Synopsis:
Barbara has been brought before the evil El Akir. He warns her she will soon beg for death - but that will be a long way off...
Seizing an opportunity, Barbara pushes over her guards and runs off into the palace corridors. She manages to find her way to the seraglio, where the women agree to help conceal her.
At the desert oasis, Ian finds himself staked out on the sand by a bandit named Ibrahim. To force him to reveal the whereabouts of the concealed gold which he believes Ian to be carrying, Ibrahim plans to use honey to lure hungry black ants onto his body.
The King comes upon Leicester questioning the Doctor and Vicki, and orders him to go prepare his soldiers. Richard confides to the Doctor that he knows that it was not he who told Joanna of his plans, and that Leicester was to blame. However, he cannot afford to antagonise his commanders and so is content simply to warn them to leave the city at once, as the Doctor has made an enemy of the Earl.
Ian tells Ibrahim that he has gold hidden in his boot, so that the bandit will untie his leg. He then claims it is in the other boot. Greedy for the prize, Ibrahim fails to resecure the first leg. Once both legs are freed, Ian is able to lever himself up and quickly overpower his captor.
Ibrahim quickly pledges himself to help Ian, to save his own skin. He will help him get to Lydda.
Barbara meets Haroun's daughter Maimuna in the harem and plots an escape with her. Despite his desire to recapture her, El Akir refuses to allow his men to enter the seraglio. He will search it himself. One of the women - Fatima - decides to inform El Akir of the women's plotting.
Ian arrives at the palace with his new acquaintance, only to find the guard already dead. As Ibrahim goes to steal horses, Ian enters the palace and makes his way to the seraglio.
El Akir is there, about to attack Barbara when Haroun appears. It was he who killed the guard. He stabs the evil Emir in the back. Barbara and Maimuna leave with Ian and Haroun on the stolen horses, whilst the other women attack Fatima.
After the Doctor and Vicki have fled the palace, Richard prays that his crusade will be a success.
Vicki asks the Doctor if he will take Jerusalem, but is told that the King will get close enough to view the city but then have to withdraw, realising that even if he took it he would never be able to hold it.
They arrive in the forest close to the TARDIS landing site, only to be surrounded by Leicester and his men. They are accused of being Saracen spies. Before the Earl can execute them, Sir Ian appears. He accuses the Doctor and Vicki of really being sorcerers who have caused him much hardship, and so claims the privilege of despatching them. Leicester agrees and Ian takes the captives deeper into the woods - where the TARDIS is waiting with Barbara aboard.
The Earl and his men hear a strange sound, then find no trace of Sir Ian or his prisoners when they investigate. They assume the unfortunate knight has been spirited away by witchcraft...
As the Doctor and his companions stand round the console, the TARDIS is suddenly plunged into darkness and they are frozen into immobility...
Next episode: The Space Museum
Data:
Written by: David Whitaker
Recorded: Friday 26th March 1965 - Riverside Studio 1
First broadcast: 5:40pm, Saturday 17th April 1965
Ratings: 9.5 million / AI 48
Designer: Barry Newbery
Director: Douglas Camfield
Additional cast: Tutte Lemkow (Ibrahim), Sandra Hampton (Maimuna), Viviane Sorrel (Fatima)
Critique:
For many, The Crusade represents the last great historical of the 1960's, on a par with - if not superseding - John Lucarotti's Season 1 offerings Marco Polo and The Aztecs.
From this point on we get the uncomfortable humour / drama mix we previously saw with The Romans, especially in scripts by Donald Cotton, or we drift into literary genre history, in the stories commissioned by Gerry Davis. Only The Massacre comes close to the power of this story, but it falls into the same trap which Whitaker encountered here.
When put up against established history, what can the Doctor meaningfully achieve in the drama? During the events in Paris, 1572, the Doctor does not interact with any of the real historical figures, of which there are several, and Steven is pretty much confined in his part of the plot to the fictional characters in the story.
When the Doctor attempted to support Richard's peace plans in the previous episode, he must have known that this was not what happened, historically. Here, he actually tells Vicki of what will happen over the next few months - so why even attempt to alter the course of events? He has put their lives at risk for nothing.
In many ways, the plot of The Crusade runs out of steam by its fourth instalment. The marriage plan of Richard for his sister looks like it will be a significant new plot strand - but then goes nowhere. She, Saladin and Saphadin all simply drop out of the story - leaving Ian to do his heroics whilst rescuing Barbara.
Realising they no longer have any relevance to the plot, the Doctor and Vicki are advised to leave.
The Doctor informs Vicki of the final stages of the Third Crusade. In November 1191 the Crusaders learnt that Saladin had been forced by his lieutenants to disband part of his army and so advanced on Jerusalem, reaching a point only 12 miles from the city. The occupying forces were low in morale and would have capitulated had they been besieged for any length of time, but poor weather and illness led the Crusaders to withdraw - unaware of how close they had come to taking the city. The Crusaders were also concerned that they might be surrounded by Saracen reinforcements.
In the Spring of the following year, another advance saw the Crusaders reach a point in sight of Jerusalem, but in-fighting between the European rulers led to the army splitting in two - one force wishing to focus on the holy city, the other to withdraw and attack Saladin through an invasion of his power base in Egypt. Richard opted for staying, but refused to lead the army - stating he would attack Jerusalem as an ordinary soldier only.
In July 1192, Saladin retook Jaffa - only to lose it again a few weeks later. In September, a treaty was finally signed. Jerusalem would remain in Muslim hands, but safe passage would be given to Christian pilgrims and merchants.
Richard's return home via the German states proved eventful when he was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, who accused him of murdering his cousin. He did not get back to England until 1194. Saladin had died of yellow fever in 1193.
Leicester is a fictional character, though the title did exist at the time - held by Robert de Beaumont from the time of the Conqueror. He was succeeded by three other Roberts. The line ended in the 14th Century, but the title was recreated when Queen Elizabeth made her favourite Robert Dudley 1st Earl of Leicester in 1564.
Tutte Lemkow appears as Ibrahim, the bandit who attempts to rob Ian in the desert. He had been unavailable for the filming at Ealing, which is why a different character played by David Brewster is seen to actually attack Ian in The Wheel of Fortune. He turns to an off screen character, whom he addresses as "my brother...", to help bridge this inconsistency.
Back in February a quantity of black ants, sourced from London Zoo, had been brought into the studio at Ealing for the scene where Ian is staked out on the sand - but William Russell refused point blank to allow them to crawl over his arm. Camfield's assistant Viktors Ritelis agreed to double.
Lemkow had to go to the local A&E department in the middle of the recording day, having badly cut his hand when he dropped his knife. During rehearsals he had embellished his rather generic role with ad-libs and made it much more memorable, with the blessing of Camfield and Spooner. The character didn't even have a name in the original script - being simply "Arab".
The director insisted on the presence of a cow carcass in studio - just so he could record one shot of Ian and Ibrahim through its skeletal ribs. This caused a great deal of discomfort as it began to smell and attract flies under the hot lights.
Camfield later claimed that this was the best Doctor Who script he ever worked on, and the one he had to make the fewest alterations to.
The Crusade would prove to be the final story of the William Hartnell era to be written by David Whitaker. It was the only Hartnell story he wrote as a freelancer, The Rescue having been written whilst he was still story editing. He remained active behind the scenes on associated projects, mainly relating to the Daleks - the TV Century 21 comic strip, films and stage play Curse of the Daleks.
It was during the broadcast of this story that Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jenny Linden and Roberta Tovey were filming Dr Who and the Daleks at Shepperton Studios.
Whitaker would also help launch the Frederick Muller novelisations, penning two of the original three - including this one.
Both John Wiles and Donald Tosh had been recruited to take over from Verity Lambert and Dennis Spooner respectively by this time. Shortly after broadcast of this episode, Tosh made his first commission - a proposal from old acquaintance Donald Cotton. This would become The Myth Makers.
At the same time, an unsolicited script arrived from former policeman and journalist Robert Holmes. This was "Space Trap", which would eventually be produced as The Krotons.
Tosh rejected it.
The composer for this story was Dudley Simpson, who was starting to provide the incidental music on a semi-regular basis. This was the only full story directed by Camfield which he worked on - following an unfortunate falling out between the two men. During the making of this story, Simpson hosted a party for cast and crew. Camfield commented on the amount of money that Simpson must be making to afford his home. The composer pointed out that he did not make as much as the director thought, but Camfield thought he was lying to him and took offence. He refused to hire him ever again on any Doctor Who or other projects.
However, towards the end of Camfield's life the pair reconciled as he admitted he had been wrong to challenge Simpson. A silly, trivial argument, that got out of hand.
In some ways fandom benefitted from this incident, as Camfield would later give us some highly distinctive scores by the likes of Geoffrey Burgon (Terror of the Zygons and The Seeds of Doom) and Don Harper (The Invasion).
- The ratings rally by half a million, but the appreciation index falls another point.
- The working title for this episode was "The Knight of Jaffa", which was later given to the second episode.
- After the criticism last week, Television Today had only nice things to say - complimenting Whitaker's dialogue and the performance by Julian Glover.
- However, Television Mail thought the dialogue "appallingly flat", though luckily it couldn't be heard above the "creaking of the plot". The writer ended: "Surely this kind of unhistorical nonsense can only be screened by people who have a profound contempt for children"...
- Tutte Lemkow becomes the third actor (after Gabor Baraker and Zohra Segal) to return from Marco Polo, which Camfield had worked on as assistant to Waris Hussein.
- A photograph was taken of the TARDIS crew standing around the console - to be used in the opening moments of the following episode. This would save on the need to wear their old costumes and make-up for just one very brief sequence.
- Novelist Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) used the novelisation of this story as an example of how modern writers viewed the medieval period.
- Below is a scene from the footage created for the 1999 VHS release of The Crusade. William Russell, in character as Ian, described the events of the two missing episodes. The venue was the dining room of Ian Levine's home - the unofficial adviser to the programme for much of the JNT era. Ian mentions one adventure which had never been seen on TV, a reference to a recent BBC Books' Past Doctor Adventures novel (The Witch Hunters, by Steve Lyons). This was a deliberate cross-promotional plug added by JNT, who wrote the links for all the special VHS releases.
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