John Benton John Benton was a member of UNIT , serving before , during , and after the Third Doctor ' s exile on Earth . He was promoted from Corporal to the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 , holding the post of Regimental Sergeant Major . One source says that he later achieved the rank of Lieutenant . Biography . Early life . John Benton ' s grandfather met the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler in the trenches of World War I in 1914 . ( COMIC : " The Forgotten " ) His father also served in the military . As a boy , John wanted to be just like him . His brother , Chris Benton , did not want to be a soldier . In 1944 , while his father was on embarkation leave , the Benton family had a picnic in the woods outside Bolton . While the boys were playing , Chris fell from the high wall of a ruined tower to his death . John tried to save him , but failed and blamed himself ever after . Some time later , his father was killed in the Normandy landings by a grenade . ( HOMEVID : " Wartime " ) John had another brother who worked on the railways in the 1970s ( AUDIO : " Time Tunnel " ) and a younger sister . ( TV : " The Android Invasion " ) He also had an aunt , who was supposedly a medium and died in the late 1960s . ( PROSE : " The Eye of the Giant " ) Military career . Benton was a corporal when he met the Doctor for the first time , though he was doing surveillance work rather than serving in uniform . He helped the Second Doctor defeat the Cybermen and Tobias Vaughn . ( TV : " The Invasion " ) Discovering RAF Lieutenant Mike Yates in a derelict Portsoy house , Benton opened fire on the Armidian s holding him hostage there as Yates broke free . The Armidian group vanished . With the Armidians still in the local area , the Brigadier ordered the Tharon stone the Armidians used to draw power from igneous rock to be destroyed . Benton led one of three groups to find the stone circles the Armidians had teleported to . Benton ' s group killed one of the Armidians that was trying to use the stone circles to wipe out humanity . According to this account , Yates was then promoted to captain when being recruited to UNIT by the Brigadier . ( AUDIO : " Vengeance of the Stones " ) Following Sergeant Robin Marshall ' s death , ( AUDIO : " Shadow of the Past " ) Benton was promoted to Sergeant . ( TV : " The Ambassadors of Death " ) Benton was part of a team who investigated the Glasshouse . He had discovered that someone had kidnapped Barbara Redworth , a police officer who had seen Silurian s , while murdering everyone else on the floor . He led UNIT troops in successfully fighting off a Silurian invasion fleet on the Kent coast . He detonated a bag full of flares at an invading Myrka , killing it . He turned down a promotion to Captain because he preferred being a soldier to an officer . The promotion instead went to Mike Yates , who in this account had already been working for UNIT as a sergeant . ( PROSE : " The Scales of Injustice " ) While Benton tried keeping surveillance on Captain Chin Lee , Chin Lee used the Keller Machine to psychically incapacitate Benton , allowing Chin Lee to escape . He later helped Yates escort the Thunderbolt missile to be dumped at the bottom of the ocean . Benton was wounded when the convoy was attacked by escaped prisoners from Stangmoor Prison who stole the Thunderbolt . After recovering , he helped take Stangmoor Prison back from and the prison ' s prisoners . Benton then became the prison ' s acting governor . ( TV : " The Mind of Evil " ) When the Doctor was recovering from being frozen at the Devil ' s Hump , the Doctor ' s assistant Jo Grant asked Benton and Yates to come to Devil ' s End . They came in the Brigadier ' s helicopter at soon as it was light outside . While recceing for tracks , Benton discovered Olive Hawthorne had been tied up and put in a chest in the village church . He freed Miss Hawthorne , and they hid in the cavern beneath the church . Benton was rendered unconscious by a forcefield in the cavern , and Miss Hawthorne carried him to The Cloven Hoof pub when the Dæmon Azal killed Garvin . Miss Hawthorne saved Benton from an attacking Morris dancer by hitting him over the head with her reticule . She and Benton helped stop the villagers from burning the Doctor when they tricked them into believing he was a mighty wizard . When the Doctor entered the church to save Jo , Benton and Yates were joined by UNIT reinforcements to get past Bok to save the Doctor and Jo , but to no effect . Benton fired a bazooka at Bok , but Bok ' s body immediately reformed . When Azal ' s powers turned against himself , rendering Bok immobile , the Master ran out of the church . UNIT arrested the Master , and Benton was ordered to take the Master with him . ( TV : " The Dæmons " ) Benton was a down - to - earth British infantryman and non - commissioned officer — reliable , uncomplicated and with a good dose of common sense . When the Third Doctor asked him if he was going to comment that his TARDIS was bigger on the inside than on the outside as everyone did , Benton ' s classic reply was , " Well , It ' s pretty obvious , isn ' t it ? " It was also on this occasion that Benton travelled for the first and only time in the TARDIS — namely , the short hop from UNIT H . Q . to Omega ' s palace . ( TV : " The Three Doctors " ) Despite not understanding what the Doctor was doing or any of his explanations , Benton always took the Doctor at his word and trusted him implicitly . He was loyal , not just to the rank , but also to the people he worked with , and was willing to disobey orders in order to help them . During one incident , he allowed himself to be rendered unconscious when the Doctor was framed so as allow him to escape , and later subdued Mike Yates and General Finch . ( TV : " Invasion of the Dinosaurs " ) Benton had some memorable experiences in UNIT . He fought Dalek s and Ogron s from an alternate timeline . ( TV : " Day of the Daleks " ) the Master ' s TOMTIT machine regressed him to a baby . When restored to adult form , he appeared before his UNIT colleagues stark naked . ( TV : " The Time Monster " ) Benton also worked with the current Doctor and his previous incarnation whom the Time Lord s had called in to help against Omega . Benton was delighted with the reunion . It was during these events that Benton travelled for the first and only trip in the TARDIS — namely , the short journey from UNIT HQ to Omega ' s palace . ( TV : " The Three Doctors " ) While undercover in Kettering , Benton met Margery Phipps around Christmas time the year Jo left UNIT and they began dating . They were still dating in spring when dinosaurs appeared in London . He was sent to Kettering in the place of Mike Yates when he was recovering ( AUDIO : " Council of War " ) Shortly after the return of the Doctor to Earth and his regeneration into his fourth incarnation , Benton was promoted to Warrant Officer — a rank which entitled him to be addressed as " Mister " . ( TV : " Robot " ) As a Regimental Sergeant Major , Benton helped against the Zygon s . ( TV : " Terror of the Zygons " ) He was stationed at the Space Defence Station at Devesham during the Kraal s ' attempted invasion of Earth , where he was replaced by one of Styggron ' s android duplicates . ( TV : " The Android Invasion " ) Benton met the Ninth Doctor when he was put on a team with Harry Sullivan and sent to the West Country to investigate a missing member of UNIT and a subsequent series of " monster " sightings . Though this was after his promotion , the Doctor and the Brigadier still referred to Benton as " Sergeant " , and his uniform also bore the rank of a sergeant . ( COMIC : " Official Secrets " ) While transporting radioactive cargo by UNIT Land Rover through the woods outside Bolton with his driver , Private Willis of the Regular Army , Benton was haunted by the ghost s of his brother and father . He overcame his feelings of guilt ( which were apparently the source of these hauntings ) and returned to his post in time to prevent the cargo from being hijacked by a dangerous criminal . ( HOMEVID : " Wartime " ) Later career . By 1979 , Benton had left UNIT and had became a used car salesman . ( TV : " Mawdryn Undead " ) Benton attented the UNIT reunion of 1983 , by which point he had returned to active service . ( PROSE : " Business Unusual " ) One account stated that by 1986 , Benton had returned to UNIT and become a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant , subsequently leading a UNIT team to the Snowcap tracking base in Antarctica to clear up the chaos left by the Cybermen ' s attempt to drain Earth of its energy in December of that year . ( PROSE : " The Power of the Daleks " ) By 1999 , he was a Regimental Sergeant Major , working in a UNIT office . He was married and had three children . ( PROSE : " Genocide " ) He later had a grandson . ( PROSE : " " ) In 2009 John Benton was invited to Sarah Jane Smith ' s aborted wedding with Peter Dalton , but couldn ' t make it because he was doing something secret in Malaysia . ( PROSE : " The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith " ) On 24 April 2010 he attended the wedding of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane in Cheldon Bonniface . By this time , he was in his seventies , well - tanned and stocky . ( PROSE : " Happy Endings " ) Benton attended a Christmas dinner hosted by the Eighth Doctor at the Brigadier ' s house . Together they shared a toast to faithful friends . ( PROSE : " " ) Later in his life , Benton owned a pub in Scafell called the " White Hart " . He decided to pack up with his wife Margery Phipps and go on a cruise . When Kate Stewart and Petronella Osgood arrived at the pub he helped him . When Jastrok arrived at his pub Benton became injured . He tried to then slow the Silurian . Benton spent his time restoring Bessie . Despite leaving military service as a RSM , he was referred to as ' sergeant ' by all , including other members of UNIT . ( AUDIO : " Call to Arms " ) Kate passed local control of UNIT in the UK to Mike , Benton and Jo due to their experience with Silurians and Sea Devil s before , whilst she couldn ' t get back to base . After Jo went off in a huff he went to check on her . He helped Osgood in her work . He took the Air Creatures the Silurians were using back to the Hebrides before he went back to his wife for their cruise . ( AUDIO : " United " ) The Eighth Doctor later visited Benton to collect his third self ' s notes on Isaac ' s music . The Doctor then informed Benton that he would die soon . ( PROSE : " DS Al Fine " ) Undated events . At some point , Benton accompanied Sarah Jane and Harry on a visit to UNIT ' s Black Archive . He also met Leela there on another occasion . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Other information . Jo considered Benton to be " quite a sweetie . " During the 1970s , Benton owned an Allegro . ( AUDIO : " The Doll of Death " ) Jo claimed that she once rendered Benton unconscious using karate . ( AUDIO : " Ghost in the Machine " ) In the 1970s , Margery Phipps believed that Benton resembled James Bond , " not the new one , the one before him but without the Australia n accent . " ( AUDIO : " Council of War " ) He was not a fan of Woody Allen ' s films , preferring the " Carry On " line when it came to comedy . He was familiar with " Star Trek " to the point of recalling the " episode where Spock had a beard " when the Third Doctor mentioned visiting a parallel universe . ( PROSE : " The Face of the Enemy " )