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City at World's End
(Christopher Bulis) |
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 Name: Monitor
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Sarath, unspecified
date in the far future.
Appearances: "City
at World's End"
Doctors: First
Doctor
Companions: Susan, Barbara
Wright and Ian
Chesterton
History: Although The Doctor faced many diverse
problems and enemies during his time on Sarath - apparently an Earth
colony in the distant future that had somehow lost all knowledge
of their origins -, Monitor was the only truly villainous opponent
he faced; the other potential threats on Sarath were either simply
misguided individuals or were never a direct threat to The Doctor
himself.
When
his existence began, Monitor was an AI program created to help city
officials coordinate and control the city of Arkhaven, one of the
largest cities on Sarath, the population divided in a class system
based on factors such as the Elite, the Technical and Service Functionaries,
the Church - allegedly true Believers regarded themselves as different
from the general population, the Military, and the Common Citizens.
Although he might have been content to exist in this manner for centuries
as he obeyed his programming, Monitor’s purpose began to change
when an asteroid impact damaged Sarath’s moon, leaving the
moon in a gradually descending orbit that would inevitably culminate
in it striking Sarath and eliminating all life on the planet. As
Professor Jessen, one of Arkhaven’s leading scientists, began
work to construct the Ship, a massive rocket that should be capable
of taking the surviving population of Arkhaven to Mirath, the next
planet in the system, the city’s officials found themselves
facing a massive influx of refugees attempting to gain access to
the Ship.
This crisis came to a head when the city was
attacked by the Taklarians, another group of humans who operated on a
Nazi-esque system of genetic breeding and purity, Arhaven’s officials
regarding the possibility of allowing them on board to be reprehensible
and forcing them into a brief but devastating war that resulted in Arkhaven
being reduced to around eight hundred thousand people from a population
of over five million, although the Taklarian ship was destroyed. During
this period of conflict, matters with the Ship began to become increasingly
complicated. Due to Professor Jessen having lacked the necessary funding
to do his research into rocket construction properly before the moon
began to fall, he had made some errors in his earlier calculations, and
had incorrectly calculated the power of the engine he could create. With
the Professor only able to produce an engine capable of producing half
the power required at best, construction on the Ship continued to provide
a symbol to keep the population calm while the Functionary class - those
responsible for the Ship’s construction - discreetly chose a group
from their class who they felt could be trusted to travel to Mirath in
the lunar lander, the ship that would have taken passengers from the
Ship to Mirath when they reached the city, the lander being the only
vessel possessing sufficient hull shielding to survive the debris that
it would encounter. To further limit riots a camp was established for
the NC2s - Non-Citizen, Non-Conformist, referring to people from outside
Arkhaven or those who caused trouble in the city -, the threat of the
camp limiting the possibility of rebellion as the NC2s would be left
behind when the Ship left.
With
the development of this plan, Monitor began to subtly take independent
action; while he could have survived if the Ship had been in working
order, with only the five hundred or so people who could be carried
in the Lander, the population would regress to a low-technology level
for some time, meaning that Monitor would ‘die’ as parts
of his systems decayed without the ability to repair them. This plan
began when Monitor inspired by Mayor Draad’s plan to make the
city appear more populated than it was after the Taklarians’ attacks
by illuminating hollowed damaged buildings and sending out cars filled
with dummies; with Arkhavian medical technology occasionally relying
on putting people in stasis when they faced imminent death until
an effective treatment could be found, Monitor was able to secretly
remove the people from the stasis tubes while they were concealed
from the rest of the hospital - not violating his programming as
they were technically already dead - and replacing them with convincing
android duplicates, creating a secret group of ‘Trojan Horses’ that
Monitor could use to infiltrate and control the final evacuation
to secure his own existence.
However, Monitor’s plans were jeopardised approximately
a month before Zero Day - the day that the moon would hit Sarath
- when the TARDIS arrived on the planet. Although the TARDIS crew
were separated when the building that they had materialised on top
of was hit by a meteor strike, Barbara being lost in the sewers under
the building while Susan was taken to hospital and the First
Doctor and Ian sent to the NC2 camp. While Susan was in hospital, she was
replaced by one of Monitor’s androids, but since she had actually
been merely entering a healing coma rather than actually dying she
regained consciousness before her body was cremated and managed to
escape. Meanwhile, The Doctor and Ian were able to tell their story
to one of the wardens of the NC2 camp, the discovery of the TARDIS
prompting him to consider the possibility that their story was true
(Although The Doctor was unable to show them the interior as Barbara
had the only available key), Draad offering The Doctor access to
the city’s equipment to create a new key for the TARDIS in
exchange for his advice in the final stages of the ship’s construction.
Although
The Doctor quickly deduced the truth about the Ship after he was
allowed a closer look at it - allowing him to make a few quick calculations
based on mass and power requirements to deduce that the Ship lacked
the power to get off the ground -, he was forced to continue his
work out of a lack of anything else to do. The situation became even
more complicated when a group of Church functionaries abducted Susan
to question her about her religious beliefs, fearing that The Doctor
and his companions might introduce doubt in their gods, resulting
in the accidental death of the Church’s leader during the rescue
- they were putting Susan through a ‘trial by water’ in
a leisure club and the bishop fell into the water and was dragged
down by his robes - and the discovery of this Susan’s android
nature. At the same time, the real Susan and Barbara were reunited,
only to be captured by the group of Functionaries responsible for
developing the Lander to be used as an expendable labour force, having
previously assisted in aiding NC2 escape efforts from the camp to
capture the NC2s and use them for the same purpose.
Before
The Doctor and Ian had time to consider what to do about the discovery
of Susan’s true nature, the moon’s descent was accelerated
when it was unexpectedly pulled apart by tidal stresses, resulting
in Zero Day occurring over a month in advance. With The Doctor and
Ian delaying their return to the Ship to continue their search for
Susan and Barbara - during which they encountered the surviving NC2s,
released from the camp when the warden refused to obey his orders
to kill them -, they thus missed an attack on the ship mounted by
the surviving Taklarians - who had been living underground in hiding
since their last assault failed -, Draad destroying the Ship after
the Taklarians had boarded it. The Doctor was able to lead the NC2s
to the Lander after deducing its most likely location, but the subsequent
attempt to appeal to Draad was interrupted when Monitor finally revealed
his true intentions - no longer required by his programming to obey
Draad as Arkhaven no longer existed as a legal structure that would
require a mayor (Cities required a thousand inhabitants to classify
as such and Arkhaven now had around half that) -, taking direct control
of his androids.
Fortunately,
despite Monitor’s refusal to be controlled once again and the
shock factor of the androids’ true natures, the addition of
Susan’s android to the equation proved to be Monitor’s
undoing. Since Monitor’s androids included duplicates of the
templates’ brainwaves, Susan possessed an undefined but existent
connection to her android, allowing her duplicate to resist Monitor’s
influence and thus disrupt his connection to the other androids.
Although Monitor refused to be controlled again, one of his androids
- originally a security officer called Ben Lant who had helped The
Doctor and his friends during their time in Arkhaven - regained enough
memory of his human identity to destroy Monitor’s central databank,
destroying Monitor once and for all. Although Monitor attempted to
gain some measure of revenge by damaging the Lander’s control
computer in his last moments, the android Susan was able to connect
herself up to the system and take its place, The Doctor using an ‘escape
pod’ from the TARDIS to provide the Lander with additional
space without an increase in mass so that all of the survivors present
could depart in the ship. Having witnessed the Lander launch, The
Doctor and his companions departed in the TARDIS - Barbara having
retained her key throughout the earlier chaos -, leaving the colonists
to make a new, good life for themselves on Mirath. |
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