Born: 29th November 1942 (as Michael Francis Craze)
Died: 8th December 1998
Episodes Broadcast: 1966-1967

Michael Craze was born in Newquay, Cornwall, although his family moved around Great Britain during his childhood. At age twelve, a superb singing voice led to Craze being cast in musicals like The King And I at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Immediately after finishing secondary school, he became involved with repertory theatre. In 1958, Craze began earning small parts on television, initially on an installment of Armchair Theatre. The same year he appeared, uncredited, in the film Blow Your Own Trumpet. A more substantial television role came in 1960, when Craze was the juvenile lead in the science-fiction serial Target Luna. Other early television included episodes of Dixon Of Dock Green (playing four different roles in five years) and No Hiding Place. In 1965, he produced and appeared in a short film entitled Fragment.

In 1966, Craze was cast as Ben Jackson in Doctor Who. His brother, Peter, had already had a role in The Space Museum a year earlier (and would go on to make two subsequent Doctor Who appearances). Alongside Anneke Wills as Polly, the introduction of Ben was part of a strategy by producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis to update the programme's cast of characters, appealing to more modern trends. Ben and Polly debuted in The War Machines. They were present for the show's first regeneration scene, in The Tenth Planet. On the same production, Craze met production assistant Edwina Verner; they would marry in 1969. Having struggled to build a rapport with star William Hartnell, Craze enjoyed a warm working relationship with his successor, Patrick Troughton. Nonetheless, after a year, Lloyd and Davis concluded that Ben and Polly were not working well, and decided to write out both characters in The Faceless Ones.

Craze insisted that his son, Benjamin, wasn't named for his Doctor Who character

Craze spent the remainder of the Sixties contending with typecasting, but gradually earned more varied roles as the Seventies dawned, on shows like Z Cars, Ivanhoe, The Doctors and Intimate Strangers. He also appeared in a number of low-budget horror films, such as Satan's Slave. With acting work coming only intermittently, Craze became a pub manager in the mid-Seventies, and would thereafter remain involved in the food service industry. In 1983, he and his second wife, Helen, had a son whom they called Benjamin -- although Craze insisted that the name wasn't a reference to his Doctor Who character.

Craze acted only rarely during the Eighties and Nineties, including an episode of The Diary Of Anne Frank. In 1984, director Graeme Harper hoped to bring Craze back to Doctor Who to play Krelper in The Caves Of Androzani, only to be vetoed by producer John Nathan-Turner. In 1992, news broke that the missing final episode of The Tenth Planet had been returned, and Craze was asked to record links for an anticipated video release. Sadly, the recovery turned out to be a hoax, and the project was cancelled. Craze's last credit came in 1994, on the telefilm The Healer. On December 7th, 1998, Craze fell down a flight of stairs; his injuries induced a heart attack, and he died the next day.