We left the entire world – that’s planet earth for non-natives – frozen in time after Peter, a small, open shirted boy with blonde hair and (probably) blue eyes, used the space rogue’s time ship to travel back to 197something so they could steal the crown jewels. Carol and Stephen have returned from hyperspace to find even the TPs on earth are as stuck as the saps. We rejoin the action as the rogue feasts his eyes on her majesty’s trinkets.

It becomes clear – to Peter at least – that the rogue is going to steal the crown jewels. The boy gets terribly overwrought and begs Jedikiah to stop him. Stealing the crown jewels would be breaking one of the most important laws of time.

Back in the lab, Stephen consoles Carol with the news that they’re not dead – only sleeping. Like the pet tortoise they buried last Whitsuntide.

Carol is feeling cold and depressed so Stephen decides to jaunt outside to see what’s going on. Hang on – last time TIM wasn’t working they couldn’t jaunt properly. Now – even though he’s off line due to time being out of whack – Stephen can jaunt perfectly well. Hmm.

With the naked android’s help, a hole is cut in the glass and the rogue can help himself. It’s quite literally regal pick’n’mix.

They obviously couldn’t afford location filming for this episode so Stephen returns from his jaunt outside and conveys all that we would’ve seen – silent streets, frozen people, never more a butterfly – in one sulky teenage hunch. Carol gets hysterical.

My bad – they can afford location filming. Ok, they can’t – they just use postcards and CSO. But it does the job. People are frozen – just like the hunch said.

Yup – the rest of tourist London is exactly the same. I wonder if that woman knew that she’d still be famous thirty five years after she fed those pigeons?

Back at the Tower, the rogue is stroking his new trinkets lovingly. I bet that’s not the only thing in shot that he’s stroked lovingly in his time.

Indeed, so busy was with his stroking that he failed to notice that Peter had escaped. And all he has to do now is get out of the Tower of London. Sucks to be Peter.

Oh look – the Houses of Parliament are frozen too. I wonder if Tower Bridge is frozen?

That was a joke actually. But they’re one step ahead of me. Yes – Tower Bridge is in fact frozen. Let’s see if I can do it again – I wonder if Sally Geeson is frozen in her shower?

Damn – plot gets in the way. They hear Peter’s voice and – his being the only voice left in the world – they decide to track him down. He’s not under there…

Maybe he’s in there?

It really does suck to be Peter – a naked man has his hand on Peter’s crotch. I can’t believe this is a U certificate. I hope I don’t go to prison for taking this screen grab.

Carol’s arse. That’s more like it. Nice, twenty-something lady arse to look at. Oh and they’ve arrived too late – Peter has been taken away. Mmm – lady arse.

They run after Peter and the robot. They find the rest of the time travellers about to depart in a colour bubble. Stephen is swatted away by the android but Carol is grabbed. They jaunt (or whatever they call it) back to their space ship. Stephen is appalled.

Everyone suddenly wakes up. Stephen is grabbed by the Beefeater. That sounds ruder than it is.

He jaunts away. Old Beefy is left looking confused and elderly.

Back at the lab, they also wake up. Someone has sat them down and Ginge is all confused.

Stephen tries to explain what the ruddy hell has been going on. He doesn’t do very well.

On board, the rogue is cross with Jedikiah for trying to kill Carol. She might be one of his ancestors – killing her might mean he is never born.

Carol is undressed, given a pretty frock and dumped in a cage next to Peter’s. There’s no way she had that on under he AE suit so the rogue must have a collection of lady’s clothes on his ship. Lady’s clothes, small boys, naked bodybuilders – this is the rummest U-certificate I’ve ever seen. And that doesn’t even include the rather salty DVD commentary.

The TPs try to contact Carol telepathically. It doesn’t work. These days, of course, telepaths have voice mail so you can leave them a message when they’re unconscious. But in the olden days they had to make do with only getting messages when they’re awake.

Carol finally wakes up. "A cage!" she cries when she sees the bars. Sharp lass.

They get chatting. Peter jumps to the wrong conclusion and tells Carol off for being on earth illegally in the 20^th century. Earth is a closed world and no one with a space suit or magical powers should be messing about there. He gives her such a stern look.

She replies that she’s from the 20^th century and that Peter is in fact the one who should explain just what the bloody hell he’s doing poking his alien nose into human affairs.

They have a heart warming moment when they realise they are both telepaths. It is spoilt (a) by the alarming age difference and (b) by the medusa growing and growling in their general direction.

Peter delves back through his memory and eventually believes that Carol is one of the first telepaths – one of the original underground movement. He then says she might give birth to an entire line of telepaths. I think he just called her a slag.

The rogue wants to know what Jedikiah’s beef is with the TPs. He says he’s met them before and they cost him 500 years of his life. He caresses a pistol meaningfully. I don’t think he’s entirely sane and reasonable.

Back in the lab, John has a theory about what happened to everyone on Earth. He illustrates it by showing a man jumping off a diving board. So far, so good.

Ah ha – his point is that time isn’t like a smooth flowing film – it’s a series of frames that only look like a smooth flowing film. And if the projector stops, so everything stops.

Stephen finally understands – after John pauses another film of people diving into a pool (which begs the question why John has so many films of men in swimming trunks) – so one of John’s big close-ups is wasted as it comes a bit too late to drive home his point. They decide that the people who froze time are the same people that kidnapped Carol. You think?

In space, cracks are beginning to emerge. Jedikiah has started giving orders and the rogue doesn’t like it.

In the menagerie, Peter explains that he is a member of the eternal order and he regards all of time as his home. Put your legs together, son, or you’ll get us all into trouble.

He goes on to explain that they are the guardians of the time lanes. The lanes need guarding because the first time travellers caused chaos and couldn’t be trusted. So an army of young, pretty boys was created to stop them. It all sounds a bit thin to me.

Yay – old technology. Lovely stuff. John is using it to input some data into TIM manually. TIM agrees with whatever John typed into him. I think Nick Young had bought a pocket calculator that week and wanted to show it off.

The prisoners are taken to Jedikiah. Carol wants to know why they’re being held here against their will.

Jedikiah explains that the beta ray allows non-telepaths to navigate the time lanes. Peter can show him how to do it. Peter is appalled.

Peter is given a choice – tell Jedikiah what he wants to know or be eaten by the medusa. As if to prove he’s serious, Jedikiah invites the medusa along to have a quick nibble.

Carol is appalled.

But the plan has a hole in it – Carol is taken away and is thus away from the medusa. She is able to telepath back to the boys on earth.

Meanwhile, Peter is really suffering at the tentacles of the medusa. He’s quite literally straining every sinew not to burst out laughing.

At the rogue’s insistence, the medusa is brought back to the menagerie. Carol’s call home is cut short.

The rogue and Jedikiah have another tiff – this time over the condition of the boy, who is in charge of the ship and eventually who has the best species. Jedikiah breaks the rogue’s walking stick in half and declares himself boss. The rogue is appalled.

TIM has worked out that Carol is in the 26^th century but that’s about as close as he can get.

Carol and Peter have a chat in their respective cages. Carol learns that Jedikiah is Jedikiah. She is astonished.

Now that’s an interesting shot – the CSO fringing is clearly yellow and yet they are on a largely yellow set. I don’t understand. The vital plot information contained (or not) in this scene has completely passed me by.

Carol and Peter join hands and try a mind link – they’re going to try and overload the medusa’s sort of brain thing. Not kill it – they can’t kill remember – but make it feel a bit poorly and easily distracted.

The rogue catches them making green light with their fingers. He breaks up the young lovers and shouts at them. Bad telepaths.

There follows a discussion about forth dimensional drift in hyperspace. I think John means that objects in hyperspace can drift forwards and backwards in time without really trying. Except that would make a nonsense of the time lanes so one of us has become a bit confused.

Back on the ship, Jedikiah is blowing up a balloon.

It’s for the old airlock trick – put a balloon in an airlock, lower the pressure and the balloon expands until it bursts. Jolly amusing. Less amusing when you put a person in there and watch him or her expand until they burst.

In this case, she will expand until she dies.

Sucks to be Carol.