Another 5 minute and 15 second recap opens chapter four of this adventure. So that’s 10 minutes and 30 seconds of episode three that was either in episode 2 or episode 4, leaving a staggering 13 minutes of original material in that whole instalment. But what an episode it was – history has been changed and the Roman Empire never fell. So obviously this week is all about...

...oh.

A modern Roman comes down to bully the monkey men with a smile and an electric prod thing. How utterly evil.

They monkey men find our heroes during their team meeting. We don’t know what they say because the TPs power to translate other languages doesn’t seem to work on monkey men from other planets.

Wait – yes we do – they can speak pidgin English. They call the TPs "masters". Bless.

Nuts – it was going well until some Romans in a control room thing decide to snoop on the conversation. They find five humans who don’t know anything about the world a bit suspicious so they zoom in for a closer look.

This is worth recording apparently. Of course it is – you never know when you’ll need to fill five minutes and fifteen seconds with recycled material.

Earth has been renamed Rome. Peter is appalled.

There’s nothing else for it but to go back to the first century AD and fix things. The monkey men watch them go. Their masks aren’t good enough for them to look appalled but I think they’d be too scared to be appalled by their masters anyway. Not unless a master took them to one side and pulled out a latex glove and a seedy smile.

No – it needs proper humans to look appalled. These two will do nicely.

Gaius – who gets sweatier by the week – isn’t happy. He’s come a long way and doesn’t want pesky kids messing up his glorious empire.

Back in the pub, Peter has been asking around for info about Peter Duncan and his steamy hobby. He has a couple of leads but mostly they just laugh at the locals’ stupidity in not being able to tell the difference between a time pump implosion and a thunder bolt.

They recap – for Chris’s benefit – about not harming anything in case it messes with history. The boot is on the other foot now though – it’s the Romans from the future whose time line is at stake. Thus they can’t risk hurting one of their ancestors and messing things up. It does suggest that all of the TPs’ families are fine in the future though as none of them has disappeared. The Hardings, Jamisons and N’bondos are just fine. John doesn’t have a last name.

John stops Chris drinking the wine that they realise none of them ordered. It may be DRUGGED~!

They pretend to drink it and fall unconscious. Gaius is waiting for them. He thinks he has won. More fool him.

HA~! Gotcha. The TPs blast them with their stun guns in a move so smooth you could eat your dinner off it.

They jaunt off (except Chris who has to leg it). This makes Gaius ponder out loud about what he’s up against this time.

Gaius conjures up a time portal and they step through, back to their version of the future. It is somewhat cooler than those rubbish time discs the TPs use.

A local watches them go. He blames the booze. Or thanks the booze. It’s obviously good stuff.

They find the steam engine. Peter Duncan has already removed the important bits apparently. John is going to disintegrate the rest but the damage has already been done. Peter is sad.

The machine is disintegrated. The red tin in the middle was something John happened to have about his person. He doesn’t say where he kept it.

John and Peter take first watch, the rest have a kip. We watch them getting comfortable because the episode is still under-running despite the recap.

Peter Duncan sees Gaius arrive back in the olden days. He’s got a new belt – one that can stop teleporting. Mwahahaha. Except he already had a machine that robbed the TPs of their powers last time so why didn’t he just use that?

Time to swap shifts. They’re useless guards though – Peter Duncan has already slipped in without them noticing him.

They hear a noise.

Chris goes to see if there is anyone downstairs. "Hello? Anyone there?" he coos.

He’s outsmarted by Peter Duncan and ends up locked in the cell.

Stephen jaunts to Chris’s rescue but finds Peter Duncan as well.

He chases him out but fails to notice Duncan has been grabbed by a Roman. He walks back in none the wiser.

Gaius has found the sleeping TPs. With only four minutes left I fear evil will triumph this time round. Or – worse – that this will be a five part story.

Stephen tries to jaunt but he can’t. Damn – the belt of doom works. Ruddy Roman technology.

Gaius declares that he is going to kill them – that way time remains the way it should be. Or shouldn’t be, depending on your point of view. Literally nothing can save them now.

But not before John gives them (and us) an informative talk on the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries.

Gaius says Rome reached the moon in the fifth century. He does have a point – their reality is a bit cooler than ours. Imagine what their iPhones can do.

It’s Liz’s turn to speak and she chooses for her topic the rights and wrongs of slavery.

Peter Duncan has heard enough. He runs in to try and save them. He fails, obviously, but he has a crack.

He is knocked out but the Romans – rather than killing our heroes – simply fade away. What can this be?

Liz gets all emotional – Peter Duncan is dead. Boo hoo. Etc.

But wait – he’s fine – he’s just lost his memory. That’s why the Romans vanished. History is ok again. That’s lucky.

It dawns on John and Peter.

Then eventually on Chris.

Then we immediately cut to the gym for a final joke – Chris gets tossed by a judoka and tells the little fellow to pick on someone his own size. HA HA HA.

The end.