According to a 1966 Times Literary Supplement review, Doctor Who and the Crusaders is ‘An undistinguished historical story … neither helped nor hindered by the intrusion of the ubiquitous Doctor’ (3). This seems to miss the point rather as the book is clearly not a historical story at all, preferring to tell us Richard and Palestine’s eventual fate through the Doctor’s mouth as a coda. Indeed, the reviewer’s description of the Doctor as an ‘intrusion’ is the key to his misunderstanding; once the Doctor seeks safety by fleeing Richard’s court (4), it is Richard who drops out of the narrative. He doesn’t even turn up to hunt for the Doctor, that being done seemingly independently by Leicester - the Doctor may be incidental to Richard, but it is Richard who is incidental to the story. Whitaker is more concerned with history as a concept rather than with these specific historical events, and he goes to a lot of effort to set out his stall right at the start. Did the reviewer miss all the weird stuff about Earth’s ‘Time pattern’ (see Whitakerisms)?
    Whilst Ian and Barbara are engaged in an adventure ostensibly about surviving a different era, the Doctor and Vicki find themselves bound to Richard’s plans for peace. Whitaker wastes no time in establishing how theirs is a doomed position, the Doctor immediately realising, when Joanna asks for his help, that he and Vicki’s safety is ‘tenuous’ and that events are ‘enmeshing’ them (5), and the narrative making it clear at the very moment that Richard frames his plans that they will be ‘shredded into pieces and blown away’ by Joanna (6).
    But Whitaker isn’t just idly speculating about the difficulties faced by time travellers visiting the past. History also sweeps those of the time along in its wake. Richard’s plan seems humane and selfless: he seeks to ‘stem the blood’ of ‘half the world’ (7), despite his instincts fighting against his own proposed solution (8) and even though the price is the one person, Joanna, who he seems to hold closest (9). The problem is that Richard’s plan is at odds with the era - such a peace is impossible when soldiers such as Leicester view the sole purpose their being in Palestine as to ‘fight’ (10) and Joanna loathes the enemy so much she views the prospective terms as ‘a pact with the Devil’ (11).
    When Richard seeks to override the concerns of those around him with an assertion of his authority (12), he finally appreciates how badly he has misplayed his hand, the ‘awful realisation’ that he is not the ultimate allegiance to which his followers swear (13) only hitting him when Joanna threatens to turn to the Pope and reduce Richard to ‘a hated shadow’ (14). In this, he is contrasted with Saladin, victor of this campaign, who manages his alliances carefully despite loss of face (15), as with El Akir, and always plans always for the worst (16). However, though Saladin is not a man who would be so impotently surprised or easily outmanouvred by King John’s actions (17), he is just as trapped by the politics around him as Richard, expressing that he ‘cannot quarrel’ with El Akir (15) - it is not a free choice.
    And so the tangled web of politics and the blind motion of history become one. The powerlessness of the Doctor in the face of history is matched by historical figures’ powerlessness in the face of the political relationships they navigate – Saladin wins because he tends the allegiances that maintain his power, the Doctor must flee because he has become allied to two conflicting sides and Richard fails because he views himself as above the need for politicking until it is too late.
    There is, however, some hope to be had in the world beyond the courts of Richard and Saladin, with Ian and Barbara’s adventures featuring the redemption of thieves (Ibrahim), the downfall of tyrants (El Akir), the reunion of families (Haroun) and the freeing of slaves (El Akir’s harem). These are explicitly framed as adventures in ‘a world of chivalry and barbarism’ despite the characters coming from the modern era (18), and so Whitaker is asserting that action is possible despite the constraints of history. 
    Fortunately, this means that Whitaker’s moral, that progress can only come when different ‘colours, languages, custom, rule and fashion find a meeting ground’ (19), is not a mere glib prophecy from the future, where everything’s better, but an actual actionable outlook in any era, demonstrated by the unlikely alliances that lead to Ian’s rescue of Barbara. Unfortunately, gender doesn’t really get a look in and so Whitaker excludes half the world from his celebration of the capacity for agency - Joanna, the highest-status woman in the tale and the one whose will triumphs over Richard’s, draws her strength through Leicester’s support and the Pope’s authority; Haroun works alone to seek vengeance for the death of his wife and kidnap of his elder daughter whilst his other daughter is kept at home and becomes solely responsible for helping El Akir’s liberated harem, which he will do through marriages or returning them to their fathers; and Barbara, a modern woman, is left dependent on Ian (‘She had needed him’ (18)) and does not even get to assert her perspective on events, with El Akir’s looming threat of violence switching straight to Ian’s overhearing her cries of pain (20), mounting her rescue, wrapping her up and whisking her away. This is especially frustrating because Barbara has so many moments where she resists, frustrates and outwits El Akir and his guards throughout the story but, at the crucial moment, none of this is used to play into Ian and Haroun’s opportunity to stage a rescue.
    And so, with the last novelisation of the 1960s and (sadly) Whitaker’s last contribution to the range, the Tory urges of Doctor Who become an actual problem rather than just an amusing sideshow. The Doctor urges that humanity must ‘control greed, destructive ambition, hatred and the dozen and one other flaws’ from which they suffer (21) but, without the creative inputs of producers, directors and actors, the books themselves remain terribly constrained by one of those flaws, offering a far less modern outlook on the world than the one Whitaker helped to shape on television.