064 The Crusade Episode 1: The Lion

EPISODE: The Crusade Episode 1: The Lion
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 064
STORY NUMBER: 014
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 27 March 1965
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Douglas Camfield
SCRIPT EDITOR: Dennis Spooner
PRODUCER: Verity Lambert
RATINGS: 10.5 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Crusade Episode 1: The Lion

"We do not trade with Saladin today. Not today, nor tomorrow, nor any day henceforth."

Englishmen carrying swords walk through some woods. They are stalked by similarly armed Saracens, but both parties miss the Tardis silently materialising. In the woods is William de Tornebu, an ally of the King, Richard the Lionheart, out with his knights. William des Preaux wishes they return to Jaffa, but he refuses. Leaving the Tardis the travellers are ambushed by the Saracans and Barbara is captured by them. William des Preaux pretends to be Richard to protect the wounded king and is captured too. The Doctor, Ian and Vicki take William de Tornebu back to Jaffa & Richard's court, stealing clothes from the market stall of Ben Daheer on the way. Barbara and des Preaux are taken by El Akir to Saphadin, the brother of the Sultan Saladin, who mistakes them for King Richard and his sister Joanna. Saphadin and Saladin see through the deception but are intrigued by Barbara when she tells them of her journeys. William de Tornebu is delivered to the king, but the king is in foul mood and won't assist them: as far as he's concerned she can stay with Saladin until she rots.

I've said before that I'm not a great fan of the historical stories. This episode leaves me cold but I can't see anything actually wrong with it. It is a straight take on the story and as such mostly lacks the comedy elements of Reign of Terror and the Romans which I liked better.

When I first did a blog for this story I said

I mentioned when I started this that I'd been listening to lots of old Doctor Who stories on MP3. Well after listening to the stories I knew I hadn't heard I was suddenly struck that maybe I hadn't heard the missing episode for two of the near complete stories: The Reign of Terror & The Crusade. So I swiftly got them out the way so I could proclaim that I'd watched (listened) to every episode of Doctor Who. However as I'm sitting down to watch the Crusade now it strikes me that if I'd never heard those episodes before then,and I just listened to those episodes a few months ago, then I've never enjoyed this story all the way through in order before.....

For another story I've had trouble enjoying all the way through in see the Myth Makers and enjoy a very embarrassing tale.....

Back to write this series comes former script editor David Whitaker, who previously penned Edge of Destruction and The Rescue. Also returning is director Douglas Camfield for his first full story in that role having been Assistant Floor Manager on the pilot episode, An Unearthly Child and Marco Polo before directing the last recorded episode of Planet of Giants which was merged with it's predecessor to become the third and final broadcast episode of that story, which eventually was broadcast under Camfield's name.

Douglas Camfield very much starts as means to go on by casting Walter Randall, who'd already been Tonila in the Aztecs, as El Akir. Camfield uses him again in The Dalek Masterplan episodes 9 & 10: Golden Death & Escape Switch as Hyksos, Invasion as a Patrolman, and Inferno as Harry Slocum. He also appears in Planet of Spiders as the Guard Captain.

In the left of the above picture is a Saracen Warrior extra who I think is Roy Stewart, whom IMDB only credits for episode 4. He'll be back as Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen and the strongman in Terror of the Autons. He's most famous for playing Quarrel in the Bond film Live and Let Die.

Saphadin, on the left bellow, is played by Roger Avon who Camfield uses again in The Dalek Masterplan episode 4 The Traitors as Daxtar.

David Anderson, playing Reynier de Marun, was, like Walter Randall, also in The Aztecs as the Aztec Captain. Camfield uses him again too as Sven in the Time Meddler and an Egyptian Warrior in Dalek Masterplan 9: Golden Death

Playing William de Tornebu, bellow left, is Bruce Wightman. He too is in Dalek Masterplan playing Scott in episode 8, Volcano, before returning in Camfield's Terror of the Zygons as the Radio Operator.

Playing market trade Ben Daheer is Reg Pritchard. Camfield recalls him for The Dalek Masterplan episode 7: The Feast of Steven where he gets a neat little in-joke with the Doctor.

DOCTOR: (to the man) Haven't I seen your face before somewhere?
MAN: Where?
DOCTOR: Yes, of course, I remember now, yes. The marketplace at Jaffa.

He gets some humour here too as this exchange with William Hartnell shows:

DAHEER: My lord. You are from Pisa, my lord?
DOCTOR: No.
DAHEER: Genoa, then?
DOCTOR: I know of the place well.

Having made his debut on the first Doctor Who story An Unearthly Child (Production Assistant: Douglas Camfield) as the uncredited fight arranger, a role he repeated on The Aztecs: Temple of Evil, Derek Ware finally gets an on screen credit both as a Saracen Warrior and the fight arranger! Ware's group HAVOC would provide stunts for many Doctor Who stories. He returns in The Chase: The Planet of Decision as the Bus Conductor where he's uncredited in a location sequence shot by Camfield instead of the story's credited directed. He's an uncredited Trojan Soldier as well as the Fight Arranger in Myth Makers 4: Horse of Destruction before fight Arranging Dalek Masterplan 7: The Feast of Steven and appearing in episodes 9 & 10, Golden Death & Escape Switch, of the same story as Tuthmos. He's the Spaniard in episodes 1, 3 & 4 of The Smugglers - he fight arranges that last episode too, fight arranges episodes 1 & 4 of Camfield's Web of Fear as well as appearing in episode 4 as a soldier. He's The Ambassadors of Death: Episode 2 as a UNIT Sergeant and Episode 7 as a UNIT Soldier before playing Private Wyatt in episodes 1-3 of the next story, Camfield's Inferno. He fight arranges the fist episode of the story after that, Terror of the Autons before making his final, and possibly most famous, onscreen appearance in The Claws of Axos: Episode One as Pigbin Josh! I've struggled to get a clear image of him from elsewhere in the episode but Toby Hadoke reckons that he's the one who gets run through by the sword so....

The other credited Saracan is Valentino Musetti, another stuntman. He'd already been in Marco Polo episode 5 Rider from Shang-Tu as an uncrerdited Mongol Bandit. IMDB thinks he's in Dalek Invasion of Earth 1: World's End as an Egyptian Soldier but I'll bet that's a misplaced Dalek Masterplan credit because he is an Egyptian Warrior in the aforementioned episodes 9 & 10 of that story! He'll be back as a prisoner in Mind of Evil and an extra in Colony in Space & The Time Monster. (With thanks to Toby Hadoke for identifying both of these two for me!)

You know we've actors from episodes 4, 7, 8, 9 & 10 of Dalek Masterplan in this Episode. And so far we've found someone from every Camfield directed story bar the first, Planet of Giants, and the last, Seeds of Doom. I wonder if we can find enough actors in the rest of the story to account for the missing ones?

The Lion is another episode of Doctor Who that was missing and has been returned. The Crusade as a story was bought by New Zealand television but was never screened there and ended up in storage in Wellington. At some point The Lion was separated from it's three companions and in 1974 was scheduled to be destroyed in a landfill. However en route it and several (320!) other cans of film were "retrieved" by a local collector. We know from surviving paperwork that The Lion was the only Doctor Who episode in this batch of films scheduled for destruction. The episode passed through a number of hands before coming into the collection of Bruce Grenville. He showed it to some Doctor Who fans who identified it as missing and arranged for it's return to the BBC.

The recovered print is a suppressed field recording, lacking the detail found in stored fields recording, and is also quite badly damaged. It's by far the worst looking episode available on DVD - the damage is detailed at The Restoration Team's website article on the video release. The frame to the right illustrates some of the damage well: there's nasty tramline scratches down the print and there's a projector burn towards the bottom right which annoyingly moves around for a minute or so.

The episode was first released in a VHS set alongside the previously released episode 3. Linking narration was provided by William Russel, who played Ian Chesterton, and The Crusade was packed with the following story, The Space Museum. Both existing Crusade episodes are then presented as part of the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set, a collection of orphaned missing episodes. The Crusade episodes are the earliest Doctor Who episodes on the set, The Reign of Terror having been set aside for a separate release. Lost in Time also includes the audio recordings for the missing episodes of the Crusade. The Moonbase, the other four part story on the set for which two episodes survive, is also presented in this way and, unlike their CD releases, there's no added narration.

The full contents of the Lost In Time set, a total of 18 episodes, is:

First	The Crusade	1 & 3
	Dalek Masterplan	2, 5 & 10
	Celestial Toymaker	4
Second	Underwater Menace	3
	Moonbase	2 & 4
	The Faceless Ones	1 & 3
	Evil of the Daleks	2
	The Abominable Snowmen	2
	The Enemy of the World	3
	The Web of Fear	1
	The Wheel In Space	3 & 6
	The Space Pirates	2

The first time time I wrote about this episode I said

At the time of writing The Lion is the penultimate episode of Doctor Who to be returned to the archives.

The most recent episode returned when I wrote that was Dalek Master Plan 2: Day of Armageddon. Since then another Hartnell episode, Galaxy 4 episode 3: Airlock, and ten Troughton episodes, Underwater Menace 2 Enemy of the World 1-2 & 4-6 and Web of Fear 2 & 4-6 have all been recovered. So The Lion is the 13th most recently returned episode.

Lost in Time is a favourite DVD of mine containing lots of little glimpses into long lost Doctor Who stories: Episode two of The Dalek Masterplan, which was first presented on this set, both episodes of the Faceless Ones, Episode 2 of Evil of the Daleks and Episode 2 of Abominable Snowmen make this an essential purpose still even though these more recent recoveries and other developments make the presence of several episodes redundant:

Enemy of the World 3 now has all five of it's missing brethren back while another, Web of Fear 1, has had all bar the third episode of that story returned. Both stories are now available as their on DVDs. The Moonbase's two episodes are also available on a DVD this time with animation linking them. The Underwater Menace episode 3 has been reunited with it's predecessor and both were scheduled to be released on DVD, a trailer was present on the Web of Fear DVD, but this release has mysteriously vanished from the schedules with nobody at the BBC talking about when it's coming out. Oddly of all the stories with 50% or more of it's episodes existing The Crusade has never been seen to be considered for a DVD release with animation or even a Telesnap reconstruction which seems quite odd. If these 7 episodes were removed from Lost in Time and the also recovered Galaxy Four episode three Airlock added you'd have reasonable grounds for a reissue from the BBC, especially is they included the material from Galaxy Four episode one that got missed off the clips package last time. This would give a 12 episode lineup looking like this:

First	Galaxy Four	3
	Dalek Masterplan	2, 5 & 10
	Celestial Toymaker	4
Second	The Faceless Ones	1 & 3
	Evil of the Daleks	2
	The Abominable Snowmen	2
	The Wheel In Space	3 & 6
	The Space Pirates	2

Of course one reason for the lack of a Crusade with animation DVD release might be that the BBC are reasonably confident of getting the two missing episodes back......