Doctor Who and the Crusaders Read Free

The polish on his elastic-sided boots gleamed beneath the immaculate spats. The perfectly tied cravat sat comfortably beneath the stiff, white wing-collar, enhanced by a pearl stick-pin. No speck of dust or tiny crease were anywhere in evidence on his tapered black jacket, with its edges bound in black silk, or on the narrow trousers, patterned in black-and-white check. The long, silver hair hung down from the proudly held head, obscuring the back of his coat collar. Gold pince-nez, attached around the neck by a thin, black satin tape, completed the picture Ian and Barbara had always known. For the Doctor’s favourite costume was that of the Edwardian, English gentleman of the early nineteen hundreds. Ian had always thought the Doctor might have stepped straight out of the drawings of the famous magazines of the period,
The Strand
or
Vanity Fair
. And as Ian marvelled (for about the thousandth time!) at the Doctor’s obsession with that one, short period of life on Earth, when he had all space from which to choose, it brought a question to his lips he had often wished to have answered.
    ‘It’s often puzzled me how it is, Doctor, that we can visit all these different worlds and affect the course of life. You must confess we have interfered, often in quite a major kind of way.’
    ‘Always for the best intentions, and generally we’ve succeeded,’ murmured the old man. Ian nodded.
    ‘That really isn’t my point, though. Why is it that when we land on Earth, with all the pre-knowledge of history at our disposal, we can’t right one single wrong, make good the bad or change one tiny evil? Why are we able to do these things on other planets and not on Earth?’
    Barbara and Vicki forgot their game and stared at the Doctor, who pressed the fingers of his hands together and thought for a moment before replying.
    ‘You see, Chesterton,’ he said eventually, ‘the fascination your planet has for me is that its Time pattern, that is, past, present and future, is all one – like a long, winding mountain path. When the four of us land at any given point on that path, we are still only climbers. Time is our guide. As climbers we may observe the scenery. We may know a little of what is around a coming corner. But we cannot stop the landslides, for we are roped completely to Time and must be led by it. All we can do is observe.’
    ‘What would happen if we cut those ropes and tried to change something?’ asked Vicki.
    ‘Warn Napoleon he would lose at Waterloo?’ smiled the Doctor. ‘It wouldn’t have any effect. Bonaparte would still believe he could win and ignore the warning.’
    ‘Suppose one were to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1930, then?’ suggested Barbara. The Doctor shook his head.
    ‘But Hitler wasn’t assassinated in 1930, was he? No, Barbara, it would be impossible. Once we are on Earth, we become a part of the history that is being created and we are as subject to its laws as the people who are living in that period.’
    ‘Then we can never die on Earth,’ said Ian.
    The Doctor said, ‘We do not have everlasting lives, myfriend. Of course we can die on Earth or anywhere else, just as we can catch colds or suffer burns. Try and understand.’
    The Doctor leaned forward and, as he did so, a part of his face slipped into a shadow.
    ‘Often our escape clause on Earth has been that we have pre-knowledge that some awful catastrophe is going to happen. We would know when to leave Pompeii. We would not go fishing on the Somme river in the summer of 1916. We would not disguise ourselves as Phoenicians and live in Carthage in A.D . 648 and let ourselves be destroyed with the city by the Arabs. Or go for a sea-voyage in the
Titanic
.’
    ‘Then we can do nothing for suffering,’ murmured Barbara sadly. ‘We can never help anyone on Earth or avert horrible wars.’
    She looked up at the Doctor and was surprised to see a slight smile on his lips.
    ‘There is a story about Clive of India,’ the old man