14: The Crusade

Before Watching

Well, after the relative madness of “The Web Planet” it’s something of a relief to be back on the relatively safe ground of a Historical. This was written by David Whitaker, the show’s first story/script editor, who had moved on and been replaced by Dennis Spooner. This one promises to be more of a return to the style of Historical that John Lucarotti gave us with “Marco Polo” , with real life Historical figures being foregrounded.

This was actually the third Doctor Who story to be novelised after Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks – and – Doctor Who and the Zarbi (The Web Planet). It was originally published in 1963 – David Whitaker wrote the novelisation of his own script, and I read it beck in the early 70s, not long before Target began their successful series. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the Doctor Who and the Zarbi, but I’ll be honest, I can’t remember much about it, apart from the Doctor’s explanation of why Richard decided to turn back before he got as far as Jerusalem.

After Watching

Once again, as historical scores more highly than I might have expected. Right, cards on table. I can only realistically judge a stry by how I feel about it now. It’s probably futile for me to attempt to judge just how the ten year old me, for the sake of argument, would have reacted to watching it, but somehow I don’t think that I would have rated it as highly then, as I rate it now.

I’ll try to explain. For one thing, as well as the regulars, this has three terrific actors in the three main roles – Jean Marsh (due to be short lived companion Sara Kingdom in the next series) as King Richard’s sister Joanna, Bernard Kay (who we saw a few weeks ago as Carl Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth) as Saladin, and Julian Glover as Richard the Lionheart (later to be Scaroth in the wonderful City of Death). Any one of those has the ability, like Philip Madoc, to lift any production. Put all three of them into it, and you’ve got every good chance of something special. One of the main plot points is Richard’s desire to find an honourable way out of the situation he is in, which leads him to consider giving his sister Joanna in marriage to Saladin’s brother, Saphadin. This makes for some great scenes between Marsh and Glover. Which actually highlights one of the strengths, as well as one of the weaknesses of this story. One of the strengths, as I have said on more than one occasion, is that the BBC were so good at doing historical drama serials. On the other hand it’s a bit of a weakness in this particular story as I find myself far more interested in Richard, Joanna and Saladin than I am in anything involving the regulars. In fact, they are rather incongruous in this story, an element that doesn’t quite gel with everything that is going on around them,.

As for the script, well, this is a very literate piece of work from David Whitaker, and the actors obviously relish this. To a younger audience I wonder whether some of it might not have come across as a little heavy, but to me it worked just fine. What interested me was that the story takes a very modern tack, which I think might well have been quite surprising for 1965. To me, it was Saladin who came across as the civilised, reasonable, pragmatic leader, while Richard came across as petulant, mercurial, and hot headed – which in truth is probably pretty close to the real, historical Richard.

Which is not to say that the script abjures all clichés. The ever popular ‘the crew gets split up and Barbara gets captured’ is, frankly, wearing a bit thin, now, and that’s one thing I won’t be sorry to see the back of when Ian and Barbara leave at the end of “The Chase”. I expect Barbara would have been quite happy about it as well. Once again she ‘s found herself as the object of desire of some ne’er do well who has no intention of being a gentleman about it. The poor girl should seriously consider hanging her perfume. Another cliché – although not specifically a Doctor Who cliché, and one that I rather enjoyed, was the way that Ian was staked out and smeared with honey after caught by bandits.

Of course, this suffers in the same way that any Historical featuring real and well known Historical figures is going to suffer. In “Marco Polo” we know that Tegana can not kill Kublai Khan – because he didn’t, and that Kublai Khan will eventually sallow Marco to go home – because he did. In the same way we know that Joanna will not be forced to marry Saphadin, because she wasn’t, and Richard will conclude his treaty with Saladin and return home – because he did. And that’s the problem. There just isn’t enough uncertainty, and in a story involving King Richard the Lionheart, the Doctor and the companions are only ever going to be the bit part players, and never the heroes.

Overall, then, it was a perfectly good Historical although it did just sort of , well, end, and even for all that I certainly enjoyed it more than the Dennis Spooner Historicals, if not as much as the John Lucarotti ones.

What Have We Learned?

 Saladin was rather a decent chap, while Richard was a bit of a rotter. I’d always sort of suspected that.