Doctor Who: "The Crusade"

[pmcray]

There are only two missing episodes from Season Two (it is the shortest season of early Who at 39 episodes, but not really that much shorter than the other Hartnell/Troughton seasons), and if there were to be two missing episodes from this season, we would rather they were from "The Space Museum" or "The Chase". "The Crusade" is a very solid historical and the audio tracks for episodes 2 and 4 unfortunately don't allow us to imagine what is going on as easily as is the case for the missing episodes of the more straightforward Base under Siege story of "The Moonbase". With the "The Reign of Terror" shortly to be released with its two missing episodes, we can hope that "The Crusade" might be revisited. I could certainly do with revisiting it myself. It's a over two years since I saw it and there are a great many potentially ticklish obstacles to be navigated here by the production, although I think on the whole I think there are navigated successfully, although it is a pity that the BBC resorted to blackface. This is very far from the debacle it might have been in less sensitive hands, but I think a second "viewing" is in order with an eye to determine just how orientalist the story is.

I recall a duplicated sheet from second year history with a cartoon of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin shaking hand and a caption declaring that the Third Crusade was a draw. Saladin was "our" kind of "Turk" in popular imagination (mostly it seems owing to Sir Walter Scott), which helps to make the whole production less freighted than it might have been - or might be today. As with "The Aztecs", we get some cod-Shakespearean dialogue, but, with actors as skilled and well-cast as Julian Glover, it works in context and the audience of the time probably would have expected it, being more familiar with that kind of thing than today's. Bill Russell gets to do much the kind of thing that we got to do in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and Barbara has a meaty subplot. I'd need to see it again to determine just how similar Barbara's predicament here is at one point to her predicament at one point in "The Keys of Marinus".  

"The Crusade" has a special place in Doctor Who lore as one of the three DW novels were published in the 1960s. It was Whittaker's most substantial script up to that point so it is perhaps little wonder that he chose it as the one to novelise. I remember my eldest brother returning excitedly from Hewitt's, our local newsagent, to announce that three DW novels were now available. The copy of Doctor Who and the Crusaders, with its wonderful Chris Achilleos cover, might still be in the house in Preston somewhere, along with the other two and some other DW novels I got later. I remember considering it a curious object as a child - pure historicals were something that belonged to a remote age. Sadly I don't think I have ever read it;  certainly, if I did, I don't recall anything of it other than its mere existence, but there must be lots of fans (my brother amongst them?) who did need read. Indeed, there must have a number of fans who during the interregnum between 1966 and 1973 came across it in libraries and jumble sales and the bookshelves of their elder siblings. I wonder what they made of it and I wonder how it stands up now.

Now Write On...
I can't see the BBC doing the Levant in the studio these days. But, heck, they could go there on location. What about something set in C9th Baghdad or C12th Alamut? The Doctor and co. turn up at Alamut to consult a rare manuscript in the library  The Doctor finds himself investigating a series of murders - in a fortress of assassins. This could be a homage to The Name of the Rose as well as to the richness of Islamic culture. The shadow of orientalism lies heavy, but a writer of sensitivity with knowledge of the period could do something very interesting here I think without falling into those traps.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

More likely they could do something in that period but film in Malta or Serbia - the relative settings for Kings Landing and so forth in Game of Thrones.

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

Yes, you probably would film it somewhere like that if you were making a story set in that part of the world.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the Alamut story. The Old Man of the Mountain can also be taken as an allusion to the hermit who lived under the tree by the house that was perched halfway up the top of a mountain when the Doctor was a boy. There is also a reference to the Old Man of the Mountains in "Marco Polo". Of course, many monasteries or monastry-like edifices appear in DW ("The Abominable Snowman", Planet of the Spiders", "The Brain of Morbius", "Logopolis") to say nothing of all kinds of fortresses and bases under siege, so it would be as much a homage to Who itself as to The Name of the Rose and other monkpunk classics (A Canticle for Leibowitz, Anathem). And we can offer a very DW explanation as to why there is no contemporary accounts provide no evidence of the secret garden of paradise at Alamut itself.

Now all we need is the TARDIS to head back to 1997 and pitch Grandfather of Assassins to BBC Books.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

A Name of the Rose mystery with aliens would work very very well. Especially with the Doctor finally going into the TARDIS, going into the library and pulling out a scroll of 'lost' works from the Greeks or similar and smiling.

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

The library at Alamut was destroyed by the Mongols. The Doctor has previous with them. So it's entirely possible that the Doctor has manuscripts in his library that he has saved from there. In fact, that might be why he goes there in the first place.

I also like the way that the fact the TARDIS as edifice could mirror Alamut as edifice, so the Doctor gets trapped in the fortress pursued by assassins whilst his friend gets trapped in the TARDIS. Also the Secret Garden of Paradise is dimensionally transcendent and one of the objects that appears in it is the TARDIS. But is a real TARDIS, a gateway to the Doctor's TARDIS or something altogether far more sinister...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The novelisation of The Crusade famously had a scene in which Barbara was threatened with whipping, with a line something like "soon you will feel the caress of my whip" which must have come as a bit of a surprise to any adults reading it. I really can't recall much else about it - I remember it as a reasonably faithful adaptation of the episodes, but I was a LOT closer to the episodes then, I read it in 1965 or so.

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that there were certain things that could be got away with in the mid-60s that couldn't even slightly later (just as there are things today that you couldn't have done 20 much less 40 years ago). It might also be carry over from the idea of DW as a show for all ages rather than as a children's show (that adults adored as the Daily Sketch quote used to have it on the cover of Target novels).