Lauren Anderson (home video)

Lauren Anderson was a P.R.O.B.E. webcast released as a download by BBV Productions on their new website in 2021. It featured the reappearance of Lauren Anderson, previously the protagonist of two of BBV Productions' feature-length home video productions, Cyberon and When Being You Just Isn't Enough. Brief footage from both films was featured in the short in the form of flashbacks.
== Publisher's summary ==
Giles tangles with shapeshifters.
== Plot ==
Director Giles receives a set of documents relating to Doctor Lauren Anderson, a woman recorded in P.R.O.B.E. files as having died over ten years earlier in bizarre circumstances some time after her involvement in the "Cyberon incident", being found dead after having slaughtered her own coworkers and patients at the psychiatric hospital where she worked. According to the new evidence, Doctor Anderson was actually framed by a shapeshifter who took her appearance.
Having had Maxie check the footage, Giles reports that Maxie found no evidence of it being doctored. The document further claims that the source is themselves Lauren Anderson, having been turned into a shapeshifter herself (which is how she successfully vanished from the records for a decade). She has set Giles an appointment, claiming that she is involved with something "important… P.R.O.B.E.-important". After recording a video diary documenting all of this, Giles heads out to meet her.
At the meeting, Lauren (now known as "Lor") first shows herself in the form of a male security guard, startling Giles, but then morphs back into her original appearance, whom Giles thinks looks quite genuine. She explains that she thinks she is under some kind of unnatural influence from her ex with whom she'd recently gotten back together, Michael, a fellow shapeshifter. She found him irresistible as long as she was with him, to the point of letting him persuade her to move back to London — but began feeling drained and depressed the longer time she spent around him. Giles realises that the "Michael" Lor has been dating was not the same kind of shapeshifter as Lor at all, but rather a love wraith similar to the one Giles previously dealt with, Stacey Facade.
Soon enough, "Michael" tracks Lor down thanks to her alien pheromones. However, upon spotting Giles, he is stunned and frightened, and reverts to an older appearance — revealing themself as the very same love wraith Giles knew as Stacey Facade. It transpires that after the device built by Maxie prevented Stacey from feeding on the emotions of humans, she refused to leave Earth but instead found and tried to ensnare Lor, whose partially alien biodata meant she was still susceptible to Stacey's hypnotic abilities. Stacey demands that Giles and Maxie hand Lauren over. When they refuse, the love wraith begins to devolve into a ravenous beast, whom Giles is ultimately forced to shoot. Unsure of if the body is really dead, they transport her body to the storage site in Northumberland.
Giles and Lor get to talking following the end of these trying experiences, and to both their surprises, "hit it off pretty well". Giles ends a second video diary recording by stating his hope that Lor will stick around with P.R.O.B.E.
== Cast ==
* Giles - Bill Baggs
* Lauren Anderson, Torlakh - Jo Castleton
* "Michael"/Stacey - Daniel Harcourt
* Torlakh - Keith Drinkel
=== Characters ===
* Maxie Masters
== Crew ==
* Written by - James Hornby, Bill Baggs
* PROBE theme by - Mark Ayres
* Script editor - Lucy Wood-Ives
* Art - Warren Lewis
* Editing and post-production - Callum Brown, Bill Baggs
* Special thanks to - James Wylder and Hunter O'Connell of Arcbeatle Press
== Worldbuilding ==
* Love wraith ensnare humans using hypnotic pheromones.
== Story notes ==
* This story makes numerous references to When Being You Just Isn't Enough. However, because BBV Productions no longer held the rights to the Zygons, Lauren and Torlakh are referred to as simply "shapeshifters", and their true forms are never seen on-screen.
== Continuity ==
* Giles encounters Doctor Lauren Anderson, who first became involved with the preternatural during the "Cyberon incident" at PKD. (PROSE: Cyberon) She was subsequently framed for mass murder by a shapeshifter, becoming a shapeshifter herself. (HOMEVID: When Being You Just Isn't Enough)
* Giles faces Stacey Facade a second time. (WC: Stacey Facade)
* Giles referred to "other organisations" similar to P.R.O.B.E., which would have killed Lor or locked her up if she'd revealed herself to them. According to him, these organisations are no longer "around". (TV: Resolution, Spyfall)
== External links ==
Category:P.R.O.B.E. home videos
Category:2021 home videos