Science Fiction

You arrived?

Yes, in a box.

From the utterly fantastical, web-filled world of Vortis, our intrepid travellers careen back to Earth’s middle ages, landing just outside of Jaffa, where they encounter Crusaders doing battle with Saracens. And you know what? They don’t find that strange one bit. It’s taken them some fourteen stories, but in “The Crusade” (Story Production Code P), our jaded time travellers no longer display amazement at what they discover outside the TARDIS doors. If it’s Tuesday, it must be the Levant, ho hum.

Even when they meet King Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, there’s no real sense of wonder. Ian only wants to persuade Richard, one of the most mythologized of British kings, to help him rescue Barbara (who was this story’s kidnap victim and court intrigue player, just as she was in our last historical, “The Romans“), expecting this favor as payment for the return of the king’s shiny gold belt.

Indeed, the parallels between “The Crusade” and “The Romans” are striking—Barbara is separated from the group and used as a pawn in various court intrigues (Saladin’s court, in this case); Ian spends the entire story trying to rescue her and engaging in sword fights; and the Doctor and Vicki pal around with historical personages, dress in period clothing, talk about changing history, and have a few laughs while narrowly escaping at the end.

Given these similarities, why, then does “The Crusade” rank as perhaps the finest historical story of all of Doctor Who‘s run? Simply put, the quality of the writing and the acting. David Whitaker’s script provides strong enough characterizations of the story’s historical figures that one does not balk at sequences without the Doctor or the companions. The writing itself flows gracefully—aside from some awkward sequences with Arab characters speaking broken English—resisting even William Hartnell’s legendary efforts at mangling lines.

But then, the story would also work without the Doctor and his companions. For all of Barbara’s escaping and running and being re-captured by the evil El Akir, the story centers on Richard’s attempts to end the war with Saladin; the strongest moments of the story revolve around Richard and his sister Joanna’s arguments over her proposed marriage to Saladin’s brother. It’s as though our time travellers were dropped into a BBC period drama and wander around at the margins of the story. Very little time is given to “sightseeing” and explanations of the strange world in which they’ve arrived. Too, the story remains essentially serious, with only a minor humorous aside featuring stolen court clothing, a tone that helps reinforce the laconic response of the travellers to meeting such significant historical figures.

So what makes “The Crusade” a Doctor Who story other than the presence of the TARDIS?

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Whatever power has got hold of the TARDIS has taken your pen! Of course, ha ha! Now then, there’s something for us to solve!

No sooner do our temporal travellers extricate themselves from a web of Roman palace intrigues then they find themselves in a literal web, with the TARDIS trapped by an unknown force on the planet Vortis, better known as “The Web Planet” (Story Production Code N).

From the start, this story attempts to break new ground by creating an entirely alien world, both physically and narratively, with uneven results. One can see obvious seam lines in the background flats, and in an effort to provide a sense of space, the camera occasionally pans a bit too high, revealing the two-dimensionality of the background. Plus a man in an ant costume (a Zarbi) runs into a camera.

There’s plenty of running through corridors, multiple scene changes in each episode (since, of course, Ian gets separated from the Doctor and Vicki, and the three of them are separated from Barbara, all by the third episode), and often the scenery is jostled by actors. But given the limitations of studio shooting—not just spatial but temporal and financial as well— one can only applaud their willingness to go for it. In particular, the sound work, with an ominous chirping whenever the Zarbi appeared, helped strongly to carry off the ambitions of the visual effects team.

Speaking of the second episode of the story, “The Zarbi,” producer Verity Lambert noted:

This was an extremely difficult episode to do technically, in that there had to be a tremendous amount of scenery in the studio, and apart from the breaks necessary because of scene changes, there was the added problem that we had not used the Zarbi, except briefly in episode one, and it was impossible to tell until we got into the studio the kind of difficulties we would run into with dressing them and moving them from one scene to another.

(Quoted in Howe-Stammers-Walker, Doctor Who: The Handbook: The First Doctor)

They were, essentially, making it up as they went along in terms of putting an ambitious science fiction show on air in a tight time frame and an even tighter budget. So we can rightly forgive them any wires we see pulling the butterfly-like Menoptra through the air or the odd extra limbs on the pillbug-like Optera.

But can we forgive them for the plot?

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Oh, something else I forgot to tell you. I think I poisoned Nero.

Fresh off a literal cliffhanger of an ending in “The Rescue,” the tipping TARDIS lands on its side…and no one seems to care. After our time travellers flail about on the TARDIS, we find them lounging in ancient Rome, in a villa they’ve somehow managed to take over in its owner’s absence. They themselves have become “The Romans” (Story Production Code M).

Gradually it becomes obvious that a month has passed since the Doctor’s poor landing, and having for once not landed in a terrible situation that requires immediate action, everyone decides to take a holiday, leaving the TARDIS stuck on its side in a ditch. While the jump from the crashed TARDIS to our Roman revelers seems a bit jarring, the discontinuity allows for Vicki to have been integrated into the daily routine behind the scenes. She is at ease with everyone, particularly the Doctor, with whom she shares a blend of nonchalant curiosity and optimism. Throughout the story, Vicki will follow the Doctor around, accepting orders yet not allowing the Doctor to take himself too seriously. Where Susan had a certain reverence for her grandfather, Vicki respects the Doctor but retains a very real independent streak.

Still, we can’t have a Doctor Who story without something happening beyond character development (the thin plot of “The Rescue” notwithstanding), so the travellers split up (of course) and intrigues abound. All roads, indeed, lead to Rome.

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