My favorite part of Lawrence Miles's Dead Romance is Chris Cwej. A well-meaning figure driven to diabolical acts by his sheer puppy-like trust in his Superiors, he's deeply tragic and compelling – yet every other Doctor Who book featuring him takes place before he was brainwashed by said Superiors, thus lacking the aspect of him that drew my interest in the first place. Evidently I wasn't alone in feeling this way, judging by the fact that small publisher Arcbeatle Press has taken it upon themselves to give the man a series all his own! Starting in 2019 with the anthology Down the Middle, the Cwej book series follows a post-brainwashing Cwej. It continued in 2024 with the release of a novella named Requiem, intended to serve as a "zeroth entry" to the series: a brand new jumping-on point.
...unfortunately, despite efforts to the contrary, this jumping-on point isn't really a story about Chris Cwej at all.
Let me clarify. Requiem (by James Hornby) is adapted from a fanmade Doctor Who audio drama written in the 80s by Andy Lane, the man who would go on to create the character of Chris Cwej. Said audio drama featured the Doctor and fanmade companion Truman, whereas this novella's protagonists are Cwej and his Superior patron, Tyron. Despite this, the author has made an effort to preserve as much of the original dialogue as possible, simply reassigning lines to various characters.
It's a deeply strange experience; the drastic difference in medium would theoretically suggest that the script would need to be drastically altered as well, but instead, the decision was made to keep it as close to the original as possible. The script is very evidently that of an audio drama, and much of the prose feels extraneous and incongruous as a result – to say nothing of the fact that Cwej himself is given lines that were never written with him in mind, and ends up sounding a lot firmer and more self-righteous than he ever was back in Dead Romance. Distractingly Doctor-like, in fact. It's... a messy cut-and-paste.
Naturally, the most successful segments are the original scenes, which serve to add Cwej: The Series–specific context to the novella's events and the characters' choices. These match much better with the series context: Hornby crafts some brilliant prose from Tyron's perspective, going in-depth on what the universe looks like from the viewpoint of a cosmic power. Those scenes are probably the book's strongest sequences, although credit where credit's due to the occasional internal monologue by Chris Cwej himself, helping to flesh out his character-specific perspective on the book's events. All of these are meant to help integrate the story into its new context, but they can only do so much when they're so visibly shoehorned in. Beyond those occasional moments, the characters of Tyron and especially Cwej himself feel egregiously underbaked, especially for a book intended to introduce us to the latter character.
As for the actual story of the book: it's okay. There's a lot of buildup – and quite effective buildup at that – for what turns out to be not much payoff. The ultimate explanation for what's going on is a bit sudden and hard-to-believe, and the plot's problems basically get resolved off-screen. In addition, a key player in the book – Gregori Glasst – is only introduced right before the novella's climax, which gives us very little time to get attached before his noble and tragic self-sacrifice at the end. I have a feeling it'd play better in audio drama form, where things are a lot more snappy, but I read it across a couple weeks, and after all the running around the characters did, I felt let down by the solutions presented to the plot's various conflicts.
For what it's worth, there's a few solid emotional beats in there, particularly in the form of tragedy. There's some effective body horror – made wonderfully painful to read by the prose descriptions – and some heart-wrenching backstory behind it... all of which becomes relevant for a little while, before being abandoned right before Glasst gets involved, when it would be most interesting to explore. Similarly, Glasst's self-sacrifice at the end would have landed so much better if he'd taken up more of the story, or if he'd seen firsthand more of the chaos he'd caused. And the story comes close to making a point about human–machine collaboration, but never really does anything with the threads it sets up, almost feeling actively self-contradicting at points. All the pieces are there for a substantial story, but it's evident that with some restructuring they could have hit that much harder than they do.
And that's the thing about Requiem. It was a confusing project to start with – adapting an audio drama about the Doctor and co. into a novella about Chris Cwej – but could have worked given the confidence to restructure and rewrite it into a more original piece. Instead, the decision to keep it as true to the source as possible means that the main emotion it elicits is that of feeling thrown. On many levels, the novella feels incongruous, like it's trying to tell a perfectly fine story that was simply never meant to be told this way... the love poured into it by its author and publisher is evident, which makes it an especial shame that it doesn't end up clicking.
Adaptation is never about surface-level fidelity; it's about knowing what needs to be changed to make something work in a new context. If only Requiem subscribed to that same ethos, we could have had a truly solid work on our hands. As it is, it's one of the more disarming pieces of prose I've encountered on my journey through the Faction Paradox–adjacent corner of the Whoniverse – but I know the people at Arcbeatle Press are passionate writers with nothing but love for the stories they weave. No matter how I felt about this introductory addendum to Cwej: The Series, I'm very much looking forward to getting started with the series proper.
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