Doctor Who - The Crusades

Saladin Days

Doctor Who - The Crusades
Airdate: 27th March - 17th April 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray
Four Episodes including two reconstructions

Oh dear... well, there was a reason why the BBC chose Series 2 for the debut Blu Ray collection of William Hartnell’s Doctor (hopefully it won’t be the last). The sixth story of the nine serials which comprise series 2, The Crusades, has two episodes ‘missing presumed wiped’ (as the saying goes), making this season the most complete of this era’s Doctor Who stories. And this one, for me, was a hard watch for various reasons.

Notable things include a famous actor and actress in key roles. So joining the crew of the TARDIS... Bill Hartnell as The Doctor, William Russell as Ian Chesterton, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and Maureen O’Brien as Vicki... are Julian Glover as Richard The Lionheart and Jean Marsh as his sister Joanna. The whole tale takes place in Palestine during Richard’s crusades and it’s actually quite boring... at least it was for me... playing around with political intrigue and cowtowing to regal entitlement (I really have no love of positions of authority, it has to be said).

Another interesting thing was, once again, seeing William Hartnell getting in on the action for a little bit of the first episode. Indeed, he knocks a Saracen Warrior unconscious and even attempts to indulge in some swordplay. Then we get what seems to have become a standard formula for the show, the TARDIS crew get divided with Barbara captured by Saladin, Ian (or Sir Ian as he is to become after King Richard knights him) going after her and getting into his own trouble... while The Doctor and Vicki keep themselves close to the King to try and assure things go smoothly for everyone. Which it decidedly doesn’t and the four travellers barely escape with their lives at the end of the fourth episode, which itself cliffhangers into the next story arc.

And, yeah, the overly talkie script, definitely took on the original mission statement of the show, to teach kids about history, is a hard slog but it’s proven even harder by the BBC’s decision to not do what they’ve been doing a lot of recently, for missing episodes... in that they have not commissioned new animations to go with the surviving soundtracks. Instead, they’ve fallen back on something they used to do which is to have the sound of the episode play while still photographs from the production are manipulated, to give a sense of what the accompanying visuals would have been.

Now, I’m not knocking that their is a certain amount of creative thought gone into the way the still photographs are manipulated. For example, different characters will be highlighted in close ups as they speak to mimic the cinematic syntax of cross cutting between two or more people in a conversation. However, it would, I think, be true to say that this does nothing to lift the story and, since it’s a relatively dull story anyway, the decision not to add animation is a poor one. Especially since, I suspect, it all boiled down to the BBC being too cheap to commission the animation of a mere two episodes. So, yeah, it certainly doesn’t do it any favours.

And I really don’t have much else to say about this one, I’m afraid. The novelisation, Doctor Who And The Crusaders by David Whitaker (who added a fair amount of stuff not seen in his serial from the same year) was the second novel to be released (after Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks) and also the last to be released until Target rereleased these first two, with this as their third, in 1973 (immediately following their first original release, Doctor Who And The Zarbi, based on the previous serial The Web Planet, reviewed here). I don’t remember much about it but I would certainly have enjoyed reading this one a lot more than the experience of finally watching it, I can tell you that. I suspect this is the one real weak link in this Blu Ray set and it’s telling that the BBC didn’t subject any of their special guests to have to slog their way through this one... it’s one of the few discs in the set which doesn’t have a Behind The Sofa extra. So, yeah, that probably says it all and I certainly wouldn’t recommend this story to anyone I know but, still, I’m very glad to have it and have the opportunity to finally see it, that’s for sure. Just wish they’d at least coughed up a little cash to animate episodes 2 and 4. And so onto The Space Museum... which I confess I’m looking forward to much more.