1.14: The Crusade

In which both the plot and the make-up become a problem.

Broadcast: March-April 1965 

Watched: July 2019

1. The Lion

Well that is a hell of a jump from the last episode.

A rare example of a Hartnell episode I’ve only heard on audio that works better with film. Throws you straight into the action. Love the Doctor stealing clothes. Admire the fact it doesn’t just make it goodies vs baddies: Saladin has honour, Richard is a petulant twat. 

Barbara must be thoroughly sick of being captured and passed around by important people though.

2. The Knight of Jaffa

This one really doesn’t work that well on audio does it? Can’t for the life of me work out why. Perhaps it’s that there are too many characters, not different enough from one another, which makes it hard to follow?

Anyway. Fine. Barbara must be really sick of being passed around as a sex slave by now. I kind of like that the Doctor’s theft comes back to haunt him. Not a lot else to say.

(A thing I am saying at time of publication, rather than viewing: this would be an obvious candidate for animation the two missing episodes, since doing so would complete season 2, and mean the BBC finally had a complete 60s/black and white – the two things overlap perfectly – series to release. 

One reason no one seems keen to do this is that historicals, with their higher number of characters and more complicated backgrounds, are harder to animate than sci fi stories. The other is that an unnerving number of them, this one included, feature, er, racially insensitive casting and make-up choices, and nobody wants to be the one to say, “Guys, shall we do a new Doctor Who cartoon with some brownface in it in 2022?” Oh, well. Anyway, on with the show.)

3. The Wheel of Fortune

Oh wait the brownface is much more obvious on this one. Hmmm.

“A girl? Dressed as a boy? Is nothing understandable these days?” Well, quite. Quite like the scene playing on/deconstructing the girl-dressed-as-boy trope. Also, Vicki worrying that the Doctor is ditching her is quite sweet.

The eight minute subplot in which a Palestinian kidnaps Barbara, turns out to be nice, tells her El Akir murdered his family which he’s never told his surviving daughter, and then seems to get himself killed, is a good idea that doesn’t quite work because they rush through it so quickly.

All the references to the Northern Quarter are very funny in a world in which that bit of Manchester has gone all hipster.

“When you’re on your knees before my master” oooer, Babs’’ admirers are at it again.

Anyway, my main thought on this episode is... what is this story actually about? It doesn’t really have a throughline, it’s just tourism: and while this trick worked in a comedy like The Romans it doesn’t really work when played straight. Unless it does something magnificent and surprising in part 4, this is by far the weakest historical so far.

“The only pleasure left for you is death – and death is very far away,” is a hell of a creepy cliffhanger, mind.

4. The Warlords

Who exactly are the warlords here?

Well that didn’t change my opinion at all. What a completely inconsequential story. The Joanna marriage plot just stops. Ian rescues Barbara, and they leave. That’s it.

I was just thinking re the harem girls that it’s nice this story isn’t unnecessarily racist, when Ibrahim shows up and it is. Oh well.

That said, I thought the nice Arab dad who rescued Barbara last episode was dead when he wasn’t, it was some other bloke. So who is the real racist here Chesterfield, hmmm?