The strip focused around the titular Turner, an ordinary earthworm who gained human size and intellect after accidentally consuming a Super Serum created by the insane Dr. Otto Matik. Turner teams up with Glug the Slug, a similarly anthropomorphic slug, to defeat Matik, and the two subsequently go on many adventures inspired by popular films, TV shows, and pieces of literature. Glug was temporarily Put on a Bus from 1996-1997, and replaced by Goldblum the Fly in this period.
Tropes include:
- Berserk Button: Kylie Leech can be short-tempered at the best of times, but being sexist or condescending is a good way of really annoying her, as Glug found out in her introductory scene.
- Big Bad: Otto Matik is the comic's main recurring villain, though he actually appears relatively infrequently, with most of the villains being one-off ones.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The early stories tended to fall more into Random Events Plot territory — including a story where a wedge is driven between Turner and Glug by the latter's falling in love with a Cornish pasty (and not even an anthropomorphic one; just a regular, if outsized pasty), with it eventually being resolved when the pasty's owner, Peter Rogetnote shows up and eats it — before it settled down into its eventual format of parodying films and TV shows.
- While Turner and Kylie Leech's anthropomorphic status are both explained away as being the result of exposure Dr. Matik's Super Serum in the early stories, later stories have the world populated by humans and anthropomorphic animals in equal measure, with there being no real explanation of this.
- Halfway Plot Switch: "Mighty Morphin' Flower Arrangers" started out as a parody of, as you might guess, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, but switched to being a parody of Doctor Who about a third of the way in. Rose purportedly found Power Rangers to be already so ridiculous that there was nothing he could do to make it seem more absurd than it was, and so switched to a different target.
- Here We Go Again!: "The Beasts of Dr. Klemp" revolves around a mad scientist who wants to make the entire population of London just as ugly as him. Turner and Glug manage to rig things so that his "ugly bomb" backfires on him... at which point he becomes incredibly handsome and decides he wants to make all of London just as good-looking as him, much to Turner and Glug's annoyance.
- Horrible Hollywood: One story has Turner brought to Hollywood to make a film adaptation of his adventures. It turns out that the actual star is a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Turner is only there to act as a stunt double, and the film's depiction of his life story is grossly inaccurate. It culminates in Turner eating the film's negative to prevent its release.
- Mad Scientist: Turner encounters a lot of these during his adventures, the most prominent one being Dr. Otto Matik.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: While the strip's main recurring female character, Kylie Leech was clearly designed to resemble Kylie Minogue, character-wise she's actually a clear reference to Sarah Connor from Terminator 2: Judgment Day — something made clearer by the fact that her debut story was titled "The Worminator".
- Put on a Bus: At the end of "The K Files", Glug decides to stay on another planet in order to raise the alien he was impregnated with, leading to Goldblum taking up his role. This didn't stick however, and Glug returned firstly in a one-off appearance in that year's Christmas story, and then permanently in "The Beasts of Dr. Klemp" early the following year.
- Teleporter Accident: "Star Truk: The Next Service Station" has its Data Expy suffer one of these when a transporter accident (presumably caused by them having to beam out right as their Star Truck was being destroyed) causes his head to materialise inside his stomach. It doesn't technically kill him seeing how he's an android, but it puts him out of action for the rest of the story.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Many of the plots were taken wholesale from popular films or TV shows at the time, including "The Worminator" (The Terminator), "The K Files" (The X-Files) and "Star Truk: The Next Service Station" (Star Trek: The Next Generation, though with its plot being a take-off on the then-recent Star Trek: Generations).
