The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  RUSSELL: Well, of course I care!

  ARTHUR: I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I know you care a lot, obviously. You just have to deal with it somehow. Please excuse me. I just hitched from the other side of the Horsehead Nebula . . . Perhaps you’d better let me out—

  FX: Huge thunderclap outside. Rain. Windscreen wipers on.

  RUSSELL: In this weather?

  FX: Huge lorry overtakes with a blast on its horn.

  RUSSELL: Bloody lorry! That’s twice now! Bloody McKenna’s All-Weather Haulage!

  FX: He beeps the car horn.

  FX: Rain stops.

  RUSSELL: Oh, just a shower . . .

  FX: Windscreen wipers off.

  RUSSELL: Anyway, where were we?

  ARTHUR: Um . . . when did it start? Her . . . delusions?

  RUSSELL: Oh, it started with all that business when everybody had the hallucinations, you remember.

  ARTHUR: No.

  RUSSELL: She was in a cafe somewhere. Rickmansworth. Apparently she stood up, calmly announced that she had undergone some revelation or something, wobbled a bit and collapsed screaming into an egg sandwich.

  ARTHUR: But when you say ‘everybody’ had hallucinations . . .

  RUSSELL: The big yellow ships in the sky announcing the end of the world, remember? Everyone going crazy and saying we’re going to die, and then pop, they vanished. The authorities denied it, which meant it must be true.

  ARTHUR: They vanished?

  RUSSELL: Anyway, whatever drug it was that MI5 or the CIA or whoever put into the water supply or whatever, didn’t seem to wear off so fast with Fenny—

  ARTHUR: The Vogon . . . The yellow ships . . . vanished?

  RUSSELL: Well, of course they did, they were hallucinations. You don’t remember? Where have you been, for heaven’s—

  ARTHUR: What?!

  FX: Handbrake pull – the car skids to a stop, they are thrown forward.

  ARTHUR: (Stunned) Uhh.

  FENCHURCH: (Thrown into back of seat) Unf—

  ARTHUR: Fenny – is she all right?

  RUSSELL: Would you please let go of the handbrake?

  ARTHUR: Sorry. Oh, look . . . that seems to be my house.

  INT. – POLICE COPTER, IN FLIGHT

  HAN DOLD AIR TRAFFIC (Distorted) Unidentified police copter, spaceport air traffic – alter course, the interplanetary shuttle is departing—

  FORD PREFECT: Hallo, Air Traffic. Life has suddenly furnished me with a serious goal to achieve. I have new responsibilities – unh!

  FX: Radio smashed. Fizzles.

  FORD PREFECT: (To self) And that shuttle’s not leaving without me. Now – where’s that towel . . .

  EXT. – SPACEPORT

  FX: Copter lands. Ford leaps out, running and flapping his towel.

  FORD PREFECT: (Yells, breathless) Hey! Hold the gangway! One plus towel coming aboard!

  INT. – INTERPLANETARY SHUTTLE

  FX: Ford staggers in. Pressure door closes behind him.

  STEWARDESS BOT: Excuse me, sir, do you have a reservation?

  FORD PREFECT: (Breathless, but with a winning smile) No. But I have an American Express card . . .

  STEWARDESS BOT: Oh – I’ll need to check that—

  PILOT VOICE: (Distorted) Cabin crew, secure pressure doors and strap in for lift off.

  FORD PREFECT: I think you need to find me a seat first.

  STEWARDESS BOT: (Flustered) Er – were you wanting a Dentrassi steerage bin or first class massage chair with in-flight holovid and free novelty ringtone downloads?

  FORD PREFECT: (Still winning smile) Yes, please.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: What possible purpose in life could inspire Ford Prefect more than drinking a lot and dancing with girls? Is Arthur Dent finally home for good? And how will the reappearance of Earth disrupt the Vogons’ traffic-calming initiative? The next episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy resolutely refuses to be ignored, discarded or dropped out of plastic carrier bags . . .

  ANNOUNCER: For those listeners whose income exceeds fifteen thousand Triganic Pus per annum (regardless of orbital duration), wealth counselling is now available at a reasonable rate by the fire hydrant outside the Old Pink Dog Bar in Han Dold City, just under the sign saying ‘New Bar Bird Wanted, Knowledge of Local Hit Men Vitally Necessary’.

  FOOTNOTES

  The Vogons This opening scene was originally at the start of Episode Two of the Quandary Phase, but was moved very late in the day to the start of Episode One, a conscious decision to reverse expectations and by doing so warn those familiar with the sequencing of the novels that the gloves, if not off, were going to be loaded with the odd horseshoe. There is also the fact that So Long is very much Arthur’s love story, and rightly so; however, with events coming up in Mostly Harmless (which Douglas had not yet formulated), the Vogons could not be consigned to the dustbin of history for the duration of Arthur’s relationship with Fenchurch; in fact nothing that has gone before on Hitchhiker’s is about to be wasted.

  Although the events in this scene are not in the novel, it is based on Douglas’s descriptions of Vogons and amplifies the idea – started in the Tertiary Phase – that Earth is not the only planet they are destroying. In fact their bureaucracy has got so out of hand that they are simply wiping out anything that is even a minor inconvenience. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not so much under threat from grand dramatic villainy as from the everyday deadweight of rules and quotas enforced without common sense or compassion. This applies equally to political leaders and commissioning editors . . .

  ‘Far out in the uncharted backwaters . . .’ This is an updated version of the Book speech from the top of the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series One Episode Two, repeated here with some tweaks because Douglas repeats it almost verbatim at the start of So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. The tweaks (such as references to novelty ringtones) are (a) to confound expectation of the overfamiliar (b) to update the digital watch gag, which has already been used in the Primary Phase, and (b) set up the phone-gag ‘runner’ which runs vaguely through So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish.

  Alien teaser These were the easiest lines to write in all fourteen episodes. Just close your eyes and hit keys, and this alien language comes out. Then get Bob Golding in to play the part, and it turns out he can speak the language! Amazing coincidence.

  A drinks bill that would bankrupt a Triganic Pu collector From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, chapter 19: ‘. . . the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu.’

  This of course does not mean that the Pu is worth much at all, but if you’ve got eight Ningis to rub together . . . erm . . . you must have enormous fingers . . .

  When Arthur Smith (as the Barman) says, ‘I know your face,’ this is, in fact, not in the novel; but Ford’s puzzlement is important, as this suggests that another Ford has been in here before, trying to pull the same stunt. This introduces the Déjà Vu theory of parallel worlds and multiple lives, which will be the theme of Mostly Harmless. Don’t say you weren’t warned, gentle reader.

  Rob McKenna The opening chapters of So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish contain very little dialogue and it is Douglas’s narrative voice, rather than that of the Book, which predominates – much more so than in the earlier novels. At once this is a stylistic departure from any precedent set in the original radio series and it was immediately apparent that any adaptation which wasn’t pages of narration by the Voice would need to take a much more hands-on approach to things. My earliest draft of this episode had Rob arrive at a motorway service area, bump into another trucker and discuss the rain types. But this involved introducing a new character to bounce the lines off, one not found in the book, and delayed the arrival of Arthur Dent. The
solution seemed inevitable; rather than drenching Arthur as he swept by in his lorry, Rob would have to pick him up. This way both their backstories would get told in conversation, and their characters revealed.

  In the event the casting of Rob McKenna was a chance to introduce the idea of parallel lives in parallel universes – Bill Paterson semi-reprised his role as a space trucker from the second series and became Rob, still a trucker but this time all too earthbound.

  EPISODE TWO

  SIGNATURE TUNE

  ANNOUNCER: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, Quandary Phase.

  Sig fades.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  Music: Busy purposeful feel.

  THE VOICE: Trying to predict the future is a mug’s game. But it is a game that life forms everywhere learn to play, because the future is always changing and we are going to have to live there, probably as soon as next week. However Arthur Dent could never have predicted that just a few days ago an update to his copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would suddenly declare that the Earth had now, for no reason that he could possibly fathom, flicked back into existence, as if it had never been destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet at all. But any life form worth their sodium chloride would do what Arthur has consequently done under such circumstances: they would hitch the quickest ride home available by spacecraft, haulage lorry and Saab automobile. Though perhaps only Arthur Dent could have fallen in love at first sight with the Saab driver’s catatonic sister, all but unconscious on its back seat.

  EXT. – ARTHUR’S HOUSE – NIGHT

  FX: Car door slams, Saab speeds away, under:

  FX: Footsteps on gravel.

  ARTHUR: (Yell) Thanks for the lift, Russell! Bye, Fenny! (Sighs) Fenny . . . Fenny . . . (Sighs again) Good grief. Am I really home? On Earth? No bulldozers? No Vogons? Everything as it was before . . . before—

  FX: Distant phone ringing inside the house, under:

  ARTHUR: (In a torpor) The phone’s ringing. (Suddenly) The Phone Is Ringing!

  FX: Garden gate. He hurries up path, business as per:

  ARTHUR: Key! Need a key. Dammit. No! Under the stone frog? Yes! Under the frog . . .

  FX: Phone upstairs still ringing.

  FX: Door opened, blocked by junk mail, kitchen acoustic.

  ARTHUR: Door’s stiff . . . oh. Junk mail. Piles of it . . . Urgh. Dead kitten? How—? Never mind. (Effort) Unf . . . right. The phone. Where’d I leave the phone? Upstairs, dammit—

  FX: He runs upstairs, stairwell acoustic.

  ARTHUR: I’m coming!

  INT. – ARTHUR’S BEDROOM

  FX: Bedroom door opened, bedroom acoustic.

  ARTHUR: I’m here, I’m here—

  FX: Phone stops ringing.

  ARTHUR: (Breathless, leaping at it) Zarking fardwarks! (He plonks down on the bed) . . . I’m home . . . By my own personal time scale, so far as I can estimate it, it must be, ooh, years since I left. But how long here? But how? The planet was demolished, utterly destroyed . . . and it wasn’t a hallucination. But this is my house . . . the front-door key where I left it, the junk mail piled up where I left it, and my bed, the way I left it the morning the bulldozers came. Why? How? Don’t question it, Arthur. Enjoy it. Own it. (Sighs) Getting dark . . . I wonder if the electricity’s been cut off . . .

  FX: Click.

  ARTHUR: (Pleasantly surprised) Oh. Well, well. And everything’s where I left it. Half-read book, half-thrown-away magazine, half-used towels. Half-pair of socks in half-drunk cup of coffee – other half-pair missing in action. A half-eaten sandwich half-turning into . . . (Sniff) Eurgh! . . . Bung a fork of lightning through this lot and you’d start the evolution of life all over again . . . no – hang on a minute – this is new. A present?

  FX: Gift unwrapped.

  FX: Shaken.

  ARTHUR: From who? It’s heavy.

  FX: Box opened. Glass bowl picked up.

  ARTHUR: (Inspecting it) A glass bowl. Engraved . . . (Reads) ‘So Long . . . and Thanks . . .’? Odd. Looks like crystal.

  FX: He pings it with a fingernail. A long, resonant clear note.

  ARTHUR: Sounds like crystal. Bit posh for cornflakes, I suppose. (Idea) Ah. A fish bowl.

  FX: He gets up, goes to the sink, fills it with water.

  ARTHUR: For which I will require a fish – (Effort) – and being home, I don’t need you in my ear anymore . . .

  FX: Pop of Babel fish coming out of his ear.

  ARTHUR: In you go, little Babel fish. Have a holiday from all that translating. So easy to forget you’ve been sharing my adventures for so long . . .

  FX: Babel fish plops in water. Swims about.

  FX: Plastic bag action, under:

  ARTHUR: Oh. My Hitchhiker’s Guide isn’t here. Just a Guide-sized hole in the bag. (Resolve) Oh well. Easy come easy go.

  INT. – A SALES SCOUTSHIP OF THE SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION

  FX: Spaceship interior sounds.

  BT OPERATOR: (Very much on distort!) Yes, sir, but it’s a very bad line and I must ask if you are a BT account holder—

  FORD PREFECT: (Somewhat out of breath) Let’s say I am, for the sake of argument.

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) And where you are calling from?

  FORD PREFECT: What does it matter where I’m calling from?! . . . Letchworth!

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) Well, I’m sorry but you can’t be coming in on that line, not from Letchworth.

  FORD PREFECT: Bugger Letchworth, if that’s your attitude.

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) Hold on, caller, let me check the Letchworth exchange.

  FORD PREFECT: No—

  FX: Click.

  Music: ‘Hold’ muzak. Mix with ‘book noises’ – under:

  FORD PREFECT: (Fumes, muttering, under:) Tsk . . .

  THE VOICE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its five million, nine hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation that ‘it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.’ In other words – and this is the rock-solid principle on which the Corporation’s Galaxy-wide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

  This not only suggests that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is responsible for the majority of personal computer operating systems sold across the Galaxy, it is a widely respected view widely held by right-thinking people, who are largely recognizable as being right-thinking people by the mere fact that they hold this view. And Ford Prefect is one of them. Having learnt that nothing in life is certain – not even the destruction of a planet you have spent fifteen years of your life researching – Ford is now attempting to put the Universe – in as much as he understands it – to rights . . .

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted, interrupting muzak) Hallo, caller?

  FORD PREFECT: Yes!

  BT OPERATOR: There’s no way you are calling from Letchworth, sir.

  FORD PREFECT: I know that, I am an intragalactic hitchhiker calling from a sales scoutship of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, currently on the sub-light-speed leg of a journey between the stars known on your world, though not necessarily to you, dear lady, as Pleiades Epsilon and Pleiades Zeta.

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) Do you mean Harmsworth?

  FORD PREFECT: I know what I mean. And the reason why I am bothering you with it rather than just dialling direct as I could – because we have some pretty sophisticated telecommunications equipment here in the Pleiades, I can tell you – is that the penny pinching son-of-a-starbeast piloting this son-of-a-starbeast spaceship has disabled it and insists that I call collect.

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) You want to reverse the charges?

  FORD PREFECT: No! These people are the creeps of the cosmos, polluting the celestial infinite with cellphones, palmtop
s and computer operating systems that never work properly or, when they do, perform functions that no sane person would require of them and go beep to tell you when they’ve done it! And this guy is on a drive to sell more of them! And if his benighted consumers don’t have mobile communications, PDAs and repetitive strain injuries, he will accelerate their technologies until they bloody well do have!

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) Um – could we just go back to the start . . . ?

  FORD PREFECT: No! Noooooo!! Now I’ve shoved him into the suspended animation facility, he’s fast asleep, and I’ve put his ship in a parking orbit round a moon of Sesefras Magna. You won’t have heard of it so don’t ask. Now all I need is for you to just do what I’ve asked you to do! Just like you’d do for any loyal customer.

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) And that’s what you want, is it?

  FORD PREFECT: Yes!

  BT OPERATOR: (Distorted) Thank you, caller.

  FORD PREFECT: (Calming) Look, I am on a mission to save civilization as we know it. Or something like that. And you’re going to help me!

  FX: Click line dead.

  FORD PREFECT: Hello? I don’t bel—

  SPEAKING CLOCK: (Distorted) At the third stroke the time will be one . . . thirty-two . . . and twenty seconds . . .

  FX: Beep . . . Beep . . . Beep.

  Speaking clock continues under rest of scene.

  FORD PREFECT: Yes! She did it! You little beauty!

  FX: He makes his way to an airlock door, giggling.

  Speaking clock echoes around the ship.

  Airlock operates.

  LIFEPOD: Thank you choosing this Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Lifepod. Share and Enjoy.

  FX: Computery noises.

  FORD PREFECT: The pleasure’s all yours.

  LIFEPOD: Set coordinates to Port Sesefron Orbiting Station.

  FX: Escape pod launches.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  FX: Arthur’s cottage interior. Arthur getting breakfast business under:

  THE VOICE: Arthur Dent has awoken on Earth, the planet he thought he had lost forever. No longer is he the wild-looking creature who arrived home last night. His hair is washed, his chin clean shaven, his laundry done. His dressing gown is no longer decorated with the junk-food condiment stains from a hundred grimy spaceports. This morning he found the three least hairy things in the fridge, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they’d made no attempt to move within that time, he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he’d picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile.