Chris Cwej
Christopher Rodonanté Cwej, also known as Chris, was a 30th century Adjudicator who, alongside his partner Roz Forrester, travelled for a time with the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: Original Sin) Chris departed the TARDIS following Roz's death, and was soon recruited by the Time Lords, (PROSE: Lungbarrow) who gave him many technological enhancements, including the ability to regenerate. (PROSE: Dead Romance) During the War in Heaven, they used his biodata to create the Cwejen, a servant race of duplicates, while the original Chris was designated Cwej-One. (PROSE: The Book of the War) After the War, he underwent an experimental procedure to become a disembodied artificial intelligence, now called Cwej-V and capable of commandeering the bodies of other Cwejen. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)
Name
By almost all accounts, his full name was Christopher Rodonanté Cwej. (PROSE: Original Sin, etc.) However, by one account, his middle name was spelt "Rodonante", without the accent. (PROSE: The Room With No Doors) On one occasion, he introduced himself as "Christopher Rodamonte Cwej". (PROSE: GodEngine)
Chris believed his surname to be of Polish origin. (PROSE: Dead Romance) It was traditionally pronounced "Shvey"; however, by his early twenties, Chris had decided to pronounce it "Kwedge" to avoid confusing people. (PROSE: Original Sin) Throughout his first life, he generally used "Kwedge" (PROSE: The Room With No Doors, Bad Therapy); however, after introducing himself as "Kwedge" to Penelope Gate, he later told her it was pronounced "Shvay". (PROSE: The Room With No Doors) Towards the end of this life, Chris owned a t-shirt with the ambiguous text 'It's Pronounced "Cwej"' printed on it. (PROSE: The Dying Days)
All known Cwejen other than Chris used the pronunciation "Kwedge". During his second incarnation, Chris himself continued to use it, but retained a private affinity for "Shvey", and was able to recognise a message from his own third incarnation solely by the fact that he used the "Shvey" pronunciation. (PROSE: The Weasels and the Warpfield) During the V-Time Experiment, Chris came to think of his first three lives as "the First Shvey", "the Second Kwedge", and "the Third Cwej". (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
Throughout his years as Cwej-V, Chris generally used the "Kwedge" pronunciation, and was only addressed as "Shvey" by Superiors in formal situations. (PROSE: The Aftermath, The V Cwejes) At the Yakushima Tower, Chris told HANS that his name was pronounced "Kwedge". (PROSE: Soft Target) However, when Chris arrived at the Tower during the Uprising of the Cwejen, he became irritated with a robot that addressed him as "Kwedge", and Chris realised that he "had been holding in his anger about this for some time". (PROSE: Rebel Rebel)
Biography
First Shvey
Early life
Chris was born on 5 September (PROSE: The Room With No Doors) 2954. (PROSE: Head Games) His parents, Volsted Kornbluth Cwej and Mrs Cwej, lived in the lower levels of Spaceport Five Overcity; Volsted's ancestors had had a centuries-long association with the Guild of Adjudicators. (PROSE: Original Sin) Chris was of Scandinavian descent. (PROSE: The Two Jasons)
As a small child Cwej had a yellow teddy bear named Mr. Buttons. (PROSE: The Ursine Brood) When he was five years old, he attended his Grandfather Cwej's funeral. At some point, he was given a pair of holo-noculars; while using them on his family's front balcony, he saw a human corpse floating in the canal below. (PROSE: The V Cwejes) At one point during his childhood, he had two heads. (PROSE: Original Sin) He grew up watching a show about the Third Dalek War called EarthDoom XV. (PROSE: Sky Pirates!)
As a teenager Cwej had a reptilian pet. (PROSE: Original Sin) He spent much of his late adolescence experimenting with body-beppling to aid his romantic prospects, (PROSE: When I Remember __________) and spent some time as a catboy with tufted ears. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
Chris became interested in law enforcement, not because of any desire to take command, but because of an interest in customised vehicles, powerful weaponry and women. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Following in his father's footsteps, he enlisted in the Guild of Adjudicators, and spent two years training on the colony world Ponten IV. During a tour of duty while training, Chris visited the planet Jallafillia; he witnessed the ruling Church of Saint Thoth killing children for having red hair, but was unable to intervene because of a clause in the Colonies Cultural Identities Act. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet) While on a rooftop on Hellman's World, he witnessed an altercation between the criminals Uncle Bob and Judy Collins; Chris shot Bob dead to save Collins's life. (PROSE: Judy Collins vs Christopher Cwej) In 2975, he graduated as an Adjudicator alongside twenty-five other students on Ponten IV. His parents attended the ceremony. (PROSE: Original Sin, Lungbarrow)
After graduating, Chris spent a year on traffic patrol in Spaceport Nine Overcity. He was then squired to Roz Forrester, whom he considered a legendary Adjudicator. They were working on their first case together, investigating a murder that had occurred in Spaceport Five Undertown, when they met the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield and helped them defeat Tobias Vaughn. (PROSE: Original Sin)
Travels with the Doctor, Roz and Benny
Chris and Roz travelled with the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield on many adventures. In this eventful period, Chris fathered two daughters: Jasmine Surprise Hutchings with Ishtar Hutchings (PROSE: Happy Endings) and iKrissi with Dep of the People. (PROSE: The Also People)
Chris spent some time pretending to be a monk. (PROSE: Warchild)
Chris had certain recessive genes that gave him latent psi abilities. On Yemaya 4, he had a traumatic experience when a virus awakened these abilities; they were soon repressed with an improvised antidote, (PROSE: SLEEPY) though the Brotherhood of the Immanent Flesh would later tell Chris that he still had "immense potential with the necessary treatment". (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
Chris was present at Benny and Jason Kane's wedding. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
After Benny's departure
After Chris accidentally deleted part of the Doctor's TARDIS, he unleashed the Carnival Queen and found himself trapped in a desert outside N-Space, where she persuaded him to spawn several irrational gynoid children with her. Faced with the choice between the Time Lords' order and structure and the Carnival Queen's chaos and uncertainty, Chris was influenced by a false memory of his childhood, implanted in him by the TARDIS, to choose order and preserve reality as he had always known it. The Carnival Queen, knowing what Cwej's future held, knew he had made the wrong decision. (PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
Chris spent a month living under the alias "Bruce Jovanka" on a cold human colony ruled by the Scientifica while the Doctor and Roz infiltrated the planet's criminal underground. At the Imperial Hotel, Chris encountered Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka. Working with Nyssa, Chris discovered a load of fusion bombs on the Skybase orbiting the planet; the two of them met up with the Fifth Doctor and travelled to the crash site of the Machine. After the Fifth and Seventh Doctors worked together to defeat the Ferutu, Chris left the planet with the Seventh Doctor and Roz. (PROSE: Cold Fusion, AUDIO: Cold Fusion)
When the TARDIS was arrested on Thrantas, Roz and Chris partnered with two local police officers to collect evidence in the case against the TARDIS. He was then arrested for interfering with evidence. (AUDIO: The Trial of a Time Machine)
Chris went with the Doctor to the Quadrant in London in 1987 for a narcotics investigation. When he looked at Gabriel Tyler, he saw a reflection of himself. The Doctor told him to get some cocaine for the investigation, and went on the local pub scene to find it with David Daniels. When the N-Form was activated, the Doctor told Chris to get close to it and stop it with one of his gadgets. When Chris had sex with David, he unwittingly infected him with a 30th-century metagenic compound that acted as a HIV antivirus; this was discovered in 2015, when UNIT scientist Harry Sullivan examined David's blood and identified it as a potential cure. (PROSE: Damaged Goods)
After Roz's death
After Roz's death in battle, Chris continued to travel with the Doctor for a short time. (PROSE: Bad Therapy)
The Doctor and Chris travelled to the Doctor's home planet, where the Doctor faced members of his House and many dark secrets were revealed. After this, Chris decided to leave the Doctor and travel alone using a time ring of his own, given to him by Romana II. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
Recruited by the Time Lords
After leaving the Doctor, Chris became an agent for the Time Lords and their Great Houses. (PROSE: Dead Romance, The Dying Days) Shortly after regenerating, the Eighth Doctor told Bernice Summerfield that Chris was on Gallifrey, but might come to Smithwood Manor to see her. Cwej evidently visited the house at least once, as Alexander Christian found a T-shirt in his bedroom saying "My Friend Went to San Francisco and All He Got Me Was This Lousy T-Shirt". (PROSE: The Dying Days)
After Benny destroyed the Spire, she worried that without its effects of "locking the future into reality" the future she knew would never occur, meaning that she had "signed the death sentence for Chris and the others, for a future of skycities and Empire". However, this situation was managed by David Foreman and Clarence, and Benny was informed that the future history of Chris still existed. (PROSE: Ghost Devices)
Chris was found unconscious on one of humanitiy's outer colony planets in 2593 by a Knights of Jeneve post-battle clean-up expedition. He was frozen in cryogenic suspension and placed on a planet in the Ardethe system. His memories were affected by the cryogenic process, but he was able to recall most of them in time. He had a small symbol tattooed on his back. (PROSE: Deadfall)
Subsequently, Cwej travelled with Benny to defeat Deed and the Godhead (PROSE: Oblivion) and to take down the Project on Megerra in 2594. (PROSE: Mean Streets)
Cwej continued to be an operative of the Great Houses (PROSE: Dead Romance) as they entered their War in Heaven. They altered his biochemistry to give him various abilities, including telepathy, time travel, and the potential to regenerate from fatal injury into an adaptive cybernetic form - a regen-inf soldier. (PROSE: The Book of the War) They also altered Chris' memories of his time with the Seventh Doctor, making him remember the Doctor as the "Evil Renegade" who abducted him from Earth and killed Roz Forrester. Chris came to think of the Great Houses, rather than humanity, as "his people". (PROSE: Dead Romance)
Chris worked for the Time Lords in securing the bottle universe which contained a version of 1970 Earth. There, he became friends with Christine Summerfield and showed her the real universe outside the bottle. During this time, he also negotiated alliances with the Daleks on Skaro, the People in the Worldsphere and the Sphinxes on Simia KK98.
Cwej was exposed to fatal levels of radiation in the final stage of the Great Houses' invasion of the bottle universe. (PROSE: Dead Romance) He returned to the irradiated zones of the bottle Earth, hoping to hasten his death and regeneration, but the radiation interfered with the process. The Great Houses initially opted to let him to die, but after Irving Braxiatel requested that Cwej assist an investigation on Paracletes, they sent a monk to help him regenerate. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle)
Second Kwedge
Though Cwej had ingested mutagens that he expected would turn him into a heavily armoured war machine, House Military strategists arranged an intervention to disable them, causing him to regenerate instead into a short, fat, middle-aged man. Sources speculated that the intention was to make Cwej appear innocuous and human for strategic reasons, to test the depth of his loyalty, or to psychically prepare him to battle Faction Hollywood and the parasitic entity the Fat. Whatever the case, Cwej reacted badly to his new form. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Cwej's first mission in this body was to go to Paracletes in 2596 to recover data from Edward Watkinson's expedition to the planet. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) He continued performing "cultural sterilisations" of Remote colonies for the Homeworld, but in response to his new physical form, he became unhappy, if not actually mutinous. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Some members of House Mirraflex advocated Cwej's termination, but instead it was deemed acceptable for him to enrol in the Gauntlet for training. While in the Gauntlet in the 29th year of the War in Heaven, Cwej was unwittingly used by the Great Houses for their Army of One project (PROSE: The Book of the War) and the Cwejen were created by diffracting Chris' timeline. (PROSE: The Book of the War, AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) They consisted of the Cwej-Primes, who resembled his original blond, handsome body; the Cwej-Pluses, who resembled the short, fat, dark-haired incarnation; and the Cwej-Magnuses, who resembled the armoured, cybernetic form he had almost (but never actually) regenerated into. Cwej was considered for leadership of the Cwejen army, but during his time in the Gauntlet, he exhibited significant socialisation problems, at one point having a duel with another cadet, Robert Scarratt, which left Cwej with significant facial scars. As a result, he was considered unfit for command. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Chris was sent to CERN in 2016, where the Large Hadron Collider was being plagued by various malfunctions, nicknamed "weasels". He encountered the physicist Dr. Trofim Alkhimovitch, who said that he had been saved as a child by a blond young man who had also been named Cwej, but had pronounced it "Shvey"; since Chris had no memory of this, but knew that no other Cwejen would use that pronunciation, he was pleased to learn that he would somehow recover his original appearance. With Alkhimovitch's help, Chris found that CERN's weasel issue was being caused by actual extradimensional weasels, which were fighting an invasion of cockroaches invaded by angel insects invaded by bacteria, and so on, each invading force tinier than the last. After encountering the Quoth, they traced the initial issue to a zero-dimensional object intruding on one-dimensional space, and solved it by asking the one-dimensional line-creature to "push back". (PROSE: The Weasels and the Warpfield)
In an attempt to improve the Cwejen's utility as agents, Cwej was sent to alter his own past by taking his younger self as a travelling companion, supplanting the Defector's influence with his own. Dressed in a blue kimono decorated with gold question marks, Cwej introduced himself as the Adjudicator, and took his younger self on many adventures in the spaceship Vicinity II. However, complications in the process caused a psychedelic experience which led Cwej to reconsider his actions, and he ultimately returned his past self to the Defector. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
Cwej returned to 2596 to help his friends defeat an All-High God which merged with Absolam Sleed. (PROSE: Return to the Fractured Planet) He then travelled by himself in another star system before he was called back to Dellah to fight the Ferutu and travelled with Clarence on the way back. The Ferutu attempted to kill Chris with a blast of fiery silver time energy, but the result was that Chris was pushed back through his personal timeline. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods) The Book of the War described this as "his own sense of self-worth overriding his sense of duty", as he had not yet finished the mission against the Fat for which his second body had been designed. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Third Cwej
In his new body, Chris initially appeared as a thin, blond thirteen-year-old boy, a young version of his original self; Braxiatel expressed uncertainty whether he would age rapidly or have to wait to become an adult again. The Ferutu attack had also restored the memories that the Time Lords had altered; Chris no longer trusted them, and expressed hesitation about dealing with them further. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods) Ultimately, he remained in the service of the Great Houses, but became a "loner by nature", nothing like the brash, over-eager agent he had been when he joined. (PROSE: The Book of the War) Chris was present at the birth of Benny's son, Peter. He "looked rather older than the kid [she'd] last seen," but Benny knew to expect the unexpected with Chris. (PROSE: The Glass Prison)
Cwej visited the USSR village of Satlykovo in late 1957, and evacuated the villagers to safety following the explosion of a nuclear waste store near Lake Karachai. During the evacuation, he met an eight-year-old Trofim Alkhimovitch. Cwej told him that he was destined to achieve great things, and that if he one day met a man who called himself "Kwedge", Alkhimovitch could win his trust by mentioning that the true pronunciation was "Shvey". (PROSE: The Weasels and the Warpfield)
Cwej's only notable mission in the fourth and fifth decades of the War was his takedown of Faction Hollywood in 1999 Los Angeles. Using his experience with the Cwejen, he manipulated the House of the Seven Gables into betraying information about Michael Brookhaven by framing the oldest member for the Black Dahlia murders. Using the information he learnt from another member, he invaded the set of Brookhaven's film Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom during the Hollywood Bowl shooting, initiating a cinematic Samurai duel with Brookhaven. Despite Cwej's advantage, he was left completely at Brookhaven's mercy before they were interrupted by the Gods of the Ainu. After trying to save Brookhaven, Cwej fled. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
After the War, the Superiors summoned Chris to undergo the V-Time Experiment, a procedure that would destroy his body in order to transform him into an artificial intelligence. He initially refused, fleeing to the obscure system of Orniticon; but after an encounter with his two previous incarnations, he relented and travelled to Duskeriall Palace. The Surgeon unravelled Chris' body and transferred his consciousness to a slab of the silicate lagh, which was divided and placed in microchips on the necks of several million Cwejen, any of whom Chris would be able to enter and control.
Cwej-V
Now an artificial intelligence designated Cwej-V, Chris continued to carry out missions for the Superiors, commandeering the bodies of various Cwejen throughout the Totality. He spent his downtime alone in the Vicinity, an endlessly customisable virtual reality stored on a lagh shard housed within a small glass cube. (PROSE: The V Cwejes) For an initial period, the Superiors kept him confined to a single Cwej-Prime body, distracted and fulfilled as the leader of the interventionist squad Temporal Team X. They also recommenced editing his memories to keep him under control, causing him to remember the Doctor as the Evil Renegade again. (PROSE: The Trauma Deception, A Bright White Crack) After some time inside the Vicinity, Chris came to doubt that he had ever existed as anything but an AI, or that the Cwejen had ever even had an original. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
Harbouring Larles and Kwol
Three years after the V-Time Experiment, Chris was diverted to the parallel universe Dawn 1027, and encountered Larles and Kwol, a pair of alien criminals from the planet Grigori who had destroyed their reality's version of Earth. Taking pity on them, Chris compelled them to rescue the survivors, which took them two years; he then smuggled the two aliens and their spaceship, La Kraw el Sol, back to his own universe. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)
Chris, Larles and Kwol travelled to 31st century Gantifreet, where a legally dubious farm populated by Cyberon-uplifted animals was operating. After consulting with the metamorphic missionary Lorre, and confirming that the animals were remorseless Cyberon agents, the trio destroyed the farm. (PROSE: Barnyard of the Cyberons) At some point in their travels, Chris became acquainted with the Jubilant Nilso, who knew him as Scongo. (PROSE: The Aftermath)
During a holiday to Deptford County, Washington, Chris' interest was piqued by an upcoming expedition planned by the marine biologist Roger Daly to a supposed Fountain of Youth on the ocean floor. Chris posed as a sea captain to infiltrate the expedition. While piloting a submersible to inspect the trench, he witnessed hundreds of spectral human figures rising toward the surface; he later speculated that they were people lost at sea, moving towards reincarnation. (PROSE: Flickering Flame)
The Superiors sent Chris and Iris Wildthyme to investigate a rift in the spacetime fabric in Plymouth, in the year 2020. The corpses of several humans, apparently victims of spontaneous combustion, were discovered nearby. Chris and Iris eventually tracked down the killer: a spindly, faceless alien creature with a rod-like instrument that could incinerate organisms at a distance. After they sealed the rift, Iris speculated that the creature was a scientific explorer from another plane of existence. (PROSE: Flickering Flame)
Back in the Vicinity, Chris installed the dating app UniLove, and began an online relationship with Aiden Torres. He eventually learned that Torres was dead, and that he was interacting with an AI simulation created by the Cyberons. (PROSE: Flickering Flame)
Chris brought Larles and Kwol along on mission to investigate a temporal distortion on a train. With the help of tour guide Donacho Munchausen and his companion Kleio, they saved the passengers and broke them out of a time loop. (PROSE: Infinity)
Chris was sent to the planet of Hellman's World to eliminate the space bandit Judy Collins. He decided to spare her life. (PROSE: Judy Collins vs Christopher Cwej)
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Agent Giashnel sent Chris to investigate a temporal disturbance at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 1968. He met Kirstine, Yanna, and George Cwej, who ran KYG Solace, a company which allowed people to revisit traumatic events via time loops. Chris used a bomb to destroy their time machine. (PROSE: In the Loop)
Chris, Larles and Kwol investigated a crashed spaceship, and found themselves trapped in its labyrinthine interior for months. They encountered Kady Williams, a woman who shared her own body with the Gestalt, a spirit entity with a multitude of voices. They learned that the ship was controlled by the Gentleman, a powerful renegade Cwej who had been converted into a shapeshifting memetic entity. He told Chris that the Superiors would soon betray him, and told Kwol that Chris would cause Kwol's death. (PROSE: Ring Theory)
Chris was sent to Golgalith, a planet ravaged by the War, and where the Superiors feared a resurgence of their Eternal Adversary. They met an old man, Harlan, and use an aetha-drive to visit his childhood so they could stabilise the timeline. (PROSE: Crushing Reality)
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Chris met with Valerie Pascal, a professor acquaintance who had an unusual problem: she had lost her ability to speak the name of her town. He brings her to La Kraw el Sol and connects her to the Vicinity, which investigates her brain patterns and identifies her as a native of Auvergne. The place seems not to exist, though Averoigne and Aveyron do. The computer reveals that a fluctuation in the timeline is to blame, centring on the writer Clark Ashton Smith, who coined the name Averoigne in one of his stories and after whose work the real region was renamed. The group travelled in time to meet Smith, who was on an expedition to find the Zothiquas, creatures he has seen in visions. They encountered an undead parody of Smith's friend, H. P. Lovecraft, created by the Zothiquas, but they fled when Smith recognised them as alien parasites, and Valerie recovered her memories. (PROSE: When I Remember __________)
Chris was sent to investigate a disturbance on the planet Nibo. He encountered a sprawling mushroom entity which had grown from abandoned Time Engines, and which had time-distorting effects. After expending hundreds of Cwejen bodies fighting the Shadow-Mantises it generated, Chris defeated the entity. (PROSE: The Mushroom at the End of the Universe)
When damage from a war between the Hytherians and Geldex over the Psychosphere began affecting the dreams of 21st century Earth, Chris' mind was uploaded to the Psychosphere to find a way to shut it down. While there, he met Jen Ashfield and Sara Willox, who both remembered their encounters with Cwej as nightmares. (PROSE: Collective Unconscious)
When Chris was staying at the Yakushima Tower with an old girlfriend, Kizzi Abriela, the building's AI, HANS, seemingly malfunctioned and took over the bodies of the lizard bankers who were there for a conference. Chris defeated them and got to safety. (PROSE: Soft Target)
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Chris arrived on the isolated colony world Marsogohso, where he met Colette, a woman who had experienced being killed constantly throughout her life by a time-travelling monster. Chris managed to lure and kill it, freeing her. Colette borrowed Chris' time ring in order to become Kaetannan, a legendary knight from her culture's past. (PROSE: The Eternal)
Trauma, recovery and the Uprising
A Vicinity malfunction sent Chris to the body of a Cwej on an uncharted blue desert planet, inhabited by thousands of Cwejen, who lived in mud huts and spent their days idling, uncommunicative and with no apparent concept of the outside universe. The Cwej-Primes subsisted on meat delivered by cybernetic Cwej-Magnuses. Though initially distressed, Chris eventually mellowed, and ultimately remained stranded here so long he began to forget his previous life.
One day, he saw a priest-like Cwej-Plus sermonising about the world beyond, and begged him for information. The priest took Chris to a crystalline crater containing a damaged timeship. He activated it, then emerged with several newly created Cwejen of all three types, demonstrating that this was how the population reproduced. Horrified, Chris attempted to destroy the timeship, but the priest summoned a mob to drag him into a cavern. Seeing butchered Cwejen below, he realised the meat he had been eating was Cwej flesh. In a subterranean colosseum, he saw Cwejen performing gladiator battles as Adjudicators and criminals. The winner was devoured by Cwej-Ursa, a colossal cybernetic monstrosity resembling a blond teddy bear: a Cwej who had crash-landed here aeons ago and regenerated hundreds of times, subsisting on the flesh of his clones. The cavern collapsed as the sabotaged timeship exploded, and the injured Ursa began to regenerate into an ethereal winged creature with many eyes. The blast incinerated Chris' body, and he woke in La Kraw el Sol to find only seconds had passed. (PROSE: The Ursine Brood)
Larles and Kwol noticed that Chris had seemed disturbed lately. Suala of Temporal Team X offered to remove the pain of Chris' memories, something to which Chris eventually agreed. He finally confided in his friends about the things he had seen on Ursa's planet, though Suala told Cwejen 178 that they had not actually remove the pain from his memory, and that the treatment had been a placebo. (PROSE: The Trauma Deception)
Chris, Larles and Kwol went to PsyCon, a tech convention where the Superiors have identified unusual activity. An attending magician, Dylaxu, stole a new piece of equipment, the Futura Visor. Dylaxu revealed that he was Donacho Munchausen, who revealed that he was the one who murdered the Superior High President, as well as arranging for Chris to meet Larles and Kwol. This was an elaborate scheme to steal the visor and make money. Kwol grabbed the visor and used it to look into the future, where they saw humanity presiding over the destruction of the universe. Kwol attacked Chris, who was forced to kill them. (PROSE: The PsyCon Prediction)
After admitting to harbouring the alien fugitives for the last seven years, Chris was tried on the Base of Operations and sentenced to execution. The Superiors destroyed the Vicinity, the hardware of which was a small glass cube. Chris woke in another reality with Vicky, a woman who revealed herself to be the embodiment of the Vicinity. Having used the last of her energy to send him here, she told him to move on, but Chris contacted George Cwej and asked to be sent back to the Base. Chris shot the High President, then went on the run. Months later, he was accosted by Larles, now an agent of the Superiors. Chris' actions had inspired an Uprising of the Cwejen, led by a rebel Cwej named Thomas Mackeray. Larles showed Chris the devastation the Uprising had caused, but abandoned him when he made a glib comment about Kwol. Chris attempted to rebuild the Vicinity, then sealed himself in a cave on a moon of Svelter V, and retreated into the virtual reality with a simulation of Kwol. (PROSE: The Aftermath)
Inside the new Vicinity, Chris had a psychedelic vision where he re-experienced his initial transformation into an AI, witnessed many past and future versions of himself, and realised that he had never been an ordinary Cwej, but was in fact the original, Cwej-One. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)
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After fifty years, Chris was woken by Christina, a female Cwej, and her girlfriend Frey, an Ephem who was a member of the Friend. Chris was now a legendary figure known as the First Rebel. The women brought him to the Tower to meet Thomas Mackeray, who now called himself the Healer, and welcomed Chris in the hopes that he would aid the Uprising. When Chris refused, the Healer threw them into a pit. While lost in the lower levels, Chris encountered Koschei, a Superior criminal who had been imprisoned here since the Superiors controlled the Tower. Since Frey was dying from a lack of Superior biodata, Koschei offered to donate some on the condition that Chris agreed to obey him on a future occasion. Chris discovered the Tree of Life, a structure in the Tower which produced the drug Praxis and could be used to manipulate time. He attempted to undo the Uprising, but Koschei spoke through Frey, distracting him at a critical moment and causing the Uprising to be only half reversed, leading to an unstable new status quo. Frey's creator and original biodata donor, a high-ranking Superior, contacted Chris, who told her he refused to work for the Superiors any longer. (PROSE: Rebel Rebel)
Other realities
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Other versions of Cwej existed in different histories. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin, Oblivion)
Legacy
While researching the history of the Forrester family for his book, Tranlis Difarallio read that Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester were declared traitors to the Earth Empire after their disappearance. (PROSE: Dependence Day)
When Bernice Summerfield first encountered the Cwej Septimus, she mistook him for Chris. Seeing this, Straxus was amused that Bernice was familiar with the Cwejen's progenitor. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel) While reunited with Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, Benny fondly recalled their adventures with Chris and Roz. (AUDIO: The Final Amendment)
When Alexander Christian broke into Smithwood Manor in 1997, he hid in Chris Cwej's empty bedroom. (PROSE: The Dying Days)
When the Eighth Doctor was interrogated by a Klade operative, the interrogator expected him to remember an instance on Falkus when the Doctor was accompanied by "a tall man and a dark-skinned woman". As the Doctor did not, this event was either in his pre-amnesic past with Cwej and Forrester or in his future with Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor. (PROSE: Father Time) Similarly vaguely, Bernice made reference to historically being "a sucker for a boyish grin and a floppy blond fringe", which could refer to either Jason Kane, who dyed his hair blond, or the natural blond hair of Chris. (PROSE: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Squire's Crystal)
Appearance
As an adult, Chris was six foot three inches tall, blond and muscular. (PROSE: GodEngine) Roz thought him "so good-looking that he was almost a caricature." (PROSE: Original Sin) He appeared to be of Canadian extraction. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
When he first met the Seventh Doctor and Bernice Summerfield, he had undergone a "body bepple" to make him look like a bear with golden fur and pointed triangular ears. Bernice thought he looked like a teddy bear. (PROSE: Original Sin)
After his regeneration, he was shorter than his original body and quite stocky, with dark hair and a mellow voice; (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) an acquaintance of Cwej described it as "Friar Tuck without the haircut." (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Personality
Cwej was enthusiastic and, although he was intelligent, he usually acted before thinking things through. While travelling with Roz, she usually did the thinking for him. (PROSE: Shakedown)
The authors of The Book of the War noted that Cwej spent much of his professional life as "an easily-manipulated disciple", drawn to law enforcement mainly by "a child-like desire to engage in protracted high-speed chases". Cwej was "definitely not stupid, but over-eager and often naïve", and his tendency to throw himself into maximum-risk situations and emerge inexplicably unscathed made him seem a kind of "luck-child", both to fellow Adjudicators and the Great Houses; he saw his recruitment by the Houses as a promotion, or opportunity for adventure. In the months following his regeneration, he became unreliable and "profoundly sulky". Following the production of the Cwejen, and his eventual recovery of his original form, Cwej became more withdrawn, remarking that "once you've spent time with two-hundred of yourself, you never want to go near anyone else again". (PROSE: The Book of the War)
After his experience being attacked twice over by giant, ferocious squirrels generated from Larles's nightmares by the Gentleman, Chris began to share Larles's phobia of squirrels. (PROSE: Ring Theory)
Behind the scenes
- Creator Andy Lane said that he based Cwej and Roz on characters from NYPD Blue, with Roz being a gender-flipped version of Andy Sipowicz (played by Dennis Franz). This presumably means Cwej was modelled on the character John Kelly (played by David Caruso).[1]
- Cwej's appearance in Original Sin, where he has been modified by a body bepple to look something like a teddy bear, was inspired by Chewbacca.[2]
- Damaged Goods, the 1996 novel which depicts Chris' sexual encounter with a gay man, was written by future Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, whose work often includes gay themes. (The same year had already seen Dave Stone's Death and Diplomacy establish that Jason Kane had sex with both men and women, and the comics introduce lesbian companion Izzy Sinclair.) In 2003, Davies mentioned Cwej in an introduction to the Queer as Folk DVD: "I even wrote a Doctor Who novel in which the six-foot blond, blue-eyed companion interrupts the hunt for an interdimensional Gallifreyan War Machine to get a blowjob in the back of a taxi. Like you do."[3] Cwej tells David that sexuality is a non-issue where he comes from - a sentiment later echoed by Jack Harkness, another future-human companion, whom Davies created for the 2005 revival.
- The covers for the Big Finish audio adaptations Damaged Goods, Original Sin, and Cold Fusion use photographs of voice actor Travis Oliver to represent Cwej. While Oliver generally resembles Cwej, his dark hair conflicts with the books' consistent descriptions of Cwej as blond. The 2020 short story The V Cwejes potentially explains this difference, revealing that the regenerated, black-haired Cwej, following Superior orders, abducted his own younger self at strategic points in an effort to supplant the Defector's influence on his life; in the altered timeline, the younger Cwej's hair temporarily darkened as a side-effect of contamination from his future self's biodata.
Footnotes
External links
- Chris Cwej at the Faction Paradox wiki
- Scongo at TARDISposting Wiki.
- "InCWEJulous! The Essential Facts about the 7th Doctor's Last Companion (and then some)", an article by Stephen Groenewegen for the Happiness Patrol queer fanzine (November 1997)
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