DOCTOR WHO AND THE CRUSADERS
by David Whitaker
First published 17 February 1966*, between The Sea Beggar and Priest of Doom (That's War of God, episodes two and three to normal people)
*Based on the Popular Television Series, ed. Paul Smith
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"Had its safety device been of much wider sort ... there would be no chronicles about Doctor Who"
And so, with the last novelisation of the 1960s and (sadly) Whitaker’s last contribution to the range, the Tory urges of Doctor Who become an actual problem rather than just an amusing sideshow. The Doctor urges that humanity must ‘control greed, destructive ambition, hatred and the dozen and one other flaws’ from which they suffer but, without the creative inputs of producers, directors and actors, the books themselves remain terribly constrained by one of those flaws, offering a far less modern outlook on the world than the one Whitaker helped to shape on television.
Whitaker use of his inexorable motion of history is analogous with the tangled web of world politics he presents. When Richard seeks to override the concerns of those around him with an assertion of his authority, he finally appreciates how badly he has misplayed his hand, the ‘awful realisation’ that he is not the ultimate allegiance to which his followers swear only hitting him when Joanna threatens to turn to the Pope and reduce Richard to ‘a hated shadow’ even though he has already had a warning in the way John has sought to sure up his position in England. In this, he is contrasted with Saladin, victor of this campaign, who manages his alliances carefully despite loss of face, as with El Akir, and always plans always for the worst: ‘Malec Ric is, as I say, sincere […] you reply softly to the letter while I call sharply to our forces’. The powerlessness of the Doctor in the face of history is matched by historical figures’ powerlessness in the face of the political relationships they navigate – Saladin wins because he tends the allegiances that maintain his power, the Doctor must flee because he has become allied to two conflicting sides and Richard fails because he views himself as above the need for politicking until it is too late.
But Whitaker isn’t just idly speculating in a fiction about the difficulties faced by time travellers. History also sweeps those of the time along in its wake. Richard’s plan seems humane and selfless, if morally problematic; he wants to ‘stem the blood’ of ‘half the world’ at the cost of one person, even though Joanna seems the person he holds closest and his own instincts seem to fight against his proposed solution. The problem is that Richard’s plan is at odds with his time; such a peace is impossible when soldiers such as Leicester view the sole purpose being in Palestine as to ‘fight’ and Joanna is so loathe to the enemy she views the prospective terms as ‘a pact with the Devil’.
Whilst Ian and Barbara are engaged in an adventure about surviving a different era, the core of the book (and I don’t think it’s the core of the TV episodes despite it clearly being there, though that might be my mistake, especially with the missing episodes) is about how unavoidably wed the Doctor and Vicki’s safety is tied to Richard’s doomed plan for peace. Whitaker wastes no time in establishing both sides of this problem, the Doctor immediately realising, when Joanna asks for his help, that he and Vicki’s safety is ‘tenuous’ and that events are ‘enmeshing’ them, and the narrative making it clear at the very moment that Richard frames his plans that they will be ‘shredded into pieces and blown away’ by Joanna.
According to a 1966 Times Literary Supplement review, Doctor Who and the Crusaders is ‘An undistinguished historical story … neither helped nor hindered by the intrusion of the ubiquitous Doctor’. This seems to miss the point rather as the book is clearly not a historical story at all, preferring to tell us Richard and Palestine’s eventual fate through the Doctor’s mouth as a coda. Indeed, the reviewer’s description of the Doctor as an ‘intrusion’ is the key to his misunderstanding; this is a Doctor Who story and, tellingly, once the Doctor seeks safety by dropping out of Richard’s court, Richard drops out of the narrative, not even turning up to hunt for the Doctor, that being done by seemingly independently by Leicester. Whitaker is more concerned with history as a concept rather than history as a sequence of events and goes to a lot of effort to set out his stall and his intent right at the very bloody start. Did the reviewer miss all the weird stuff about Earth’s ‘Time pattern’?
‘An undistinguished historical story … neither helped nor hindered by the intrusion of the ubiquitous Doctor’
David J Howe: The Target Book (quoting a 1966 Time Literary Supplement review).
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The Doctor realises he and Vicki must flee the court: ‘what had been a peaceful haven, a most reliable refuge for him and Vicki, while Ian went in search of Barbara, had now become a place full of menace, where at any moment hands might descend and drag the pair of them away and thrust them into some dark dungeon from which they might never merge’ – there’s a nice balance in the idea that the threat to the Doctor and Vicki is that they will be made to disappear, forgotten forever in an unlit dungeon, and that the solution to their problem is to disappear out of Richard’s world of their own accord.
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When Joanna asks the Doctor to find out what Richard’s planning: ‘Somehow or other, he told himself, he most wriggle out of the net of court intrigue which seemed to be enmeshing him. His place at the court of King Richard, and Vicki’s, was tenuous enough already, without adding fresh difficulties. But he could see no way out for the present, and just had to hope that either Richard would make his plans public or that Joanna wouldn’t press him too much’ - The Doctor sees the dangers but has played no part in making them and can do nothing to free himself. He is helpless in the face of history.
Whitaker doesn’t play with suspense: ‘in any case in a few short hours the whole grand plan for peace was shredded into pieces and blown away. For there was one factor the King had over-looked.
‘Joanna’. – Importantly, ‘Joanna' is a line all of its own.
The purpose of all this is the manner of and speed with the noose ties around the Doctor’s neck not the possibility of a non-historical outcome.
‘To know this bond will sheath the swords of half the world...? To stem the blood, bind up the wounds and heal a host of men, and give them lives and futures...? Now there’s marriage contract which puts sacrifice to shame and makes a Saint of any woman’
‘Joanna linked arms with her brother’
And, of course, the hint of incest: ‘“I have given him no cause for such attentions,” she went on hurriedly, as she saw her brother’s eyes darken’
Richard on Leicester’s objections to his plan: ‘arguments for which he had, if the truth be told, a greater sympathy than the peaceful solution he was advocating’
‘Why are we here in this foreign land, if not to fight’
‘The very reason you are here in Palestine is the reason on my side. Are you not here to recapture the Holy City; fight the heathen invaders? If you marry me to one of them, Richard, you make a pact with the Devil’
‘I am the King. I command you’
‘“Look to Rome.” Richard stared at her, the awful realization of what she implied seeping through him’
‘Force me to it, and I’ll turn the whole world into your enemy. Yours will be a hated shadow, even to your family and friends. I swear that I will demand of His Holiness that he bring down upon you the brand of excommunication!’
‘John, my brother, finds a thirst for power in England; drinking great draughts of it, although it is not his to take. He’s planning to usurp my throne, and so trades with my enemy, Philip of France!’
Saladin on not confronting El Akir over Barbara: ‘she is just one woman, Sir William. El Akir, for all his villainies, is an ally. He commands an army upon which I may have to rely in time of battle. I cannot quarrel with him until his use to me is over’
‘Malec Ric is, as I say, sincere. But his mind is like the shifting sands. If it goes ahead, I will support it, to the hilt. But, brother, I beg of you not to rely on it coming to this favourable end … this is a gesture of peace from a weary man. But weary men can rest and rise invigorated... so you reply softly to the letter while I call sharply to our forces’
‘Modern people though they were, they had stepped into a world of chivalry and barbarism and Ian had not failed her. She had needed him and he had come for her’
‘I have a friend, a very wise, well-travelled man who spoke to me on the subject of religions once. In the West, three main streams dominate: Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity. In the East, the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Moslem rival Janism, Sikhism, Parsee and Shinto. But what is the sum total? That all people, everywhere, believe there is something mightier than themselves. Call it Brahma, Allah or God – only the name changes. The little Negro child will say his prayers and imagine his God to be in his colour. The French child hopes his prayers will be answered – in French. We are all children in this matter still, and will always be – until colours, languages, custom, rule and fashion find a meeting ground’
‘“Your tender flesh,” he said hoarsely, “is about to feel my first caresses”’
Ian hears Barbara’s cries: ‘some violent and dreadful pain forcing more sound out of a tortured body to quell the shocked activities of heart and brain; a sound that bit its way into the conscience, begging to know why it had been made at all, reaching out a tremulous frond of agony to earn pity and peace’
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‘Until we know, until we can control greed, destructive ambition, hatred and the dozen and one other flaws that plague us, we are not worthy to breathe’
Whitakerisms - History
On not changing Earth history: ‘the fascination your planet has for me is that its Time pattern, that is, past, present and future, is all one – like a long, winding mountain path. When the four of us land at any given point on that path, we are still only climbers. Time is our guide. As climbers we may observe the scenery. We may know a little of what is around a coming corner. But we cannot stop the landslides, for we are roped completely to Time and must be led by it’. Even more baffling: ‘“Suppose one were to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1930, then?” suggested Barbara. The Doctor shook his head. “But Hitler wasn’t assassinated in 1930, was he? No, Barbara, it would be impossible. Once we are on Earth, we become a part of the history that is being created and we are subject to its laws as the people who are living in that period.”’ Of Clive of India’s gun not working when he tried to commit suicide: ‘Time, that great regulator, refused to let the man die before things were done that had to be done’. And: ‘If Rasputin is to die, no will to survive by that extraordinary man, no black arts, no personal power, can save him’. Time sounds very much like God or Fate here and only works on Earth.
Height Attack!!
Richard is 'a tall, dark-haired man'
Sir William is a 'tall huntsman'
Luigi Ferrigo is 'a tall, well-dressed man'
The Chamberlain is 'a tall, dignified figure'
Saladin's guards are 'magnificently tall fighting warriors'
Are You Sitting Comfortably..?
(or 'Doctor Who goes Jackanory')
The Tardis: ‘Had its safety device been of much wider sort, of course, it is more than likely it would have detected the presence of the coming struggle in the little forest outside Jaffa. But, of course, if its sensitivity had been so fine there would be no chronicles about Doctor Who’
Whitakerisms - The Prologue
The prologue is lovely, setting up the Doctor (‘the real aching sadness the loss of Susan meant to the old man’ and ‘a new and vigorous spring in the Doctor’s step, a happy gleam in his eye and a fresh interest in the unknown adventures that lay ahead’), briefly establishing Vicki (even though she was in Doctor Who and the Zarbi), and showing how Ian (‘a deeply tanned bronze, his body trained to the last minute, no single trace remaining of the ordinary Londoner he had once been […] his brain was sharp and active, tuned to deal with whatever problems might present themselves’) and Barbara (‘unlike Ian, she could have been put back in London in the old life she had known, among friends and acquaintances […] The golden tan on her skin might have come from a long holiday in the West Indies. Her superb physical condition could be explained away by regular visits to a gymnasium […] life inside the Tardis had given full reign to her air of mystery, and the adventures outside it had deepened her love for life in all its various forms, maturing her sense of values, giving her the ability to taste the joys and sorrows of existence to the absolute last drop. Where her face and form had conjured up beauty in the eye of any beholder, now beauty radiated from within and trebled her physical attractions, making her the admiration and desire of all who met her’) have changed. However, I don’t know how I feel about the Barbara one – it at once sets her up as much more complex than Ian but also manages to completely objectify her (setting her up as an object of indiscriminate desire) whilst seemingly attempting to do the exact opposite (as her attraction radiates from within).
There is, however, some hope to be had in the world beyond the courts of Richard and Saladin, with Ian and Barbara’s adventures featuring the redemption of thieves (Ibrahim), the downfall of tyrants (El Akir), the reunion of families (Haroun) and the freeing of slaves (El Akir’s harem). These are explicitly framed as adventures in ‘a world of chivalry and barbarism’ despite the characters coming from the modern era and so Whitaker shows how action is in fact possible despite the constraints of history. Fortunately, this means that Whitaker’s moral, that progress can only come when different ‘colours, languages, custom, rule and fashion find a meeting ground’ is not a mere glib prophecy from the future, where everything’s better, but an actual actionable outlook in any era, demonstrated by the unlikely alliances that have led to Ian’s rescue of Barbara.
Unfortunately, gender doesn’t really get a look in and so Whitaker excludes half the world from his celebration of the capacity for agency - even Joanna, the highest-status woman in the tale and the one whose will triumphs over Richard’s, draws her strength through Leicester’s support and the Pope’s authority. Haroun works alone to seek vengeance for the death of his wife and kidnap of his elder daughter whilst his other daughter is kept at home and becomes solely responsible for helping El Akir’s liberated harem, which he will do through marriages or returning them to their fathers. Barbara, meanwhile, a modern woman, is left dependent on Ian (‘She had needed him’) and does not even get to assert her perspective on events, with El Akir’s looming threat of violence switching straight to Ian’s overhearing her cries of pain, mounting her rescue, wrapping her up and whisking her away. This is especially frustrating because Barbara has so many moments where she resists, frustrates and outwits El Akir and his guards throughout the story but, at the crucial moment, none of this is used to play into Ian and Haroun’s opportunity to stage a rescue.
Miscellania
Whitaker’s quite the tease: ‘the adventure of the talking stones of the tiny planet of Tyron, in the seventeenth galaxy’
The Doctor is very much the hero version by now: ‘whatever alien world it was that received him and his fellow travellers, and however well or badly they were treated, the Doctor always set things to rights, put down injustice, encouraged dignity, fair treatment and respect’
More character-defining for the Doctor: ‘It was the Doctor’s very personal and peculiar strain of individuality that made him capable of bridging all the different places he visited, accepting them on their own terms. He would land abruptly in a new world as a stranger and yet, all at once, become a part of that world; reaching out with curiosity and friendly interest to such a great degree that people assumed him to be no more than an ordinary visitor from across a range of mountains, or from over a small sea’
Barbara and Ian are very much a couple in Whitaker's world – ‘always her eyes turned to Ian and their hands were ready to reach out and touch’
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