you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast each week we take a single
episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio and overanalyze it to within an inch
of its life welcome to the discussion
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol.
I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we are looking at yet another in the sort of animated recreation series of Doctor Who.
We'll be looking at The Crusade.
First Doctor adventure.
Couple comments before we go on.
The Crusade has not gotten its own standalone release.
The Crusade has been bundled in with the Series 2 Blu-ray box set,
which will ultimately be released in about six months to 12 years in the United States
under the William Hartnell Series 2 box set.
It is a Telesnap recreation.
We'll talk about that.
But it's been released officially, and so we're going to cover it.
And I'll also add, before I go into my synopsis, you'll often hear that the world you create in your mind's eye when listening to audio-only adventures is in every way superior to what can be created on TV and in the movies.
I find that argument wanting, but that's it.
That's what we've mostly got here in two episodes, episodes two and four, which are missing from this four-part story.
And they were recreated with telesnaps.
After I watched them, I found out that they have recorded a separate narration track with William Russell, who plays Sir Ian.
And he fills in some of the details.
Unfortunately, I'd already written the synopsis based on how I filled in the details.
And so I'm sticking to it.
Enjoy My Mind's Eye.
Ceres synopsis.
The TARDIS arrives near Jaffa in the 12th century.
Nearby is King Richard the Lionheart and his party of men all named William.
They all come under attack by the Saracens under the command of Emir el-Aqir.
Barbara is captured and Sir William de Pleu,
which I'm going to pronounce in the way Americans pronounce French names,
is captured, pretending to be the king as a diversion to allow the real king to escape.
The doctor, Vicky, and Ian recover the wounded Sir William de Tombou,
giving him medical attention and eventually returning him and the king's belt, which was in Sir William's possession, back to the king in Jaffa.
Before meeting the king, they must steal some clothes, which the doctor and Vicky accomplish.
These clothes, however, are no doubt already stolen from the crusaders.
Hopefully that won't cause any problems.
In El Akir's camp, Sir William meets Barbara.
After proper introductions, Sir William maintains his ruse and adds cover for Barbara by claiming she is his sister, Joanna.
and they claim the treatment to which they are entitled as royalty.
El-Aqir makes to take them to Ramla, where Saladin, the sultan, has his camp to gain his favor.
Saladin isn't deceived and knows immediately this is not King Richard or Princess Joanna,
and El-Aqir looks the fool.
Sir William is sent back to El-Aqirs, but as a knight, he will be well treated in his captivity.
Barbara will remain to entertain Saladin with tales of her travels.
In King Richard's court, he is beholden to the doctor and fam, but not inclined to help Barbara.
Sir William and the doctor make the king see the humor of Sir William's ruse.
The doctor is a wily old bird and soon has the king thinking of a swap and perhaps something more.
The king's sister, Joanna, meets the doctor, Vicky, and Ian, and she is suspicious of them,
most especially of Vicky, who is pretending to be Victor, a boy.
El-Aqir wants to do terrible things to Barbara, so he arranges for her to be kidnapped from Saladin's encampment and taken to his place in Lydda to suffer her fate.
The king has decided to offer his sister in marriage to Saladin's brother, Safadin, to make a peace deal, and he sends Ian to convey the message.
But first, he knights him, Sir Ian of Jaffa.
The stolen clothes have come back to haunt the doctor, as the Chamberlain recognizes them.
But a 12th century human brain is no match for a Time Lord brain,
and the doctor soon has this smoothed over to his satisfaction.
It's not everyone else's.
Barbara arrives at Lydda, and then some noises happen.
And there are pictures of guards apparently molesting a chicken,
and Barbara wandering the streets, plus dramatic music.
So I think she escaped.
Sir Ian arrives at Saladin's camp and presents the king's proposal.
They aren't going to let Sir William go, and he learns of Barbara's kidnapping, so Southerdin allows him to go after her.
Yes, yes, Barbara did escape, and as she is about to be recaptured, Harun-ed-Din rescues her and gives her shelter in his home.
Joanna discovers that Victor is a girl and, while first being upset, comes to accept that the doctor only perpetrated the deception for the girl's protection.
She takes Vicky into her protection.
In return, she suspects that her brother is up to something involving herself and asks the doctor to tell her if he learns anything.
He agrees.
Back in Lidda, Harun tells Barbara his tale.
His eldest daughter was taken by El Akir for his Harim, and he murdered his son and wife.
For this, Harun lives only to kill El Akir.
He has not told his other daughter, Safiya, about the fate of their family, and she believes they have gone missing.
Harun goes out, but is captured, or maybe beaten, and left in the streets by the guards searching for Barbara.
This ultimately leads them to search Harun's house, and Barbara surrendering to them to protect Sophia.
Saladin has received Richard's peace offer and agrees to it, but still makes ready his armies, just in case it falls through or is a deception.
Sir Ian, sleeping in the desert, has been taken prisoner by Ibrahim and his mostly missing brother.
In court, the doctor is not making friends with the Earl of Leicester, who wants war, not peace.
When asked directly by Joanna what the king has planned for her, the doctor demurs.
So Leicester tells her, and she is furious at both the doctor and the king, and she flatly refuses, citing that the pope is ultimately in charge, not the king, and he wouldn't allow it.
The king thinks the doctor spilled the beans to Joanna and kicks him out.
Now trapped in El Akir's palace, Barbara is going to be treated very poorly indeed by El Akir.
But she escapes again, this time into the palace.
Sir Ian is tied up and staked to the ground.
His captor, Abraham, wants him to hand over his money.
But when Sir Ian refuses, he covers parts of him in honey and leads ants to him.
Abraham can wait until Sir Ian tells him what he wants to know.
Lester is questioning Vicky, and the doctor is less than complimentary to Lester and his desire to fight.
The king overhears and puts an end to the questioning.
He also tells the doctor that he knows he didn't betray his plan,
but that it was expedient to pretend that he did.
Lester is a good fighter, and he's going to need him.
Having made an enemy of Lester, the king sends the doctor and Vicky to Acre.
The doctor readily agrees, and they leave immediately,
although he's actually planning to return to the TARDIS.
Barbara has found sanctuary in El-Aqir's Harim.
She meets Harun's eldest daughter, who tells her that they all, apparently,
hate El-Aqir and agree to hide her.
All that is safe for one who betrays Barbara for a ruby ring.
In the desert, the ants ever closer, Sir Ian cracks under pressure and agrees to turn over his gold.
He convinces Ibrahim that it is in his boots, but when they are removed,
Sir Ian's foot odor overpowers Ibrahim and rots the ropes binding Sir Ian's wrist.
He subdues Ibrahim and forces him to take him to Lydda.
In Jaffa, Lester learns of the doctor's departure and sends his men to follow him.
Unfortunately, the TARDIS lies in the direction of Saladin's camp, not in the direction of Acre.
This gives Lester all the proof he needs that the Doctor is a spy.
El-Akir finds Barbara, and this time, he's really cross.
But simultaneously, two things happen.
Harun, who was just left in the streets, bursts in and, I don't know, probably kills El-Akir.
Then Sir Ian shows up to non-lethally thump a few heads.
They are both safe and head back to the TARDIS.
The Doctor and Vicky are aware that Lester's men are trying to entrap them, so the Doctor comes up with a picture-perfect plan for a Telestap reconstruction.
They must make absolutely no sound whatsoever.
This doesn't work, and the Doctor is captured and about to be killed when Sir Ian arrives and claims the right to kill the Doctor for himself.
They get in the TARDIS and leave to the bewilderment of Lester and his men.
The end.
I'll just ignore the part from the space museum that follows there.
All right. I think I pretty much had it spot on.
I'm not 100 percent sure about the whole thing about Ian's foot odor, but it was really the only way I could figure out how removing his boots led to him escaping.
But yeah. So and I didn't actually get a chance to listen to the audio alternative version on that particular episode.
So so there's enough in the dialogue. Get that. What dialogue?
well i assume so i mean i had the narration on for that but the fact that he cuts oh no that's
what you don't see yeah he cuts through the bonds tying his leg in order to take well i figured he
had to do that to take the boots off so he has got two boots left but his arms are tied to the ground
so how does he get his arms out of the ground that he he roll he rolls over back and pulls
pulls his arms free because he got leverage i guess i'd have to go i'd have to go back and
see if the see if the audio duration explained it any more clearly but it seemed to make sense
to me at the time and i didn't realize that it was going to be the the first aspects of the
episode that we were going to start discussing so i didn't memorize it carefully enough
well there's always the chicken molesting scene with the guards but uh yeah uh you know what
what are your thoughts the ian's foot sorry sir ian's foot odor aside what uh well i don't know
we are we are we talking first about the because you've sort of alluded to it about the reconstruction
itself or about the story that is reconstructed? I guess we should talk about the story first.
That's what we usually do. Okay. I mean, so my thoughts on the story, and obviously two parts
of it do exist in full, but actually I have to explain a little bit of background in terms of
Doctor Who and the Crusaders, which is that this is one of the first Doctor Who stories that I
encountered I watched a little bit of Doctor Who when it was on TV and I was pretty young and Peter
Davison was the doctor and I can't quite pinpoint exactly which stories I saw but I stopped watching
it because it was too scary and around about the early 90s well exactly around about the early 90s
there were some there were some repeats and I saw those and either just before or just after I forget
which I acquired some or I was staying with a friend and they had novelizations of Doctor Who
and they said the old Target novelizations and I read a whole bunch of those and Doctor Who and
the Crusaders was one of those and kind of stuck in my memory particularly I thought it was a really
good story but actually probably any of the those stories that I read the novelizations of
would have would have made a mark on me just because you know it's the first ones you come
across do so so because of that it being one of the early stories that I encountered and therefore
perhaps made an even more favorable impression because of that I may be biased but I love this
story I think it's I mean it one of the things is I've also said this before I just really like
pure historicals in Doctor Who and this is kind of I mean despite there being a number of elements
within it that are very much of its time and I'm sure we'll come back to those it very much kind of
wholeheartedly throws itself into the the kind of historical narratives around the crusade and
the you know Richard and Joanna and where was Beringeria could they not afford Beringeria she
was there should have been there I mean I don't know I have to I have to say I don't I it's not
a kind of historical period I know a great deal about so there may be inaccuracies that don't
bother me because I'm just I'm just I'm just kind of going on I think what it's what it's kind of
riffing on are these you know the kind of adventures that we see our characters getting
up to like in getting knighted or staked out in the desert and you know threatened with hands
and it's very boy's own crusade exactly exactly and again the time i came across it it was perfect
for that but it it it is just a kind of very well structured story the characters are memorable
the kind of escapades that they get up to have their own kind of drama and momentum and so even
though the historical context that we get into it feels like you know we've missed the beginning and
we don't stick around for the end it's enough that there are good characters there and that our
characters themselves have have a story that does have a proper beginning middle and end and is
actually quite satisfying well since since you gave your your backstory on coming to this i will
add that i certainly read the crusaders in novel form back in the early 80s long before i ever saw
this in fact this is absolutely the first time i've ever seen any footage from this except maybe
in a clip somewhere where they were talking about a missing episode with, you know, my family
namesake, Julian Glover there. But I'm going to, I'm going to take a slightly different sense
because I don't know, you know, the English, British United Kingdom education system is
obviously very different and what they concentrate is very different. So I will say that in the,
the, either the late seventies or the early eighties, this, this is going to take a long
detour, but I'll make it as quick as possible. They started showing a show called Return of the
Saint. Ian Ogilvie is Simon Templer, which was basically a remake of the 60s, The Saint with
Roger Moore. I had never heard of this character before when I started watching those late nights
in, like I say, it's probably the early 80s. And I thought, oh my God, I quite like this. Then they
started showing the Roger Moore ones. And I'm like, oh cool, this is like a longstanding thing.
And then I finally figured out that this was actually based on a series of books.
So I thought, well, I would like to read some of these books.
And in fact, the Saint books are the very first time I think I ever really got truly invested in a series of books that wasn't that was an actual series of books as opposed to a tie in.
So like when I was a kid, younger kid and then the Star Trek books where they were novelizations, I had to have every one of them.
But with the saint books, I started reading them at the public library, and then I started buying used copies at the bookstores, and then I have a nearly complete collection of them here on my shelves at this point.
But the very first one I read was The Saint and the Templar Treasure, which I think, if my memory serves me correctly, is either a 77 or 79 book.
It was the most contemporary one they had in the library.
It's listed as being by Leslie Charteris, who is the creator and predominant writer of the saint.
However, in subsequent years, I learned it was not written by Leslie Charteris.
It was ghostwritten, which is what he was doing in his dotage, just to keep the money coming in.
And I really enjoyed the book.
And the premise was that the saint went somewhere in France where they had a previous Templar fort.
And there were some adventure hunters there who were treasure hunting for some of the treasure left behind by the Templars.
Now, why I say this is because up until that point in my life, I had never heard of the Templars or the Hospitallers or any of that.
Because the Crusades is just something we don't do over here.
It's a non-thing.
So I didn't know that.
I didn't know Templars was a thing.
Then I started looking into that.
And then I kind of got into the Crusades.
And so I started reading history of the Crusades.
I even have a couple books on historical books on the Crusades here in my books.
I boned up on one of them last night after watching this because I kept thinking, I'm having some trouble with parts of this.
But OK. And, you know, if nothing else, the Crusades does show us the innate destructive power of religion because that's all it is.
This is bloodshed for dumb reasons.
So that is what I come to this from as a sort of not by any stretch of the imagination qualified historian on the Crusades.
But I knew more about the real Crusades before I came into watching this episode, which I have always been looking forward to.
Because I've always thought, you know, this is going to be a good one.
I was not as impressed with this story.
I thought it was disjointed.
It really feels like four separate, it's like a different cast of characters in every episode, and it's only four episodes long.
It's like, William today, gone tomorrow.
They just kind of come and go, and the merchant is in and gone, and the other, I don't know, it just, it has a really oddly, not even exactly episodic feel, but it's just, it's kind of strange.
So, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped.
that's not to say i didn't enjoy it but i was like i'm a little disappointed because i really
expected that this was going to be the pinnacle of the historicals to me of the ones that i haven't
seen and of the ones i've seen as well i was hoping it's the pinnacle of the ones you haven't
seen yeah well you know working on the working on the assumption that when i finally get to see them
in whatever form I get to see them, I'll go, yeah, it was definitely the Crusades.
That's the one that sounds like it would interest me the most.
That's the one that would, you know, at every button.
But it's kind of, all right, it's okay.
But I just felt like they could have done a lot better.
And certainly this one deserves six parts as opposed to the French Revolution,
which was, what, like 12 parts or, I don't know, 20 parts?
It's very long.
The Reign of Terror.
I thought the Reign of Terror was four parts as well.
Is that only four parts?
Holy cow.
I wouldn't swear.
I know from my mind that it can't possibly be even seven parts,
but it sure feels like it.
It was so long and boring.
And yeah.
So this was not that.
This was not that.
It moved along at a pretty good clip.
It just,
it really just felt like they were hitting the end of an episode and
turning 90 degrees and going somewhere else.
Maybe because they were trying to,
Maybe because they were trying to fit in little historical anecdotes, like, for example, William of, I'm going to look down here because I can't pronounce it, De Preux, De Preux, however it is pronounced, also known as William of Pratelus.
That's real. That story, or at least anecdotally real, that he was with a hunting party with a king when they were out falconing and he was taken prisoner because they were pursuing him thinking he was the king. He decoyed them off that. Real. Real-ish, right?
the the story of trying to marry off joanna to safadine uh maybe real it's certainly in many
historical accounts um and then it's certainly also apparently contested that there is no way
that richard could or would have tried that but it's possible that safadine tried it but then on
the other hand you know so is that one true i don't know but it's certainly believed to be true
So it's possible that they just kind of picked these spots and said, well, I want to do this and I want to do that a little bit.
And I want to do this this other little bit. I can't think of another little bit off the top of my head.
Those are the two main ones. But, you know, and then they fleshed in a story around that and said, well, we got to make we got to make Ivanhoe.
No, no, no. Roger Moore was Ivanhoe. What was what was William Russell?
What was his show that he used to be the night in before Doctor Who?
Do you remember?
I had no idea.
So he was already famous before he did Doctor Who.
He definitely was a star of a show before Doctor Who, and he was a knight.
And I can't remember if it was Ivanhoe or if it was.
Anyway, I mean, obviously they had to knight him.
I mean, it's just like that's just a it's just a given.
They had to do that.
So, I mean, I could see that.
I think there's bound to be an element of truth in what you say,
but I actually think the structure of the story is probably more driven
by wanting to present the different courts or the different sides of the story.
So, you know, you sort of see the characters in the Lionheart's party,
but you also see inside Safedin Saladin's palace and El Akhir and,
and,
you know,
a little bit of,
again,
it's,
it's kind of very,
it's not,
it's not perhaps the way you would tell a story nowadays,
but what they're doing,
I think is mixing in characters who represent the different people affected by
the war in various ways.
So the Lionheart and his sister Saladin and his brother,
the character whose name I have forgotten
is it Harun? Harun
that's the father whose family
is butchered by El-Akir
El-Akir himself, the merchants
the Harim, there's a lot of
I would say colour if it weren't a black and white story
and I think in some ways
the action is designed to move us around
those different settings and contexts in order for us to encounter those characters and experience
those different aspects of it and to some degree I think that curtails the ability to actually
kind of give any of those characters a story of their own which is why I agree it feels a bit like
you know they come in and they they drop out rather abruptly in some cases but I think the
way that they manage that to kind of keep the momentum going and to make it feel satisfying
is that we very much follow i guess probably primarily ian and barbara's story in this although
the the doctor does play a fairly active role just not a very effective one
yeah yeah it i don't know it's just it is it just has a it just doesn't gel it doesn't gel
from you by the way sir lancelot the adventures of sir lancelot 1956 um and uh 20 or 30 episodes
one season kind of show but yeah i mean you had to have a night so i the other thing that i find
interesting and i do not remember this about the crusaders the book so this is the crusade
the book is actually doctor who and the crusaders in case you're looking for that target novelization
I'm not selling you mine. It's on my shelf somewhere.
A couple of things that I didn't think worked.
No, they didn't feel right.
We're in the second season.
And if you'll recall, going back to the earlier historical episodes, at least some of them,
there is this element of Barbara the Historian filling in context for perhaps the other members of the crew.
like Susan or Vicki.
There's very little of that here.
If you don't know,
I don't know what you would learn
about the Crusades
if you were watching this episode.
It seems like they've kind of abandoned
that idea of actually teaching somebody.
Yes, Barbara knows that King Richard
has red hair,
but that's about the only fact
that we are at all given
in the course of this episode.
I mean, more power to Vicki.
She seems just right on board here.
Okay.
But you'd think she wouldn't have a clue, you know, any more than I would.
No.
Okay.
Someone who, with my educational background and not my weird Simon Templar fixation.
But I also thought that was kind of like, and maybe that's why this is the beginning
of the end on the historicals.
You know, they're just going to bounce them in.
And I think in the Romans, there wasn't a whole lot of it because they weren't, apart
the fire they weren't really trying to they weren't really trying to do anything with
historical events they were just sort of the historical environment does that make sense
this one obviously they're trying to play up a couple of events that may or may not have actually
happened but but are believed to have well i don't i don't know i think this probably is the historical
this is the historical environment i think that is partly what is different about the historicals
and maybe why it does make them more difficult to construct,
because you're not creating, you know,
the kind of futuristic stories or extraterrestrial stories,
they have the possibility to create an environment
in which the story is told,
which purely serves the narrative purpose of the story.
Anything that's a historical is constrained by the fact
that you can't really make all of it up,
even if we've talked about the fact that bits of this may not be terribly
accurate.
So there has definitely been some making up going on.
It's got to be within the parameters that allow the audience to recognize it
as being the third crusade that they learned about in school.
If they learned about it in school.
Ah,
you knew it's the third crusade.
I did know it was the third crusade.
There's no mention of that in this episode.
And it's called the crusade as if there's only one.
is it not not the crusades it's the crusade i i don't believe they have mentioned it was the
third crusade i hadn't picked that up but yes it is the third crusade that's in my notes here
started in 1190 so this episode uh and it was over by 1193 so best guess gosh three minutes
yeah yeah it was very quick uh 85 000 men to the sword and then there you go now um it this would
It was taking place in 1192 by all the way, when he was at Jaffa.
And that's all right.
You know, that's exactly what happened.
He did come to Jaffa.
Jaffa is where that was kind of their last real success story was before they failed to reach Jerusalem.
So, but yeah, no, didn't get that either.
Didn't even get Barbara getting a line.
You know, there were eight crusades.
This ran from 1462 to 1562.
This one must be about the third crusade during the time of King Richard or, you know, anything, but nothing.
They just like which I assume maybe every school child in Britain knew that, you know, maybe.
Well, I mean, you've said you've certainly provided me with a bunch of facts that I wasn't necessarily familiar with.
But on the other hand, I don't younger than the people in this, though.
I don't care. I don't I don't particularly want this serial to lecture at me.
And these are not facts that I'm going to retain or go and tell my friends about.
But that was the point of the show, was it not?
Originally?
What?
I mean, kind of historical words.
Well, to convey some facts and provide some context.
Yeah.
Well, it's the context, though, isn't it?
It's the empathy.
And I, I, I mean, I, I, I don't know.
To me, it does.
It does.
It kind of gives you the interesting things, things you were talking about, the conflict
of the religion and actually there are kind of there are interesting moral dimension again i kind
of question whether a story like this would be handled in this way but nevertheless there they
are addressed the things like joanna's role or joanna's duty in this the you know avoiding
bloodshed by essentially giving her to to uh safadine and there's there's i mean i i think
I had this in my mind before I saw the comment that Dennis Spooner had admired the Shakespearean
nature of Whittaker's writing. But there is actually a kind of sense of this being a bit like
a Shakespearean history, that Shakespeare was a lot of the time not writing, well,
a lot of the time, probably all the time, not writing for historical accuracy himself. He was
writing partly for drama, partly to make political points that were contemporary and would please his
patrons by being selective about the histories that he tells. And he would pick out in the way
I think we get here, some of the kind of interesting, as we say, the dramatic conflicts
and power plays going on between our lead characters, and also a kind of range of characters
like you've got here between the kind of the nobles and the you know the kind of servants and
thieves and beggars so there is something incredibly rich about that in this for at least
for me i don't think that's don't think that's there and say the romans this is one of my favorite
historical no the romans is a bit of a is a bit of a farce i'm gonna have to say though that you
know looking whereas i said that i was expecting the crusades the crusade to be at the pinnacle
of the historicals i do have to look at them and go i can't think of one that i liked better
yes uh you know actually i do quite like the romans but it's pretty much a comedy
too but i'd have to go back and re-watch that one i wouldn't i wouldn't show the romans to anyone
who I was trying to convert to my own crusade
for returning pure historicals to the current Doctor Who on TV.
I don't think I found one yet to show people to say
this is why we need historicals back.
But OK.
Well, I would happily show people the Aztecs
and I would show people this if I was convinced
they would be able to get past the reconstruction.
Yeah, the Aztecs might be better.
Yeah, that's actually...
Actually, you know, the one that stands out in my mind as being the best one of the bunch,
and we've talked about it on the podcast, which is telling you something right about it now, Marco Polo.
Yeah.
Because by the time they condensed it down to seven and a half minutes or whatever their reconstruction was,
it's like, yeah, that's pretty good.
I forgot how short it was, but it's pretty darn short.
It was about half an hour, I think.
That was actually seven, seven, 25 minute episodes.
yeah yeah so i do kind of go i don't know how that one would stand up in full in full reconstruction
when they get to that we'll find out but uh yeah no well again i i haven't i haven't tried to
listen to marco polo because i'm hoping that we will get some well i'm sure we will get some
version of it although chances are it's going to be another telesnap reconstruction like that but
they're going to release it when they get around to the series one blu-ray box set yeah yeah i
assume that that's they're going to have to keep doing that um uh i'll throw out a couple things
just from the from the historical standpoint just in case anybody is remotely uh remotely
uh interested in case you didn't know of course all the names have changed and all of them but
most of the names have changed jaffa is tel aviv is modern day tel aviv uh ramla leida uh they're
all right in that area. Jerusalem is inland. Those are all coastal. And that's basically what the
third crusade did. They came down the coast. At this point in history, after the second crusade,
there had been a kingdom of Jerusalem established, which then collapsed, and a king of Jerusalem
and whatnot, and it collapsed and had fallen back to several coastal provinces, because I believe
it was Saladin at that time, took back Jerusalem and drove them to the coast, but didn't drive
them out. So the third crusade was to come down, reinforce those coastal kingdoms, and then take
Jerusalem back, which they never did. They failed. The doctor's comment about him coming within sight
of it, that is part of the lore that Richard saw Jerusalem on an excursion, saw that it was
fortified in such a way that there was no way he was going to take it and apocryphically said you
know i'm not going to look on this again until i take jerusalem and he never looked on it again
and ultimately he managed to cut a deal with saladin for peace that allowed them to keep
their lands and allowed pilgrims to go to jerusalem which was ultimately a deal that they
that they sealed, which kept the peace for about three years or something.
But so, yeah, so you're picturing in that area, which I think, you know, by the names that I've
just mentioned there, that territory has been stable and without conflict since these times.
I mean, it's all been wonderfully peaceful over there in the Middle East.
Let's see. I think I already mentioned it started in 1190. He had an army of 85,000 men.
They were particularly brutal. Richard himself was quite the fighter and was always at the front.
The stories that we're told that he recounts of Saladin sending him ice and fruits when he was ill, or snow and fruits is true.
Apparently true, or at least apocryphally true from the writings of time.
that was the way they treated kings. They were royalty. They actually had this sort of
respecty thing going between them and the knights. So when the whole thing about Sir William being
taken and treated well, exactly right. If you'd been lower than that, you'd have probably been
killed because that's anybody below that wasn't worth it. And they would butcher them. Both sides.
Richard had just recently, after he'd taken Acre, he tried to cut a deal with Saladin for an exchange of prisoners.
Not context here, but if this had been mentioned in this episode, you might wonder why Saladin was kind of, I don't know about this peace deal thing.
Richard had gone to them and said, look, we've got 3,000 captured men, women, and soldiers here, and we'd like to trade them for a bunch of money or whatever.
Saladin kind of goes, yeah, okay, I think we can do that.
And then he delayed, basically, hoping to get more troops coming in.
And eventually Richard just got really angry one day,
and he hauled all 3,000 people out to within sight of the Saracen camp
and slaughtered them in front of them.
They had their differences of opinion.
In another instance that they put out somewhere,
Richard was apparently fighting, and his horse had been hacked pretty good,
so he was on a...
And Saffodon apparently saw that,
didn't think it was appropriate for a king to be fighting on a horse that was really badly damaged,
and sent him horses because a king should be fighting proper.
It's just a weird code of conduct that they...
And I felt like they were trying to convey that in this episode.
I don't know if it was as successful, but it did.
And although we only saw the four of them, and most of them were named William,
He had an army of 85,000 and something like 200, 250 ships that had set sail as part of his fleet.
His sister, Joanna, was the Dowager Queen of Sicily.
She was 25 years old.
This did, again, apparently there was some brokerage of trying to get her to marry Safedin.
and then they would cede all the lands that they had won,
all the coastal kingdoms,
they would cede as part of her dowry
so that she would become the queen of basically Jerusalem
and Safedin would be the emir, not Saladin.
And that was put forth by somebody.
Some historians say it was put forth by one side.
Some historians say it was put forth by the other side.
others still say it's ridiculous and idiotic that they would ever even consider that because
there are a variety of things working against it for example she was a widow and a widow can't be
forced into a marriage apparently um that that's a thing without her consent and uh also the this
the the muslims can divorce with no consequences for the husband and he gets everything so he could
have just married her and then divorced her and she'd have been out and dead and gone so it it
never came to anything because she just steadfastly refused so and let's see i don't know i think
that's it i have on the historical stuff but uh it was it just felt a little bit like a miss
because it is sort of a rich tapestry and yet it is kind of treated like a 1950s ivanhoe so
Lancelot kind of running in this forest and daring do show,
although not as much daring do or running in the forest,
but do you have anything else on the story?
I'm interested in the,
the kind of lead our regular characters,
because I think in some ways it's quite interesting how they're handled in
this.
Certainly the,
the doctors,
the doctors playing quite sort of high status character.
He pulls off his kind of heart and all imperiousness to good effect.
a number of times in this and i think it's probably one of my favorite of hartnell's
performances but it's interesting in some ways that it's slightly atypical of the doctor i guess
i mean like he he's quite violent in the fight at the opening he bashes one of the saracens and
he grabs a sword and waves it around and yeah i mean i i suppose we do see in is it an unearthly
child or is it no it's it's the second episode the 10 000 tribe of gum or whatever you see or
whatever where where he tries to bash the head in of a um cave dwelling early human but by this
point it I guess it it doesn't it doesn't feel entirely typical and actually in some ways
Ian is even more you I mean you've you've picked up on that kind of backflip he does when he pulls
his hands free from the stakes in the desert after his boots have been cut off but that's not all he
does he has quite a lengthy sword fight himself at the beginning he has a number of action scenes
where you kind of think, hmm, this is more, you say he was Salancelot.
That sounds more like the Salancelot kind of thing
than the Ian Chesterton school teacher kind of thing.
I mean, this is an interesting thing for a science teacher to have.
He's always that.
I mean, he's that in the Aztecs.
I mean, that is the role he ultimately comes out to fulfill, though.
I think he may have been the science teacher and also the PE teacher at the school.
Well, maybe it's it's it's it's definitely they're writing for William Russell more than they're writing the character of this.
The school science teacher who has wandered into the TARDIS because he was curious about one of his pupils.
Oh, the other thing about the doctor was that he he decides he's going to steal some clothes.
I don't know if that counts as, you know, in addition to violence, he's committing theft, but he justifies it on the basis that they're already stolen, which is kind of true on the one hand, but doesn't really mean that he's not enriching himself, as it were.
so well i mean the first doctor was uh a little bit more of a devious character i mean i i think
in some ways they did paint him as a bit the anti-hero this is the man that sabotaged his
own ship because he wanted to go see the dalek city yeah mischievous as you say it's a guy who
was willing to bash the head of a caveman in to serve his own ends and admittedly they toned
that down and i have no problem with him grabbing a sword to fight when he's been attacked by
somebody with a sword who's trying to kill him i know it would have been a little believable if he
failed at that utterly but well yes that would yes that would have been that would have been my
point i i don't i don't disagree with any of that it's i guess it's just interesting that
we're into the second half of um season two and i yeah i don't i don't know i mean none none of
this in any way detracted from my enjoyment of the episode i think possibly the the handling of
barbara what it that she's mostly the kind of damsel in distress in this she isn't never used
her knowledge of history to save the day she doesn't use her knowledge of history to save
the day but she also makes moves that you kind of think are not necessarily too smart in every case
So it's perhaps not Barbara's finest episode.
No.
Vicky, I just got confused by.
I mean, I didn't really understand why she was being dressed up as a boy in the first place, because what was the point?
It's not like they were hiding that Barbara is a woman.
So they certainly weren't doing a good job of hiding that Vicky was a woman either.
No, it certainly seemed a bit odd to these people going, what do you mean she's a girl?
Well, you know, the clothes maketh the man and those are the clothes they were able to steal. I don't know.
I guess it could have been that. I mean, again, I suppose it comes back to the Shakespearean thing of you can't get much more Shakespearean than a bit of cross-dressing.
But Vicky was confused about why she had to dress as a boy, I think. And then so was I confused about it.
But then also I was confused about why suddenly they had the scene where there's a reveal and she doesn't have to dress as a boy anymore because it didn't seem to serve any purpose in the greater story.
It just seemed to be a way of, you know, filling time.
Yes. And it's another one of those 90 degree turns that just felt like, OK, well, we went there and nothing came of it.
You know, it's like Sir William disappeared after a certain point.
After the last time he sees Ian, he says, you know, good luck.
Okay, Sir William's fate is sealed.
He's going to be in El Akeer's prisons forever, I guess.
And, you know, he could have turned up again at the end,
but obviously they don't want to pay the actor to be in for a part.
It's sort of this character's came and went.
They've got another 84,999 Sir William, so.
Exactly, exactly.
He'll be able to lose one.
Okay, I will point this one out.
So, Sir William
De Preux,
however they pronounced it,
real. The other
Sir William,
or whatever it was,
not real.
So, they created a scene
where the king was out with
two people, one historical
and one not, and they couldn't have
thinking of going, well, maybe we could call the other
one Sir James.
Sir Bernard.
yeah anything but for whatever reason they chose to name them both william that's just an odd
writing choice unless you're going to make a joke of it which they didn't so you know i mean it
happens in real life sure i'm sure that in your life you've met other simons um i met a eugene
once twice two two of them i mean it's interesting that um you're having difficulty pronouncing
De Preux but and also the difficulty with having two Williams on on the screen but Julian Glover
deals with this by calling him Richard De Preux at some point which both gets his name wrong but
still has the problem that there are two characters with the same name because he's supposed to be
Richard as well. Was the actor's name Richard by any chance? No I believe it was John. Okay it's
just you know it's like it's like that's beardy guy and that's captured guy it's not a problem
it's just it when you're and it's like well what are we going to do about sir william what are you
going to do about sir william he's right there in the room with you what it's like he's injured
he's got the william the beardy oh william the beardy got it it it's just it's not that it
didn't happen in the real world and not that i couldn't keep track of it it's just well yeah no
in a way i couldn't keep track of it because when i'm writing notes down and then suddenly i go
wait i thought the other guy was sir william oh no i'm confused wait wait no there's two sir
williams okay well i guess they're both real historical figures and therefore that is why
you would do that but no they are not so why would you do that and and odd but okay there you go
the other thing about the doctors the doctors um behavior in this is again i think it's coming back
of the product of the time and file under actors blacking up
and all the other things that go on.
But it's the way that he treats Richard's plan
to marry Joanna off without her consent
because he doesn't give away the king's plan to her,
although he's accused of it.
And it's almost presented as if he's done the right thing
there he's being unfairly accused of doing something that undermines the king but actually
i definitely felt that he should have tipped her off as to to what was going on i kind of
that whole thing is a little odd because he does say a couple of times to richard before the idea
is broached that he should ask her right he he does he does put that case that it's a great idea
if she agrees yeah if she agrees now is that because he knows she won't agree because he
knows his history or is is that just because you know he's he's taking the position of of
let's go with consent and but then he did promise her he would keep her informed of his plans and he
absolutely breaks that he absolutely breaks that he doesn't tell her yeah it's no he he does
absolutely break that i think i think the point about trying to get richard to tell her is that
he's trying to do that so to keep to to make sure that she gets kept informed but without having to
as it were go against the king's wishes because he's obviously that point not wishing to well at
any point not wishing to tell her and so if he were to go ahead and share that confidence with
joanna herself it would be going against the king so he there's a there's an element of scheming with
it going on there but he doesn't get away with it and when the chips are down he decides to side with
the king in effect rather than with joanna and keep his word to her yeah it's an odd it's an
other the other part with the doctor and i mean i watched it i watched it twice just to that's that
whole bit when the chamberlain comes to him and accuses him of stealing the clothes and he he
circular logics his way out of that but as far as i can tell he did not
it's like you people are it's like that abbott and costello routine where they they say i can't
even do it it's so it it mind bends me with like give me five dollars uh or i need loan me loan me
ten dollars here's five dollars i paid you back now you owe me five dollars and what huh yeah
somehow it felt like that and uh i mean sure it's supposed to be funny and it kind of is
and but at the same time it's like yeah i guess you just can't outsmart a time lord that's all
that's all i mean the so performances of the regulars aside i would say the acting in this
is distinctly mixed i i really liked obviously got julian glover and gene marsh and we know
they're great and they are great in this former mrs john pertwee indeed bernard kaye as well but
There are a lot of other performances in this that are pretty weak, I think.
Not major characters, but scenes between guards or soldiers or whatever,
where you think you've just hauled these guys in off the street.
Well, they did haul some people in who were not as commonly looking of English people.
Some of them are obviously in blackface and some of them are not.
So it's possible that the Pickens were less in the actors' guild back then for some of those roles.
But, yeah.
Well, no, I mean, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
I don't think the bad performances were just the people.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean, it was kind of across the board.
It wasn't all terrible.
But, yeah, I was definitely thinking, you know, this is a great script.
And generally, well, realistically,
Some people were making the most of it,
but there were definitely scenes where it felt like you were watching a school play.
I definitely did feel that it was just Richard and his five compatriots there
that were there to take back the Holy Land.
There was something to that.
and maybe that contributes to the small scale feel,
the play feel of it.
Yes, but when the Holy Land is as small,
when the Holy Land is small enough to fit in a television studio,
you probably only need five people to take it.
That's true.
And he still failed.
He still failed.
Indeed.
Although, I mean, I did say,
talking about the fact that we kind of leave before the,
the kind of what is going to happen is explained in dialogue,
But we do get quite a kind of satisfying ending where Lester tries to or intercepts the doctor and is about to do away with him.
And so that kind of moment where Ian kind of pulls that trick, it feels like the story is winding down and then it's got one more thing up its sleeve.
It's a pretty satisfying ending, I thought.
I will go so far as to say this.
I was slightly, I was slightly confused in that moment.
And then my brain put the pieces together. It's like, Oh yeah,
here's another character that did not show up until after Ian left.
Lester was not in any of the earlier episodes until after Ian was sent.
And then Lester shows up. It's, it's again,
it's that sort of rotating cast just they come in and they're gone.
It's the only way it works. Obviously he,
he can't have known that Ian was part of Sir Ian was part of the,
of the group.
And we've kind of talked about how
this story is probably
better for not being an out-and-out comedy
in the way that the Romans was.
But if there was one thing that made me laugh
in this, it was Leicester saying,
we will not speak of this or we will look like fools.
I thought that was very good.
You'd think they would just be
all on the witchcraft thing, but
all right, no, it's a good call on his part.
I agree.
So, unless you have anything else on
the story let's do recall our attention to to the travesty that is tell us now reconstructions okay
well i'll i'll let you go first i've seen better and i've seen worse i think obviously a lot i've
paid for worse yes well yes i i mean the underwater menace is is odd it's a pinnacle of bad yes well
one of the things is that you can only use the material that you have available and some stories
have lots of telesnaps and some stories have fewer and you know being able to because they weren't
intended to be placed in a sequence that would accompany the soundtrack in order to actually
convey the narrative that is now missing you can't necessarily expect it to work perfectly in that
respect and so some of the things in this that or put it the other way around the things in the
Underwater Menace that were just inexplicable. They don't do in this. So they tend to put up
a telesnap of the person who is speaking. I know that sounds fairly basic, but that was really
odd in The Underwater Menace. The other factor in terms of having to basically depend on your
source material is the soundtracks weren't designed to be heard without seeing the video.
So I think that's very different. And I kind of felt motivated to leap to the defense of audio
because I do think that when it's done well,
one of the kind of things that's great about it
is that you can build these pictures in your mind
that really kind of transcend the limitations
of what could be realised on screen.
And this wasn't designed like that.
Some of the information that is being conveyed
by the production is being conveyed visually.
And that's not always the case.
You know, some of the missing episodes
are kind of wordy enough or whatever that you can pretty much get everything that's going on
just by listening to all of the dialogue and a few of the sound effects but as you kind of
very well illustrated in your synopsis here there are sequences where the soundtrack simply
doesn't convey what the hell is going on at all and there just isn't enough visual material to
piece together something that that conveys that so in a way I mean I understand I think why they
did it but in a way it seems to me an odd decision that on the blu-ray the default soundtrack doesn't
have the linking narration that I think is just that they've included it almost as an extra because
I think it was recorded for the cd release about 15 years ago but it is more or less essential to
understanding this story it is it's quite it's quite uh it has quite a flourish to it to barbara
winding down the dark streets the shadows banging around her everywhere she turns this it is a city
in fear of ella cure and it's like wow okay well i think i think that's maybe why it's not included
as the default because there's an element of editorializing it's it's there's new writing
going on there there's there's laying over what was in the original script and interpretation
that potentially goes above and beyond that but I think you have to do that with the missing episodes
the choices that you make about the telesnaps that you're going to present on screen are themselves
editorial decisions certainly and we've discussed this before when you do the animations you're
creating something that is essentially a new production, albeit partly new production married
with partly old production. But that's just the reality of it. I would love it if the original
Crusades episodes were rediscovered and we could see what was intended to be on screen. But if we
can't, what I would like is to enjoy as much of those original performances as is possible,
with the story still making some kind of sense.
And obviously the ideal for that is,
could we please have an animation for it?
But if we're going to have something that has kind of gaps
in what is visually conveyed,
then, yeah, we do kind of need the audio or something
to fill in those gaps for us.
So, I mean, it's great that that audio soundtrack
is included on the discs,
But I think maybe, I mean, the animations where they're included are the default.
The recons, because they've included the recons on the animation releases, are an extra.
And I feel like probably it would have made sense to make the narrations the default on this.
And the unaugmented audio an extra.
Yeah, no, I completely agree that that should have been the default position.
I mean, I would go so far as to say is they should have just knuckled under and done an animation, but okay.
They didn't just bite the bullet, get the job done so that you don't have to buy this again in five years when they decide to try again.
It is, as reconstructions go, I would put it more or less on par with the Web Planet missing episode, the Telesnap version,
which I thought was pretty good given what they had available.
the web planet's not missing is it sorry not the web plan the web of fear web of fear ah right yeah
gotcha yeah the the first the first reconstruction before they did the animation before they animated
it yeah that was a that was you know that was a as telestaps go up to that point i would say that
was the best one i'd ever seen and come to think of it that's the last one i've seen since this one
so um except for the underwater menace which is an absolute travesty uh for a variety of reasons
And that's not me bagging on the Underwater Menace, the story.
That's a whole different thing.
It's a terrible Telestap reconstruction.
And they had the audacity to sell it to me.
I paid for it.
And I still think...
They had the audacity to offer to sell it to you.
Yes, I still think that they should come here,
get down on their freaking hands and knees,
beg my forgiveness with my money in my hand
to give it back to me after purchasing that.
Because it's so bad.
that it is an embarrassment there they force you to bear it no i buy it thinking it's going to be
not shit is my thought and then it wasn't pardon my french but i think we can get by one in 10 11
years but it's just like wow you thought i'm putting a warning on the podcast now how could
i have you know how could you sell that in good faith to people that's what it crossed my mind
And we know, just to go back to that, that the team that put it together were given very strict instructions by the BBC arm that was doing this, that they weren't allowed to do anything with that telesnaps.
They were allowed to only use telesnaps that they had.
They were only allowed to use still telesnaps.
They were only allowed to use them in the order that they appeared at the place where they appeared.
And they could not, like, oh, here's a shot of the doctor talking with an indiscriminate background.
So let's put this in there while he's talking because it's from somewhere else.
They weren't allowed to do any of that.
They were under strict, make this as awful as you possibly can orders.
And they did.
They succeeded.
But then somebody sold it to me.
And that is the part where, like, that's an editorial decision that they should still be paying for.
This was better than that.
But as you say, there are some sequences in this that just cannot function without the visuals as they exist.
Like the bit where Barbara's running up and down the streets.
I really did when they go, bring the woman into the palace.
And then I'm like, what?
Something?
Huh?
Did somebody just rescue her?
Was it Ian?
Did Ian make it in time?
No.
Now she's, is she in the palace?
Is that indoors? Is that outdoors? I don't know what's going on here.
Oh, the guard, he's molesting some chickens.
Okay. I think she must have escaped.
It took a couple of frames to go.
I think they're chasing her through the thing.
I'm not sure.
She should have stomped on their foot and said,
I'm getting away from you or run or something, but she didn't.
So she was not obviously planning for the future when the episode would be lost.
there is one thing I will say for this reconstruction that I have to point out
there's the scene where Barbara is in the Harim and the eldest daughter of Arun says
we will we will hide you here we all hate him and they cut that picture to that one woman
and you're going like oh yeah that woman that was my notes at that point were that woman
absolutely and i thought that i thought that was well done i mean it was bashing you over the head
because every time they mentioned um el akir or the reward or anything like that they cut to
that one tele-snap they had of fatima in the harem and that look on her face yeah well i'm not even
sure if it was that look but but it but it was it was kind of you the the point is you don't have
her expressions sort of say i'm pretending to i'm pretending to be good but really i'm scheming or
whatever she whatever she would have been doing in terms of acting to the camera when the the actual
video camera was there you don't have any of that so you do have to bash your audience over the head
to a degree when you don't have any of that nuance in there you just you simply have the
same still picture again and again the only the only way you can convey the information is by
using it timing it to coincide with those kind of significant points in the audio it had nothing to
do with the fact that they did it over and over again it was the instant they showed that i think
her face says everything you need to know that is the huh i can get rich face and i think that's a
beautifully whoever took that telestep picked the exact right instant to get what that woman is
going to do that is the perfect picture i got that face i looked at it i'm go yep she's betraying her
maybe it's partially the timing and then of course the second time they did it the third time they
did it the fourth time they did it i'm like oh yeah yeah yeah but because i'm not sure i got
that sense i'm not sure i got that sense as strongly as you because what the script gives
you is that someone is going to betray barbara and what that telesnap gives you is that there
are two women who the camera as it were camera in inverted commas has cut to at this point
and then it keeps cutting back to the same telesnap and the same two women and i was like
well I'm pretty sure it's the one on the right but oh yeah I don't know that because I don't
know where these telesnaps have been taken from it's not until later in the story where she creeps
out of the room and you get to see a different telesnap so you realize yes it was the one on the
right I I really did I wrote in capital letters that woman the first time they put that shot up
I'm like ah yeah burned in my head that's made could be the framing could be all sorts of things
just it was you know it could be just a picture showing the massive harim that he's got of you
know three women i don't know what else there is about this telesnap i'm i'm glad to get a chance
to see it i'm disappointed at how they've chosen to do it i don't know it doesn't it really doesn't
seem to me like this historical is that much more complicated than a space drama the fact that they
do have three clothes changes notwithstanding but i have i have to say because i mean that's that's
that's kind of going back to three or four years ago when charles norton kind of picked out some
of the episodes like marco polo the heidens and indeed this one as being unlikely to be
animated because of the the kind of costumes involved and i and i looked at it and i thought
well you know is this really that the way the way it's kind of mounted the way the production is
mounted it doesn't look to my non-expert animators eye as if it's that different from say the reign
of terror but i guess when you actually look at the cast list and the number of people that they
would have to draw rig and animate they do have a lot of people coming and going it's a it's a lot
of people and it goes back to that thing that you were saying about you know one episode there's a
there's a load of characters they all disappear and then you get another load of characters in
the next episode and so all of those have to be created separately by the animators and i can see
why that makes this you know potentially i don't know twice as expensive as an episode that only
has a few people in it i do have to ask this question i and i'm i'm willing to bet that there
is like a dramatic story to be told that behind the scenes of intrigue and possibly illness and
death or something. But at the end of episode three, yes, at the end of episode three, a bandit
comes upon Ian. He's trying to steal some stuff and then Ian catches him, spins him over, get him
choked, and then an unseen assailant whacks him over the head from behind. And he says, thank you,
my brother and the episode or that part of the episode ends in the next episode a completely
different actor is got him pinned and he refers obliquely to his off-screen brother who we never
see do you think there was supposed to be two actors here and one of them got the first guy
got ill and couldn't come in the next week and so they just had to go uh here do this rewrite
slightly and go because it it's fairly odd that the way they did it i don't i know nothing about
it i i don't know but it did seem off right it seemed off to me yeah yeah yeah okay more of that
well the cast in one episode is not the same as the cast in the next episode
but well yeah i mean that that is definitely the case and it's true it seems unnecessary but
from an animation point of view if they had unless unless the unless david whitaker had
written it as a single character which i guess is maybe what you're suggesting the original intent
might have been but he had no because character to bash ian so right if you'd have had the two
brothers and both of them had appeared in you know end of episode three and through episode four
still have given the animators two characters who they had to animate so i was thinking that what
they did was they didn't want to pay actor two to be in episode three for half a second and then
they were going to have the two brothers in episode two and then the guy that we already
saw on camera had to bow out for some reason so they i guess maybe used the guy that was
going to be his brother after all and just made him the only one and he goes oh yeah my brother
off stealing horses or something.
It's just odd.
I perhaps should go look and see if there is any tale of that
from the production side.
But anyway, do you have anything else?
I think we've...
I do not.
And there is no hint or announcement of any kind
of any future Blu-ray box sets from the early years
that have missing episodes.
I, you know, I, well, we know we, we know we're going to get them,
but we don't know what order we're getting them in.
So it's hard to speculate when they think it worries the heck out of me that
they're going to go in and,
and put out one of the seasons where they've put together most of our,
all of the Troutons with animations and they're going to release the box set
without the animations and they're going to make telesnap recreations.
I can, at this point, I can totally see them doing that.
I go, Oh no, no, you're going to buy those separately.
Oh, I hope not. But,
No, it would make sense for them to do it the way you envision it.
And therefore, I have this.
But it would be completely inconsistent with everything they've done, where they have essentially used all the available material relating to any particular season in the release of it.
I mean, in some ways, I think the thing that they might struggle with is when they come to release some of those Troughton seasons where we've had kind of three disc releases of certain serials.
Because we've got a color version, we've got a black and white version, and we've got the set of recons.
They'll do the recons.
They won't be able to put all of that into a box
that only has sort of seven or eight discs
or whatever we've had in the boxes so far.
So their choice will then be either make it into a much bigger,
more expensive set, or say we'll only put the colour animation in,
if that's what they see as the colours.
It'll be a recons.
It won't be the recons.
they'll throw in the existing episodes and the the telesnap episodes because that is the
what they've got no i don't i don't think it will i think i think if anything it's more likely they
will try and include everything that's out there so that would be the animated color and black and
white versions plus the recons for the ones that are missing but i do think that it's hard to see
how they can actually do that so i think they they might end up having to say some of that bonus
material on the animations isn't going to be included and it would be the first time that
they would have not included something that had been previously released when putting together
one of these sets but there's just been so much material you know the these releases of the
animations have been so complete so comprehensive that it it makes it difficult when you're when
you're putting it together as part of a full season anthology yes we'll see we'll see i think
we've still got a few uh not missing seasons from latter doctors uh to still be done so i suspect
it'll be a while before we get to another heart or trout and box set but i could be wrong they
might throw one trout out there just to see how it goes all right well uh therefore we don't know
what would be next whenever we get around to talking about another doctor who episode which
was ultimately my point is that yeah we might you never can tell who knows well i think the next
doctor who episode we'll be talking about is likely to be the 60th specials um because i don't think
we're going to get a Troughton or Hartnell,
another Hartnell set before November 2023.
I think that's a fair bet.
They would have announced by then, wouldn't they?
Well, they haven't announced anything, right?
There aren't any other box sets announced at this point.
No, they used to announce the subsequent box set
before the currently announced one got released.
So it felt kind of almost...
what's the blu-ray release equivalent of chain smoking it felt like whatever that would be
and it's i think they have slowed down slightly they were getting at least three of them out a
year and it seems to be down to about two but i mustn't complain because i do think that the
you know the as i've said these sets are incredibly comprehensive they pull together all the materials
from all previous VHS and DVD and some case, you know, CD audio stuff, everything related to the
season. It's an incredibly comprehensive set of stories and they look fantastic in all respects.
So it really is an amazing series. Well, Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure as always.
Listeners, I hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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