Meddling Monk

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 and The Daleks' Master Plan, as an adversary of the First Doctor. They were written and co-written respectively by Dennis Spooner.

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.