This episode opens with a very fourth wall breaking speech by an older looking Ian Chesterton. He's talking directly to the audience, explaining that he and Barbara don't often tell people what happened, because they'd think them mad, but he thinks you could handle it. He opens up with talking about the Doctor, and very neatly, I think, sums up what Doctor Who is all about.
"The Doctor... He was old, when I was young. Somehow I still feel he's up there in his lunatic ship, righting wrongs, still specializing in trouble. He dives in, and usually finds a way out. He showed me so many things, so many...caught up in history, as the old boy tried to find our way home...it sounds ridiculous, fantastic. Well, it was a fantastic adventure."
We head into the intro, then into the past, where two Englishmen are being followed by somewhat stereotypical looking Saracens. Right behind this mess, the TARDIS appears, obviously setting up the Doctor and company to stumble right through some potentially historical moment. Apparently, those Englishmen were some of King Richard the Lionhearted knights, and were guarding him while he was out gallivanting through the woods near Jaffa (near modern day Tel Aviv), bored because Saladin's men were nowhere near.
Barbara almost immediately gets kidnapped, while Ian tackled the other Saracen warrior. Doctor and Vicki rush up, with the Doctor trying to figure out just what they got themselves into this time. A pitched battle breaks out between the English and the Saracen attackers, and quickly moves towards the group. Vicki and the Doctor drag a wounded knight off, while Ian watches as Richard appears to get captured. The Saracen leader orders his men to find and kill anyone else lying around, and heads off. One quickly runs into Ian, who grabs a sword and begins fighting him (badass science teacher or what?), while another runs into the Doctor and Vicki, and the Doctor proceeds to show off his epic fencing skills. Luckily for William Hartnell, one of the knights nearby is merely wounded, and throws his spear at the enemy, killing him (really nice throw for a guy with an arrow in his shoulder, lying on the ground, throwing a sword). Ian also handily dispatches his attacker, showing that years of warfare and military training are no match for a good English right hook. The knight reveals that the man who was kidnapped was not the king, is about to tell them about some belt, and passes out. The Doctor surmises that this belt would help him get in the King's favour, so they could find Barbara.
As a side note, the Doctor sometimes seems like a really strange D&D player. He gets a mission or plot hook, and immediately will go gallivanting after it, regardless of what he was doing. He also has a tendency to do what you least expect, and the crazier it is, the better it seems to work out.
In true D&D fashion again, Ian splits the party, wandering off to look for Barbara, loudly calling her name in a wood full of very hostile enemies. The scene fades as the King, fine except for a nasty gash on his head, staggers off.
We then cut to Barbara, captive with the fake King Richard, one Sir William, who quickly decides to say she's Princess Joanna, King Richard's sister. Unfortunately for 'Joanna', apparently Saladin's brother had a bit of a thing for her, and they realize that their plan might not go as smoothly as they hoped.
The Doctor, rogue that he is, starts sweet-talking a merchant, and then proceeds to steal an entire wardrobe while the merchant argues with some man, and the graphically discuss the punishment for thievery. The Doctor hides under a table, grabs the clothes, then proceeds to break the poor broke merchants other table, causing the merchant considerable distress. He then stands up, commiserates with the poor fellow, thanks him, and walks off. Ouch.
The smug Saracen warrior who captured Barbara brings them in to show off to Saladin and his brother. His brother, instantly recognizing that Barbara is not in fact Joan, flies into a rage, only calmed by Saladin. Saladin pronounces that the knight is not King Richard (King Richard was a ginger, this knight has black hair), and then nicely compliments Barbara. He calmly finds out from the knight who he really is, and then begins to try and figure out Barbara. The warrior who captures him suggests they torture Barbara for Saladin's amusement, which Saladin didn't find very amusing, and orders him to leave, and guard Sir William, and to treat him with great respect, and to follow the laws of chivalry. Saladin begins questioning Barbara, who, apparently deciding that the truth might works, begins telling him about how she arrived in the woods in a box, and was from a planet of insects, and before that Nero's time, and before that in the future in England! Remarkably, instead of locking her up as a crazy lady, he decides that she must be part of a troupe of actors, and commands her to come to her table and tell him tales, or else.
We end with a scene of the Doctor, Vicki, and Ian, talking with the King and his men, while the King gives us a great deal of exposition on the basic political and military state of affairs, delivered in a rant. Ian decides to ask the pouting king to let him go as an emissary to Saladin's camp to get their friends released, which the king, still furious that Saladin had slaughtered his friends, flat out refuses.
This episode was remarkably well done. If they redid this episode in modern times with modern camera techniques and removed the racism, it would be one of the great episodes of the new series. As it is, it is one of the best episodes I've seen yet, and even Saladin and his men are portrayed relatively fairly. Unfortunately, the second episode in the arc is lost, so I won't be reviewing it, and instead will skip straight to the third episode, The Wheel of Fortune! Hopefully, I'll be a bit faster with this next update too.
More reading on Richard the Lionhearted
More reading on Saladin
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