4 episodes
Aired between 27th March 1965 and 17th April 1965
Written by David Whittaker
Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Synopsis
King Richard the Lion heart and his band of merry knights are having a lark in the forests of Jaffa, when they're attacked by a band of Saracens. Luckily for them, the TARDIS had materialised in the same forest, and when Ian hears the battle, takes up a sword and joins in, fighting the Saracens off.
He discovers afterwards, that Barbara was captured by the Saracens and taken away, along with one of the knights, William Des Preaux, who used his wits and proclaimed that he was King Richard, when the real King was lying on the floor, wounded. This allows the real king to escape.
Once the battle is over, the group find another wounded knight - William De Tornebu. William explains that Des Preaux and Barbara will have been taken to Saladin for judgement, thus revealing to the Doctor that they have landed in the midst of the Crusades. Ian is desperate to find Barbara again, but the Doctor says they will have better luck if they will return De Tornebu to King Richard, along with his kingly belt. They can use the act of good faith as a bargaining chip to get help in bringing Barbara back.
In Saladin's camp, Des Preaux tells Barbara of his ruse, and says that if she wants protecting too, she must pretend to be the King's sister, Princess Joanna. The ruse works, and the prisoners are taken by a Saracen general known as El Akir, before Saphadin, Saladin's brother as the king and princess of England.
To aid with their negotiations, the Doctor and Vicki go to the local market, where they shoplift some European clothes from a trader who takes them off Saracen soldiers to sell on as his own wares.
Faced with Des Preaux and Barbara, Sapahdin sees straight through the ruse, and berates El Akir. The pair are joined by Saladin himself who is insulted when the hapless general proposes to make Barbara walk over hot coals. He agrees to keep Des Preaux hostage, and Barbara is to stay at the camp for entertainment, but they are to be treated humanely.
Fearing for her safety, the Doctor makes Vicki dress up as a boy and use the name Victor. Once they've bandaged Des Tornebu up, Ian, Vicki and the Doctor take him and the belt back to King Richard who is having a tantrum at the loss of life caused by the Saracen siege. Against the Doctor's urging, Ian asks King Richard to help them rescue Barbara.
The sulking King refuses, but is soon talked round by De Tornebu and the Doctor, on the embarrassment that Saladin will obviously face when he's made aware that he captured a false King.
El Akir is the one who's smarting from embarrassment and shame however. He decides to get his revenge on Barbara by hiring a Geonese merchant by the name of Luigi Ferrigo. The merchant pretends to help Barbara escape, but instead delivers her into the arms of El Akir who takes her away to Lydda.
The Doctor and Vicki attend the court and befriend the Kings sister, Joanna.
Little do they know that the sneaky merchant whom they stole off has also come to court. He accuses the Doctor of theft, and the royal Chamberlain. Using his quick wits and logic, the Doctor convinces the Chamberlain that the merchant is using stolen goods, therefore they cannot be stole twice, and thus he's committed no crime.
King Richard readies a party to send to negotiate with Saladin, and knights Ian, allowing him to go and do the talking to release Barbara and Des Preaux. He also authorises Ian to arrange the marriage of Joanna to Saphadin in order to stop the warfare.
When Ian goes to Saladin's camp, he is brought Des Preaux, but discovers that Barbara has escaped.
And what of Barbara? She reaches Lydda with El Akir, but manages to get away and runs through the alleyways, hiding from the guards.
As she skulks in the shadows, a hand covers her mouth. It is the hand of Haroun Ed-Din, a local resident of Lydda who hates El Akir's guts since he killed Ed-Din's wife and son, and kidnapped one of his daughters. Ed-Din takes her back to his house where he introduces her to his daughter, Safiya.
At court, Joanna overhears the Doctor discussing Vicki's disguise with him, and finds out that Vicki is a *gasp* girl.
At first, Joanna is offended that her and the King were deceived, but when the Doctor explains the reason for the ruse, she's fine. In fact, she goes as far as calling the Chamberlain and ordering him to get Vicki a good quality dress. The Chamberlain is flummoxed at the idea of Vicki being a girl, and even more so at the thought of buying the dress with the Kings money, but he does as he's told.
Vicki tells the Doctor she's relieved, as she was worried that somehow her dressing up as a boy meant he was going to leave her there. He calls her silly and gives her a nice cuddle.
Ed-Din tells Barbara to hide in the house, whilst he goes to see if the guards have left. He gives Barbara his own dagger and tells her to kill his daughter and then herself, should El Akir find them. Barbara doesn't like that idea, but takes the dagger anyway.
As soon as Ed-Din leaves his home, he runs into a guard and immediately checks his belt for his dagger (a bit absent minded it seems). Ed-Din ends up getting knocked unconscious when he discovers it's not there. The guards search Ed-Din's house but luckily, Barbara and Safiya had already gone into a secret room to hide.
Barbara decides she can't kill Safiya and tries to escape instead, but is captured and taken back to El Akir.
On his way back to Jaffa, Ian is mugged by bandits in his sleep. He wakens and fights them, but is knocked out in the process.
Back at court, King Richard shares his plan to marry Joanna to Saphadin with his knight commanders. The Earl of Leicester thinks the plan is absolutely preposterous and is quite certain that the only way to end the war is by killing the Saracens. The Doctor takes the King's side and shouts down the Earl, making an enemy of him.
In the Saracen camp, Saladin discusses the prospect of the marriage with his brother, Saphadin, who is all for the wedding. Saladin doesn't care if Saphadin is married to Joanna or not, he's still skeptical that the King will keep his word and end the war.
When they leave the Kings presence, Joanna asks the Doctor what they discussed, but he refuses to say, indicating that the King will tell her himself. She goes away and finds out though from the Earl of Leicester. As soon as she sees the King, she goes bananas and refuses to be married off to an infidel.
The King presumes that the Doctor revealed his plan to her prematurely, and orders him out of his sight.
Barbara is taken before El Akir who is slightly annoyed at the humiliation and trouble she's caused him. He makes it clear that he intends to torture her for a while before she's allowed to die. He offers his guards gold to do whatever they want to her.
Barbara wrestles free and knocks El Akir's gold to the floor. Whilst the guards scramble to pick it up, she escapes, El Akir and the guards search their camp, even checking the Harem. The girls in the Harem say they haven't seen Barbara, but as soon as El Akir leaves, they tell her to come out of hiding. It turns out that one of the Harem girls is Ed-Din's daughter, The girls agree to help Barbara.
When Ian wakes up, he finds that he's bound to stakes pegged to the desert floor. The thief, Ibrahim, tells Ian that he's got to pay a ransom for his freedom, otherwise he'll leave him to die in the desert. Ian professes that he doesn't have any money, so Ibrahim smears honey on Ian and sits under the shade of a nearby tree, waiting for ants to come along.
Back at court, the Earl of Leicester has had enough of the Doctor and accuses him and Vicki of treason against the King. As they argue, the King enters and tells Leicester to ready the knights for battle, seeing as Joanna will not marry. When Leicesters gone, he apologises to the Doctor and Vicki, saying he knows that it was Leicester who told Joanna the plan, but admits that the knight is too valuable for the King to deal with. The Doctor asks permission to get out of there, and the King agrees, knowing that he'll eventually be killed if he stays.
The Earl talks to one of his men and tells him to watch the Doctor and Vicki closely, believing them to be treacherous witches and wizards.
Meanwhile, as the ants get closer, Ian bluffs that he's hid his money in his shoe. The greedy Ibrahim believes him, and when he loosens the binding of Ian's foot, Ian kicks him to the ground and tears out the stakes. He promises to kill Ibrahim unless he takes Ian to Lydda. Obviously the thief agrees.
As Barbara makes an escape plan in the Harem, one of the girls leaves and sells her out. Whilst she is confronted by El Akir, Ian arrives at the city to find a dead guard.
El Akir has decided it's best just to kill her, but before his sword can fall, he is killed by Ed-Din who turns out to be fine. Ian arrives just in time to help dispatch some guards who are about to attack Ed-Din. He and Barbara escape back to Jaffa, paying the thief gold from El Akir's purse.
At the forest of Jaffa, the Doctor and Vicki realise that they've been followed back to the TARDIS by the Earl of Leicester and his guards. The Doctor tries to sneak back to the ship, but is caught.
Vicki manages to get to the TARDIS and surprisingly meets up with Barbara.
Together they watch as Ian bluffs the Earl of Leicester into letting him "kill" the Doctor for his treasonous acts. The Doctor asks to see Jaffa one final time before he dies, and the Earl grants the request, allowing Ian to take him away.
Finally free of the guards the companions meet up at the TARDIS and quickly leave.
Once in flight, they all have a good laugh at the ruse, but the joviality is short lived as the lights go dim and the group are all frozen in time.
Trivia
- As you can see from the above, this is the first full adventure that Douglas Camfield directed.
- Looking at it today, the Crusade is still horribly prejudiced towards black and ethnic minority people who should have occupied the Saracen roles, with the fact that the main characters are all portrayed by white people browned up. However, unlike just about every other piece of British TV in 1965, there are different ethnic groups represented on screen. You'll note of course that they never share a scene with William Hartnell, and the reason wasn't because he didn't want to steal their limelight.
- The shoplifting merchant scene, despite its dubious morals, is another injection of humour into a relatively serious story
- The arguments between the King and the Earl of Leicester, and equally those between the King and Joanna are all rather well acted.
- The dilemma Barbara's put in when Ed-Din asks her to kill his daughter should they be captured
- The first bit with the merchant is quite amusing
What didn't work
- As if I have to say it, but .... the browned up faces.
- I have no idea whether King Richard really was a big baby, but his tantrums are annoying.
- Ian's capture and elaborate death trap. What was the point, when he could tear the stakes from the ground?
- I'm not sure about the bit with Ed-Din. If the soldiers knocked him unconscious, how did he come back to kill El Akir?
Overall Feelings
Given the amount of serials around this time that had people running around forests in tights, firing bows and wielding swords, it seems surprising that this story appears as far in as it is. Like the Reign of Terror, school kids in those days would know generally more about this period than the ones of today, so there's no need for introducing the main characters, or even explaining why Saladin's Army is fighting King Richard.
Fair enough. But if all the pleasantries and exposition is out of the window, that means there's more time to pick up where the Roman's story left off, and give us a tour de force of all the stereotypical bits we can expect to see in the Crusades right? Wrong!
Admittedly, a lot of them are there, but no mention is made of the Templar's, and there's certainly no great battles waged in the searing Arabian sun. The reason for the latter is obvious, there wasn't the room, manpower or budget to cope with that, so we have to do things in the court of King Richard instead. This is fair enough too, but you don't need to watch it more than once to get the concept that really...nothing happens. at all.
The entire plot revolves around Barbara being captured by the Saracens. She is brought into a ruse to stay alive, but that's seen through straight away. There's an interesting plot thread set up where she will have to tell stories to Saladin or die, and then it's promptly never touched again, there's a vengeful villager who gets knocked out and only turns up at the last moment, and then she's rescued. Even in King Richard's court, there's an interesting bit where the King tries to stop the war by marriage, but his sister refuses and that's the end of it.
Rating
4 out of 10
There's so much that could have been done, that was just left. A real shame.
Rewatchability Factor
3 out of 10
Watch what? There's nothing to watch
Watch this if you liked...
Do you think this story would fare better if the missing episodes were found. What scene would you be most interested in watching?
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