Shakespeare's Richard I by the Doctor

The Crusade - Episode 1: The Lion

I'm settling into my routine now. I can watch an episode at the gym, and do a quick write-up at home before I leave for work. Win-Win. So, we have the first Episode of the Crusade, chronicling King Richard I and the crusade into the Holy Lands. And you know what that means. Brown face. A whole lot of brown face.Though I do think I saw a black person in the background of a few shots. Which might actually be the first black person in Doctor Who. I'm a little too lazy to look that up.

So, the action gets rolling, and Barbara gets kidnapped by the Saracens, of course. And Ian and the Doctor get some nifty 1960's TV sword fighting in, before a sword is thrown into a man's chest. The Doctor steals some things in a fit of stealing the stolen things is good, and Vicki dresses as a homeless person outside a hut for no discernible reason.

And this gets me to Barbara. She's been captured and meets the man who was claiming to be King Richard so the real king could escape. But I wonder how long it took Barbara to figure out what was going on, because her clueless-ness for a History teacher was kind of painful to watch. I know History is a big subject and all that, but when you're in a children's program where character trait #2 is "History" teacher, I'd hope that you'd not be on the receiving end of an info dumb about what is going on.

It's a good start to a story, and curious to see how this goes. I understand it's a recon for the next episode, so...yay?

Episode 2 - The Knights of Jaffa