London. England, 1952.

The War is over: it's a time of peace, regeneration and hope.

A Golden Age of scientific discovery and boundless optimism.

Unfortunately, it's been 1952 for the past 65 years.

And Prime Minister Winston Churchill is beginning to worry people might notice.

He suspects the phenomenon is the work of Professor Quanderhorn; a brilliant, maverick scientific genius with absolutely no moral compass. Despite the fact Quanderhorn has saved the world from several Martian invasions, the attacks of the Mole People, the Troglodyte Shape-shifters and the Beatniks from Under the Sea, plus countless other sinister phenomena which threatened to rend the very fabric of reality, Churchill would dearly like to close him down - once and for all.

Why? Because he's terrified. Of Quanderhorn's reality-warping experiments, of his massive crowd-pleasing popularity. Of the unearthly secret locked in his cellar...

Eager young Test Pilot, Brian Nylon recovers consciousness to discover he's lost his memory, and is in the middle of yet another Reality-threatening catastrophe, prompted by one of the Professor's experiments gone horribly wrong. On top of that, he appears to be a double agent working on behalf of Churchill, charged with uncovering Quanderhorn's darkest secrets.

Unfortunately, he's the world's worst spy - with a Boy Scout mentality, he's virtually incapable of lying. Also, he's somewhat distracted from his mission by his feelings for Quanderhorn's assistant, Dr. Gemini Janussen. She's a brilliant cold and calculating scientist, only slightly hampered by the rational half of her brain having been replaced by a clockwork mechanism, which tends to run down at moments of crisis, leaving her emotions to run amok.

The third member of the team is Guuuurk - a Martian bounder, whom Quanderhorn is holding hostage after the most recent failed invasion attempt, and who learnt human behaviour by repeatedly watching the only TV show that can be received on Mars - a program starring archetypal English cad Terry-Thomas. He is honour-bound to attempt to escape and return home at every opportunity, but really doesn't want to go back to the filth-ridden dusty hole in the ground he occupies there.

And finally, there's Troy Quanderhorn, the professor's genetically-engineered "son" - the result of a slightly botched experiment into gene shuffling. Despite being amazingly strong, he could easily be outwitted by brain-damaged plankton. We're never sure, but we also suspect there's a sprinkling of insect in his makeup, as he's building an enormous cocoon in the eaves of the laboratory and a giant dung ball in his bedroom.

The lab is grumblingly cared for by the faithful janitor Jenkins, the Professor's disgraced batman from World War Two. Superficially subservient, he harbours submerged resentments, and a hidden dark side which is rarely glimpsed.

The relentless looping of Time is causing reality itself to become stranger and stranger, and the crew struggle against the mountingly curious dangers it is generating. In the midst of these horrors, Brian struggles to regain his memory, discovering clues to his missing past in the strangest of places. And as the mystery unravels, he's fairly sure he doesn't like the man he appears to have been.

But who stole his memory? And why?

What is the unearthly secret in the cellar?

And will it ever be 1953?