 In the year 1578, Queen Elizabeth I asks her court magician, Dr. John Dee, to give her a vision of "the shadow of her time." Dee invokes the angel Ariel, who transports the Queen and Dee to the England of the future--a post-punk post Thatcherian wasteland where civilization has come to a halt. Bands of teenage girl punks roam the streets. Equally dangerous are the fascistic police. Buckingham Palace is a recording studio, the center of an entertainment empire controlled by media czar Borgia Ginz, who owns everything from the C of E to the BBC. The anti-heros of the film are led by Elizabeth s mirror image Bod, the murderous leader of a mad household that includes the historian Amyl Nitrate, the pyromaniac Mad, the sex-obsessed actress Crabs, loving brothers Sphinx and Angel, the artist Viv and their French au pair, Chaos.