Monarch
Name:
Monarch
Species:
Urbankan
Place of Origin:
Urbanka
Main Actor:
Stratford Johns
Appearance:
Monarch was described in one word, insane. He was from the distant planet Urbanka, Monarch also 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 had 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 doubled 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 person 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 had 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 finally able to convince Adric that Monarch was lying to him, all he needed Adric to do 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 doorof 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.