The Crusade

Chapter The 158th, in which there is a good knight with Richard not Judy.

Plot:

The TARDIS lands in late 12th-century Palestine during the time of the third crusade. While the Doctor, Ian and Vicki assist a party including Richard the Lionheart repel an attack; Barbara is captured by Saracens. One of the King's knights, Sir William des Preaux, pretends he is Richard to misdirect the attackers. He and Barbara - who Sir William pretends is Joanna, the King's sister -  are taken by their captor El Akir to meet the Sultan Saladin and his brother,  Saphadin, where the ruse is quickly uncovered, and El Akir is shamed. The others inveigle their way into the Lionheart's retinue to get help to rescue Barbara. Richard is stubborn and a little petulant, but comes round to the idea of sending a message to Saladin. He wants to offer the real Joanna's hand in marriage to Sapahdin to avoid war, so knights Ian and sends him off to the Sultan. Ian arrives and delivers the message but is too late to collect Barbara, as El Akir has already arranged for her abduction and taken her back to his house in Lydda. Barbara escapes into the streets of Lydda, and befriends Haroun, whose eldest daughter has been taken by El Akir for his harem.

Hiding in Haroun's house while he is out, Barbara gives herself up to searching guards to protect Haroun's younger daughter. Meanwhile, Joanna has found out from the Earl of Leicester about the plan to marry her off and is not happy, railing against Richard. Richard publicly blames the Doctor for breaking a confidence and telling Joanna; really, he knows it was Leicester, but does not want to blame him and risk upsetting his knights, as he fears he will soon need them to go into battle. Barbara has managed to give El Akir's guards the slip again and is being kept hidden in his palace by Haroun's elder daughter. El Akir finds her, but is killed by Haroun, who has broken in. Ian arrives at this moment, after having been briefly waylaid on his way to Lydda by thieves. Returning to the TARDIS, Ian and Barbara find Leicester, who's followed the Doctor, about to execute the Time lord as a traitor and spy. Ian persuades Leicester to let him execute the Doctor, and the travellers all escape into the TARDIS, and make off.

Context:

As this was a black and white story, with half the episodes missing, I did not bother trying to entice the family to watch. I watched the story on my lonesome in two sittings from the DVD on the 2004 Lost in Time boxset, which collected together all the then known orphaned episodes of 1960s Doctor Who. Mostly, the odd surviving episodes on this set are presented without any context, but a couple of stories including The Crusade are presented in full, or as close to full as they could do at the time. For The Crusade, this means that episode 2 and 4, for which the visuals were not - and still are not - known to exist, are presented as soundtrack recordings only, without any explanatory narration, static images, or animations (which have become the standard options for presenting such episodes subsequently). This made it a little difficult to follow occasionally - the end of episode 2, for example - but, as the story is primarily dialogue rather than action driven, this wasn't often. The other additions to help follow the plot were some in character inserts of Ian Chesterton, as played by William Russell, explaining about the adventure as an older man. These scenes are slight and inessential, yes, but were also rather lovely to see again.

First time round:

I first saw the third episode, The Wheel of Fortune, on The Hartnell Years, a VHS presentation by 1980s Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner which came out in June 1991. This was the first of a series of compendium tapes to come out in the early 90s which covered odds and sods for most of the actors who'd played the Doctors up to that point, with framing sequences presented by an appropriate, or inappropriate, actor. This one saw Sylvester McCoy in costume introducing the clips and episodes, including the third part of The Crusade, the only one known to exist at the time. I believe on reaching The Crusade for the blog I have now covered all the stories whose odd episodes I first watched on this tape (which I obtained and viewed as soon as possible after it came out that Summer, after I'd finished with sixth form and A-levels and was on my hols before starting at university). I feel in blog posts past that I have been a little unfair on this set of releases. Yes, they were naff in places - Keff McCulloch's "Latin" version of the Doctor Who theme and the rudimentary opening credits, for example - but they were also exciting for the long-term fan, as a chance to sample rare bits and bobs that wouldn't have otherwise seen the light of day. The Wheel of Fortune was by far the best thing on the tape, and is to my mind the best individual episode of The Crusade too. Having my first experience of this story be this single episode presented in isolation misaligned my understanding and appreciation of the wider tale, I think, but more on that in a moment.

Another exciting thing that happened related to this story, at the other end of the 1990s, was that the first episode, The Lion, was discovered. This was the first Doctor Who episode to be found since The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1992, and a lot of fans, myself included, had pretty much given up hope that we'd see any more of the old, lost stuff by then. It s release on VHS was highly anticipated. It was rush released a few months after its discovery in July 1999, alongside part 3, the aforementioned links by William Russell, a CD of the soundtracks of parts 2 and 4, a keyring, and The Space Museum. I was living in a shared flat in Brighton at that point in 1999, and from memory I was having a day off work as I remember going out to buy the set from MVC on the day of release and watching it in the early afternoon when my flatmates were out. 

Reaction:

One of the great, great scenes of early Doctor Who appears in the third episode of The Crusade, and there are no regular characters in it. It's the fight between Richard (played by Julian Glover) and Joanna (played by Jean Marsh) about the King's plan to marry her off to the Sultan's brother. It's a barnstormer, great dialogue, delivered by great actors looking like they're having a ball playing great characters, marshalled by a great - maybe the great - director, Douglas Camfield. I almost can't watch it without cheering, it's so good. The line "You defy me with the pope?!" and Glover's reading of it is a particular highlight. It was the big set piece of the only surviving episode, so it rather dominated the presentation on The Hartnell Years tape, which was without much in the way of description of the rest of the story. As such, it gives a false impression that the The Crusade is all about Richard and his court, which it isn't really. Richard is a presence in the narrative, but for the most part he is arguably background one. The main thread of the story is the quest to be reunited with Barbara, intercut with Barbara's exploits surviving in a tight spot, pursued by the villain of the piece, El Akir. Richard and the impact of courtly intrigue is a complicating factor for the rescue plot, and adds a lot of historical colour, but the overall shape of the story would be more or less the same if he did not feature directly. The same is true of Saladin and his brother too.

With that misinterpretation fostered by the Years tape fixed in my head after watching and rewatching that single episode many times over the years, the remainder of the story, once I got to experience it, didn't seem to fit and was underwhelming. Joanna doesn't appear in the final episode, and the King rapidly gives up on his plan to marry her off. Instead of the episode building up to a big final confrontation between the Doctor and the King, Richard knows all about the truth of who spilled the beans to Joanna, and sends the Doctor on his way in friendly fashion before the halfway mark of the last part's running time; he doesn't appear thereafter. Leicester hangs around until the end, but just to be a barrier preventing our heroes from leaving. I'm blaming The Hartnell Years for warping my view of what the story is about, and it is guilty to a certain extent (Sylvester McCoy talks after the episode about how the Doctor avoids being executed as a witch as if it's a major plot point rather than a one-line aside); but, the structure of the story contributes a lot too. A lot of the action forms those set pieces and subplots that are diversions from the simple through-line and don't have any lasting significance to the story once they are done. All of the light comic business between the Doctor and the trader Ben Daheer, for example. It can also be seen with characters. Des Preaux is a big presence in the first two episodes, but then disappears. Does he get released by Saladin to go back to Richard? It's not clear (maybe it would be with the visuals). De Tornebu similarly has a big presence early on but then disappears a few minutes into part two.

So, what we have here is the usual basic plot template of the time: our heroes arrive in a new place, get separated from each other or the TARDIS or both, and - in different subgroups  - explore the new locale, getting into scrapes, set pieces, character moments, and vignettes that are often somewhat disconnected from the main proceedings. This was the exact same format as the previous two broadcast stories, The Romans and The Web Planet. In The Crusade, Barbara being reunited with the rest of the TARDIS crew is padded out - and greatly improved, lest we forget - by lots of plot detours, a sort of exploration of history by accident. This was a time of transition for Doctor Who, the old model of the Doctor and friends being forced by circumstances to go on adventures rather than - as would more and more become the norm - choosing to do so. Writer David Whittaker clearly loves writing the Shakespearean stuff. It's a shame that this story didn't come later at a point when the TARDIS team didn't need an excuse to explore a historical period and stand up to bad guys, and the whole story could have been a bit less episodic and achieved the full-bloodied quality throughout that it did in some individual scenes.

All the regular and guest actors get lots of stuff to do, and all perform well. One aspect of the casting is problematical, though: white actors play characters of different ethnicities using make-up. For some reason, this is not commented on as much as the similar situation in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It was broadcast ten years earlier than the Tom Baker story, but nonetheless it still feels at best awkward when watching it today. Obviously, the lack of visuals for half the story might disguise it for some, or might put people off watching altogether so they're unaware. The Crusade scores over Talons in one way, though, as the non-white characters are a much diverse and nuanced bunch, rather than the monolithic culture of villainy into which Talons' Chinese characters are all lumped.

Connectivity: 

Like The Doctor's Daughter, The Crusade sees the Doctor and friends landing during a conflict between two sides; he is based with the military leaders of one side, with whom he has an argumentative relationship, while one of his companions is separated from the rest of the TARDIS team and ends up captured by the other side.

Deeper Thoughts:

Lost and Found and Not Around. There's a rumour going round that the next Blu-ray box set to be announced will be the first black-and-white offering, and will be season 2, William Hartnell's second year. It would be the most logical choice, being the one of those first six monochrome seasons with the fewest missing episodes; it only lacks the two missing parts of The Crusade and is otherwise complete. Fans are hoping for animations of those missing episodes to be included, but as pointed out astutely in this blog post by Cyberdevil that might not be so easy. I would imagine that we'll get reconstructions using still images matched to the soundtracks instead. Given that getting any classic Who on Blu-ray, let alone 1960s Who with episodes animated, seemed an impossible dream only a few years ago, it shows how spoilt we've been by these releases! This has true for Doctor Who fans since the home video range began. Fans of any other shows in the 1990s weren't regularly getting compendiums of rarities, or rush releases of newly found archive material. Very few in 2020 have episodes of 50+ years of a favourite show available to stream, and even fewer are getting anything as good a range as the beautiful and comprehensive Blu-ray season sets on offer now (but then, they are limited editions that tend to sell out quickly).

This may be why I can sometimes be disproportionately taken aback when I find that something else non-Who is not instantly available to me. During lockdown, I have been seeking out some old things to watch that have fallen into this category. One of the extras on the recent Tom Baker  Blu-ray box set talking about 1970s Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe's later career made me eager to watch Private Schulz again. This was a 1981 comedy drama produced by Hinchcliffe, and was one of the first non-children's shows I absolutely fell in love with as a young TV addict. It's not on any streaming service that I could see, and the DVD has long ago been deleted. Around the same time, I thought it would be fun to watch all of Christopher Nolan's films in order, to lead up to the release of his latest, Tenet, in July. This plan was scuppered from the off, as his first film Following is similarly missing from streaming services and has had its DVD release deleted. These were pretty popular and reasonably mainstream pieces, so why were they so difficult to find in 2020, when one can stream - to pick a random example - The Sensorites effortlessly? What is the magical ingredient that means that some things never drop out of circulation? After much searching, in the end I found them both online for free, probably in violation of copyright laws. It wasn't obviously as exciting as someone finding episode 1 of The Crusade back in the day, but in my small way I liked finding something that had previously been missing.

Another recent example of a missing story return outside of the world of Doctor Who was delivered through my letterbox in the last few days: It Couldn't Happen Here. This is the 1988 film starring Pet Shop Boys, which grew out of an idea to do a long-form video stitching together visual interpretations of all the songs on their 1987 album Actually. These sort of videos were all the rage back in the late 80s. But It Couldn't Happen Here grew beyond that, became bigger, and more gloriously strange, and ended up getting a theatrical release. I was a big PSB fan then as I am now, and - because news travelled more slowly in those pre-web days - I scoured the local newspapers for weeks and weeks after the London premiere to see when it was showing near me. Little did I know that it had spectacularly bombed, been critically mauled, and would never again be exhibited at any Odeon, whether close or far away. It has never been shown on TV, and never been in any subsequent film festival or event. It got a VHS release in 1992, which I snapped up, but I haven't had a VCR for so long. Anyway, the wonderful BFI have released a 4K restoration on Blu-ray. If you haven't seen it before, whether a fan or not, or if you have and think it's a grand folly or crazy work of genius (I'm somewhere in between), I'd recommend giving it a watch. The Blu-ray has sold out already (the curse of the limited edition again), but it's on the BFI player.

In Summary:

Several great comic and dramatic set pieces as detours from a slight and simple main plot. But better than that sounds.