Probably the calmest reaction of them all. Gotta love Benton! From the 1972 episode "The Three Doctors," Part 1. I own no rights to anything in this video.
@@theyellowlightsaber3193 - The last time we saw Yates, he had joined an ashram to get his head on straight and found a-holes teaming up with mutant spiders to take over Earth. It would be good to see what he'd done with his life, and for those two to have a last hurrah with the Doctor.
@@markjones464 both are still with us, and are doing the third doctor companion chronicles, and Mike Yates has not long finished a 17 part story with 4th the Nest Cottage Chronicles!!, and the Destiny of the Doctor
@@julietfischer5056 my favourite example of that is when the Doctor was falsely accused of essentially terrorism with dinosaurs - Benton was posted to guard him and immediately said "escape but knock me out first so it looks real". With no hesitation
@@MichaelFreckelton - And that great moment when he's fighting a general who WAS one of Project Golden Age, and the general threatens him with a court-martial. Without stopping his attempt to disarm a superior officer, Benton says, "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." As if he wrestles officers daily.
I always liked the fact that Benton was nowhere near as thick as he seemed. In 'The Three Doctors', he's damn sure that they are nowhere near Cromer, possibly not even in the same universe; In 'The Time Monster', he grasps the idea of interstitial time very quickly. His explanation: "Like the gap between 'now' and 'now'." , is almost spot on. Although he does get regressed to a baby at one point, and pops up sans clothes, when all is sorted out. Yes, really.
I am so fond of the Pertwee-era UNIT family of the Brig, Benton & Company. One of my favorite Classic Doctor Who Shows is "Terror of the Zygons" which is FINALLY due for DVD release next year in 2012. It is also the saddest of my favorites, as it features the final appearance of the Pertwee-era UNIT team of the Brig, Benton & Company.
A shame that Captain Mike Yates had missed this adventure. He would've been surprised to see not only the The Doctor's TARDIS on the inside,but also all 3 incarnations of him joining forces,brought out of their own time zones by The Time Lords because of an emergency.
@@julietfischer5056 Benton was a corporal when he 1st met the Doctor,who was in his 2nd incarnation at the time and became sergeant after the Doctor entered his 2nd regeneration and got exiled to 20th-Century Earth by his people.
I met Levene at Whooverville at the beginning of September it was quite amazing. I also got to ask him and Richard Franklin (Yates) a question during their panel
@63DW89A There was something indefinably wonderful about the UNIT family, wasn't there? The Brigadier is an absolute legend; few people before or since could handle the Doctor so well. And Benton, although a seemingly minor character, had so much personality and warmth about him that you loved him straight away. That's the kind of thing you can't script. And it's about time they released Terror of the Zygons; such a classic!
Must be the longest running gag in television. Culminating of course in that time when 12 does it himself, having 'always wanted to see it done properly'.
haha, i actually met him again in 2012 at the same place :P although he did surprize me a lot as when i met him again he remembered me, and he was swearing a lot but it made me laugh, i dont know if he will again but the last time i met him it was at the fleet air arm museum in yeovilton around August time, if he shows up again then go there and u will meet him :)
@63DW89A :O They're releasing it at last??!!! *Dances* And yeah - I LOVE UNIT too :D A friend and I went to a cheesy kiddies Doctor Who thing a couple of weeks just because Benton was there and seriously, John Levene is the LOVELIEST of guys in real life too!
@xxdrosexx I really like "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" as it is a good UNIT story, & is one of the best-ever WHO stories, FAR underated (& unfairly too!) due to the poor dinosaur special effects. It is a supebly written. produced and acted story, aside from the Dino SFX. Agree that "Android Invasion" is an odd choice for a UNIT Boxset as it is missing Pertwee-era UNIT. I very much like AI (& Seeds of Doom), the main flaw with both stories being Pertwee-era UNIT missing.
@EmmaJaneMurdock it is, if u ever get a chance to meet him then take that chance hes a nice guy :D i would like to met him again, he has become one of my favourite characters from doctor who
@xxdrosexx Got to admit it is a brilliant piece of writing to have a key character like Capt. Yates betray UNIT though! BUT, wiriting out Mike Yates in IOTD is a sad sign of the gradual phase-out of UNIT that started in Season 11. Richard Franklin has commented on how pleased he was to get such exposure and character depth in "Planet of the Spiders" for Yates. I imagine that he felt the same about Yates in IOTD. Yates' betrayal is thoughtfully done; he's not evil, just confused & misguided.
His ideals got twisted around by the people of Project Golden Age. The scene in which we learn that he wasn't undercover was wonderfully done. Nobody over-emoted but you could see the characters' disappointment and shock at his betrayal.
The reason the storyline had the Doctor exiled to Earth was due to BBC budget restraints. The producers only had to make monster costumes and didn't need to make sets for other planets too often. But Pertwee saw the show peak in popularity and the budget did later increase, which led to Tom Baker getting out and about all over the place.
@xxdrosexx YES!! DVD releases along with "Terror of the Zygons" in 2012 will also be FINALLY, the Sarah Jane Era shows, "Death to the Daleks", and "Android Invasion". The LAST Sarah Jane Era show awaiting DVD release will be 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs" to be released in 2013, although a UK acquaintance has informed me that it could see a possible late 2012 release as part of a UNIT story package! I have all Sarah Jane era Classic WHO except those and am looking forward to the releases!
@xxdrosexx Yes. Actually should be called the UNIT Boxset. I just rechecked the DVD release info on Wikipedia (Search Wikipedia for "Doctor Who DVD releases" to find the lists). The DW DVD release list now says that the UNIT Boxset WILL be released in 2012 and will include both "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" and "Android Invasion". That is a recent change as the info wasn't there when I checked a few weeks back.
@63DW89A Oh don't get me wrong, I LOVED Invasion of the Dinosaurs and I don't even care that the first episode is in black and white [after all, the first 6 seasons are]... I just still haven't gotten over Mike's betrayal :(
My headcanon is that Yates may have suffered a bit of PTSD from all the UNIT action, besides seeing so many stupid, short-sighted, greedy, selfish assholes willingly selling out their fellow humans, and then BOSS messed with his head (followed by Three and that crystal from Metebelis III). He went on leave and came across Project Golden Age (probably a flyer announcing a speech or a gathering). At first, he intended only to check them out and to report them to UNIT if necessary. But he waited too long, rationalized not saying anything to anybody, and fell down the rabbit hole to True Believer in the cause. He is really fortunate that he was not thrown UNDER the prison.
@63DW89A Yeah I went and checked last night :P. That's a really bad choice of episodes to put on it I think... I mean come on, they're calling it a UNIT box-set but the Brig isn't even in one of the episodes! And Invasion of the Dinosaurs just breaks my heart. Why, Mike? WHY?
I always figured that Captain Yates was a casualty of the sort of things that UNIT dealt with. Perhaps not the aliens so much as the human perfidy. Consider some of the humans that UNIT encountered on screen, and that there were plenty of off-screen adventures as well. Every crime from graft all the way up to collaborating with invaders. What was he doing during that time we didn't see him? Was he undercover? Did he have to deal with douchebags? Did he pick up a bit of PTSD? And then the last straw was Global Chemicals and BOSS getting into his head. My headcanon is that he never realized just how much it affected him. He was all 'I can handle it' when the Doctor tried to talk to him and maybe the Brigadier gave it a try. But he wasn't handling it. He went on leave after the Global Chemicals mission, came back seemingly okay. Somewhere in the interval, he encountered the public face of Project Golden Age. Like a good UNIT member, he checked out a couple of meetings. And then a few more, and a few more. And he always had a good rationalization (at least to him) for why he didn't say one word to the three men he'd accompany through the gates of Hell to arrest the Devil. Until he was thisclose to being completely part of the program. (And we all know that Project Golden Age wouldn't have led to one. Oh, for the first few generations, the 'colonists' would have had very close to their perfect society. But human nature is messy, and as the population increased, factions would arise and people would vote with their feet. Their new world would have ended up as war-torn and polluted as the one they had 'left.')
