Ben Jackson

Benjamin "Ben" Jackson (born December 1942) 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.

Ben was born in December 1942 to James Jackson. (PROSE: Invasion of the Cat-People; AUDIO: The Forsaken) They lived in London, where Ben grew up opposite a brewery. He once had a headmaster who "got nicked" for not paying his bus fare. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)

As a child, Ben 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)

In 1956, at the age of fourteen, Ben sneaked onto his father's ship. 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)

His father died of a heart attack prior to July 1966. (AUDIO: The Yes Men)

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)

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)