Talk:The Monk (Doctor Who)

Perhaps I should explain why the Monk's appearance in the thirtieth anniversary special is particularly noteworthy, but it's a spoiler and in any case I don't suppose anybody here cares much. So I probably won't. --Paul A 03:20, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia contains spoilers, so please do go right ahead and mention it. I wasn't aware the Monk made any appearances after his originals, so I for one am quite curious about it. Just make sure to put this line:

{{msg:spoiler}}

before the paragraph where you do, to give readers the option of not reading it. Bryan 04:59, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Moving page

I moved the page since the Monk's the only one of the titled Time Lords without a "The" prefixing his title as the article name. It's also easier to just add the "the" instead of removing it from everyone else. --khaosworks 08:02, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

The Master

Wasn't the theory about the Monk being the Master first made popular in a manual for a DW RPG in the 80s? Does anyone know anything about this? — P Ingerson (talk) 21:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like the nonsense that the FASA RPG was spouting (like the origins of the Sontarans), but I don't have any reference materials on hand. Let me do a little Googling and see what I can come up with. --khaosworks 21:59, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Page move?

The discussion really should be here instead of at Page moves. That being said, the reason for the definitive article in front of Meddling Monk is a combination of historical useage and inertia. It can be argued that this is his full title, not merely "Meddling Monk", but at the same time, there's the consistency issue, as we have entries of "Valeyard", not "The Valeyard" and "Rani (Doctor Who)", not "The Rani" and more especially "The Doctor (Doctor Who)", so it's starting to look like a bit of a hodge podge. There's also "The Inquisitor" and "The Other (Doctor Who)". I'm still considering what's the better way to go about this, but this will have a knock-on effect on the titles of those articles as well. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:37, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that definitive articles are not to be placed at the beginning of character article (or any article, for that matter), unless it's abundantly clear that it is part of their name. I.e. a sentence referring to them would be "Hello, The Cheat." If characters like Joker (comics) or Universities can't have "the" in the titles, I'm not all that sympathetic to Meddling Monk and the other articles losing "the" from their titles. They shouldn't recieve different treatment just because they all happen to be from Doctor Who. Apostrophe 15:48, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Do you believe in it strongly enough to fix all the redirects? The Doctor (Doctor Who) has about 500. Tim! (talk) 18:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I only see two. Not all that hard of a task. Apostrophe 20:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

goto the article and click on "what links here", you'll see all the articles which link to it as its current name. All of them would have to change. Also check Master (Doctor Who) which you've already moved, not nearly as many, but you can see what has happened. Tim! (talk) 20:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted the page move until final disposition of this discussion - it's going to be a massive project to fix the redirects, so I think we should all be appraised of the consequences and be prepared to accept it before we proceed with any moves. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:40, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

I'm still not seeing the problem. If people click on a link that's a redirect, it'd direct them to the article that the redirect page is a redirect to. If people click on Aeris, they'd still be sent to Aerith Gainsbourg. The only problem is double redirects, of which there would only be two for Doctor (Doctor Who). Or this a Wikipedia style thing? --Apostrophe 04:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I also don't see the problem with the redirects, I move pages like this every once in a while and rarely have to fix more than a handful. The only time large numbers of articles need relinking is when pages split into several articles for disambiguation-related reasons. Relinking articles to bypass redirects is a cosmetic thing that I only bother to do when I'm already editing a page for other reasons. Bryan 04:40, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Ultimately, after consideration, my position is that I don't mind either way - just that it be consistent. That is, if we move remove the "The", then it should be the same for all, i.e. The War Chief, the Master, etc. We'll just have to fix the redirects as we find them. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 04:54, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

So, if there's no objection, I'll start moving some that I can, then. --Apostrophe 21:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Do try to get a head start on fixing some of the redirects as you can too, while you're at it. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:26, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 13:45, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Saxon

There has been speculation that Mr. Harold Saxon in the upcoming finale to the latest series of Doctor Who is the Monk. The Monk; the first enemy time lord the Doctor met in the original series, wanted King Harold the Saxon to win the Battle of Hastings and rewrite history so that the Saxons were victorious. It could be this "Saxon" is the name sake of that attempt, and the first enemy time lord the Doctor meets in the new series as well. 207.202.227.125 01:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

good point, although, if he is the monk then surely he would be preaching instead ofrunning the country??? --click here 14:50, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's being confrimed that the Master will be in the series finale, so the chances of seeing two Time Lord enemies of the Doctor seems slim, but you never know. Michael Mad 15:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Character name

What evidence is there, really, that this character's name is "The Meddling Monk"? Surely, the monk was just a disguise for the purposes of the specific story, and that his continued use of the disguise, as seen in DMP, was because the Doctor had stranded him in an era where the disguise was still relevant. Should the reference to him as "The Time Meddler" by the DWM story, "4-Dimensional Vistas", not be given greater credence as an attempt to take the name of the character from the title of the serial in which he appeared, rather than the deceptive narrative? He wasn't a monk when he was stealing all that other loot we see in his TARDIS in "The Time Meddler". He took other disguises appropriate to the various eras to aid his plunder.

Somehow, I think the article needs to go a bit further in explaining why DWM made the choice they did. I think it wouldn't be too far to suggest that "The Time Meddler" be given consideration in the first sentence of the article as an alternative name for the character, and then to explain later in the article why there's ambiguity about the name. Calling the character, "The Meddlng Monk"—no matter how well-entrenched that now is in fan circles—is a bit like saying the name of the Master is "Mr. Magister", or any one of the dozens of other disguises the Master had. Somehow, over the years, "the meddling Monk" has turned into "The Meddling Monk", and it's not really accurate. CzechOut 00:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Marooned?

On my viewing of "Escape Switch", the Monk was not marooned on the desolate planet, it was merely somewhere he'd landed before realising that his directional circuit had been removed. The Monk then complains (and I paraphrase) that now he is doomed to wander the universe like the Doctor. But that he will get his own back, one day.