Deputy Bennings is the main antagonist of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "North Star".
He was played by James Parks, who also portrayed Bart in House of the Dead 2.
Biography
Bennings was descended from humans who had been taken to the Delphic Expanse as slaves by the Skagarans, only to turn the tables on them and become the dominant force on the planet. Bennings held firm to the law set up by the first human rulers that made Skagarans second class citizens. Despite being a sheriff's deputy, he mostly used his position to bully Skagarans. He led a lynch mob that killed Skags, a Skagaran who had killed a human in self-defence.
The next day, Bennings and his henchmen went to the bar where Bennings bullied the Skagaran assistant Draysik into drinking with them, saying Skags must have been drunk to kill someone. When Draysik replied that Skags didn't drink, Bennings mocked the idea of a Skagaran killing a human while sober and offered Draysik his gun to do the same. Jonathan Archer, visiting the planet incognito, defused the situation by asking Draysik for a coffee, angering Bennings. The confrontation between them was broken up by Sheriff Macready, who told Bennings to keep an eye on the newcomer.
Bennings and his men followed Archer as he left town with the local teacher, Bethany, and discovered that Bethany had been teaching Skagaran children in violation of local laws. He arrested her and took her back to the town jail. Archer knocked Bennings out and freed her. As the pair tried to leave town in a cart, Bennings shot Bethany and badly injured her. Archer promptly had Enterprise beam them both aboard so she could receive treatment.
Bennings tried to convince Macready that Archer's use of advanced technology meant he must be working for the Skagarans and that they had returned to enslave them again. He told Macready they should massacre all the Skagarans on the planet but Macready refused to act without proof and told Bennings that if he wanted to remain a deputy, he should enforce the law. Bennings responded by removing his badge.
Archer returned in a shuttlecraft with a number of crewmembers from Enterprise and explained to Macready that they were from Earth, convincing him he needed to relax the laws against Skagarans. Bennings refused to believe the story however, shooting Macready in the shoulder and instigating a firefight between his supporters and the Enterprise crew. While the Enterprise personnel overcame Bennings' men, Archer ended up in a fistfight with Bennings and knocked him unconscious.
