Bennett (The Rescue)
Bennett was a 25th century murderer who passed himself as the Didoan "Koquillion" to escape justice.
While a passenger on the spaceship UK-201 en route to Astra, Bennett murdered a fellow passenger and was caught. When the ship crashed on Dido, Bennett killed the rest of the passengers, including Vicki Pallister's father and the natives in an explosion to cover up his earlier murder.
Vicki, who hadn't attended the meeting between the humans and the natives because she was ill, was unaware that Bennett had killed anybody. He planned to use her innocence to protect himself from the authorities. He told her that the natives had wiped out the others, and pretended that he had been paralysed in the attack.
He also claimed that he was protecting them from a native named Koquillion, who was really Bennett in a ceremonial mask used by the natives. To keep Vicki unaware of this farce, Bennett hooked up a tape recorder in his cabin to play phrases such as "You can't come in!" and "Go away!" when the door was opened.
Bennett's crimes were exposed by the First Doctor, who unmasked him and whom he then attempted to kill. Before he could do so, he was confronted by two surviving Dido people. While backing away from them, he opened a secret door and accidentally fell off the rock ledge to his death. (TV: The Rescue)
Years later, the Third Doctor hallucinated about Koquillion when the Keller Machine turned his worst fears against him. (TV: The Mind of Evil)
Behind the scenes
- Bernard Archard was considered for the role of Bennett before Ray Barrett was cast. (DOC: Mounting The Rescue)
- To avoid revealing the actual identity of Koquillion, the closing credits for the first episode of The Rescue, "The Powerful Enemy" credited Ray Barrett under the pseudonym 'Sydney Wilson', which was a combination of the first name and surname of Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson respectively.
