Talk:The Monk

How to split this page
Right, so this has been on the back of my mind for some time, but: the presence of this in the lead… "The chronology of the Monk’s life was complicated by their own meddling erasing parts of their past. One incarnation, known as the Nun, claimed to no longer know what number of regeneration she was on due to this."

- AUDIO: The Wrong Woman

…makes it, I think, an unquestionable emergency: we need to split off the Monk's various incarnations to their own pages. We simply cannot write a linear biography of "the Monk" without engaging in shaky speculation as to what order they go in (why has Gemma Whelan been placed before Rufus Hound?), and to add insult to injury, this new quote indicates that any order would be inaccurate speculation because there isn't an accurate linear order at all.

Also, while this is a minor point, some of the section titles we've been using aren't very good, T:NPOV-wise. "Grander exploits" is a value judgement, and "As a Renegade" blurs the fact that all the post-Butterworth Monks are Renegades too; Butterworth isn't particularly more a Renegade.

Unlike The Master, there is no jurisprudence saying we shouldn't, and neither is there much of a problem in puzzling out which incarnation is which, so it should be relatively simple.

Nevertheless, let's not rush into this blind: does anyone have specific ideas for how to do this? One potentially-contentious thing is that I think the "Early life" stuff should stay on The Monk, rather than go on the page about Butterworth's Monk. Yes, one account presents the Monk in The Time Meddler as being in his first incarnation, but certain developments mean we may soon have to acknowledge that the adult Butterworth as seen on TV may have had a very different past from that ascribed to "Mortimus". There's also the fact that certain invalid stories presented Butterworth as a later regeneration of the character. And getting back into clearly valid material, depending on how we interpret the Wrong Woman quote, we may or may not want to take any incarnation number previously given, even "1", with a Kembel-sized grain of salt.

Hence, the current picture of the changes:
 * "Early life" will remain at The Monk;
 * "As a renegade" will become The Monk (The Time Meddler);
 * "Grander exploits" will become The Monk (The Book of Kells);
 * "Mustachioed meddling" will become The Monk (The Black Hole);
 * "A new body" will become The Monk (The Persistence of Memory);
 * "The Nun" will become, well, The Nun (with a redirect at The Monk (The Wrong Woman)).

Naturally the linking templates such as Butterworth will be retained, but merely altered to point to the correct dabbed page. This will minimise the work needed across the Wiki to accommodate this change. Scrooge MacDuck ☎  08:26, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * While I reject the notion of making policy to accommodate an uncommissioned story exclusively because bits and bobs came out on Twitter, the rest of this is more or less sound. I'm down for the splt. NoNotTheMemes ☎  09:08, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I'm not saying that the invalid Peter Harness short story itself would warrant the change. I simply cited it as evidence that even among current writers who don't conflate Monk and Master, the notion of Butterworth as #1 is far from unanimous, even though it did make its way into one novelisation; and thus, it is better for future-proofing not to put too much weight on that account (given that we are awarded some wiggle room by the Wrong Woman quote and CIA File Extracts). Scrooge MacDuck ☎  09:13, 11 May 2021 (UTC)


 * This seems like a very well thought-out proposal. I'm cool with it. LauraBatham ☎  09:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I concur. 📯 📂 10:17, 11 May 2021 (UTC)