Day 67: The Warlords

For a serial that is based around the Crusade of Richard the Lionheart, it is a story that has dealt very little with concepts of faith and religion so far. That changes slightly in the beginning of this episode, where Richard is forced to exile the Doctor and Vicki, because some of his lords are concerned that they may be traitors, whereas he has grown quite fond of them. And as they depart, he asks them whether he will ever see Jerusalem. The Doctor responds in the affirmative, yet he knows that he will only see it from afar, and never capture the city itself. But he still has faith, faith in what he is doing and faith that what he is doing is the right thing in the name of God. And in the scene directly after it, we have the lord, Leicester, who is most against the Doctor and Vicki spread rumours about them, claiming that they are unholy and witches. And in these two scenes we have the Crusades summed up in a nutshell. On the one hand, we have the people who do these things because of faith, and this is what they believe in. It may be wrong, or it may be right, but the point is that they have faith in these concepts. And then we get to the other approach, which is exploiting this faith for other purposes, to further your goals, much like other more modern crusades to the Middle East. It shows that sometimes faith can be a driving force, but others it is used as an excuse, to further people's own agendas as they go about their business.