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| Four to Doomsday |
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 Name: Monarch
Format:
Television Show
Time of Origin: Distant planet of Urbanka,
approximately in the 1980s.
Appearances: "Four
to Doomsday"
Doctors: Fifth
Doctor
Companions: Adric, Nyssa, Tegan
Jovanka
History: Monarch can be described in one word;
insane. A native of the distant planet Urbanka, Monarch resembled
an upright humanoid frog, but his gruesome exterior concealed a mind
that could have been magnificent if it wasn't for the matter of his
missing sanity and conscience. Although he told anyone who asked
that Urbanka had been destroyed a thousand years ago when a star
collapsed into a black hole, in reality he had destroyed it himself,
and had only abandoned Urbanka in pursuit of more deranged schemes.
In
the past, Monarch had visited Earth over a period of at least 35
000 years, each time abducting representatives of a prominent culture
- ranging from the Australian Aborigines, the Mayans, the Chinese
Mandarins, and the Athenians. Each time, the journey had taken less
time than before, Monarch doubling the ship's speed with every trip,
and now intended to go to Earth to settle there for good, mining
the Earth of its supplies of silicon and carbon (Among other minerals)
to create a faster-than-light drive that would allow Monarch to go
back in time to the beginning of the Universe and confirm what must
have been his most demented belief; that it was he who created everything,
and that he alone is God.
Exactly why Monarch was going to Earth when
other planets had the elements he required was never explained, but some
speculate that he may have felt like he understood Earth better than
most since he felt as though he had gained 'valuable local knowledge'
in his last visits.
In
any case, Monarch had already reverted the entire population of his
planet - along with every native of Earth he'd taken from his previous
visits - into elaborate silicon chips, which allowed him to store
over six billion sentient beings of approximately human size in one
spaceship. Along with his two android ministers for Enlightenment
and Persuasion, Monarch intended to approach Earth with a message
of peace and goodwill, and then release a poison against humanity
that would, in his own words, release them from 'the great tyranny
of the universe - internal and external organs', along with all the
various other factors that went with that, such as the need to sleep,
rest, eat, drink, and so on.
Eventually, only four days away from Earth
on his last visit, Monarch ran into the complication of the TARDIS materialising on board as the Fifth
Doctor was trying to get his
companion Tegan
Jovanka back to Heathrow. Meeting the leaders of the four
ethnic groups on the ship, The Doctor quickly befriended Bigon, the
only leader who hadn't been won over by Monarch offering to make
him leader of his 'group' on Earth; as a philosopher, Bigon felt
that democracy was the only civilised form of government, but fail-safes
in his android body had stopped him rising up against Monarch in
the past. While The Doctor tried to figure out a way to stop Monarch,
Tegan attempted to take the TARDIS to Earth to warn everyone, but
only succeeded in materialising outside Monarch's ship in the vacuum
of space, while Nyssa was taken to be turned into an android... and
Adric, won over by Monarch's vision, agreed to convince The Doctor
to let Monarch inside the TARDIS.
The
Doctor was eventually able to convince Adric that Monarch was lying
to him; all he needed Adric for was to convince the people of Earth,
organic life-form to organic life-form, that he wasn't a real threat
until it was too late. The Doctor and Bigon then won Lin Futu, the
Chinese leader, over to their side by pointing out that Monarch would
never give up control of such a populous people as the Chinese, then
winning the other two leaders, Villagra and Kurkutji, over as well.
With no other way to get the TARDIS back, The Doctor and Adric were
forced to go on a spacewalk to get it back... but, with Adric having
been given the only space suit, The Doctor would only have six minutes
to get to the TARDIS before he froze to death.
Despite
the intervention of Persuasion and Enlightenment, Adric was able
to remove their main circuit boards before they could kill either
him or The Doctor, and The Doctor eventually got to the TARDIS by
throwing a cricket ball at the wall of the Urbankan ship; the ball
bounced off and returned to The Doctor's hands, and its momentum
carried him to the door of the TARDIS, where he was able to make
a short hop back onto Monarch's ship to pick up Nyssa and Tegan.
Outraged, Monarch tried to shoot them, but The Doctor hit him with
a sample of his own toxin and Monarch's body shrivelled in on itself;
as The Doctor had suspected from Monarch's foolish belief that faster-than-light
travel was the key to travelling through time, Monarch himself was
still at least partly organic, demonstrating just how hypocritical
he really was. |
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