Doctor Who A-Z #14 – The Crusade (1965)

I’ve mentioned a few times here that the rules that caused so much aggravation to writers of the pure historical serials – no changing history, no ascribing real-world actions to the Doctor or any of his companions – were written by David Whitaker in his initial series outline. What I haven’t addressed is how odd that is. Whitaker, after all, is remembered as the man who put the alchemy into Doctor Who, the man responsible more than anyone else for its freewheeling strangeness. His first script, The Edge of Destruction, changed the TARDIS crew beyond recognition in what was only their third outing. What’s he doing locking the show’s possibilities down with a set of boring, stuffy rules?

Any chance we have of answering this question comes in the form of The Crusade, the only pure historical he wrote. A very well-regarded one it is, too, with the central rivalry between Richard I and Saladin frequently compared to Shakespeare’s history plays. (The show itself would come to agree: The Shakespeare Code lifts a line from Whitaker’s script for Love’s Labours Won) At the very least, it’s a significant jump in maturity from giant ants and butterflies last week. It was Whitaker’s favourite of his own scripts, and Douglas Camfield – making his solo directorial debut after helming bits of Planet of Giants – said it was the only script he never needed to make alterations to.

You probably shouldn’t take writers’ opinions about their own work too seriously, particularly when they’re not around to look at the cumulative impact of said work.  Even The Crusade‘s biggest defender would have to admit it’s not as much of a series landmark as the first ever post-regeneration story, which Whitaker would find himself writing soon enough. What The Crusade does offer – and this may be a product of Whitaker’s stint as the show’s script editor – is provide an overview of the different solutions writers had thus far come up with to deal with the restrictions on pure historicals. Anthony Coburn clearly believed the suspense of a pure historical should lie in the TARDIS crew simply trying to survive in a hostile environment, rather than fighting evil. Dennis Spooner, by contrast, turned the historical into an exercise in genre parody, liberating William Hartnell’s most mischievous side in the process.

The one approach that Whitaker doesn’t borrow is John Lucarotti’s tactic of focusing the drama on the Doctor’s reluctance to change history. And it’s a shame, because it might have made sense of how passive the Doctor is here. Fans ticking off the Shakespeare references in Whitaker’s screenplay have made much of the Doctor protecting Vicki by disguising her as “Victor”, correctly noting that this recalls the female cross-dressing in plays such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It. But why did Shakespeare write such plots? Clearly it was to create farcical plot complications, which makes it strange that The Crusade doesn’t attempt this. An actual Shakespeare comedy would have had “Victor” trying to get out of an arranged marriage to Joanna, Richard I’s sister, but Whitaker knows she was already betrothed to Saladin’s brother at this point. The reluctance to interfere with history, so dramatic in Lucarotti’s scripts, is leaving the regulars stranded here.

If the guest characters are forced into being the prime movers of the story, then the guest cast at least are making the most of it. The Crusade has perhaps Doctor Who‘s first truly stellar cast; Julian Glover and Jean Marsh would be impressive signings for the show today (and both would return in years to come), while Tutte Lemkow has a ball as the bandit Ibrahim. Bernard Kay is also impressive as Saladin, although the neutrality that The Crusade is often praised for only really extends as far as the two leaders. Once the TARDIS crew are split up, there’s no question about which side of the conflict exhibits the most sadism; the Doctor and Vicki are accused of treason by the English, while on the Saracen side Barbara is threatened with yet more rape and Ian is tied up in the desert to be eaten alive by ants. For all Jon Pertwee’s stories are regularly accused of conservatism, they do at least consistently aim their attacks on militarism as high up the ladder as possible: Sergeant Benton earns much less of the Doctor’s ire than Mr. Chinn. In a striking reversal of the show’s usual attitude, Whitaker’s knights are donkeys led by lion(hearts).

Possibly the moral balance sheet would read differently if Whitaker’s belief that Richard and Joanna were lovers had made it into the script; Hartnell, reasonably, felt Saturday tea-time was not the right venue for sibling incest. Glover and Marsh do their best to smuggle the insinuation in, and their early scenes together are strikingly sensual even in audio format. Whether they’re good or bad, there’s no question that the guest characters are interesting, and even Hartnell reviving some of his Romans impishness for a subplot about the Doctor stealing some clothes can’t pull focus from them.

The question that kept coming to mind was: is this story, which falls so in love with its guest cast it builds all the plot around them rather than the regulars, really more forgivable than a later story which gets stick for the same crime, such as Attack of the Cybermen? Well, yes, if only because David Whitaker imitating Shakespeare is a better experience than Eric Saward imitating James Cameron – but the fundamental problem is the same, and the ending basically admits it. Rather than build up to any kind of denouement, the Doctor, Ian, Vicki and Barbara simply leave in the TARDIS rather than risk getting into any more trouble. Whitaker, too, would make his escape from the pure historical genre after this. He took the next year off and returned with a story that, rather than obeying the rule book for Doctor Who, rewrote it completely.

Next: The Space Museum (1965)

Graham’s Archive – The Crusade

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