FEATURE BY ALAN BARNES
Among their many other achievements – the light bulb, the telephone, the internet – the Monks inspired Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Why? Because if the Monks’ psychic link is passed on from the ‘lynchpin’ they use to gain control of a planet, Missy tells the Doctor and Bill, then the Monks stay in charge – “through, they think, their ruthlessness and efficiency.” “Ruthless efficiency” was, of course, the third of the three – sorry, four – chief weapons of the Pythons’ Spanish Inquisition, along with fear, surprise, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope… whom the Monks involved themselves with in Extremis… and nice red cowls. (Five chief weapons!)