I wanted to take a moment and pay my respects to the late British-born actor Michael Craze, best known as Ben Jackson in Doctor Who, and who would have been 76 years old today, November 29th. His tenure on the long-running British Sci-Fi series began in the 1966 Doctor Who episode The War Machines, where at the end of the episode, The First Doctor (William Hartnell) gained two new companions onboard the TARDIS - a Swinging Sixties secretary named Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben, a young Royal Navy sailor. The two traveled with The First Doctor back in time to 17th century Cornwall (The Smugglers), and then to the South Pole in the year 1986, where they encountered The Cybermen in The Tenth Planet . It was at the end of this episode that The Doctor experienced his first regeneration, which paved the way for Patrick Troughton to take over as The Second Doctor. Ben and Polly continued their adventures in time and space with The Doctor, and in The Highlanders were joined by Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), an 18th century Scottish piper from the Clan McLaren. Three multi-part episodes later, the TARDIS returned to 1960's Earth in The Faceless Ones, where Ben and Polly chose to remain behind at the end of the story.
Having previously appeared in such other TV series as Armchair Theatre, Target Luna, Gideon C.I.D. and Dixon of Dock Green, Michael went on to work on various other shows after Doctor Who including Journey Into The Unknown, The Avengers, Ivanhoe, The Pathfinders, Crown Court and Z Cars before his death at the age of 56. In the early 90's I had the privilege of spending the afternoon with Michael and his-then young son Ben when I visited him at home in Shepperton, where he graciously did a very long interview with me about his work in Doctor Who and career in general. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
"Just prior to Doctor Who, I played a large role in No Hiding Place, which was a very famous series here in the UK that starred Raymond Francis. I was the lead villain in it, a really horrible little person, and just prior to that, I'd fallen and smashed my nose against a curb. In fact, you can still see the scars from that. My nose used to be aquiline and Grecian; I still have the photographs to prove it," jokes Craze. "In one of the hallways of my house, I have a framed front cover from The Radio Times from when I did No Hiding Place, and before the photographer took that picture, they had to use some sort of putty to fill up the holes in my nose, it was that bad.
"When I began working on Doctor Who, I talked slightly differently because one side of my nose was blocked as a result of that injury. After we shot the first eight episodes of Doctor Who, we had a summer break, and during that time I was booked into hospital to have that [nose] channel cleared of the broken bits of bone that were still lodged inside it. They cleared it and I was able to breathe again, but in doing so, they broke a blood vessel at the top of my head, which they had to plug. I ended up losing, I think, eight pints of blood, which, of course, they replaced, but I could hardly walk and it took some time for me to recuperate. I came out of hospital just in time to do this pre-film shoot at Ealing Studios [for The Tenth Planet] with all this polystyrene blowing around, which was meant to look like snow. The PA [production assistant] on that episode was my first wife, and she was very determined that this 'snow' would go in the right direction, but instead, it all went up my nose. That's the upshot of that," notes the actor with a laugh.
Michael Craze was a genuinely warm, easy-going individual with a wonderful sense of humor and he is still missed today by his many fans.
Steve Eramo
