Doctor Who and the Crusaders by: David Whitaker: This Room is Full of Arabs

 Doctor Who and the Crusaders is written by David Whitaker from his own story, The Crusade.  It was the 3^rd story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Doctor Who and the Crusaders is an interesting approach to a novelization as while it does go over the key events of the televised story.  The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki land during the time of the Third Crusade, Barbara is captured, Ian goes to rescue her while the Doctor and Vicki mess around in King Richard’s court.  The difference in this novel is that David Whitaker instead of just taking the events of the televised story and adapting them, he is no longer hampered by William Russell’s week long vacation for “The Wheel of Fortune”.  The novel focuses much more on Ian’s journey to meet with Saladin and how he ends up rescuing Barbara from El Akir.  It’s an adaptation that relishes in the fact that it can actually make some changes to the source material, especially since The Crusade as a story has a very flat ending without any real sense of accomplishment.  Doctor Who and the Crusaders however does create a sense of a complete story as we get an actual arc with how Ian feels towards Barbara.  Now nothing was ever really stated on television if Ian and Barbara were in a relationship, but Whitaker’s insight into the thoughts of Ian show just how much he has begun to realize that yes he does have feelings for her.  He is very subtle in creating the characterization but as the original script editor for the program he gets the job done rather well.  Whitaker also devotes more time to showing what effect the time travelling has had on Barbara which is much more of a mental change for her.  Her eyes were opened to the differences and the vastness in the universe.  This has created an appreciation in Barbara for just how good everything can be and an almost steel like resistance to the evil as always the good out ways the bad.  The bad in the novel is worse than in the televised story as although it is still the 1960s, the book gets away from the restrictions and has it very clear how awful El Akir actually is.

 

To summarize, Doctor Who and the Crusaders takes what was already a great television story and amplifies it by adding in a lot of character depth.  It fixes the flaws of “The Warlords” by telling both sides of the story, focusing on Ian’s journey to rescue Barbara and just what happened to Barbara.  This all happens without really leaving anything out in the adaptation process and Whitaker really did a good job of keeping everyone as in depth as they were on screen.  100/100