the Doctor to inspect what was happening on the streets. He watched the bonfire boys burning people's belongings. (AUDIO: The Bonfires of the Vanities)

Ben and Polly found themselves near Wild Heath. One of the locals told them about a plague which summoned devils. He was affected by the sickness. He started to dream of pirates. The Player cured him. (AUDIO: The Plague of Dreams)

The Doctor, Ben and Polly later arrived in New York City in the 1890s where four Ovids — beings of pure thoughts who travelled from world to world in crystal spheres — had become trapped. Their presence caused people's dreams and nightmare to manifest in reality. The time travellers were able to free the Ovids with the assistance of Harry Houdini. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors)

The Doctor later took them to Antarctica in December 1986, when the Earth faced invasion by the Cybermen of Mondas. Ben played an important role in the defeat of the Cybermen when he disarmed the bomb that General Cutler intended to detonate and realised the Cybermen's weakness — their fear of radioactivity. Shortly afterwards, suffering from exhaustion, the Doctor collapsed onto the floor of the TARDIS control room and regenerated in front of them. (TV: The Tenth Planet)

Adventures 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)

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