In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade to establish Christian possession of the Holy Land. Kings, nobles, their private armies, conscripts, villagers and peasants flocked to "take up the Cross". After seven crusades and nearly two centuries of bloodshed that achieved next to nothing, the last Crusader foothold in the east fell in 1291.

In 1096 the "People's Crusade", a poorly led, undisciplined and ill-equipped rabble, left Europe for the Holy Land. It ended in disaster, wiped out by Turks and Saracens without getting much further than Constantinople (Istanbul). Also in 1096 the First Crusade set forth, with more success. Three years later these Crusaders captured Jerusalem, and put its inhabitants to the sword. The popular image of gallant and chivalrous knights was far from reality. Success by the Turks in Edessa lead to a second Crusade in 1147, it captured Damascus but ended shortly after.

In 1169 Saladin became leader of the Saracens, and 18 years later invaded Palestine. A Third Crusade began, led by Richard the Lionheart of England and Philip II of France. The two leaders constantly quarrelled, and after taking Acre in 1191 Philip returned home leaving Richard in sole command. In the summer of that year, Richard began his march on Jerusalem. Richard would fail to take the city, the following year he concluded a treaty with Saladin and returned home.

Chroniclers of the above events neglect to mention the appearance of a strange blue box at Jaffa, between Acre and Jerusalem, in the year 1191.

`The Crusade' is arguably the best historical Doctor Who story ever. It is well-researched and written, and there is some great dialogue for the Doctor. The Crusade was also the first Doctor Who story in which established actors played guest roles, Julian Glover as King Richard, and Jean Marsh as his sister Joanna both give fine performances.

Julian Glover also played King Richard in the telemovie Ivanhoe, directed by Crusade's director, Douglas Camfield. He would return to play a Doctor Who villain 14 years after `The Crusade'.

Jean Marsh, at one time married to some chap called Pertwee, is perhaps best known for her role in the BBC series `Upstairs, Downstairs'. She would return to Doctor Who twice more; as Sara Kingdom in `The Dalek Masterplan', and Morgaine in the seventh Doctor story `Battlefield'.

`The Crusade' is the only significant material missing from Doctor Who's second season. Only Episode 3, `The Wheel of Fortune', survives. It can be found on the BBC compilation "The Hartnell Years".

In January 1999 episode one was recovered in New Zealand. The following is an account of it's recovery by Steve Roberts:

"In the middle of 1998, Bruce Grenville, a film collector in Auckland, New Zealand was attending a film collectors fair when he happened across a 16mm print of 'The Lion' in a pile of bargain-priced films. He was not aware of its rarity value, but bought it anyway, for the princely sum of five dollars! In early January 1999, rumours of the existence of the print reached New Zealand 'Doctor Who' fan Neil Lambess, who was able to arranged for it to be screened for himself and Paul Scoones of the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club, who immediately contacted Steve Roberts by e-mail to break the good news. Paul was able to convince Bruce to loan the film print to the BBC and only eight days later it had arrived safely in the UK."

"Strangely, although the episode was found in New Zealand, it was never actually screened there. Research in New Zealand suggests that the story possibly received a 'Y' rating rather than the family-viewing 'G' that other transmitted stories received. BBC Enterprises did send a full set of prints, however, and it seems likely that the rediscovered print is one of those. The film traffic records for this episode, and indeed a number of others, show that it was not returned to the BBC or destroyed by NZBC (now TVNZ), but instead was sent to a mysterious location marked only as 'H S'. Research by TVNZ's technical manager, Nigel Windsor, indicates that this probably means 'Hill Street', a storage facility in Thorndon, Wellington. From there it appears to have gone out to be dumped at a landfill site along with many hundred of other films (no more 'Doctor Who' episodes were among them, sadly), from where it was rescued by film collectors."

"The film print is a standard BBC Enterprises 16mm positive print with an optical soundtrack. It is a nice print, but it has suffered some quite severe damage over the years. The main problems are physical damage to the film emulsion. This takes the form of vertical scratches, known as tramline scratches, which are visible to some degree all the way through the film. There is one particularly bad section of about six minutes duration which is both scratched and scuffed and where the film has been punctured by an errant projector sprocket tooth at some point. Several single-frame projector burns are visible and the Director credit has been chopped off the end of the film. This last damage was probably deliberately done to remove the BBC copyright card at the end."

Visit the Restoration Team Web Site for the full detail on the restoration of Episode 1.

In June of 1999 the BBC released both remaining episodes (1 and 3) along with the soundtrack from the two missing episodes (2 and 4) on CD. They were packaged together with "The Space Museum" in a box set.

The DWTP now proudly presents the complete transcript to all four episodes of "The Crusade"!

Introduction by GARY ZIMMER
Additional Material by ARTIMUS BROWN