The Crusade

The TARDIS drops the time travellers into it again, landing smack in the middle of a battle between King Richard's men and the Saracens in Palestine in the 12th century. Barbara is grabbed and taken prisoner, while the Doctor, Ian and Vicki rescue a member of the King's party from death and earn his majesty's good favour. Barbara runs afoul of El Akir in the Saracen camp and Ian is knighted by the king, and the Doctor is drawn into the politics of the royal court as the king devises a plan to end the war. Oh and Vicki pretends to be a boy for a bit to keep her safe.

The Crusade is another of the purely historical adventures that the original series was known for; no aliens, no rogues trying to twist history to their own ends, just the Doctor and company getting caught up in the tide of events and hoping to come out the other side alive. Unlike some of the other
historicals, though, there is not some cataclysmic event they have to escape like Rome being burned. Barbara is in the most danger of all, first being captured and mistaken for the king's sister, Joanna (king and princess played by the brilliant Julian Glover and Jean Marsh respectively), and then taking on a role as an entertainer to the Sultan to survive, and then going on the run from El-Akir's vengeful ways. Vicki's deception at being a boy is played for laughs for the most part, at the expense of the bumbling chamberlain. When not duping hapless (yet crooked) shop keepers, the Doctor proves to be very good at getting immersed in the politics of the royal court, sparring with the king's advisors openly in debates, and Ian, well he gets to be a knight, how's that for cool? And while she's pretending to be a boy Vicki... well Vicki doesn't get to do much although she does have her own moment of abandonment anxiety, fearing that the Doctor and company are going to leave her behind.

The sad fact of the matter is that The Crusade is half-missing; only episodes 1 and 3 are held in the BBC archives but episodes 2 and 4 exist as audio recordings so the whole tale is available, it just requires switching between media to enjoy it. The two existing episodes were released on a DVD with a collection of others, but unlike other half-finished stories there was no effort made to restore the missing material with animation or reconstructed stills for a dedicated release. The first commercial release of the episodes was on VHS when they were paired with the next story, The Space Museum along with some linking narration and a clever intro by William Russell in character as Ian, looking back at the adventure after getting back home to Earth with Barbara. That release came with a single CD of the two missing episodes, and later the full audio soundtrack was released with the usual linking narration added in.

The first time I came into contact with the story, though, was the Target novelization which was done up as a standalone more than part of a series so it had a lenghy preamble to it including a reference to an adventure with the talking stones of the planet Tyron. The stones reference made it to the script for the introductory bit of the VHS release, along with a reference to the Salem witch trials (The Witch Hunters was published the same year, so does this mention make it canon?). The novel also had illustrations, which was a rare thing for the book series, but it was also a grittier version complete with Barbara being flogged for disobeying El-Akir. And it was not without its own hints about the growing relationship between Ian and Barbara.

The story ends with a lead-in right to The Space Museum so despite what authors may try and squeeze in between these stories there's really no discernible gap between them. So we stay with video for now....

NEXT EPISODE: THE SPACE MUSEUM