Council of War

Sergeant Benton has gone undercover as a councilor in the small town of Kettering. This is not his normal beat but he’s doing it for the Doctor, who has become concerned about a spate of ghost sightings, and while neither believe in ghosts it still requires investigation While undercover Benton meets a woman named Margery Phipps who discovers that she will play an essential role in the future of another world, but to realize this they will have to survive alien abduction and the dawning of a war.

To finally add Sergeant Benton to the Big Finish audios is really the final piece of the whole UNIT experience, unless they go one further and get Fernana Marlowe to come back and do a turn as Carol Bell. Benton was not seen on screen after his appearance in 1976’s The Android Invasion aside from a fan-produced one-off called War Time. But here he is at last with his own story to tell.

Benton always seemed to be overshadowed by everyone else around him; he did not get and major plot threads of his own and he was routinely shouted at by the Brigadier and almost pitied by Jo and the Doctor. Here in Council of War he is in the right place at the right time: Mike Yates has taken some leave to recover after his experiences in The Green Death and Jo Grant has left, leaving UNIT without two of its major players. Although it may seem like Benton only got sent in because there was nobody else to go, he proves to be competent at his work, getting into the thick of it quickly and identifying the key people who are involved and working to the solution. Until the alien abduction part, which is more the Doctor’s thing than his. To just see him on television he comes across as bit of a bumbler and a more loveable kind of chap, but he is actually a good officer and a good soldier.

Margery is a good foil for Benton; she's a woman of her times with all the modern ideas about vegetarianism but a slightly tiresome line as a 70s feminist. getting outraged at men left and right. She has a soft spot for Benton though as she shares the adventure with him, letting some of her guard down and enjoying his attentions and his charms. She's different from Jo Grant by miles, and a bit of a foreshadow of future series companion Sarah Jane Smith.

Some of the more menacing angles of the story start to fall away in the second half, putting the episode in danger of being written off as farce eventually, but on the whole it’s a good vehicle for Benton to come to the forefront at last, and give us a chance to get to know him all over again.

NEXT EPISODE: GHOST IN THE MACHINE