Sergeant Benton

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Sergeant John Benton is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by John Levene. He was the senior NCO of the British contingent of UNIT, a fictional international organisation that defends Earth from alien threats, and is eventually promoted to the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1, holding the post of regimental sergeant major. He appeared semi-regularly on the programme from 1968 to 1975.

Character history

Benton first appeared in the Second Doctor serial The Invasion (1968), when he is a corporal in UNIT. By the time of his next appearance in The Ambassadors of Death (1970) he has been promoted to sergeant and quickly forms a close relationship with the Doctor, Captain Mike Yates, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Benton's tour in UNIT also coincides with the tenure of the Third and Fourth Doctors as UNIT's Scientific Advisor, and his promotion to WO1 occurs immediately prior to Robot (1974–75).

During his time with UNIT, Benton faces the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Nestene forces, and the Master. Benton is characterised as reliable, loyal, uncomplicated, and possessing good common sense. Aside from the regular companions and the Brigadier, Benton is the only recurring character in the classic series to travel in the TARDIS.

Benton is loyal to the people he works with and is willing to disobey orders to help them (in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, he encourages the Doctor to knock him out and escape after the Doctor is falsely accused). He offers himself as a test subject for the Doctor's psychic-scanner, remarking that he is expendable (Planet of the Spiders).

Very little is known of Benton outside of his UNIT duties, other than that he has a younger sister and is fond of ballroom dancing. His first name is never revealed in the television series. He flirts briefly with Jo Grant, the Third Doctor's assistant, as well as Sarah Jane Smith, but this does not get beyond good-natured banter.

Benton's last on-screen appearance in the series is in The Android Invasion. In Mawdryn Undead, set in 1983, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart says he left the British Army in 1979 and became a used car salesman. In Battlefield set in the 1990s, Lethbridge-Stewart hypothesises on still having Benton to assist wth a gardening project.

Benton is one of the most popular recurring supporting characters in the television series, is often listed as a companion of the Doctor,^[1] including on the official BBC Doctor Who website.^[2] Some sources, however, like John Nathan-Turner's book Doctor Who: The Companions, exclude Benton.

Benton is one of the few adult characters to have been portrayed by a child actor in pre-2005 Doctor Who: Darren Plant in The Time Monster and Steven Stanley in the direct-to-video Wartime.

Other appearances

The prologue of the Virgin Publishing novelisation of The Power of the Daleks by John Peel reveals that Benton returned to UNIT and became a commissioned officer with the rank of lieutenant (OF-1). In 1986, he leads a UNIT team to Antarctica to clear up the mess left by the Cybermen's failed attempt to drain Earth of its energy (The Tenth Planet).

John Levene reprised the role of Benton in the spin-off video Wartime, produced by Reeltime Pictures in 1987. This establishes a first name for Benton. Levene and Terrance Dicks determined this during the early 1970s, though it was not used in any official production before Wartime.^[3] The name John Benton has subsequently been used in spin-off novels and other fiction.

In 2013, Levene reprised the role again for the Big Finish Companion Chronicle Council of War and in 2017 for "UNIT: Assembled".

Benton appears alongside the Sixth Doctor in the unlicensed fan fiction novel Time's Champion by Chris McKeon, based on notes by Craig Hinton.

List of appearances

Television

Season 6

• The Invasion (Episodes 1 – 2, 3 (voice only) & 5 – 8)

Season 7

• The Ambassadors of Death (Episodes 5 & 7)
• Inferno

Season 8

• Terror of the Autons (Episodes 1, 2 & 4)
• The Mind of Evil (Episodes 2 – 6)
• The Claws of Axos
• The Dæmons

Season 9

• Day of the Daleks (Episodes 1 – 2 & 4)
• The Time Monster (Episodes 1 – 4 & 6)

Season 10

• The Three Doctors
• The Green Death (Episodes 4 – 6)

Season 11

• Invasion of the Dinosaurs
• Planet of the Spiders (Episodes 1 & 2)

Season 12

• Robot

Season 13

• Terror of the Zygons
• The Android Invasion (Episodes 2 – 4)

Video

• Wartime

Audio drama

• The Blue Tooth (adventure related by the character Liz Shaw)
• The Doll of Death (adventure related by the character Jo Grant)
• The Magician's Oath (adventure related by the character Captain Mike Yates)
• Find and Replace (adventure related by the character Jo Grant)
• The Rings of Ikiria (adventure related by the character Captain Mike Yates)
• Council of War (starring John Levene and Sinead Keenan)
• The Scream of Ghosts (full cast audio with John Levene as Benton)

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures

• Dancing the Code by Paul Leonard
• The Eye of the Giant by Christopher Bulis
• The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell

Past Doctor Adventures

• The Devil Goblins from Neptune by Martin Day and Keith Topping
• The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee
• Deep Blue by Mark Morris
• Verdigris by Paul Magrs
• Rags by Mick Lewis
• Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts

Eighth Doctor Adventures

• The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks
• Genocide by Paul Leonard

Independent Novels

• Time's Champion by Craig Hinton and Chris McKeon

Short stories

• "Brief Encounter—Listening Watch" by Dan Abnett (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)
• "Prisoners of the Sun" by Tim Robins (Decalog; parallel universe version of Benton)
• "The Switching" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "An Overture Too Early" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: The Muses)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: Christmas Truce" by Terrance Dicks (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)

Comics

• "The Man in the Ion Mask" by Dan Abnett and Brian Williamson (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)
• "Target Practice" by Gareth Roberts and Adrian Salmon (Doctor Who Magazine #234, 17 January 1996)

See also

• UNIT
• List of Doctor Who supporting characters

References

External links

• Sergeant Benton on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• Sergeant Benton on the BBC's Doctor Who website