The Only Cure (home video)

The Only Cure was a video short by BBV Productions written by James Hornby, exclusive to the P.R.O.B.E. Case Files - Volume 2 DVD release. It included elements from the Cyberon series, including the Cyberons themselves (who appeared via several original, if static, CGI renders) and Lauren Anderson.

Summary
After Maxie falls sick to an alien disease, Giles makes the call to use a small dose of Cyberon to cure her, with disastrous consequences.

Plot
On 4 April 2021, Giles comes to work at P.R.O.B.E. HQ only to find Maxie unconscious on the floor. Giles puts her in the, calls the rest of the team, and then reviews the Bureau's security footage. However, he doesn't find anything of worth, merely seeing that Maxie collapsed for no apparent reason just after finishing work late the previous night. As Tasha, Az and Agamya arrive, they can only agree with Giles's conclusion that Maxie must have come down with something. Indeed, she has a fever, and is showing no signs of waking.

However, with Maxie being non-human, they "can't exactly take her to a hospital", and they more generally have no idea what's wrong with her exactly. Giles ends up calling Lauren Anderson on the off-chance that she might help. She agrees to come, although she is unsure whether she'll be able to provide anything more than moral support. Meanwhile, Tasha and Az check Maxie's office to try and discover what happened, and Agamya searches the P.R.O.B.E. Archive for "any alien medicines that may help". Giles records a video diary explaining the situation so far, and signs off.

Over the following hour, Maxie's state worsens, with her beginning to experience convulsions, which "come and go". Growing increasingly afraid of actually losing her, Giles becomes set on the idea of using alien technology, "something that could heal her regardless of her physiology", sparing the need for a cure specifically adapted to Gendar biology. He hits upon the idea of taking one of the remaining doses of Cyberon from P.R.O.B.E.'s stores and inject her with a small enough quantity that it will hopefully not be sufficient to trigger a conversion, but will still heal whatever is wrong with her system — much as, during the original PKD trials, the drug was originally very effective on the illnesses it was meant to cure, even healing cuts and bruises, until the conversion effects began to become noticeable.

Without telling the others, Giles makes up his mind and requisitions a single syringe of Cyberon from the storage site. After it arrives late in the evening, he tries to give Maxie an injection while the others aren't looking, but his bid at secrecy is short-lived. It turns out Gendar biology is especially suggestible to Cyberon influence, and she wakes up instantly, with an eerie blue glow in her eyes. She then voices her intention to leave. The team try to convince her to stay and rest, but she doesn't take no for an answer and, with Cyberon-aided super-strength, hurls them across the room as she makes her "escape" from HQ, stealing Giles's car.

The team are left trying to track her down, though they are impaired by the fact that it's Maxie herself who is usually the tech support. Agamya does her best to use the CCTV network to track Maxie's trajectory through London, however — until, now on foot after ditchng the car, she turns into a dead-end alleyway near Clapham Junction and disappears. The team rush there, and find an open sewer manhole. They climb down and eventually make their way to a large, cavernous area empty of sewage, with a crashed spacecraft half-buried in the soil, only big enough for one pilot. Maxie is rummaging inside the pod, tinkering with its wiring.

Hearing Tasha approach, she assesses the "intruders" and, in the distorted voice of a Cyberon, threatens them and orders them to leave her to her work. Giles is surprised by this, as Maxie, with her Cyberon enhancements, would clearly be strong enough to take down her former friends if she wanted to, with minimal threats to herself. However, he realises that there's something inside the ship which the Cyberon fluid in Maxie's veins is treating as its priority. Catching a glimpse of the interior of the ship, Giles soon realises what it is: a fully-mechanical Cyberon still seated at the control, intact, but a lifeless husk empty of Cyberon fluid. Giles decides not to stand in Maxie's way as she makes her way to the Cyberon, having realised what is about to happen: the liquid pours down from Maxie's eyes and mouth, freeing her from its control and flowing back into the Cyberon-husk to create a fully-functional unit again.

Rushing to Maxie's side as she regains her free will but collapses from exhaustion, he tries to ask her how to activate the Cyberon pod's self-destruct, but she is at first unable to speak or even open her eyes. The other P.R.O.B.E. members start frantically pushing buttons and levers within the Cyberon pod, while the Cyberon unit is slowly reactivating. Before long, the alien is moving again, and attacks them, choking out Tasha and Az each with one hand. Maxie is finally able to advise Giles to pull a particular red wire, which he does, snapping it and initiating the self-destruct countdown. With the Cyberon letting go of Tasha and Az in order to try and stop the countdown, Maxie and the humans make it safely out of the pod a few moments before it blows up in a ball of flame, bringing half the ceiling of the cavern down with it.

Back at P.R.O.B.E. HQ, Lauren gives Maxie a check-over. She finds no remaining traces of Cyberon but does identify strange, alien particles in her nasal cavity; Maxie realises she must have inhaled some pollen from one of the "alien plants" recovered from Ogden Farm. Though Lauren still isn't happy with the decision Giles took, everything thus worked out alright (with Giles confident he can spin the event into a solid win as far as Sir Andrew is concerned), and Giles closes his video diary to take a phone call from Lauren, hoping to work things out with her.

Cast

 * Giles - Bill Baggs

Characters

 * Maxie Masters
 * Tasha Williams
 * Agamya Akhtar
 * Azacca Dixon
 * Lauren Anderson

Crew

 * Art - Warren Lewis
 * CGI visuals - James Lee

Worldbuilding

 * Tasha, Az and Agamya are aware that Maxie is an alien.
 * Giles describes Lauren Anderson as a "psychologist", as opposed to a medical doctor.
 * In all the time Giles has known Maxie thus far, she's "never had so much as a sniffle", hence why he is caught off-guard by her suddenly being so gravely ill.
 * Giles describes Cyberon as "the life-blood of a robotic race known as Cyberons".
 * Although she is able to drive Giles's car while under the Cyberon's influence, Maxie normally can't drive.
 * Tasha wears boots.

Production errors

 * Due to a chroma-key effect oversight, in multiple shots of the Cyberon pod's cabin, what should be the doorway into the cavern instead "opens" into the close-up footage of the narrating Giles, with the outsized ear of actor Bill Baggs visible in the doorframe.

Continuity

 * Giles sends out a message to the Jovian Diplomacy Service on the off-chance they could be of help with curing Maxie. (WC: Varunastra)
 * Giles is friends with Lauren Anderson. (HOMEVID: Lauren Anderson)
 * Giles recounts how, "around the turn of the millennium", P.R.O.B.E. was called to investigate the activities of PKD. (PROSE: The Last Dose)
 * The Cyberon drug is a "liquid solution of nanites". (PROSE: Flight of the Cyberons)
 * P.R.O.B.E. are in position of the empty helmet of a broken Cyberon. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)
 * Giles recalls how he helped Maxie find a home on Earth, and promised to keep her safe. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)
 * Ogden Farm is revealed to have kept "alien plants", and to have recently been investigated by P.R.O.B.E.. (AUDIO: The Root of All Evil) Previously, a mysterious plant called the Ogden Farm sample, which had been stolen by a group of cultists, was central to another P.R.O.B.E. adventure in 2019. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds)