The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts, Page 2

  At one point Douglas got keen on making another radio series. His plan was to build his own studio so we could experiment with effects and music for as long as we liked. This was in 1985. If it had ever happened I think we would still have been there fifteen years later. But it would have been stimulating. After all, I think I had the best and most creative time of my life stuck in a studio with an enthusiastic comic genius who was in so many ways the size of a planet.

  Geoffrey Perkins

  19 December 2002

  Foreword by Douglas Adams: ‘Where do you get all your ideas from?’

  The story goes that I first had the idea for The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck (or ‘Spain’ as the BBC TV publicity department authoratitively has it, probably because it’s easier to spell).

  Apparently I was hitch-hiking around Europe at the time, and had a copy of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Europe (by Ken Walsh, also published by Pan Books) with me at the time. I didn’t have Europe On (as it was then) Five Dollars A Day because I simply wasn’t in that kind of financial league.

  My condition was brought on not so much by having had too much drink, so much as having had a bit to drink and nothing to eat for two days. So as I lay there in this field, the stars span lazily around my head, and just before I nodded off, it occurred to me that someone ought to write a Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as well.

  Now, this may well be true.

  It sounds plausible. It certainly has a familiar kind of ring to it. Unfortunately, I’ve only got my own word for it now, because the constant need to repeat the story (’Tell me, Douglas, how did it all start . . . ?’) has now completely obliterated my memory of the actual event. All I can remember now is the sequence of words which makes up the story – (’Well, it’s very interesting you should ask that, Brian. I was lying in this field . . . ’), and if I ever forget that, then the whole thing will have vanished from my mind forever.

  If I then come across a BBC press release which says that I thought of the idea in Spain, I’ll probably think it must be true. After all, they are the BBC, aren’t they?

  However, I wouldn’t like to create the impression that all a writer has to do is sit in a field cramming himself with a couple of Stella Artoises whereupon a passing idea will instantly pounce on him, and then it’s all over bar the typing. An idea is only an idea.

  An actual script, on the other hand, is hundreds of ideas bashed around, screwed up, thrown into the bin, fished out of the bin an hour later and folded up into thick wads and put under the leg of a table to stop it wobbling. And then the same again for the next line, and the the next, and so on, until you have a whole page or the table finally keels over.

  The problem is that you can’t go off and rave it up in a field every time you need an idea, so you just have to sit there and think of the little bastards. And if you can’t think of them you just have to sit there. Or think of an excuse for doing something else. That’s quite easy. I’m very good at thinking of reasons for suddenly having a quick bath or a Bovril sandwich. Which is why truthful explanations of how writers get ideas tend to be rather dull:

  I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of a good name for a character. I told myself that, as a reward, I would let myself go and make a Bovril sandwich once I’d thought of it.

  I stared out of the window some more and thought that probably what I really needed to help get the creative juices going was to have a Bovril sandwich now, which presented me with a problem that I could only successfully resolve by thinking it over in the bath.

  An hour, a bath, three Bovril sandwiches, another bath and a cup of coffee later, I realised that I still hadn’t thought of a good name for a character, and decided that I would try calling him Zaphod Beeblebrox and see if that worked.

  I sat and stared out of the window for a while, trying to think of something for him to say . . .

  Zaphod was definitely a three-sandwich idea. Arthur Dent came quite easily after a couple of biscuits and a cup of tea. Vogon poetry I remember was a tough one, and only came after several miles of rampaging round the country lanes of Stalbridge, Dorset, in a track suit trying to work off the effects of thinking up the Babel Fish (six slices of toast and peanut butter, a packet of crisps and a shower). Marvin was . . .

  Marvin was different. Marvin was actually based on a real person, but the person concerned tends to get annoyed if I go around telling people it was him. However, he gets even more annoyed if I don’t go around telling people it was him because then he has to tell people himself before he can tell them how annoyed he is about it, and I think he finds that particularly irritating.

  There is a rumour to the effect that the person I’m referring to here is the comedy writer Andrew Marshall, who co-wrote The Burkiss Way, End of Part One, and Whoops, Apocalypse, but I would like to emphasise that it is only a rumour. I know that for a fact because I started it.

  Is there any evidence to support the rumour? Well, it is true that when I used to know Andrew well, he was the sort of person you would feel rather nervous about introducing to people. Suppose you were with a group of people in a pub and he joined you. You would say, ‘Andrew, meet . . . ’ whoever it was, and everyone would say hello to him. There would be a slight pause, and then Andrew would say something so devastatingly rude to them that they would be absolutely stunned rigid. In the silence that followed Andrew would then wander off into a corner and sit hunched over a pint of beer. I would go over and say, ‘Andrew, what on earth was the point of saying that?’ and Andrew would say, ‘What’s the point of not saying it? What’s the point of being here? What’s the point of anything? Including being alive at all? That seems particularly pointless to me.’

  However, this is all purely circumstantial evidence, because in fact all comedy writers are like that.

  Reading through what I’ve written so far, I feel I must correct the impression that it’s all done with sandwiches, because there’s also a lot of playing the guitar very loudly involved as well.

  This used only mildly to irritate the neighbours when I just had an acoustic guitar which I would practise intricate fingerpicking styles on when suffering from writer’s block. However, since I bought a Fender Stratocaster a couple of years ago even a mild case of searching for le mot juste can now cause pain and anger along most of Upper Street.

  I also suffer from the fallacy of thinking that playing records will help you work. It doesn’t. You end up listening to the record and then you have to start work all over again when it’s finished. However, this did in the end have a lot to do with how Hitch-Hiker’s was actually produced.

  Though it was now ten years since Sergeant Pepper had revolutionised the way that people in the rock world thought about sound production, it seemed to me, listening to radio comedy at the time, that we still hadn’t progressed much beyond Door Slam A, Door Slam B, Footsteps On a Gravel Path and the odd Comic Boing.This wasn’t so much lack of imagination, as a perfectly reasonable worry that an overindulgence in sound effects easily creates irritating mish mash which detracts from a strong script and fails to disguise a weak one. Also it took time, which, it was felt, could be better used making more programmes.

  However, long-standing rules are made to be broken, and I wanted Hitch-Hiker’s to sound like a rock album. I wanted the voices and the effects and the music to be so seamlessly orchestrated as to create a coherent picture of a whole other world – and I said this and many similar sorts of things and waved my hands around a lot, while people nodded patiently and said, ‘Yes, Douglas, but what’s it actually about?’

  We never did clear that one up, of course, but I think we can fairly claim to have made some good noises. In fact recording these shows was some of the best and most nerve-racking fun I’ve ever had. Were we doing something extraordinary, or were we simply going mad? It was mostly very hard to tell. Because the BBC Light Entertainment Department had simply never attempted anything like t
his before, we were largely having to invent the process by which we worked as we went along. Geoffrey Perkins has explained how a lot of the production techniques gradually evolved elsewhere in this book, and I only want to add one thing – which is to say to him and to Simon Brett and Paddy Kingsland and John Lloyd and all the studio managers who worked so incredibly hard and inventively on the show, that the way you really get good ideas is from working with talented people you have fun with.

  Douglas Adams

  London July 1985

  THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

  An epic adventure in time and space including some helpful advice on how to see the Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day.

  Complete Cast List

  THE BOOK: Peter Jones

  ARTHUR DENT: Simon Jones

  FORD PREFECT: Geoffrey McGivern

  PROSSER AND PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Bill Wallis

  LADY CYNTHIA FITZMLTON: Jo Kendall

  THE BARMAN: David Gooderson

  EDDIE THE COMPUTER AND THE VOGON GUARD: David Tate

  MARVIN, THE PARANOID ANDROID: Stephen Moore

  ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX: Mark Wing-Davey

  TRIALLIAN: Susan Sheridan

  SLARTIBARTFAST: Richard Vernon

  DEEP THOUGHT: Geoffrey McGivern

  MAJIKTHISE AND THE CHEERLEADER: Jonathan Adams

  FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAMMER AND BANG BANG: Ray Hassett

  SECOND COMPUTER PROGRAMMER: Jeremy Browne

  VROOMFONDEL AND SHOOTY: Jim Broadbent

  FRANKIE MOUSE: Peter Hawkins

  BENJY MOUSE: David Tate

  GARKBIT THE WAITER AND ZARQUON THE PROPHET: Anthony Sharp

  MAX QUORDLEPLEEN: Roy Hudd

  ‘B’-ARK NUMBER TWO, HAGGUNENON UNDERFLEET COMMANDER AND HAIRDRESSER: Aubrey Woods

  ‘B’-ARK NUMBER ONE AND MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT: Jonathan Cecil

  CAPTAIN AND THE CAVEMAN: David Jason

  MARKETING GIRL: Beth Porter

  GAG HALFRUNT: Stephen Moore

  ARCTURAN NUMBER ONE: Bill Paterson

  ARCTURAN CAPTAIN, RADIO VOICE, RECEPTIONIST AND LIFT: David Tate

  FROGSTAR ROBOT AND AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Geoffrey McGivern

  ROORSTA: Alan Ford

  FROGSTAR PRISON RELATION OFFICER: David Tate

  GARGRAVARR: Valentine Dyall

  THE VENTILATION SYSTEM: Geoffrey McGivern

  THE NUTRIMAT MACHINE: Leueen Willoughby

  ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX THE FOURTH: Richard Goolden

  BIRD ONE: Ronald Baddiley

  BIRD TWO AND THE FOOTWARRIOR: John Baddeley

  THE WISE OLD BIRD :John Le Mesurier

  LINTILLA (AND HER CLONES): Rula Lenska

  THE FILM COMMENTATOR AND THE COMPUTEACH: David Tate

  THE PUPIL: Stephen Moore

  HIG HURTENFLURST: Mark Smith

  VARNTVAR THE PRIEST: Geoffrey McGivern

  THE ALLITNILS: David Tate

  POODOO: Ken Cambell

  AIRLINE STEWARDNESS: Rula Lenska

  AUTOPILOT AND ZARNIWOOP: Jonathan Pryce

  THE MAN IN THE SHACK: Stephen Moore

  FIT THE FIRST

  In which the Earth is unexpectedly destroyed and the great Hitch-Hike begins.

  NARRATOR: (Over music. Matter of fact, characterless voice)

  This is the story of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than 53 More Things To Do In Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Coluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is This God Person Anyway?

  And in many of the more relaxed civilizations on the outer Eastern rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, because although it has many omissions, contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important ways. First, it is slightly cheaper, and second it has the words ‘DON’T PANIC’ inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover.

  To tell the story of the book, it is best to tell the story of some of the minds behind it. A human from the planet Earth was one of them, though as our story opens he no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company. His name is Arthur Dent, he is a six foot tall ape descendant, and someone is trying to drive a bypass through his home.

  F/X: GENERAL ROAD BUILDING NOISES. BULLDOZERS, PNEUMATIC DRILLS, ETC.

  (The following conversation is carried out over this noise. The man from the Council, Mr Prosser, is being dictatorial through a megaphone, and Arthur is shouting his answers rather faintly in the distance.)

  PROSSER: Come off it Mr Dent, you can’t win you know. There’s no point in lying down in the path of progress.

  ARTHUR: I’ve gone off the idea of progress. It’s overrated.

  PROSSER: But you must realize that you can’t lie in front of the bulldozers indefinitely.

  ARTHUR: I’m game, we’ll see who rusts first.

  PROSSER: I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it. This bypass has got to be built, and it’s going to be built. Nothing you can say or do . . .

  ARTHUR: Why’s it got to be built?

  PROSSER: What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? It’s a bypass, you’ve got to build bypasses.

  ARTHUR: Didn’t anyone consider the alternatives?

  PROSSER: There aren’t any alternatives. Look, you were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time.

  ARTHUR: Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at the door yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. No, first he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.

  PROSSER: (Ordinary voice, but he is still clearly audible. In other words, he was standing next to Arthur anyway.)

  But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months.

  ARTHUR: Yes. I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call much attention to them had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.

  PROSSER: The plans were on display.

  ARTHUR: And how many average members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping round at the local planning office of an evening? It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off-chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye, were they?

  PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.

  ARTHUR: I eventually had to go down to the cellar . . .

  PROSSER: That’s the display department.

  ARTHUR: . . . with a torch.

  PROSSER: Ah, the lights had probably gone.

  ARTHUR: So had the stairs.

  PROSSER: But you found the notice didn’t you?

  ARTHUR: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’. Ever thought of going into advertising?

  PROSSER: It’s not as if it’s a particularly nice house anyway.

  ARTHUR: I happen rather to like it.

  PROSSER: Mr Dent!

  ARTHUR: Hello? Yes?

  PROSSER: Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?

  ARTHUR: How much?

  PROSSER: None at all.

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND

  NARRATOR: By a strange coincidence, ‘None at all’ is exactly how much suspicion the ape descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an
ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Arthur Dent’s failure to suspect this reflects the care with which his friend blended himself into human society after a fairly shaky start. When he first arrived fifteen years ago the minimal research he had done suggested to him that the name Ford Prefect would be nicely inconspicuous. He will enter our story in 35 seconds and say ‘Hello Arthur’. The ape descendant will greet him in return, but in deference to a million years of evolution he will not attempt to pick fleas off him. Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.

  FORD: (Arriving) Hello Arthur.

  ARTHUR: Ford, hi, how are you?

  FORD: Fine, look, are you busy?

  ARTHUR: Well, I’ve just got this bulldozer to lie in front of, otherwise no, not especially.

  FORD: There’s a pub down the road. Let’s have a drink and we can talk.

  ARTHUR: Look, don’t you understand?

  PROSSER: Mr Dent, We’re waiting.

  ARTHUR: Ford, that man wants to knock my house down!

  FORD: Well, he can do it whilst you’re away can’t he?

  ARTHUR: But I don’t want him to!

  FORD: Well just ask him to wait till you get back.

  ARTHUR: Ford . . .

  FORD: Arthur! Will you please just listen to me, I’m not fooling. I have got to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard, I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you in that pub there.

  ARTHUR: Why?

  FORD: Because you’re going to need a very stiff drink. Now, just trust me.

  ARTHUR: (Reluctantly) I’ll see what I can do. It’d better be good. (Calls) Hello! Mr Prosser!

  PROSSER: Yes Mr Dent? Have you come to your senses yet?

  ARTHUR: Can we just for a moment assume for the moment that I haven’t?

  PROSSER: Well?

  ARTHUR: And that I’m going to be staying put here till you go away?

  PROSSER: So?

  ARTHUR: So you’re going to be standing around all day doing nothing.