The Crusade [4.0]

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki land in the medieval Middle East. They are in the thick of Richard the Lionheart’s crusade into the Holy Land to recapture Jerusalem from the Saracen armies. Stumbling on the English King’s party out in the woods, they are quickly swept up into the action. Barbara is kidnapped; Ian is made a knight of Jaffa; the Doctor appoints himself supreme advisor to the king, and, inexplicably, Vicki dresses up as a boy.

King Richard is troubled at the progress of war and is considering making a diplomatic peace with the Saracens by marrying off his sister to Emperor Saladin’s brother. Unfortunately for him, Princess Joanna is having none of it and is ready to report him to the Pope. Meanwhile his armies are restless for a fight and the Saracens are happy to oblige.

The Majesty

This is a very well written script. The opening scene in the woods sets up the King and his nobles very quickly. They could easily have been 2D cut-out aristocrats, but they all have their own personality and the King is completely believable, played to perfection by the ubiquitous Julian Glover. Indeed with both him and Jean Marsh starring, the cast is truly magnificent. (As of this review, they have between then 275 credits on IMDB!) But there is a particular joy in seeing these great actors delivering poetic Shakespearian dialogue.

From the opening scenes of Episode One, we are back up to par after the disaster of The Web Planet, and although two episodes of The Crusade remain frustratingly missing, the story holds up very well right to the end.

The Misery

Vicki seems to do very little in this story. Ian and Barbara both get their own sub-plots where each becomes the primary protagonist. The Doctor, as usual, chuckles and charms his way through the story. But Vicki just follows him around. Also, for no reason she appears in episode two dressed as a boy. (Strangely, the CGI reconstruction portrayed her wearing a very low cut top in this episode... It made it very incongruous to have everyone referring to her as a ‘boy’ all the time. Unless the English court simply assumed she had the largest man-boobs feasible?) In any case, she might as well have stayed in the TARDIS, for all the good she was in the story.

Magical Moments

• The Doctor steals a cloak, justifying himself on the basis that the merchant probably stole it from someone else in the first place. He hides under the shop table to sneakily put on the clothes – a true gentleman!
• Barbara’s captor, embarrassed in front of Saladin, threatens to kill her in a thousand different ways. (“I can make her dance on red hot coals!”) Saladin turns and asks Barbara what she thinks of this. Coldly she replies: “It sound like a punishment for a fool!”. “It does,” agrees Saladin. “And who here is the most foolish?” Barbara looks up at her captor, who turns white with fear. Don’t mess with bad-ass Barbara!
• Saladin, speaking about Barbara to his guards: “Give her all liberty... except liberty itself”
• Richard indulges in a little monologue: “My armies roust about and clutter up the streets of Jaffa with the garbage of their vices. And now I learn my brother John thirsts after power, drinking great draughts of it, though it’s not his to take. He’s planning to usurp my crown and trade with my enemy, Philip of France! Trade! A tragedy of fortune that I am too much beset by them. A curse on this! A thousand curses!”
• Richard, of Barbara: “This woman can rot in one of Saladin’s prisons until her hair turns white!”
• The local tailor offers to give Vicki a makeover and turn her into a ‘veritable strutting peacock’, which sets the Doctor and Vicki into fits of giggles.
• “A girl, dressed as a boy?! Is nothing understandable these days?” sighs the Chamberlain, as the Doctor grins mischievously.
• “Will Princess Joanna agree to marry a Saracen prince?” wonders the Doctor. “You should rather ask,” responds Richard, “how can she refuse? To stem the blood, bind up the wounds and give a host of men lives and futures? Oh now there’s a marriage contract to put sacrifice to shame and make a saint of any woman!”
• No doubt inspired by the presence of Glover and Marsh, Hartnell delivers his lines as passionately as the best of them: “You stupid butcher! Can’t you think of anything else but killing, hmm?”
• Earl of Leicester, to the Doctor: “When you men of eloquence have stunned each other with your words, we – we the soldiers! - have to face it out. On some half-started morning, while you speakers lie abed, armies settle everything with sweat, sinew, bodies, and our  lives.”
• Saladin, to his brother: “Hold one hand out in friendship; keep the other on your sword.”
• Joanna to Richard: “I am no sack of flour to be given in exchange!” Indeed this whole scene where Julian Glover and Jean Marsh face off is one of the best moments of dramatic acting in Dr Who so far. “How would you have me go to Saladin? Bathed in Oriental perfume, I suppose? Suppliant and tender and affectionate? Soft-eyed and trembling? Eager with a thousand words of compliment and love? Well I like a different way to meet the man I am about to wed!”
• Ian is subjected to one of the most bizarre death-plots ever devised. Pegged out in the sand with honey on his belly and a little trail of it running to a nearby ants nest. I believe the idea is that he will get eaten alive by ants, presumably over several days... It's a horrible way to go!
• The Doctor to Barbara, peevish: “Oh why don’t you have a cup of tea or something!”

Representation

The Crusades, as a historical movement, are treated rather sympathetically, but what is worse, rather superficially. It would be one thing to consider the moral entanglements of the motivations behind mutual holy war: to consider it properly and then make a judgement in saying ‘It’s not as bad as people think.’ But it’s different to just waltz in and treat it as if it were some chivalrous political campaign between France and England.

Not only are the Crusaders let off ethically, but the Saracen are generally represented rather badly. They are all played by English actors, often wearing dark make up. (I won’t call it blackface, as that’s a very specific, deliberately racist aesthetic, which wasn’t on display here.) I wouldn’t get on my high horse typically about English actors playing Middle-Eastern characters in a production from the 60s. It’s applying modern concerns to historical material. But some of these actors put on caricature ‘foreign’ accents, sometimes sounding a little Indian in the process. This crosses a line for me, pushing their performances from ‘serious portrayal of a foreign person’ into ‘racist caricature’. This atmosphere of racism is heightened by the writing: there are many more schemers, betrayers, barbarians and general villains among the Saracens than among the English. Saladin himself is represented as fairly noble, but the story hasn’t aged well when it comes to concerns of representation.

In Summary

Despite 21^st century concerns about subconscious racism, this medieval melodrama is a highly enjoyable adventure. There is a lot of action and political scheming; the historical setting is a fascinating one, though a tad unexplored; the cast are magnificent and the dialogue unmatched. If anything, however, the overall story is a little lacking in cohesion. There’s a lot of B-plots going on, but the spine of the story, such as it is, is really just the TARDIS crew regrouping and escaping back to the ship. And it’s a shame that the BBC didn’t think to bring on actual Middle-Eastern actors to play the Middle-Eastern characters.

Overall: 4.0