A race of obscure origins who could take on any form they wished. When they attempted to take control of the Earth in the early 21st Century it amused them to look like animated human corpses.
Their mode of operation was to be invited to take over rather than to invade and conquer by force. The invitation had to be "pure". It could not be made through fear, for gain, or to deceive. Anyone harbouring ulterior motives was destroyed.
The Monks engineered situations in which the population would feel obliged to seek their help. Prior to this, they would run a complex simulation to test out all possible outcomes.
The simulated Doctor was able to warn his real-life self about their interest in Earth. They arrived in a vessel which looked exactly like an ancient pyramid, which appeared in a region contested by the US, Russia and China. This was a distraction however, as they were manipulating events at a biofuel research unit in England. A substance capable of destroying all organic life was about to be released.
In order to save the Doctor, his companion Bill Potts made them a genuine invite to take charge in return for saving his life.
Recognising the threat he posed, they had the Doctor incarcerated on a ship in the North Sea. They then set about rewriting history to incorporate themselves into every significant event, making people believe that the Monks were benevolent and had been guiding them for millennia.
They exerted control psychically through the person who had invited them to take over - Bill - boosted through a network of giant statues of themselves which were disguised transmitters. Anyone who questioned their new truth was arrested and deported to a labour camp.
The Doctor escaped from his prison ship and sought help from Missy, as she had some experience of the Monks.
She told him of the psychic link, and told him of how she had once broken this by killing the person - a girl whom she pushed into a volcano.
The Doctor and his friends broke into the Monk's pyramid in the centre of London where they found one of the aliens acting as a focus for their psychic powers. The Doctor's attempt to interfere with this failed, but Bill was more successful - using memories of her mother to override the Monks' transmissions.
The public rapidly came to realise the true nature of the Monks as the truth reasserted itself. Lacking neither the means nor the will to conquer by force, the Monks took to their craft and abandoned the planet.
Played by: Jamie Hill. Voiced by: Tim Bentinck. Appearances: Extremis, The Pyramid at the End of the World, The Lie of the Land (2017).
- The Monks as they appeared at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff in September 2017:
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