Synopsis:
In a forest clearing near the city of Jaffa, King Richard of England - Coeur de Lion - is hunting with some of his noblemen. Sir William des Preaux is worried about possible ambush by the Saracens as they are too far from the city. The King is dismissive but he proves justified in his concerns as the party come under attack by the Emir El Akir and his men. The TARDIS has just materialised in the forest nearby, and the Doctor and his companions get caught up in the skirmish.
Des Preaux claims to be Richard, to divert the attackers away from his King, who manages to slip away. Barbara is also captured.
After the Saracens have moved off with their captives, the Doctor, Ian and Vicki find the wounded Sir William de Tornebu who has been left behind, as well as a jewelled belt belonging to the King. They tend his injuries and arrange a stretcher, then make for Jaffa where they will seek help in searching for Barbara.
Worried about their appearance, the Doctor and Vicki visit a cloth merchant named Ben Daheer, witnessing him accepting stolen clothing from a man named Thatcher, who works in Richard's household. The Doctor relieves him of some of these items and they go to the royal palace.
Barbara and des Preaux have been taken to Saladin's camp at Ramlah. To explain her presence in the forest and add to his deception, des Preaux has her pretend to be the Princess Joanna, Richard's sister. Saladin's brother Saphadin is rumoured to hold a torch for her.
El Akir presents his captives to Saladin - only to learn of their ruse. Saladin knows Richard has red hair, and Saphadin is familiar with Joanna's appearance. The Emir has been made a fool of, and so vows vengeance against Barbara in particular, as des Preaux will be protected by Saladin due to his hostage status.
Thinking her a strolling player, Barbara is forced to act as an entertainer to save her life whilst Saladin decides what to do with her.
At Jaffa, the King is grateful for the safe return of de Tornebu, as well as the bejewelled belt which he had dropped during the ambush.
Ian offers to go alone to speak with Saladin as an emissary from Richard, to seek the release of Barbara and des Preaux. The King refuses to trade with the man who is responsible for the deaths of his friends and angrily informs him that he has no intention of doing anything to help Barbara...
Next episode: The Knight of Jaffa
Written by: David Whitaker
Recorded: Friday 5th March 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 27th March 1965
Ratings: 10.5 million / AI 51
Designer: Barry Newbery
Director: Douglas Camfield
Guest cast: Julian Glover (King Richard), Bernard Kay (Saladin), Walter Randall (El Akir), John Flint (William des Preaux), Roger Avon (Saphadin), Bruce Wightman (William de Tornebu), Reg Pritchard (Ben Daheer), Tony Caunter (Thatcher).
This story is set during what is known as the Third Crusade (1189 - 1192). It is generally thought that the actual setting is the year 1191, due to the historical facts of the forest ambush which almost cost Richard his life, and the planned marriage of his sister to Saphadin by way of a peace treaty. (These two events have been chronologically switched in this story).
As with previous Crusades, the Third campaign was intended to force the Muslims from the sacred sites of Palestine - especially the city of Jerusalem. The Crusade was led by King Philip II of France, accompanied by Richard of England and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I. Richard assumed command after Philip departed.
Richard had rescued his sister from Sicily on the way to the Holy Land, imprisoned after the death of her husband on the orders of his replacement as ruler of the island state.
The cities of Acre and Jaffa were captured by the Crusaders. Richard went on to massacre his 2700 Muslim captives at Acre, when he thought Saladin had not responded fast enough to his diplomatic moves. Saladin responded by killing his captives.
Jaffa was taken in 1191, but would be lost again in 1192. Richard was concerned about the behaviour of his younger brother John, who had been left to look after England in his absence, and his old rival Philip II, who had designs on England. This was the main reason for his wishing to bring the campaign to a close as soon as possible, and why he considered marrying Joanna (b.1165 - usually called Joan) to his rival's brother.
Saphadin was the Sultan of Egypt and Syria and as such was the senior brother, politically. Saladin led the armed forces, however.
King Richard I was born in 1157, third (of five) sons of King Henry II. He came to the throne in 1189.
Saladin states in this episode that Richard has a head of red-gold hair, which is true. He was very tall, at 6' 5".
His relationship with his father (dramatised in the play The Lion in Winter) was stormy, and he even allied himself with Louis VII of France in a revolt against Henry II in 1173. He gained his "Lionheart" title during a military campaign in France in 1175, due to his fierce and determined leadership.
In the public eye Richard is regarded as a great Englishman, but the truth is that he hated the place. French was his preferred language and he spent only a matter of months in England as its monarch, far preferring his lands in Aquitaine. He was buried in the Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou on his death, aged 41, in April 1199.
This was the first full story to be directed by Douglas Camfield, who would go onto become the most popular and prolific director of the classic series. As a production assistant to Waris Hussein he had been involved with Doctor Who from the very beginning, handling filming on the very first story.
His first directing role on the series had been the fourth and final instalment of Planet of Giants. This story had been re-cut to condense it to three parts, and half of Camfield's work was deleted. However, the director of the first three episodes - the series' executive producer, Mervyn Pinfield - was happy to allow Camfield credit on the broadcast final episode.
Camfield was obsessed with the military, and had attempted to join the army's special forces but had to drop out of the training. He ran his productions in military style - planning things to the nearest minute. When the cast and crew hit a snag in rehearsals, he would offer cash to whoever could devise an idea to get them over it.
For his own assistant Camfield had Viktors Ritelis, who would go on to become a director in his own right, including episodes of Blake's 7 - though he never directed a Doctor Who.
The Assistant Floor Manager on The Crusade is Michael E Briant, who would go on to become another popular Doctor Who director in his own right, and who would also helm a number of Blake's 7 episodes. Briant would later cast Tony Caunter (Thatcher) as Morgan in Colony in Space.
To portray King Richard, Camfield considered actor Julian Glover who he had seen in the 1960 BBC series An Age of Kings (half hour serialisations of the Shakespeare Henriad). Not sure he would get such a distinguished stage performer (he had just returned from an international tour with Sir Ralph Richardson), as a back-up he looked to one of a small repertoire of strong, reliable actors he was putting together - Nicholas Courtney.
As it was, Glover was impressed by the literacy of Whitaker's scripts and agreed to take on the role.
In a recent interview (Infinity issue 59) Glover states that the only actor he never liked, in all of his lengthy career, was William Hartnell. The reason he gives is Hartnell's inverted snobbery - an intense dislike of classically trained actors.
Glover had read an earlier draft of the serial which had made more of the implied incestuous relationship between Richard and Joanna, but this had been cut by the time he joined rehearsals - having been objected to by Hartnell.
Camfield promised to give Courtney something else soon, and he did cast him the main role in a crime drama - Watch The Birdies - not long after, and later cast him as Bret Vyon in The Daleks' Master Plan, and as Captain Knight, then Colonel Lethbridge Stewart, in The Web of Fear.
Bruce Wightman, who features briefly in this episode as de Tornebu, also became a Camfield regular - going on to appear in The Daleks' Master Plan (as cricket commentator Scott), and Terror of the Zygons (as a radio operator).
Walter Randall, who had appeared in The Aztecs as Tonilla, would go on to feature in several Camfield productions such as The Invasion and Inferno.
Bernard Kay had only recently been seen as resistance leader Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Apart from monster performers, only Stephen Dartnell had so far appeared in two significant roles in the same season (though one of his had been masked).
Here Kay and a number of other principal cast members appear in "blackface", which would never be tolerated today but was all too common in 1965. It should be noted that this story features a number of actors from various ethnic minorities, many of whom had also been cast as supporting artistes in Marco Polo. Unfortunately none of them is given a leading role.
Barbara tells Saladin and Saphadin of events from their most recent travels - suggesting there have been no unseen adventures for some time. She mentions Nero's Rome (The Romans) and a planet of insect people (The Web Planet). With the teachers' description of events through Season One at the beginning of The Sensorites, this leaves very few gaps where another Ian and Barbara story might fit.
Thinking her a travelling player, Saladin asks her to tell them tales to entertain them whilst he works out what her fate is to be, which she likens to Scheherazade - heroine of One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Arabic folk tales first published in English in the early 1700's. Also known as the "Arabian Nights", the best known tale is that of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Scheherazade must tell a story every night to her captor (a woman-hating ruler who has vowed to marry then murder a new wife every night) in order that he will be so intrigued to hear more that he won't kill her - directly mirroring Barbara's predicament. As well as her own TARDIS experiences, Barbara realises she has the works of Shakespeare and Hans Christian Anderson to fall back on for stories.
It was during the rehearsals for this episode that it was officially announced that Verity Lambert would be leaving the programme. Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson were keen to capitalise on her success with Doctor Who by promoting her to other projects. An earlier attempt to get her to move to a production based in Birmingham fell down when she refused to leave London. It had been wrongly assumed that, as a single woman, she would have no ties to the capital, so would accept the move. Lambert was at this point scheduled to produce the new soap 199 Park Lane, which was replacing the fashion magazine drama Compact. She agreed to stay on until the end of the second season's recording block. In the interim she would continue to commission scripts with Dennis Spooner, who was also making noises about leaving after his 12 month contract ended.
Lambert's decision to leave deeply upset Hartnell, who got on very well with the producer who had given him this late chance at TV stardom.
- The ratings are sustained in double figures, and the appreciation index returns to 50+. A degree of "Vortis fatigue" had certainly set in over the last couple of weeks.
- This is the first episode of a story generally given the overall title The Crusade.
- The story has gone under different titles. Radio Times called it "The Lionheart" (see below) and it has also gone under "The Crusades". The novelisation was Doctor Who and the Crusaders.
- Its working title was "The Saracen Hordes".
- Stunt co-ordinator Derek Ware plays a Saracen in the ambush scenes, whilst David Anderson, who was fight arranger on - and featured in - The Aztecs appears as de Marun, another of Richard's hunting party.
- Much of the forest fight was pre-filmed at Ealing on Tuesday 16th February. It was arranged by Ware, who had worked with Camfield on his first ever Doctor Who work - the Ealing filming for An Unearthly Child.
- Filming entailed the appearance of a real bird of prey, which was handled by falconer John Holmes, who made an on screen appearance with Glover.
- Bruce Wightman was a founder member of the Dracula Society. He became obsessed with the character after seeing the 1931 Universal film starring Bela Lugosi, whom he considered the definitive Count. Wightman acted as a consultant on the 1977 BBC adaptation, which starred Louis Jourdain (and which was responsible for the dropping of Terrance Dicks' Season 15 vampire story). He appears in it as a coach passenger.
- Reg Pritchard and Roger Avon would also appear in the series again - both in episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan.
- The Doctor, a Dalek and a Zarbi made a guest appearance in the Captain Pugwash comic strip in Radio Times two days before transmission of this episode.
- The Lion was thought lost for decades, but turned up in New Zealand in 1998 in the hands of a private collector, who had owned it for several years. It was returned to the BBC for copying the following year. The NZBC had never broadcast the story.
- Radio Times gave the new story its now traditional photo feature for the opening instalment:
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