THE MEDDLING MONK... IN OIL

 

This painting is "A Good Drink", by Eduard von Grützner (Oil on panel) from 1897–1897.

But could it be that the Galifreyan trickster known as the Meddling Monk posed for this a few years before the dawn of the 20th Century?

Why would the Monk have been whiling away the time in Germany by posing for the artist in 1897?  We know he enjoyed disrupting the timeline of the Earth, marking him as a renegade Time Lord. (In his own mind, I believe that he truly thought he was doing so for the greater good.)

Maybe his own Tardis was acting wonky and he arrived too early for the event which he planned to alter in History.  So he was biding his time until the right moment to strike by amusing himself as a model for Mr. von Grützner.

I've looked through the events of the German timeline for 1897, and one jumped out at me as being an interesting choice for a 'Doctor Who' timeline.

October 29 - The birth of Joseph Goebbels. 

Maybe the Monk thought that by causing Goebbels' death as a newborn infant, he could prevent much of the carnage to come.  Perhaps Goebbels would have been the first such victim, with Hitler on his hit list as well.

This possible plot line is reminiscent of the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Fires of Pompeii", in which he sadly had to stop the Pyroviles' plan to prevent the eruption of Mount Vesuvius so that History could play out as intended.

In this case, the Doctor and his Companion would have to make it possible for the Baby Goebbels to survive and eventually grow up to become the chief propagandist for the Nazis in control of Germany, until his scheduled death in May of 1945, as abhorrent as that was to their sense of justice.

As depicted in the painting, the subject doesn't look like the actor who portrayed the Monk, Peter Butterworth.  But in his own personal timeline, he could have sat for von Grützner centuries after we last saw him sparring with the Doctor.  As such, the years had not been kind....

Or maybe he had regenerated.  I expect - and hope - that soon the 'Doctor Who' series will bring back the Monk to be an adversary for the Doctor.

My dream casting for the choice of actor?  Kris Marshall.

Or the difference in appearance could just be artistic license.