The Crusade

DOCTOR: Having been stolen once, they can be stolen again, or perhaps borrowed, shall we say, hmm? 
 

CHAMBERLAIN: You stole some clothing.

DOCTOR: Really?
CHAMBERLAIN: You see this riding habit? It was taken from this very room. Now it is back here again.
DOCTOR: And a pretty poor garment, too.
CHAMBERLAIN: This and this, stolen from me.
DAHEER: And stolen from me.
DOCTOR: Yes, now there really is a point there, isn't there? If I stole from you, my lord Chamberlain, how could I steal from him?
DAHEER: You did. You did steal from me.
DOCTOR: Then how could I steal from him, eh, you blockhead?

SALADIN: Let him have all liberty except liberty itself.

DAHEER: When the sun rises I shall be here to transform the boy into a veritable strutting peacock.

IAN: I am Sir Ian, my lord, Knight of Jaffa.

• When you mix Bernard Kay's compelling performance with David Whitaker's intelligent writing and Douglas Camfield's smart directing you get something quite special. It's only a shame Saladin isn't on screen more. Top notch from all three of them. 
• El Akir's main guard (I don't know his name as his character doesn't seem to have one) is an awful actor. He only gets a few lines, but he manages to convey an impressive amount of awfulness. To be fair, it must be difficult to get too much motivation to really act convincingly for lines like, "he was going to slay me" when it's such a small job with just a few lines. 
  
• Once against the Doctor and Vicki spend most of the story mucking about while Ian and Barbara go through relative degrees of hell. Not that it really matters. As I've mentioned often enough already, Hartnell and O'Brien are such an enjoyable team. The subplots about Vicki being a boy and with the stolen clothes are gold. It's such a shame that the clothes scene quoted above is from the lost episode two. It's exactly the sort of comic performance Hartnell excels at. 
• I don't quite get why Haroun has been left in peace? He has sworn in public that he's going to kill El-Akir. Why hasn't El-Akir simply sent soldiers round to his house and had him killed? He doesn't exactly seem like someone with a conscience. Still, it does allow for Barbara to be all heroic, sacrificing herself to save Safiya. 
• Ian saving the Doctor at the end is very funny, as are all the "knight" puns the TARDIS crew throw at Ian once they've escaped. 
• This score is a little bit more Dudley Simpson than previously. Especially when it gets loud and frantic in episode four.

 

Verdict

I've never quite enjoyed the Crusade as much as the very best of the historicals. It doesn't feel quite as polished, and the way characters come and go seems a bit at random (Ibrahim has a couple of funny lines, but that whole section with him and Ian really just gets in the way when things need to be

wrapped up). The way the Doctor and Vicki simply wave goodbye to Richard and wander off just seems a bit odd. There are a lot of good things about the story, and plenty of top scenes, but I just don't feel it hangs together all that well as one story. Episode four is really quite messy structurally. That said, it is David Whitaker's first go at a four episode story, amazingly! It's nice that both sides of the Crusades are portrayed fairly and that the villain of the story isn't attached to either.