Ben Jackson
Portrayed by: Michael CrazeTravelled with: First Doctor, Second Doctor
Series: Classic
Ben Jackson was a companion of the First and Second Doctor after joining the TARDIS crew with fellow companion, Polly Wright. Ben grew up opposite a brewery before becoming a sailor on the British Naval Ship, HMS Teazer. Prior to travelling in the TARDIS, Ben was depressed when his ship was stuck on a 6 month shore posting while patrolling the West Indies. Here, Ben spent most of his nights in the night club Inferno, where he met Polly shortly before encountering the Doctor in The War Machines (Classic Series). Though Ben and Polly came from different class backgrounds, they became good friends during their adventures with the Doctor, trusting each other and punctuating their relationship with banter and good-natured teasing. They created a good team, complimenting each other well, which was seen during battle with the Cybermen in The Moonbase (Classic Series) when Polly created a chemical potion to kill the Cybermen, while Ben came up with the practical application of it through the use of fire extinguishers to deliver what was called Cocktail Polly. Although he adventured with the Doctor to many places, Ben never lost his desire to return to the Teazer, his ship. When the opportunity finally arrived, he and Polly left the TARDIS crew for the Teazer in The Faceless Ones (Classic Series).
Ben was both a realist and a practical man and it took him some time before he believed that the TARDIS did indeed travel through both time and space. Ben was also the most sceptical when the Doctor first regenerated after the events on Mondas in The Tenth Planet (Classic Series), only becoming convinced after the Daleks identified the Second Doctor to indeed be the Doctor in The Power of the Daleks (Classic Series). Despite this, Ben was a clever man and never shirked the danger of action that accompanies the TARDIS crew. He was sensible enough to know that he couldn’t take on a Cyberman with just a screwdriver and instead managed to dazzle it with a film projector before killing it. He also worked out that the Cybermen were avoiding radiation and assisted in devising a plan to destroy them using fuel rods from the Snowcap Base’s reactor. Though Ben was impetuous and headstrong, he proved to be mentally weaker than his companions when they were faced with the hypnotic processing of the Macra, struggling to fight it and failing to report Jamie for taking an official’s keys in The Macra Terror (Classic Series). When the opportunity to leave the TARDIS for the Teazer came, Ben and Polly left together, though they insisted that they would stay if the Doctor required them. The Doctor didn’t and so both Ben and Polly left to carry on their lives outside the TARDIS. Sarah Jane Smith noted in the Sarah Jane Adventures story, Death of the Doctor, that both Ben and Polly were running an orphanage in India in 2010.