The Monk

[close] The Meddling Monk, or simply The Monk, was a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Played by the British actor Peter Butterworth, the character appeared in two stories, The Time Meddler (1965) and The Daleks' Master Plan (1966), as an adversary of the First Doctor. They were written and co-written respectively by Dennis Spooner. In Big Finish audio stories later incarnations have been played by Graeme Garden (2010, 2015), Rufus Hound (2015-present) and Gemma Whelan (2021).

Other than the Doctor and Susan, the Monk was the first member of the Doctor's race to appear in the programme, and the second Doctor Who villain (after the Daleks) to make a return appearance.

The Monk was the possessor of a stolen Mark IV TARDIS – superior to the Doctor's and with a fully functioning Chameleon Circuit. The Doctor hypothesised that the Monk left the Doctor's then-unnamed home planet, Gallifrey, some 50 years after the Doctor did. At this early stage in the history of the series, the name Time Lord and the details of the Doctor's origins had not yet been devised.

The Monk liked to meddle in history and to change it for his own amusement and for what he considered to be the better: lending mechanical assistance to the builders of Stonehenge; giving Leonardo da Vinci tips on aircraft design; making money by using time travel to exploit compound interest; and, when the Doctor first encountered him, attempting to prevent the Norman Conquest as part of a plan to guide England into an early age of technological prosperity. On that occasion he wore the guise of a monk in order to gain the trust of the 11th-century locals of Northumbria, hence the name by which he became known. The Doctor stranded the Monk in the 11th century by stealing his TARDIS's dimensional controller, which reduced the interior dimensions of the time machine to minuscule size. The Monk eventually restored his ship and tracked the Doctor to a volcanic planet, where he attempted to maroon his enemy by destroying the Doctor's TARDIS's lock. However, the Doctor managed to repair it and next materialised in Egypt, with the Monk still following him. While there, the two encountered the Daleks, and the Doctor stole the directional unit from the Monk's TARDIS (later destroying it when he tried to use it in his own ship, as it was incompatible), causing the Monk to lose control over his TARDIS's navigation. The Monk was last seen marooned on a desolate, icy planet.

In the Doctor Who Monthly comic strip 4-Dimensional Vistas (DWM #78-#83), the Monk teamed up with the Ice Warriors in a complex plan to build a giant sonic weapon. In this portrayal, the character (who piloted a TARDIS also shaped like a police box) did not wear a monk's habit, and was referred to as "the Time-Meddler"; however, it was clearly the same character. The Monk was easily defeated by the Fifth Doctor. He later reappeared in Follow That TARDIS! (DWM #147), in which the Sleeze Brothers hijack the Doctor's TARDIS in order to pursue the Monk across time and space after he damages their car.

The Monk also turned up in the New Adventures novel No Future by Paul Cornell, in which he was given the name "Mortimus". The novel was the last of a story arc published to coincide with the series' 30th anniversary in 1993, in which the Seventh Doctor encounters various alternate realities that have been created due to the Monk's meddling with time, including a reality where the Third Doctor was killed in his confrontation with the Silurians (Blood Heat), attempting to distract the Doctor while he helps the Vardans to invade Earth, thus getting their mutual revenge on the Doctor for their losses during their past confrontations with him. Although the Monk seemingly traps the Doctor on the same ice planet he was himself exiled to, thanks to the betrayal of the Doctor's companion Ace, it is revealed at the conclusion of the novel that Ace was simply pretending to side with the Monk to defeat him, the novel ending with the Monk being apparently captured by a Chronovore that he had imprisoned to help him alter time. A chapter removed from the novel would have revealed the Monk was a former operative of the Celestial Intervention Agency; later books have hinted at this.

In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Divided Loyalties by Gary Russell, a young Mortimus is portrayed as a friend of the Doctor's, and a member of a cabal of rebellious young Gallifreyans at the Academy known as "the Deca". The group also included the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, Azmael (from The Twin Dilemma), the War Chief, and Drax (from The Armageddon Factor). The Monk of an artificially-created parallel universe made a brief appearance in the PDA The Quantum Archangel, working with the Master, the Rani and Drax to destroy the Earth.

The Eighth Doctor discovers a new incarnation of the Monk in the Big Finish Productions audio drama The Book of Kells. Voiced by Graeme Garden, the Monk is once again pretending to be a human monk, this time at the Abbey of Kells in Ireland, 1006. Calling himself Thelonios, he used the illuminated art skills of the other monks to create a circuit to repair his TARDIS. He also had his own companion, who happened to be the Doctor's former companion, Lucie Miller. It turns out that several of the Doctor's recent adventures had been manipulated behind the scenes by the Monk. He and Lucie reappear in The Resurrection of Mars, this time waking up cryogenically-frozen Ice Warriors on the Martian moon of Deimos, centuries before history says they should. When Lucie realizes what kind of person the Monk is, she leaves him. He in turn coaxes another of the Doctor's companions, Tamsin Drew, to join him. After that, he sets off to reunite with the Daleks, hoping to get his final revenge on the Doctor, in Lucie Miller / To the Death, only for his plans to backfire when the Daleks betray him, resulting in the deaths of Tamsin, Lucy, and the Doctor's great-grandson Alex, although the Monk saves the Doctor and Susan to make up for his role in the Dalek attack.