The Preternatural Research Bureau, more commonly known as P.R.O.B.E. was a department within the Ministry of Defence, founded by Third Doctor Companion Liz Shaw, to investigate unusual phenomena.
It was the focus of four wilderness years films, released by BBV between 1994 and 1996, and featured many individuals notable for their work on Doctor Who:
Caroline John reprised her role as Liz Shaw
Louise Jameson played Patsy Haggard, Liz’s coworker and eventual spouse
Mark Gatiss played various roles across the first three films, and wrote all four of them
Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy all play notable characters in the first film
Sophie Aldred plays a minor character in the first film
Terry Molloy plays a notable character in the second film
Geoffrey Beevers plays a notable character in both second and third films
Peter Davidson makes minor appearance in the first film, and plays a larger part (as a different character) in the fourth film
After this, the PROBE series disappeared for the best part of 20 years, until Bill Baggs decided to revive it in 2015. As Caroline John had passed away, and Mark Gatiss had moved onto bigger things, this film recast Liz Shaw, and was written by Baggs himself, even featuring him as a new character.
To say this revival wasn’t recieved well would be an understatement. Of the eight ratings across Tardis Guide and Trakt.tv, five of them rate it a 1/10, myself included.
The series however somehow continued, Baggs making the P.R.O.B.E. Case Files, short films which mostly just feature him talking to the camera monotonously for a few minutes explaining a story (occasionally advertising other BBV Products). A collabroation with Arcbeatle Press in the form of two short story anthologies, a series of audiobooks as part of BBV’s ‘Audio Adventures in Time and Space’, and a new Short Film, Portents of Doom, featuring the return of BBV’s ‘The Stranger’ with him joining P.R.O.B.E. and being characterised like Captain Jack for some reason.
This fairly lofty project’s late scrapping is probably to blame for Bill having “made up the count” of Case Files on the Volume 2 DVD with Legend, a scrapped trailer for The Brigadier Adventures that makes for quite a poor tenth and final entry in the Volume. But that’s what you get when you alienate all the people interested in helping your company’s output be, er, good.
So youo’re telling me that not only was this a ‘not so subtle ad’ like I said in my review, but it was LITERALLY A REWORKED AD?!
I just finished the second PROBE and I don’t get the praise for it (I read the reviews). It was just bad and uninteresting. The only highlight for me was Liz.
I don’t believe it, a good story from post 2015 PROBE?!
Made the right choice in reading this Anthology I guess, may need to check out more Arcbeatle things after this!
Out of the Shadows: Prologue - 7/10
I slightly struggled to follow the action at one point, the logistics of how the team disorientated me a bit and I had to reread those lines a few times to get what was happening… but honestly that kind of works for this story.
Prologue is a short, three page story that honestly does a really great job of setting the groundwork for both the PROBE team, and presumably the thematics of the things to come. The vibes here are great, the sense of mystery and intrigue do a surprisingly effective job of, well, intriguing you, making you want to know more about who these people are, what’s are they doing, what are they about, etc.
And honestly, that opening paragraph has hooked me more than any other opening to a PROBE story I’ve experienced so far.
Question, how/why is Liz the only character from Who in this and the other actors are playing new characters? I’m gonna start this maybe today if not very soon.
Yes, it’s a bit weird that Caroline John is playing Liz opposite Jon Pertwee who isn’t playing the Doctor and not once does Liz comment on his similarity to the Doctor. And then with everyone else it all gets a bit weird. But go with it and try to pretend you haven’t noticed, just like Liz does…
Liz is the only character from Who because she’s the only one the could get the rights to (couldn’t even use/mention UNIT, though eventually got that for Auton)
I did not enjoy the third one really kinda devastated that there’s just one more pre-revival story left!! Who do I need to contact at BF to get Patsy in some audios!!
