Doctor Who and the Crusaders [Paperback]

"The Crusade", a classic Doctor Who adventure from Season 2 of the First Doctor, is a magnificent historical adventure like "The Aztecs", "The Romans" or "Marco Polo". Only 2 of the 4 episodes survived on film, so it's well worth reading the novel especially since already the audio recordings of the missing episodes made me aware of the excellent dialogues David Whitaker wrote. As a work of literature, one wouldn't think "Doctor Who and the Crusaders" belonged to a children's TV series. This new edition features a new introduction, new afterword, cover artwork which looks old-fashioned in a good way with the golden logo, in other words: it's just what I wanted instead of a battered old second-hand copy. I hope there's going to be more like this especially from the Lost Episodes years.

In the early development of the world's longest running Sci-fi tv series the producers set out to educate as well as entertain. So every so often the monsters and alien planets made way for a purely Terran historic story that usually involved the Doctor and crew getting separated from the Tardis early on, followed by a tricky entanglement in established history. The BBC excelled at this sort of thing. Unfortunately most kids preferred the weird worlds, ray guns and Daleks to Marco Polo, The Aztecs and massacred Huguenots. Schooling was for weekdays. Saturdays were for dreaming. I'll admit that I didn't see the original broadcast of The Crusade but I did have problems as an 8 or 9 year old with David Whitaker's novelisation of his own script. I made several attempts to start this one before abandoning it, but eventually I persevered, got into it and indeed enjoyed it. Perhaps it was the weighty prologue that balked me... I don't know. More likely is that it was just slightly ahead of my years. Even today the long conversation the Doctor has,(not present in the original script) trying to get to grips with the immutability of time is still pretty hard going and not a little confusing with its rock climbing analogies accompanied by Clive of India, Rasputin, Kennedy, Lincoln, Hitler and Napoleon. I'm still confused how it all ties in with how certain Earth history can't be changed due to what is right and wrong, and how it all ties in with wondering what would happen in a situation where two historic figures opposed each other, both for their own right reasons.
As a whole though I can look at the book today as something quite brilliant. In the entire Target range I don't think there is another title that expands the script so much. Whitaker does a great job of bringing Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and a host of supporting characters to life, with enough tangled scheming, adventure, richness of description and sparky dialogue to keep any student of history with a yearning for adventure happy. Perhaps there are a scene or two which are a little too protracted but I think it just underlines how much Whitaker was enjoying the chance to explore the subject matter. Half of the episode are still lost, episode one having been found in 1999, so reading this is a great way of filling that season 2 gap.
This new edition includes an introduction by Charlie Higson, original artwork, a feature on author David Whitaker and between the lines article about the script to novelisation process.

Okay, I admit it. As a boy I was never really a fan of the purely historical 'Doctor Who' stories. Monsters and spaceships and gothic spookiness were more my scene. But somehow this book won me over. Perhaps it was David Whitaker's beautiful writing, his wonderful characterisations or simply the engaging plotline. Or maybe it was the fact that it had Tom Baker on the cover (yes, our local lending library had that odd White Lion hardback edition). Whatever it was, this was one historical that drew me in and I borrowed this book from the library time after time. Truly a book to be savoured.