Giles

Giles was a technology expert at P.R.O.B.E., joining at some point before 2014. He was second-in-command of the organisation, being told that he would become the boss if anything happened to Liz Shaw. After Liz decided to retire to marry Patsy, (HOMEVID: When to Die) Giles took over as Director. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor, WC: Shadows of Doubt, HOMEVID: Goo!, etc.)

Giles seemed to keep his full name a secret. He signed his name "Giles x" on P.R.O.B.E. documentation (HOMEVID: Goo!) but introduced himself in his video diaries as "P.R.O.B.E. Director Giles" (WC: Doctor X, etc.) He claimed that most details about him were protected by the Official Secrets Act. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow)

Early life
Giles grew up with a close bond to his sister Sandra. However, they fell out shortly after her marriage to Harry King in 1991, and all his attempts to reconcile with her were unsuccessful, with Sandra insisting that her brother was "mental". He was not aware of the birth of Sandra's daughter Harriet in 1998, only finding out by chance when Harriet was already a grown adult. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds)

As P.R.O.B.E. technician
At some point prior to 2009, (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars) P.R.O.B.E.'s director recruited Giles as the Bureau's technician. He had a friendly relationship with her (HOMEVID: When to Die) and her wife; he would later recall that "when he first joined the organisation, the Haggards had been like parents to him". (AUDIO: Broken Bonds)

In 2009, Giles visited Brittany Mordley in Philadelphia with Patricia Haggard and her partner. They accompanied her to a Wawa, but Giles had left his wallet in the hotel so couldn't buy anything, so Brittany paid intead, with one of her remaining Cyberon powers. (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars)

In 2011, Giles and Archie MacTavish were sent to the Vault by Patsy, to investigate a duo deaths. Meeting director Vanessa Hardcastle, she explained that the deaths were accidental. She brought them to head scientist Miles Werbiansky, who gaves Giles the inventory of the Vault, and upon seeing Cyberon, Vanessa and Miles took Giles and Archie to the low-risk storage, the area the Cyberon was kept, to find that a container had been damaged and Cyberon was loose. It inhabited the body of a young girl, Abigail, only to find that her being a werewolf caused mutations to the Cyberon. Giles managed to convince the Cyberon into shutting itself down, reasoning that it couldn't do what it was intended to do, and instead posed a risk to the survival of Cyberon. He later reported back to Patsy. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor)

At some point, he and Archie fought Shed Scales. (PROSE: The Door We Forgot)

In 2014, Giles found Box in P.R.o.B.e.'s storage hold and managed to repair her. He disapproved of Liz when she took on the Paul Reynish job due to the substantial workload they already had. Although he wanted to go with her on her mission, Liz told him to stay to lead P.R.O.B.E. if she did not return. (HOMEVID: When to Die)

The new Director
Giles was made director of P.R.O.B.E. by Haggard (WC: Shadows of Doubt) after she interviewed him in the P.R.O.B.E. Archive. During the interview, Giles recounted the tale of how he negotiated the withdrawal of the Cyberon in the Vault three years prior. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor)

Four years prior (AUDIO: Broken Bonds) to the Stacey Facade affair, which occurred in 2019, (WC: Stacey Facade) Giles was on holiday when he was asked to investigate a spaceship crash nearby. Giles met Maxiassa, the pilot of the spaceship. An entity called Mar'tuth appeared and began to hunt Maxie. Giles and Maxiassa killed Mar'tuth by using mirrors to deflect its glitches back onto itself inside a branch of Homestyle. Two months later, with the help of Sir Andrew Williams, he found Maxiassa asylum on Earth, and gave her his old job as technician at P.R.O.B.E. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)

The day after this meeting, Giles had to interrupt the tour of P.R.O.B.E. HQ he was giving to the newly-hired Maxie to go bargain with some aliens who were holding the Secret Services hostage after installing malware in their systems. However, Maxie managed to resolve the situation without leaving HQ, hacking into the Servies' server herself and removing the alien malware as well as adding new protections. Contrite at Maxie having felt that he was treating her as a burden not worth asking for help, Giles then took Maxie to an expensive restaurant for an official meeting between coworkers, trying to make her feel more respected. (AUDIO: Maxie)

On 23 April 2018 Archie and Giles investigated at Poltergeist at Garry Nelson's house. (WC: Peckham Poltergeist)

Later, Archie would die in a Manchester ritual. (PROSE: The Door We Forgot) Before Giles returned from Manchester he sought out every medium and witch doctor in the city to bring him back but it didn't work. On 7 November 2018 he recorded a case file to talk about Archie's death. (WC: Manchester)

Year of Perihelion
In 2019, (PROSE: Preternatural Nights) Giles spoke about his worries in a recorded case file that a new perihelion event was coming, during which a dimension of concentrated evil would again make contact with the universe. He hoped his team would be ready. (WC: Shadows of Doubt) By then, the team included Maxie Masters, Sir Andrew Williams's daughter Tasha Williams, Bangladeshi refugee Agamya Akhtar, and the ghostly Sir Bedevere of Camelot. (PROSE: The Door We Forgot, AUDIO: Broken Bonds)

On 5 February, 2019, Giles met Stacey Facade under the London Eye, and Giles fell deeply in love with Stacy. A week later, he recorded a video diary entry, where he spike about how he loved Stacy and how he suspected his team of being jealous. Later, he and Stacy ate dinner in the Royal Observatory.

A day later, he recorded another video diary where he handed in his notice, and planned to "start a new life" with Stacy somewhere remote like New Zealand. Soon, Giles recorded another entry, where he said about how Stacey had actually been a love wraith from the planet Succuba. Fortunately for him, Maxie made a "concoction" which counteracts Stacey's pheromones, the power that allowed her to alter Giles' perception. Giles spoke about how when he was at a debriefing with Sir Andrew, who was surprised at how naive Giles had been. (WC: Stacey Facade)

A "few months" after the Stacey Facade affair, P.R.O.B.E. investigated the pagan terrorist organisation Beltane. While chasing a Beltane agent through Oxford Street, Giles ran by chance into his long-estranged sister Sandra, whom he had tried in vain to phone earlier in the day, wanting to rebuild their connection. Leaving the prisoner in the care of Tasha and Bedevere, Giles followed her and discovered that she had had a daughter, Harriet. Back at HQ, Giles had Maxie investigate Harriet out of personal curiosity, and discovered to his surprise that she had a connection to the Beltane case in the form of her boyfriend Jonathan who appeared, unbeknownst to Harriet, to be a member.

Giles arranged to meet Harriet, who was initially skeptical of her "mental uncle"'s claims, but changed her mind after Jonathan bolted at the very sight of Giles. Chasing him to Modernex Labs, where Harriet worked, Giles found himself in a shootout between himself, Tasha and Bedevere on one side, and four Beltane members including Jonathan on the other. Jonathan was the only Beltane survivor, and after calming down Harriet, who was in shock at the sight of the murderous silence, he chased him up to the roof with Harriet. They were able to talk Jonathan down from using the Ogden Farm sample to unleash the "sacred fire" on London and destroying the city. In recognition that he had come to his sense and did care about Harriet after all, Giles put in a good word with the authorities so that he would only serve a short sentence. Though this did not alter his relationship with Sandra, Giles was pleased to build a new family connection with his niece, and she agreed to meet him for coffee now and then, though she made it clear she had no wish to become involved with P.R.O.B.E.'s dangerous dealings. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds)

After P.R.O.B.E.'s Operation World Salad detected its distress signal and its remains were indeed found at the coordinates from which the signal originated, Giles recorded a data log and debriefing about a Cyberon which had materialised with Derby and soon deactivated. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death)

In November 2019, Maxie Masters spotted one of the items on the high-security "Dr Smith shelf" giving off a flash of green light. After she spoke about it with Giles, he explained that the device was in fact Box. He allowed her to take Box off the shelf and try to repair her. After she stayed up all night working on the matter, he brought her a cup of cocoa. After she spilled the cocoa on Box, reversing much of her progress, she accompanied Giles and the rest of the team on further adventures, including helping the Space Lords to recover some space barnacles which had fallen through a space-time rift and investigating an electromagnetic ghost.

Agamya Akhtar, with whom Maxie had been having trouble getting along, spoke to her and Giles about her fear that the Box A.I. was malevolent and should not be awakened; although she continued her work, Maxie was rattled by these concerns and ended up procrastinating, working slowly and avoiding any real breakthroughs to delay the possible catastrophe. Eventually, Giles forced her to come along on a mission to Bildbriain Dairies to get her out of H.Q. and help her clear her head. Giles was excited to go undercover, creating an elaborate backstory for his persona of "enigmatic business agent Gilbert Slige", although he did not get to showcase it, due to a combination of his poor acting skills and of the man they were trying to fool quickly turning out to be an alien lifeform known as the Greth, who was defeated by Box after Maxie and Agamya agreed to trust the alien computer enough to plug her into the internet. (PROSE: Out of the Box)

After Perihelion
In late November 2020, P.R.O.B.E. received directions from the British government to investigate whether a sinister conspiracy was responsible for lockdowns. Though he found the government's suspicions to be laughable conspiracy theories, he did decide to investigate whether any supernatural forces were involved in the pandemic, and found that one of the Jovian Diplomacy Service's files on the pandemic was locked even to his high-level access code as P.R.O.B.E. director. He rang up one of his contacts at MI6, Jim, who claimed that he started being followed as a result of Giles's call.

On 7 December, Jim, who had stopped replying to Giles's calls, abruptly sent him a text message saying simply "Got the virus". Finding the message out-of-character, Giles decided to go to Jim's house on the off-chance and found that an alien smell like burning sugar was emanating from his front door, as well as an eerie pink glow. He discovered that Jim had been glued to a kitchen chair in his home by a mysterious pink slime which soon enmeshed him as well, causing him to lose consciousness. He was unexpectedly rescued by Liz Haggard, who had realised that the slime was part of, or under the control of, an alien entity from a parallel universe. The entity explained that the breaches between Ecto-Space and the Earth had been opened by the U.S. government and it was simply trying to repair the cracks using the slime, a kind of cosmic "sticking plaster".

With Control's men admitting their guilt in the matter and begging P.R.O.B.E.'s help to deal with the help they had caused, Liz and Giles were called to New York, where they met Control at his office. He showed them the alien device which they had found and misused, resulting in the cracks in reality. Left alone with the device, Giles received a call from Maxie claiming that the breaches in reality in the U.K. were getting worse than ever. Recognising the type of device from her experience with extraterrestrial technology, she talked Giles through the process of disarming it over the phone. They then returned to London, taking the device with them with Control's permission, and by the time of the New Year's celebrations (for which Liz stuck around) Maxie had figured out the object had drifted to their universe from Ecto-Space. (HOMEVID: Goo!)

New friends and old foes
On a 3 March 2021, P.R.O.B.E. were contacted by a fugitive claiming to have information about Lauren Anderson, a doctor who'd disappeared after allegedly going mad and murdering all her colleagues and patients. Their contact turned out to be Lauren herself, now gong by "Lor", who explained that she'd actually been framed by Torlakh and had become a shapeshifter herself. She believed she'd been living with "Michael", a fellow shapeshifter, but had noticed that as soon as she left his side, she felt less in love with him, and that his company seemed to be draining her energy. Giles helped her realise that the "Michael" she'd been living with was not her earlier partner but a different shapeshifter entirely — none other than Stacey Facade, who tracked Lor down just as she was meeting with Giles. Stacey angrily demanded to be given back Lor to feed on, and began to devolve into a ravenous beast from her hunger. Giles was forced to shoot Stacey, though P.R.O.B.E. were not sure that she was really dead, transporting her body to the Vault. Thereafter, Giles and Lor became fast friends. (HOMEVID: Lauren Anderson)

On 10 March, Giles and the team foiled a "Living Fiction entity" which had entered the universe during the earlier "pink goo" incident and had taken the form of a movie vampire. The "haunted" film-reel out of which the Living Fiction entity would materialise was indestructible to most imaginable methods, but P.R.O.B.E. eventually hit upon the idea of exposing it to direct sunlight, a weakness both of old film reels and of vampires, which finally did the trick. (HOMEVID: Living Fiction)

On 28 March, Giles attempted to record a video diary about the activities of Faction Paradox agents in London, which Maxie had uncovered using her time detector. However, the Faction repeatedly rewrote the events of the previous few days until P.R.O.B.E. were left wholly unaware of their presence in the city. (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings) On 4 April, Maxie unexpectedly fell gravely ill. Increasingly panicked, and faced with the fact that no normal human medication was of use to a Gendar, Giles took the drastic step of injecting her with a small dose of the Cyberon drug, hoping it would be enough to heal her but not cyber-convert her. Although it did immediately cure her, Gendar biology also proved more susceptible to Cyberon influence than humans, with Maxie immediately being taken over by the Cyberon intelligence and slipping from P.R.O.B.E.'s grasp, stealing Giles's own car as she made her getaway.

Giles and the team managed to find her trail again, however, and chased her to a cavern below Clapham Junction, where they found a crashed Cyberon pod. After the Cyberon fluid transferred itself out of Maxie on its own accord to instead revive the ship's Cyberon pilot, Giles managed to trigger the self-destruct with the help of Maxie's advice, and the team made it safely back to HQ. Although everything had worked out alright, Lauren Anderson remained cross with the contrite Giles for his recklessness in using the Cyberon drug, and, after recording a video diary relating these events, Giles intended to immediately have a phone call with Lauren and work things out. (HOMEVID: The Only Cure)

In the shadow of the Brigadier
After classified documents relating to the life of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart found their way to P.R.O.B.E.'s archives by mistake, Giles's possession began to go through them. He was interested in the figure of Lethbridge-Stewart, particularly how he had managed to retire from a life of constant contact with the strange and extraterrestrial. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow, New Pastures) Worrying that the documents would eventually be withdrawn from his perusal under the Official Secrets Act, he began to record himself reading the documents aloud, so that he would be able to truthfully answer that he had not photocopied any of the documents (which would have been illegal) if asked. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow)

Physical appearance
Giles was a fair-skinned man with light brown hair (HOMEVID: When to Die) which he tied in a ponytail. (HOMEVID: When to Die, PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars) He had dark blue eyes and, during the Paul Reynish affair, sported a short beard. (HOMEVID: When to Die) He still had a beard by 2014, (PROSE: A Worthy Successor) but he later shaved it. (HOMEVID: Goo!, et al.)

In mid-June 2014, he wore a polo shirt. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor)

Personality
Maxie described Giles as "bright" and "kind". (AUDIO: Maxie) Giles himself once stated that investigation was his passion. Although he was lucid about the untrustworthiness of conspiracy theories, he could not stop himself from investigating them, on the off-chance that something true might be uncovered in the process. (HOMEVID: Goo!) Giles was drawn to the strange and the unknown, being delighted to meet an alien girl (PROSE: She Came From Another World!) and quickly becoming friends with Lor Anderson, a psychiatrist who had spent ten years on the run as a human-shapeshifter hybrid. (HOMEVID: Lauren Anderson) His curiosity meant that he had little love for the Official Secrets Act and people who enforced it too strictly. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow)

He did not drink alcohol, (HOMEVID: Goo!) and was prone to bad sleep and headaches around the time of daylight savings. (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings)

Giles fell prey to insecurities and painful memories coming from the disagreements and feud that had torn apart his birth family, years before he joined P.R.O.B.E.. However, this had the side-effect that he viewed the P.R.O.B.E. team as a surrogate family, caring about them greatly; he thought of the Haggards as "surrogate parents" when he first joined, and of Archie MacTavish as a brother; later on, he adopted a fatherly role towards Maxie, Agamya and Tasha. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds) He was more generally insecure and socially awkward; to keep up the personal he felt he ought to have as P.R.O.B.E. Director, he did such things as practicing "roguish daredevil grins" in the mirror. (PROSE: Out of the Box)