Except that there's this one good guy left, called Caleb, whose job it is to try and overthrow the empire run by these nasty big lumps of metal. But he can't do it himself, and so he goes back a hundred years into history - well, into his history at least - to find some brave young recruits to help him do the job.

Following it all so far? Well, if not, don't worry too much. Because all will (hopefully) become clear some time next month, when the opening episode of the brand new CBBC adventure game show, Mission:2110, hits the TV screens for the very first time.

And the relevance of this to Bute is what, exactly? Well, you might already know this bit - and if you don't, there's a good chance the pictures accompanying this story will give you a clue - but just in case the penny has yet to drop, Mission:2110 is being filmed on the massive Maersk container vessels currently sitting in cold lay-up in Loch Striven, which are easily visible from the Rothesay seafront on a clear day, and whose crew are an increasingly familiar sight around the town.

We already knew about the filming plan when we visited the Maersk 'raft' for the first time back at the end of November. But now we are to have the chance to return to the vessels - and to take a behind-the-scenes peek at how one of the world's most technologically-advanced cargo ships has been turned into one huge TV studio.

Specifically, it's been turned into Future Gate, the base of the mighty Roboidz, the big nasty evil metal robots mentioned earlier, and of their slave drones, the Shades. The job of Caleb's young recruits - children from all over the UK who successfully auditioned for the show - is to defeat the Roboidz by winning a series of games and snatching Bio-Rods, which the Roboidz need to survive.

Fans of nineties and noughties telly may recognise this as a kind of a cross between Doctor Who and The Crystal Maze, except this one is clearly aimed at children. In fact it's been created by the same team that made the BAFTA award-winning Raven, a similar adventure gameshow programme for younger viewers, much of which was filmed almost next door, in the grounds of Castle Toward.

Much more than that, I can't tell you. Well, I could, but the BBC would have to kill me if I did. Because, as with any new TV show, everything - well, almost everything - is kept carefully under wraps until the very moment the first episode is broadcast.

We - 'we' being a three-strong press pack and three Maersk employees from the company's Liverpool office, given a trip to this Scottish outpost of their empire as a prize for some excellent customer service - are taken down into the cargo hold of the main 'studio ship', the Maersk Boston, to see the filming actually happen, but are told that any photographs we take must not be published until after the show goes out.

We can see some of the futuristic costumes, and one particularly impressive set, used for the last and biggest game of the series, for which all the metalwork was made by Bute Blacksmiths. But as for the detail, we are sworn to secrecy. The first series - two are being filmed on the raft, more or less back-to-back - is due to be broadcast some time in April. Until then, my lips are sealed!

The show, not surprisingly, is having a pretty big impact on life on the raft. Last time we visited, Captain Davie Johnstone and his small team of maintenance personnel were trying their hardest to make the best of the quiet life. This time everything is, relatively speaking, a hubbub of activity: there are 70 people working behind the scenes on Mission:2110, along with up to 16 children, their mentors and tutors, and most of them are living on the raft, twenty-four-seven, until the end of filming on March 19.

And the Maersk team are clearly enjoying being that bit busier (though Captain Johnstone himself has been told he's not tall enough to be given a cameo role as one of the Shades, news which we can see still bothers him). Since our last visit, it has become, if anything, even more obvious that the ships in the Loch Striven raft are going to be part of the landscape for a pretty long time: though they are among the most technically-advanced cargo vessels in the world, they are horrendously uneconomic to run, and thus, in the captain's words, "were the first ones into lay-up and will be the last ones out".

In the meantime, despite being denied the chance to be a Shade, the captain is enjoying the filming experience as best he can, watching the games when they're filmed and mixing with cast and crew whenever he and they are free. (He's even put up a Maersk-branded Lego set for the best drawing of the ships by one of the show's young stars.)

Today he has his tour guide hat on, and so we visit his own accommodation, the crew's day rooms and even the ship's gymnasium, converted for the duration of filming into a schoolwork-and-costumes room for the children (when not filming they have to study to make sure they aren't behind everyone else on returning to school).

In the gymnasium-turned-classroom we find Isaac, from Nottingham, with his head buried in a book. He and Lois, from Birmingham, were eliminated from the show yesterday, but aren't travelling home until tomorrow. Serena from Newcastle, Millie from London and Alastair from Glasgow are all preparing for their next scene.

Isaac and Lois admit it will be sad to leave the show behind, but are looking forward to seeing their families and friends again - Stephen Burt, the project's location manager for the BBC, reveals that when the first children were eliminated from the show, there were floods of tears all round. Even among the adults!

Down in the bowels of the vessel, leaving the TV side of things far behind, the chief engineer, Stuart Underwood from Dalmally, gives us a guided tour of the many highways and byways of the Maersk Beaumont, one of two 'mother ships' in the raft and the living quarters for the crew and many of those involved in the filming.

After walking almost the entire hundred metres of the ship's propeller shaft, getting up close and personal with two of her four 2.7 megawatt generators and being shown, among many other mechanical marvels, a starter motor roughly the size of a Ford Transit and a machine that can produce 24 tonnes of fresh water from sea water every day, it's time for a spot of lunch to prepare ourselves for the experience of watching a TV show in the making.

What that experience mostly involves, as we discover very soon after lowering ourselves down a hatch on the aft deck of the Maersk Boston, is an awful lot of waiting. The cargo hold we find ourselves in - one of two being used for filming purposes - is huge. But it lends itself very well to the kind of atmosphere Mission:2110 is trying to create - a sort of cross between futuristic and industrial which the BBC, perhaps not with an eye on the show's likely audience, describes as 'post-apocalyptic'.

Preparation is the name of the game as we watch from a multi-level gallery which neatly divides the hold in two. Only one half of the hold is in use this afternoon, and this is full of members of the production crew manhandling costumes into place, make-up artists ensuring that the child contestants' hair is just right, and the street performers who have to wear the Roboidz costumes silently limbering up in the middle of the arena.

Every so often a stern voice at the other end of the hold tells us to be "Quiet on the floor!" so the crew can film Caleb, played by Stuart Goldsmith, recording the 'links' - the bits between one part of the show and the next, and the introductions to the next game - alongside the contestants. As all this is happening, one of the Roboidz' performers is slowly getting to grips with his costume, though understandably it is the legs that go on first, and there is no sign of the top half being donned until the last possible moment.

Stephen Burt, the location manager for the shoot, confirms that waiting comprises a very large chunk of his job. It was Stephen, a former prawn fisherman based in Mallaig, who had the idea of using the Loch Striven raft as a film location, and who now acts as the main liaison between Maersk and the BBC throughout the filming process. "The first time I came here it was just for a jolly, a bit of a laugh," he says. "But when I got here I couldn't believe what I'd stumbled upon."

One of the games will be filmed this afternoon, although it's not entirely clear what that will involve, other than the contestants trying in some way to get past one of the Roboidz. The hope is that we will be able to see the game being filmed, but the clock is ticking - a taxi will arrive at Inverchaolain Church, on the east shore of the loch, to pick up the Liverpool Maersk trio at four o'clock, and we're fast approaching half past three.

Then a member of the production team enters a squared-off section of the studio floor and shows the contestants roughly what they'll have to do. One of the Roboidz is in there with her, now wearing its robotic top half, although with a still very human head poking out of the top. Then, just as it seems the game is about to get underway, Stephen's walkie-talkie buzzes and it becomes clear that our glimpse of some real action, more than an hour and a half since we descended into the Boston's bowels, is to be snatched from our grasp, with a taxi fast approaching Inverchaolain to take the Liverpool-based trio back to Dunoon for their ferry home and our own boat waiting to transport us back to dry land. As we head back up towards the open air, the Roboid is adjusting to his robotic head and preparing for action. Ah well, looks like we'll just have to wait until April, the same as everyone else!

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Niall Hendry-Chynoweth, who spent last week working at The Buteman as part of Rothesay Academy's work experience programme, reports on his impressions of the visit to Maersk's raft...

IT'S a wintry morning at the tail end of February and I'm watching the snowy hills of Cowal pass by on the scenic (if a little inconvenient) drive from Rothesay to Loch Striven.

We are going to visit the six Maersk cargo ships which are anchored in the centre of the loch, laid up due to the poor state of the world's economy.

In particular we're going to see two of the six huge vessels - one is the Maersk Beaumont, the 'mother ship' for half of the raft, and the other is the Maersk Boston, the most easterly of the six ships, on which a children's TV programme is being filmed by the BBC.

Mission 2110, as the programme is named, is set one hundred years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic world run by evil robots known as Roboidz. The hero, Caleb, must summon children from a hundred years into the past to help defeat the Roboidz and mend the Earth, and Caleb in his heroes are being filmed in the cargo decks and engine rooms of the ship - thanks mainly to a stroke of genius by a location manager for the BBC.

The ship's captain, David Johnstone, eagerly accepted the BBC's request to film on the raft, as the six vessels, designed to carry huge cargoes around the world at breathtaking speed, are making no money laying idle in the centre of Loch Striven, with unoccupied cargo decks and engines, and quickly gathering dust.

At the end of our two-hour drive from Rothesay - to a raft which takes about ten minutes to reach by boat - we park at a small house by a beach opposite the massive cargo ships, and wait in the fierce winds and relentless rain for our small group of seven to gather. It's a selection of people from different areas of the country which reminds me a bit of the tale of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As the final members of the group arrive, I spot a small orange boat - a rigid inflatable boat, or 'rib', making its way towards us from the side of the nearest ship.

From the lone boat walks a lone man up the beach, carrying some kind of florescent full-body garments over his arm, which we are advised to put on when he reaches us.

Each of us battles to clothe ourselves in the shiny shells, though like a second skin, they are a welcome guard against the biting wind being experienced by seafarers - even if they aren't the most flattering of outfits.

At last, when the entire group has got their survival suits on, we're ready to cross the loch to the raft. Only four of us can travel with the helmsman at any one time, so three must stay behind. I don't hear this, or mind waiting: I have my hood up.

So I wait by the wind-blasted cottage with Craig, the editor, and Kate from Maersk, and watch the rib make its wary way towards the raft of immense ships, taking a detour rather than travelling in a straight line so as not to be dragged off course by howling winds.

Ten minutes later, we pile into the boat ourselves, curl up to safeguard from the wind and set off towards the port side of the Maersk Boston, which has the legend MAERSK LINES on huge letters on its hull.

A portable metal staircase leads us up the side of the ship's hull. As I tentatively make my way up I can watch the raging sea below me batter the jetty we hopped on upon leaving the rib, which is also now being thrashed by the waves.

When we reach the top, we are guided through decks covered in puddles and over a gangway between the Boston and the Beaumont to the interior of the latter vessel's accommodation block, which spans the entire breadth of the ship.

We are led to the blissfully warm laundry room to remove our suits, and after a considerable amount of embarrassing hopping and stretching) after which we proceed to a small elevator which will take us up to the bridge to meet the captain.

Captain David Johnstone cheerfully welcomes us when we arrive on the Beaumont's bridge, and offers the group tea, coffee and biscuits before telling us a little about the ships and the current situation facing the world's biggest container shipping company.

"The recession brought them up here," he says of the raft. "All of the ships were built in a place called Stralsund in what was Germany, which takes nine months to do.

"When this particular ship came out, it was the fastest cargo ship in the world. It could do 32 knots and could carry 4,200 containers - it really was amazing.

"But when the Beaumont was launched, fuel prices went through the roof, meaning we were burning £200,000 of fuel every day.

"Since the recession began, Maersk has adopted a new policy of slowing its ships down to keep them employed and to save money on fuel. There are 'think tanks' going on right now on how to develop bio-fuel.

"They are also trying to alter their underwater hull shapes to make the ships more efficient, and they might even shorten the ships."

Four per cent of Maersk's fleet - that's nearly one ship in every 20 - is currently laid up. Things are slowly beginning to pick up, but the uneconomic nature of the B class ships means they're likely to be the last to be returned to service.

With that in mind, when the chance arose for the company to earn some money by allowing the BBC to turn the raft into a giant TV studio, they unsurprisingly jumped at the chance.

"I came to this area around October last year," Captain Johnstone says, "when the place was being used as a backdrop for a film about a nuclear submarine.

"The BBC came a week later and asked me if they could use the ship for the kids TV show.

"When they saw the backdrops they were amazed. You can't build this kind of set - it would cost millions of pounds."

Most of the show, which is a successor to the hugely popular Raven series, is being filmed on the Maersk Boston, with six or seven of the games being filmed in the engine rooms. Two series of Mission:2110 are being filmed back-to-back, and we have arrived just after the first elimination of the second series, in which 16 children are gradually whittled down to just two finalists.

Our guided tour of the ship begins with a quick look at the crew's quarters and the officers' lounge. Of the latter, the captain says: "This place would have been jumping in the old days, but with reduced manpower and a busy schedule you hardly get any time in here."

Crew accommodation is also much quieter than it used to be - two crew members used to share a room, and eight men would share a single shower, but those days are long gone and it's hard to imagine them ever coming back to such a modern ship.

Our final stop before reaching the engine rooms is the ship's gymnasium, which has been partly converted into a classroom for the children appearing on Mission:2110 - who must study hard when they're not being filmed!

One, Alastair from Glasgow, said that although he was still part of the programme, it was hard to say goodbye to those he had been working with.

Another, Isaac from Nottingham, told us: "I'm not part of the filming any more but I'm still socialising, so hasn't really sunk in that I've been eliminated yet."

With that we left down another flight of stairs to arrive at a room with walls covered in blinking lights and labelled gauges.

Our guide here, chief engineer Stuart Underwood, takes us through to the vast engine room, which is a cacophony of whirring, clanging and roaring of engines in which immense metal cylinders are attached by pipes to smaller metal cylinders, with pipes heading down through the grated floor to the metal maze below.

This orchestra of mechanical output rendered our guide virtually inaudible - though I did manage to hear however that the engine burns one tonne of fuel a day.

From here, we proceed down some very steep stairs to the workshop, where we can hear Stuart tell us that the ship, not surprisingly, carries thousands of spare parts, "because when we travel three or four thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean we can't afford to break down in the middle."

Work benches occupy the entire perimeter of this room, whose high ceilings accentuate the scale of the operations on this ship.

Next we arrive at the huge starting motor for the ship's engine, which injects air to give the machinery enough energy to start turning, supplemented by the power of four 2.7 megawatt generators.

Through the store room, and past walls seemingly made entirely of shelves, we pass a spanner which I estimate was a foot and a half in length. Then we reach the ship's unique propeller shaft tunnel, which stretches along a third of its three-hundred-metre length - and which we follow almost all the way to the stern of the ship, a fitting point at which to end our tour.

Later, after lunch, we venture outside once more to reach the cargo deck on our neighbour ship, the Maersk Boston, where some filming is due to take place.

More wind-beaten passages and scant ladders must be negotiated to reach the cargo deck, which has by far the largest capacity of any room our group has visited today.

At this point we have to be very careful what we say, as the BBC has put a strict embargo on too much information about the series before it is broadcast in April.

What we can see is a deck illuminated by colourful lights put in place by the film crew, all of whom are tending to game areas below us on either side of our metal viaduct.

Wires and cables of all different sizes are scattered around the room, like the vines of a tree, from the ground below us, up to our elevated walkway, some 20 metres above ground level. Above us, a rainbow of coloured lighting can be found all over the vast cargo deck - lights on stands, strip lighting on the ceilings, lights emanating from luminous set pieces and illuminating walls with projectors.

The Roboidz' arms and legs and, eventually, torsoes, are carried in one by one and placed, menacingly, in a row in front of a mountain of equipment. I am told, though, that the children participating in the game show are more wary of the Shade characters (zombie-like androids employed by the Roboidz).

As I write, the clanging of the metal stairs means the children are now descending to the filming area.

The hero of the show, Caleb, played by Stuart Goldsmith, can be seen in the corner of the room, paper in hand, miming his actions and going over his lines.

All of the film crew have now occupied one side of the room in anticipation of the children's first challenge. Orders are shouted across the room, yet they can hardly be recognised for the echo produced in such an expansive area.

A cast member is being fitted into the suit of a Roboid, a process which requires the aid of three people. He stretches his now robotic legs, yet is only able to make baby steps with the trunk-like appendages.

By now there are only a few minutes left until we have to leave the arena, with darkness approaching outside and a taxi about to arrive to take some of our party to the ferry in Dunoon.

We are told to hush as they are about to start filming. Finally, action! A Roboid awaits the arrival oif the children in the centre of the room, though the children themselves are currently out of sight underneath us. I don't quite understand what's going on but I can't wait to see the filming.

Muffled voices can be heard from somewhere below us on the other side of the room as filming has now begun, and after what I thought sounded like a motivational speech from Caleb, the kids run out into the centre of the room.

I'd have loved to hear someone say "Cut! That's a wrap" - but we really do have to leave now, a glimpse of some real filming action remains tantalisingly out of our reach. But it's been fascinating nonetheless...