MIAOW, sometimes also called the Ministry, was an Earth-based organisation which dealt with unusual and unnatural incidents. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen, The Dreadful Flap, et al.) Iris Wildthyme had numerous encounters with MIAOW, (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen, et al.) sometimes working with them (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme, The Dreadful Flap), sometimes against. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
The Third Doctor was aware of MIAOW. (AUDIO: Find and Replace)
Accounts differ as to what the acronym "MIAOW" stood for; it may have been "Ministry for Incursions and Alien Ontological Wonders", (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large) "Ministry of Incursions and Ontological Wonders", (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) "Ministry for Incursions and Ontological Wonders", (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen, A Gamble with Wildthyme) "Ministry for Alien Incursions and Other Wonders", (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder) "Ministry of Incursions and Other Alien Wonders", (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap) "Ministry for Incursions and Other Wonders", (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme) or "Ministry of Alien and Other Ontological Wonders". (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love) The American branch of MIAOW was the Military Observation of Otherworldly Occurrences. (PROSE: Elementary, My Dear Sheila)
MIAOW was interested in preserving the Web of Time. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen) They monitored events across the universe using a powerful computer (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme) and kept files on the activities of Señor 105. (PROSE: Elementary, My Dear Sheila) They also possessed helicopters which could travel through space and time. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
Members of MIAOW regularly faked their deaths. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
History
19th century
In the early Victorian era, MIAOW was founded by Harriet Dodd.
In 1873, MIAOW betrayed Dodd and sealed her in Wonderland. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
20th century
In the 1960s, the Jane Fonda Iris occasionally visited Earth and worked for MIAOW. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion) Iris helped MIAOW during "that business with the robot Guru and the holiday camp in Wales" when she met the Beatles and the time the cast of Crossroads was transported to the Moon by samurai jellyfish. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
A branch of MIAOW was set up in Darlington in 1962 to deal with the alien flotsam and jetsam from a time rift called the Dreadful Flap. Iris' former companion Jenny Winterleaf became the head of the Darlington branch of MIAOW. (PROSE: The Dreadful Flap)
On 1 May 1972, MIAOW helped Iris Wildthyme stop a group of witches from summoning the Devil at Hobbe's End. Afterwards, they held a party celebrating Iris' fifteenth anniversary in print. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
From 1972 to 1973, Iris Wildthyme and Panda worked for the South Kensington branch of MIAOW while they were stuck on Earth. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder) On one occasion, Noël Coward and Marlene Dietrich helped MIAOW and Iris defeat an army of vegetables that were trying to overthrow humanity. (PROSE: The Scarlet Shadow) Huxley once tried to convince Jo Jones that in the early 70s she had had adventures with Iris and MIAOW instead of with the Third Doctor and UNIT. (AUDIO: Find and Replace)
In 1973, the Ministry awoke Harriet Dodd and sent an army of "women warriors" to kill all the peculiar beings that lived in Wonderland. Iris initially tried to stop them from attacking Wonderland, but she ended up destroying the whole place in order to get a component which could get her bus working and let her escape Earth. With her bus working, Iris was able to leave Earth and end her period of heavy association with MIAOW. (AUDIO: The Land of Wonder)
In 1976, Iris obtained Vince Cosmos' map of Martian souls for MIAOW in return for all of her work for MIAOW being removed from the organisation's database. Iris gave the map to Mida Slike and was given a memory crystal containing all the information that had been removed. (PROSE: Hang onto Yourself)
In the 1980s, MIAOW got Iris to help stop Magda the Mermaid from triggering the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. MIAOW rehabilitated Magda and assigned her to their Darlington division. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)
21st century
Around the mid 2000s, Mida Slike set up Satan & Satan Ltd. as part of a scheme to get information about Iris from her ex-companion, Tom, who began to write novels about his experiences with Iris.
About five years later, Iris returned to Tom, and feeling wrong about his decision to write books about Iris, Tom and his friend Panda went to Satan & Satan Ltd. to try to convince Mida that he didn't want to write any more books about Iris, to break his contract with the publishers, but Mida refused. Tom and Panda try to escape, but they're eventually cornered by several agents. Iris then is teleported to Satan & Satan Ltd. by the Head, and after Panda defeats the Head, Iris makes Mida terminate Tom's contract. (AUDIO: Wildthyme at Large)
In the 2010s, the Darlington branch was tasked with recovering an assortment alien artefacts that had fallen from the sky after a spaceship exploded above Earth. All of the members of the Darlington branch, excluding Magda, went off-world in an attempt to stop Anthony Marvelle from reaching Hyspero. When Mida Slike found out that the Darlington branch had severely lapsed in its duties, Slike closed down the Darlington branch and fired Magda. (PROSE: Enter Wildthyme)
In 2015, Iris made a deal with a group of aliens to hold a party on Iapetus and have MIAOW pay for it. She helped the aliens send a threatening message to MIAOW and then helped MIAOW "negotiate" with the aliens. MIAOW gave the aliens party decorations, a buffet table, a dozen crates of beer, and a karaoke machine. Iris took the supplies to Iapetus and partied with the aliens. (PROSE: Our Tune)
Undated events
The emperor of dogworld hired Mida Slike and Alid Jag to prevent Princess Margaret from altering The True History of Planets. Jag and Slike both attended a 2074 conference on 20th century science fiction. Unaware that the other was a fellow MIAOW agent, they both attempted to assassinate each other. Jag pretended to be crushed to death by the Doctor's TARDIS and Slike pretended to be killed by poodles.
Slike and Jag both investigated Brenda Soobie in 1960 Las Vegas, where they encountered Fitz Kreiner and Flossie. Fitz and Flossie trapped Jag in the elevator of the Hotel Miramar. Slike captured Fitz, Flossie, Brenda, and Noël Coward and took them to dogworld in a helicopter. By the time Slike arrived on dogworld with her captives, the Eighth Doctor, Char, Anji Kapoor, and Fritter had already negated Margaret's changes to history. (PROSE: Mad Dogs and Englishmen)
Panda went on a mission for MIAOW involving weather balloons and a missing professor at a wildflower sanctuary and got sucked into the anti-matter universe. There, he encountered two other versions of himself from different points in time and met an insane queen that looked like a cross between Shirley Bassey and Darth Vader.
After helping MIAOW stop Samantha, Iris Wildthyme asked Jenny Winterleaf to take in PAND-R as a MIAOW operative.
MIAOW found reptile people at the Earth's core and Iris Wildthyme spent some time trying to convince MIAOW not to commit genocide. (PROSE: From Wildthyme with Love)
Behind the scenes
- Prior to MIAOW's first mention by that name Bafflement and Devotion, Iris had been said to work for "the Ministry" in Femme Fatale and the charity story Entertaining Mr. O. However, when they were written, those references were clearly intended to be the Ministry seen in The Avengers.
- A deleted scene from The Blue Angel would have mentioned that MIAOW had persistently tried to recruit the Second Doctor during his TV Comic exile on Earth in 1969.[1]