Monkish coven

The Fifth Doctor knew that the "monkish covens" had "gone wrong before", seemingly referencing (COMIC: Blood Invocation ^[+]Loading...["Blood Invocation (comic story)"]) Mortimus, "the Monk", (PROSE: No Future ^[+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"]) first encountered by the First Doctor in his travels. (TV: The Time Meddler ^[+]Loading...["The Time Meddler (TV story)"])

The so-called "monkish covens", or minor committees, were cults in the Capitol on Gallifrey who worshipped Rassilon.

According to the Fifth Doctor, there were "hundreds" of them with a variety of perspectives on Rassilon; some viewed him as a saint or a great engineer, and one even considered him a kind of "cosmic traffic warden" who was nevertheless deserving of worship. There was also one which believed him to have secretly been a vampire, (COMIC: Blood Invocation ^[+]Loading...["Blood Invocation (comic story)"]) fittingly known as the Cult of Rassilon the Vampire, which prophesied the coming of the Vampire Messiah. The Doctor's childhood friend Ruath was a member. (PROSE: Goth Opera ^[+]Loading...["Goth Opera (novel)"])

When a different member of the cult of Rassilon the Vampire ran amok, the Fifth Doctor recalled how "those monkish covens" had gone wrong "before", seemingly referencing (COMIC: Blood Invocation ^[+]Loading...["Blood Invocation (comic story)"]) his old enemy the Monk, once a member of a scholarly college based in the Capitol. (TV: The Time Meddler ^[+]Loading...["The Time Meddler (TV story)"], PROSE: No Future ^[+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"])

Behind the scenes

While in the context of the original TV story, the Monk's nickname seemed to simply be based on his current disguise on Earth, a deleted chapter from Paul Cornell's own novel PROSE: No Future ^[+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"] elaborated on the link between the Rassilon-worshipping covens and Cornell's notion of the Monk's backstory and identity, "Mortimus".

Mortimus was an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency, recruited from his contemplations in the Order of Rassilon, those monks who kept alive the works of the Hero. He had intervened on several worlds, diverting them away from the dangerous courses that they had embarked upon with the bullet and the knife.Cut excerpt from PROSE: No Future