012 - Doctor Who and the Crusaders

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Back on Earth again, Tardis lands DOCTOR WHO and his

friends into the midst of the harsh, cruel world of the twelfth-

century Crusades. Soon the adventurers are embroiled in the

conflict between Richard the Lionheart and the Sultan

Saladin, ruler of the warlike Saracens...

‘They’re well-written books—adventure stories, of course,

but with some thought... the creation of the character of the

Doctor had a touch of genius about it.’

WESTMINSTER PRESS

ISBN 0 426 11316 0

DOCTOR WHO

AND THE

CRUSADERS

Based on the BBC television serial by David Whitaker by

arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation

DAVID WHITAKER

published by

The Paperback Division of

W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd

A Target Book

Published in 1973

by the Paperback Division of W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd.

A Howard & Wyndham Company

44 Hill Street, London W1X 8LB

First published in Great Britain by Frederick Muller Ltd, 1965

Broadcasting Corporation

Printed in Great Britain by

The Anchor Press Ltd, Tiptree, Essex

ISBN 0426 11316 0

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way

of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise

circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published and

without a similar condition including this condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

Prologue

1 Death in the Forest

2 The Knight of Jaffa

3 A New Scheherazade

4 The Wheel of Fortune

5 The Doctor in Disgrace

6 The Triumph of El Akir

7 The Will of Allah

8 Demons and Sorcerers

Prologue

As swiftly and as silently as a shadow, Doctor Who’s Space and

Time ship, Tardis, appeared on a succession of planets each as

different as the pebbles on a beach, stayed awhile and then

vanished, as mysteriously as it had come. And 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.

But there had been changes inside the ship. Susan had gone,

left behind in an England all but destroyed in the twenty-first

century when the Daleks had attempted the conquest of Earth,

an invasion only just foiled by the Doctor. No decision was more

difficult for Susan or easier for her grandfather, who knew in his

heart that she must share her future with David Cameron, a

young man she had met and fallen in love with during that

terrible struggle between the Doctor and his arch-enemies.

Only Ian and Barbara, kidnapped by the Doctor from their

lives in the England of the 1960s and now his close friends, knew

the real aching sadness the loss of Susan meant to the old man,

and it was they who persuaded him to take a passenger a young

girl named Vicki whom they on as rescued from the planet Dido.

And, as the Doctor grew interested in the little, fair-haired

orphan and devoted more himself to care and well-being (which

Vicki repaid with a totally single-minded love and respect) his

friends were secretly overjoyed to see 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.

Ian and Barbara had changed too. Ian was now a deeply

tanned bronze, his body trained to the last minute, n single trace

remaining of the ordinary Londoner he had once been. But the

alteration wasn’t confined to muscle and sinew alone. Ian had

encountered situations beyond the concept of any young man of

his age. He had faced dangers and been forced to make decisions

a countless number of times, where not only his own life, but the

lives of others, stood in peril. Experience had proved to him that

strength and fitness alone weren’t enough in the sort of

emergencies he had to handle, and so he had turned his new life

to advantage, learned from it and improved by it, until his brain

was sharp and active, tuned to deal with whatever problems

might present themselves.

The change in Barbara was entirely different; harder,

perhaps, to find; a much more subtle thing. For unlike Ian, she

could have been put back in London in the old life she had

known, among friends and acquaintances and not one of them

would have found any major alterations to puzzle or bewilder

them. 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. For what

was totally new in Barbara grew and fostered inside the girl. She

had always had that sense of mystery about her, even on Earth in

her own time; she had always been very beautiful, her mind had

always reached ahead for answers and conclusions while others

struggled to grasp the situation. Now, 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. But always her eyes turned to Ian and their hands

were ready to reach out and touch, for, whatever world of the

future enmeshed them, they knew their destinies were bound up

in each other - the one sure thing, fixed and unalterable, in the

ever-changing life with the Doctor.

The question of change itself became the subject of a

conversation one evening in the Tardis, between Ian and the

Doctor. Barbara and Vicki were playing a game of Martian chess

– a complicated affair with seventy–two pieces – while the two

men rested on a Victorian chaise-longue facing the centre-

control column of the ship, for the Doctor’s eyes were never far

away from his precious dials and instruments. Behind them lay

the adventure of the talking stones of the tiny planet of Tyron, in

the seventeenth galaxy. Around them, the ship shivered faintly

as it hurled itself through Space and Time. A dozen minute tape-

recorder spools whirled frantically on one side, while hundreds

of little bulbs on the central control column glowed

intermittently, in a never-ending sequence. The a stately Ormolu

clock ticked its needless way through a time pattern which had

no meaning, kept in the ship purely for decoration. On the other

side of it, some twenty feet away on a tall marble column, stood

the magnificent bust of Napoleon Bonaparte. The pale gold of

the interior lighting of the Tardis shone down on the travellers

like warm after-noon sunshine.

The Doctor shifted his feet impatiently and then leaned

towards the Martian chess-board, darting out a rigid finger.

‘You’re forgetting the one important rule, Vicki, my dear,’

he said testily. ‘To marry your Princess to an opposing Lord, you

must bring up your Priest.’ He smiled apologetically at Barbara,

as Vicki nodded excitedly, moved up one of her pieces and

captured an enemy Lord.

‘I’m sorry, Barbara, but you did leave yourself open.’

Barbara looked at him indignantly.

‘I was planning to marry my Captain to her Duchess. Now

you’ve made me lose a dowry.’

The two girls started to bargain over the forfeit as the Doctor

sat back.

‘I’d better keep myself to myself,’ he muttered to Ian. He

wriggled himself into, a more comfortable position, crossing one

leg over the other and folding his arms. The polish on his elastic-

sided boots gleamed beneath the immaculate spats. The perfectly

tied cravat sat comfortably beneath the stiff, white wing-collar,

enhanced by a pearl stick-pin. No speck of dust or tiny crease

were anywhere in evidence on his tapered black jacket, with its

edges bound in black silk, on the narrow trousers, patterned in

black-and-white check. The long, silver hair hung down from the

proudly held head, obscuring the back of his coat collar. Gold

pince-nez, attached around the neck by a thin, black satin tape,

completed the picture Ian and Barbara had always known. For

the Doctor’s favourite costume was that of the Edwardian,

English gentleman of the early nineteen hundreds. Ian had

always thought the Doctor might have stepped straight out of the

drawings of the famous magazines of the period, The Strand or

Vanity Fair. And as Ian marvelled (for about the thousandth

time!) at the Doctor’s obsession with that one, short period of life

on Earth, when he had all space from which to choose, it

brought a question to his lips he had often wished to have

answered.

‘It’s often puzzled me how it is, Doctor, that we can visit all

these different worlds and affect the course of life. You most

confess we have interfered, often in quite a major kind of way.’

‘Always for the best intentions, and generally we’ve

succeeded,’ murmured the old man. Ian nodded.

‘That really isn’t my point, though. Why is it that when we

land on earth, with all the pre-knowledge of history at our

disposal, we can’t right one single wrong, make good the bad or

change one tiny evil? Why are we able to do these things on

other planets and not on Earth?’

Barbara and Vicki forgot their game and stared at the

Doctor, who pressed the fingers of his hands together and

thought for a moment before replying.

‘You see, Chesterton,’ he said eventually, ‘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. All we can do is

observe.’

‘What would happen if we cut those ropes and tried to

change something?’ asked Vicki.

‘Warn Napoleon he would lose at Waterloo?’ smiled the

Doctor. ‘It wouldn’t have any effect. Bonaparte would still

believe he could win and ignore the warning.’

‘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.’

‘Then we can never die on Earth,’ said Ian.

The Doctor said, ‘We do not have everlasting lives, my

friend. Of course we can die on Earth or anywhere else, just as

we can catch colds or suffer burns. Try and understand.’

The Doctor leaned forward and, as he did so, a part of his

face slipped into a shadow.

‘Often our escape clause on Earth has been that we have pre-

knowledge that some awful catastrophe is going to happen. We

would know when to leave Pompeii. We would not go fishing on

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摘要：

BackonEarthagain,TardislandsDOCTORWHOandhisfriendsintothemidstoftheharsh,cruelworldofthetwelfth-centuryCrusades.SoontheadventurersareembroiledintheconflictbetweenRichardtheLionheartandtheSultanSaladin,rulerofthewarlikeSaracens...‘They’rewell-writtenbooks—adventurestories,ofcourse,butwithsomethought....

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012 - Doctor Who and the Crusaders

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