DOCTOR WHO - THE AUDIO ADVENTURES
SERIES 2 EPISODE 2 "THE KNIGHT FROM CRUSADIA"
OUT IN JANUARY
SYNOPSIS: The King's Champion is the finest swordsman in the land. No one can stand in his way of protecting his king and kingdom's people from threat. That is or course when two passing time travellers come along stuck in the 14th century. The Doctor is challenged to take on the king's champion which is actually a robot warrior from the planet Crusadia in a duel, and Pip is taken hostage by the king. The Doctor must defeat the robot, save his friend, and lead the village people to stand up to their king and take back their land and save the day! All in a day's work? It's not as easy as you'd think.
NOTES: This sort of idea for a story was always on my to do list from the word 'go' it was just finding an appropriate place to fit it in. I approached Jamie Harrison and asked him if he wanted to write it with me and he said yes. The idea I had in mind was having a robot knight which had a sword fight with The Doctor, that was all I had to go on. Me and Jamie came up with the idea based around the original outline of this robot Knight. We decided that this Robot would be the product of an alien species that were trying to live amongst earth's people and rule over a very powerful kingdom and terrorise the community and the robot was their instrument of terror if you like. No sword or arrow or blow to the head can damage it. At least nothing that was available at the time of the middle ages and seeing as this was a robot from another planet the technology that was available to it was highly more advanced than the middle ages. So its a completely unfair contest but its what makes it fun.
In the history of Doctor Who, especially back in the 60's you got the story where The Doctor and Co land on a planet. They meet some rebels, help them to beat they're aggressors and then fly off again. This is exactly what this story is. It was a sort of tribute to the kind of way in which stories operated at that time. It's something you see in Doctor Who today so I was very keen for my classic roots to come out in this audio adventure series. The rebels being the villagers of the kingdom who hide away because they have no means of rebellion or any weapons to fight the aggressors who are in this instance more advanced than they are therefore making it an unfair competition. The aggressors being the Robot from Crusadia and its master 'The King' and there's more to him than meets the eye.
We also thought we'd work on The Doctor and Pip's relationship. Because Pip at this point has not long been travelling in the TARDIS. We've been so used to Kara that having a new girl on the scene is quite strange and new and refreshing and therefore we have to start that whole cycle of introduction all over again, but in a completely different way to the way it was done with Kara because Pip is a completely different character. So there are some nice scenes between The Doctor and Pip in this story to pick up on and gradually Pip comes to find that actually she quite likes time travelling and for the doctor she finds she likes even more, so yes, its a little heartwarming.
