Due to life getting in the way of things I haven’t really left the black and white era of TV Who on this blog and yet here we are back reviewing a Hartnell story thanks to the release of Season 2 on Blu-ray. Once again I decided to go with the story that I haven’t seen in the longest time and so that meant “The Crusade”, mainly because half of it is missing and it’s just not an interesting enough story to want to watch through a photo recon of half of it. This is only the second time I’ve watched it and third overall experiencing it despite being such a big fan of the show for so many years (I listened to the soundtrack only at one point to see if it helped…). Does this admittedly better recon job help, or is it still just… not very good? Let’s find out!
So as usual for historicals of the time The Doctor (William Hartnell) and his companions arrive in a historical time period, one of them is captured and ends up meeting “the enemy” while the rest find the historical figure often presented as the “good guy”, though usually both sides are shows with some mix of good and bad. In this case Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) is captured by Saladin (Bernard Kay in makeup, sadly…) while The Doctor, Ian (William Russell) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) end up meeting Richard the Lionheart (Julian Glover), with Saladin often shown as compassionate while Richard with quite a temper, which is nice to see. It would have been all too easy to portray this as simple good vs. evil. While this sounds like the set up for the first part of the story this is actually the whole story…
The Doctor looking fine in a cape, foreshadowing his Third incarnation!
The Doctor and Vicki tease and actually steal from a local clothing merchant and get involved with court politics despite The Doctor previously being extremely hard-footed about meddling in established history, while Ian is knighted and goes off to hunt for Barbara but Episode 3 was William’s time off so the character doesn’t really do anything until reuniting with everyone at the end. Barbara meanwhile meets both Saladin and his brother Saphadin (Roger Avon also in makeup, also sadly…), who is infatuated with Richard’s sister Joana (Jean Marsh, making her first of three appearances as different characters in Who!) but becomes angry at Barbara’s captor El Akir (Walter Randall, in makeup sadly etc.) when he sees she isn’t who she says she is, as well as the Richard the Lionheart who came with her as its actually Richard’s ally William des Preaux (John Flint). She and William are given freedom to move around the camp but not to leave, but she manages to escape only to find out it was straight into El Akir’s hands… but then actually escapes anyway where a local rebel named Haroun ed-Din (George Little…), who is fighting against El Akir due to him having killed his wife, takes her in. Of course, she is then captured once again by Akir because the writers just can’t think of any other way to add tension to the story!
I, er…. yeah. That’s about all I can say about this screenshot in 2023! Still, at the time it was just what happened, can’t hold it against them retroactively.
In general it’s just a bit dull. Can’t say I sat there clock-watching and rolling my eyes, and at four episodes it doesn’t massively over-stay its welcome like a certain other Season 2 story I reviewed not too long ago, but just not a lot happens. When Barbara gets kidnapped there’s a hint at a major skirmish going on but obviously due to set and cost issues you don’t really see anything. Episodes 2 and 4 being missing and represented by a photo recon doesn’t help either, though given the relative lack of action and plenty of photo material it works a lot better than most recons. Ian gets one good sword fight and a bit of a scuffle to escape his captors but other than that its just mostly court politics from both sides with some escape sequences thrown in. Glover’s Richard and Marsh’s Joana play off each other well, especially when the former tries to marry off the latter to end the war, but it just doesn’t hold my interest enough.
The Continuity:
The original VHS release replaced the two missing episodes with William Russell in character as Ian talking about what happened in between the existing episodes. A fun idea that still exists on the blu-ray extras menu.
Not much. The big one is that Episode 4 ends with everyone in the TARDIS frozen in place, a cliffhanger that leads directly into the next story, “The Space Museum”. Other than that it’s just a few off-the-cuff references by The Doctor as to having met King Richard or a few audios where Ian refers to himself as “Sir Ian of Jaffa”, that sort of thing.
Overall Thoughts:
“You want me to marry a man from the Middle East?!” “Well, technically no…”
The Crusade is one of those Hartnell historicals that sadly I just find dull as hell. Can’t fault the acting it’s just the story while sometimes visually impressive (for the time) it often ends up with a bunch of talking and instead of an intriguing plot that makes that talking riveting and engaging its instead just… talking. Talking and some escaping, with added unpleasant historical make up jobs on all the Middle Eastern characters, which was fine at the time but boy retrospectively in 2022 it’s hard going. Plus half of it is missing and having no movement to go along with the talking doesn’t help your concentration! I can’t hate it, but I won’t be watching it again…
Not much to say here, Barbara escapes Akir’s camp with the help of his harem, meanwhile Ian escapes his captors attempts to have him killed by ants in the desert, allowing everyone to reunite in time to escape together as the two forces once again come to blows (off screen).
Hogan Reviews 