The Crusade has never been one of my favourite stories. I read the novelisation long ago and found it a little dull. The existing episode three did little to improve my opinions, although I did always enjoy the performances, particularly Jacqueline Hill’s and the scene between Julian Glover and Jean Marsh as Richard and Joanna. When the first episode, The Lion, was discovered I viewed it with trepidation and found that it did little to improve my view of the story.

Rewatching the story for this marathon I have discovered a little more respect for the story – mainly for the performances, if not an enjoyment.

My main issue is the dialogue. It is incredibly florid and ‘Shakespearean’. I am a great fan of Shakespeare but, for me, this style does not fit into Doctor Who very well. It is too stagey and to some extent forced. When the Doctor himself starts using words like ‘methinks’ and Jean Marsh stumbles over lines which, to the modern tongue, are oddly constructed, I have to wonder if it was a good choice. Doctor Who can be many many things, but a Shakespeare play is not one of them – at least not on the basis of this story.

The most engaging part of this story is Barbara’s plotline. Kidnapped by El Akir’s men, managing to escape into the dark streets of Lydda, only to be captured again, we have great scene after great scene – particularly the existing episode three – The Wheel of Fortune – which sees her contemplating the death of a young girl and herself to protect them from El Akir.

Unfortunately, this is punctuated by the Doctor and Vicki’s ineffectual politics in the court of King Richard which mainly boils down to Vicki posing as a boy, the Doctor avoiding arrest for stealing clothes and the Earl of Leicester suspecting them of being spies. This final idea goes nowhere when the Doctor and Vicki simply slip out of the palace and run back to the TARDIS. They are pursued, rather feebly, by the Earl of Leicester. He takes the word of Ian, someone he has never met, and the crew are able to escape.

Indeed, Ian, with William Russell due his holiday episode, is packed off for the majority of the story in search of Barbara, whom he finds and brings back with very little effort on his part. Even his encounter with Ibrahim in the desert seems merely a way to have him do something before reaching Barbara. It certainly has no impact on the plot.

Maureen O’Brien’s Vicki is markedly less of a confident character than she will become by The Time Meddler. She is very much the poor little orphan girl, even having a slightly cloying scene where she worries the Doctor will leave her and whining that the TARDIS is the only home she has now.

The Doctor is fun, and not a little softer than earlier serials of this era, but the whole stolen clothes part sits a little uncomfortably with me.

This story is another example of some bonafide historical characters meeting the Doctor and his friends but here we have a calvacade: King Richard I, Princess Joanna (or rather Joan according to online sources), Saladin and Saphadin (the Western names for the Arabic leaders). Checking online though, it seems that Richard’s knights are all inventions. There are plenty of Williams and even a de Preaux, but none of the names actually given in the story appear in online historical sources as far as I can tell.

The story revolves around real places such as Jaffa, Lydda and Ramla with mention made of Tyre and Genoa. Production restrictions of the time though mean that much of the story could be set anywhere. Ramla is tents and Jaffa is a castle. The only place with a sense of ‘exoticness’ is Lydda with its dark shadowy streets,

The costumes for the story are very good, although I am not sure where the Doctor gets all the clothes for himself, Vicki and Ian as he only seems to steal a couple of garments and one pair of boots from the dodgy market trader, Ben Daheer.  Also, there are some very flamboyant moustaches on show – particularly William de Tornebu and the Chamberlain!

Another make-up aspect that must be mentioned is Bernard Kay ‘blacking up’ to play Saladin. It stands out quite markedly as none of the other ‘Saracens’ are blacked up. Roger Avon (Saphadin) and Walter Randall (El Akir) are not, and many of the smaller roles and extras seem to be played by actors with, at the very least, a darker complexion, if not of a non-White ethnicity. Of course, nowadays, Kay’s casting would never happen and, to be fair, it’s not massively obvious in the production as the make-up is actually quite good, but as a sign of the times this production was made, it is interesting. One wonders if more of the cast would have been made up in this way if they did not look suitably exotic, or if – for the smaller roles – non-White actors/actresses were deliberately sought with only the plum role of Saladin going to the ‘best’ actor regardless of race.

Historical episodes are difficult to pull off with the fact the TARDIS crew cannot be seen to interfere too much in established events. I think this is worse when real historical characters are included as stories such as The Aztecs seem to suffer less from the problem.

The Crusade seems to take this to the extreme with the crew having hardly any impact on the events around them, aside from saving King Richard in the first few scenes (which his men could probably have managed without them).

The regulars watch as events unfold around them, particularly the Doctor and Vicki, and for much of the story I felt like the ‘guest’ characters treated them as minor distractions from the bigger events. Their interactions continually seemed cursory.  Also, I feel the story lacks focus. There is no outright villain which most stories, even the other historicals, do have. There is no Tegana or Tlotoxl. The closest we get is El Akir, but this is a character the Doctor and Vicki never meet, Ian only meets briefly (just before he is killed by another supporting character) and doesn’t even spend a huge amount of time in the company of Barbara whom he has kidnapped early in the story.

The separate stories of the regulars don’t really end satisfactorily either. The Doctor and Vicki and Ian and Barbara arrive back at the TARDIS with little idea of the troubles of the other couple. This is something played to comic effect in The Romans, but here just means the story ends on something of a damp squib.

All in all, it’s a story which doesn’t gel for me. There are some lovely set pieces, excellent performances and the regulars, on the whole, are superb as always but, as a sum of its parts, it just doesn’t satisfy.