Prisoners Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and William des Preaux (John Flint) are presented to Saphadin (Roger Avon) and Saladin (Bernard Kay, seated) by El Akir (Walter Randall) in The Lion, the first episode of The Crusade (1965).
A man of slight build, with a somewhat melancholy face in repose which entirely altered when he smiled, Saladin was many of the things a leader of men needed to be. His force of personality was tremendous, although he did not fight as Richard Ceour de Lion did, at the head of his men.’
This was writer David Whitaker’s description of Saladin, the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in Doctor Who and the Crusaders, the 1965 novelisation of his own scripts for The Crusade. Personified on screen by character actor Bernard Kay, Saladin is a more imposing presence, a man of dark and weary countenance, thoughtful, wise and fiercely intelligent but with a dry wit, an eye for Barbara Wright’s beauty and respect for his opponents. The performance is easily the most memorable of Kay’s four roles in Doctor Who, even though it’s confined to just a single scene in each of the first three episodes of The Crusade.