The Randomiser: The Crusade

As someone who basically grew up with the Target novelisations of Doctor Who, The Crusade is a very weird experience*. The Crusade is one of early Who's high-concept historicals, before the concept of a purely historical Doctor Who story was, essentially, cast aside. In The Crusade the Doctor and his companions must master the complex politics of the third Cruade in which Richard I faced off against Saladin. What is strange about it is that this is also one of the very early Doctor Who novelisations and I hadn't realised quite how much freedom David Whitaker had taken with the plot.

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I'm glad I saw this. It is a piece of Doctor Who that is attempting to do something that has not been attempted since the show abandoned its interest to educating about history. That said it is, in a way, more educational about the limits of studio-bound Doctor Who in the 1960s, and 1960s attitudes to race and class, than it is about the third Crusade itself. For a reader of the novelisations it is also weirdly different to expectations. Like at lot of Hartnell's shows, it is more interesting as a view upon avenues that have subsequently closed, than it is in and of itself.

*also I'm quite drunk, please attribute spelling errors accordingly.