The Monk is 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 species to appear in the programme. Appearances Television The character first appeared as an unnamed character who had disguised himself as a monk, and who was the possessor of a stolen Mark IV TARDIS which had a fully functioning camouflage unit. The Doctor hypothesised that he left the Doctor's then-unnamed home planet, some 50 years after the Doctor did. At this early stage in the history of the series, the names Time Lord and Gallifrey, and the details of the Doctor's origins had not yet been devised. The monk was meddling in history to change it 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 within this serial. 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 character eventually restored his ship and tracked the Doctor to a volcanic planet called Tigus, where he attempted to maroon his enemy by destroying the Doctor's TARDIS's lock with his laser screwdriver. The Doctor managed to repair it and next materialised in Egypt, with the monk still following him. While there, they encountered the Daleks, and the Doctor stole the directional unit from the monk's TARDIS, causing the monk to lose control over his TARDIS's navigation. The monk was last seen leaving an icy planet. Other media The Monk has featured in comics, novels and other Doctor Who spin-offs. In the Doctor Who Monthly comic strip 4-Dimensional Vistas (DWM #78-#83, Winter 1983), the Time