Doctor Who: The Crusade
(4 episodes, s02e22-e25, 1965)
It’s Julian Glover! General Maximillian Veers, Walter Donovan, and Aris Kristatos! Instead of an Imperial soldier, a Nazi, or a Soviet sympathizer, this time he’s a rather petulant King Richard the Lionheart.
Ian gets to use some of the swordfighting skills he’s learned over the last couple of years, and he gets knighted as well. The Doctor gets to display his interesting morals (once stolen clothes are fair to be stolen again), and displays a couple of character traits I’m glad have survived into the modern era (he does not suffer fools and cherishes bravery). The Doctor and Vicki really do have an adorable relationship, but the whole ruse of disguising Vicki as a boy is quite a stretch, especially given the rather conspicuous curves and facial features.
This was a simple story, but engaging and entertaining. The second and fourth episodes I watched were reconstructed from recorded soundtracks and screen caps.
Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”
UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Space Museum
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
Creative Criticality 
This whole thing is incredibly well cast. In addition to Glover we have Jean Marsh, Bavmorda from Willow, as the Princess Joanna. We also have Bernard Kay as Saladin. He’s not a very well known actor but I think that he’s amazing as Saladin. In fact this whole story is amazing in how it depicts the Saracens. As a whole they’re a lot more likable than the English with all their court intrigue, selfishness, and overall childishness really. I do like that even though El Akir is our villain that he’s counter-balanced by the equally villainous Earl of Leicester on the English side. All-in-all it’s a very nice and even depiction of the two sides.
The writing is also superb. David Whitaker was the script editor for the first season of the show and he wrote Vicki’s first story so he knew the characters so well but he also just writes beautiful dialog. Some of it is actually in iambic pentameter. Then there is that wonderful fight between Richard and Joanna. It’s so wonderfully performed and the dialog takes you to all the right places. Fun Fact: Richard actually did try to marry Joanna to Saphadin to end the conflict but was blocked by her appealing to the Pope, so it’s also educational as it was intended to be. Great story, great review.
[…] Paris and the relatively tight story. The antagonist is Julian Glover, last seen in Doctor Who as King Richard the Lionheart, but also in some of my faves as General Maximillian Veers, Walter Donovan, and Aris Kristatos, […]
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[…] During this tale, King Richard is fighting the Crusades, and met the First Doctor during The Crusade. About twenty-five years down the road, the Fifth Doctor met Kamelion masquerading as King John in […]