FX: Cafe door with bell, open/close.
EXT. – STREET – DAY
ARTHUR: (Sudden intriguing thought) I wonder . . . ?
INT. – ROBOT SPACESHIP – CORRIDOR
FX: Muffled cacophony of sound layers from beyond bulkheads. The occasional flying ratchet screwdriver whizzes down this corridor.
THE VOICE: While Arthur Dent is feeling bereft and sorry for himself, Ford Prefect is several thousand light years away, simply feeling sorry for himself.
FORD PREFECT: (Stirring fitfully) Zarking racket . . . can’t I hitch one peaceful ride . . . ? Now I’ve got cramp . . . !
INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE
THE VOICE: The ship Ford has inveigled himself aboard – one can hardly term his presence ‘hitchhiking’, as the ship is in orbit and its only other sentient occupant is not aware of his presence – is a vast silver dreadnought, built for the questing robots of Xaxis. Having embraced an economy based entirely on binge drinking, video gaming and reality television, the Reptilian Lizard Rulers of the Planet Xaxis had brainwashed their attention-deficit human subjects so effectively that public apathy rather than panic was the response to attacks on Xaxis by its neighbouring world, Zirzla. The robots and their ships were built to defend the planet, but were inclined to think there had to be more worthy civilizations to defend. Using self-propelled tools to reconfigure their ships, they made huge pan-galactic leaps in search of true civilization. These voyages almost always resulted in disillusionment and a sad, head-shaking return to orbit over Xaxis – not helped by encounters with hedonistic ne’er-do-wells like Ford Prefect, who would sneak aboard their ships via the exhaust vents, hijack the monitoring systems to play video games and clutter up the corridors with the sort of lifestyle magazines which celebrate ecologically unsound forms of transportation and controlled substances.
INT. – ROBOT SPACESHIP – CORRIDOR
FORD PREFECT: (Getting out of his bunk) Ooofff . . . I just want a few days’ R&R, for Zark’s sake . . .
FX: Ratchet screwdriver screams up and buzzes about busily.
FORD PREFECT: What the – a screwdriver? (Yells) Mind where you’re flying! Nearly had my eye out! Shoo! Shoo! No! Don’t tidy up my magazines – buzz off and screw up something!
FX: Screwdriver flies off, disgruntled.
FORD PREFECT: (Effort) First rule of hitchhiking? Never make up a bunk in a maintenance shaft. Second rule? Never bunk next to a monitoring area. What in Zark are the sensors picking up now? More makeover vids?
FX: Mechanical sequence, door opens.
INT. – XAXIS SHIP MONITORING ROOM UP
FX: Din now clearer. Combined sounds of various planets’ news output, with explosions and blaster fire in background.
FORD PREFECT: (Walking in) It’s not as if there’ll be any glimmer of intelligence from the Xaxis news networks.
NEWS ANCHOR 1: (Distorted) . . . single transferable vote has been put aside in favour of a competitive makeover of both legislatures, the Xaxisian Chamber in magnolia, the Zirzlan with a cheerful nautical theme . . .
FORD PREFECT: Thought not.
FX: Distorted gunfire and screams, under:
COMMERCIAL V/O: (Kronkite style, distorted) On a cold moon in a cold galaxy, the future is war, war and nothing but war . . .
FORD PREFECT: Videogames: not quite as trouser-filling as the real thing of course . . . or as ironic . . .
FX: News logo sting on next monitor.
NEWS ANCHOR 2: (Distorted) Siderial Daily Mentioner News Network on the Cosmovid Loop, coming to you live – our reporter Trillian Astra has been following events at the State Re-Dedication of the Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice.
Music: A toothpaste jingle.
FORD PREFECT: (Ironic) Way to go, Trillian, prime time at last . . . Ah, here we are.
FX: He throws a switch. All monitors cut off.
FX: Background battle sounds become audible, under:
FORD PREFECT: Never underestimate the power of an off switch. All should be peace and quiet. Except it isn’t. Mm. External monitor on.
FX: Space battle up, loud and clear.
ZIRZLA ROBOT LEADER: (Distort, on a loop) Xaxisian ship, surrender your ship or be destroyed by our starcruisers. You are in violation of the Zirzla Restricted Zone.
FORD PREFECT: Oh, a battle. That’s the bloody racket. How am I going to sleep through all this? (Sighs) I suppose I could look up some insomnia cures.
FX: Rummages in satchel – pulls out the Guide, switches it on.
THE VOICE: (Distorted, handset Guide) Rest. A good hot bath is always—
FX: Switch, spooling.
FORD PREFECT: Oh, for pity’s—
FX: Click.
THE VOICE: (Distorted, handset Guide) Recuperation. See ‘Tea, making a proper cup of’ – and ‘Baths, good hot’.
FX: Switch, spooling.
FORD PREFECT: Third rule of hitchhiking – never import bookmarks from Arthur Dent’s Guide . . . Hang on a mo’ – if I do manage to get to sleep in amongst all this, I could wake up dead. Not good.
FX: Switching and spooling, under. Ford muttering about looking on level four not three . . .
FORD PREFECT: Time for a little quiet persuasion.
FX: Switching/clicks, under:
THE VOICE: (Distorted, handset Guide) Earth – Mostly harmless. But with some uniquely civilized—
FORD PREFECT: Pause.
THE VOICE: (Distorted, handset Guide) Paused.
FORD PREFECT: Prepare download.
THE VOICE: (Distorted, handset Guide) Please attach universal connector.
FORD PREFECT: (Rummaging about, off) Tsk. You could at least help me find one . . .
INT. – SHOP, ISLINGTON – DAY – SUMMER
FX: Shop door.
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Hi, can I help you?
ARTHUR: Is this Friends of the Planet?
ECOLOGICAL MAN: That’s what it says over the window.
ARTHUR: Yes, right, I’m here in Islington doing a bit of um – research into its prehistory, and I was passing your shop and it occurred to me that I’d like to give you some money to help save the dolphins.
(A pause)
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Very funny.
ARTHUR: To free them from captivity. From dolphinaria, weapons research, jumping through hoops. Return them to the wild. Quite a lot of your appeals letters were on my doormat when I returned home recently after a long trip, and as I was lighting the fire with them I thought, why not give a few quid to help save the dolphins? So I was passing and saw your shop and— Are you all right?
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Actually, you’re rather annoying me.
ARTHUR: Just like this?
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Astonishing, I know, but true.
ARTHUR: Do we know each other?
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Do I look like the sort of person who’d spend time with you?
ARTHUR: Sorry. Must be having a déjà vu. This is Friends of the Planet, isn’t it?
ECOLOGICAL MAN: (Withering sarcasm) Yes. And that leaflet was sent out a year ago. But unless you have been in outer space for the last twelve months –
ARTHUR: Gosh! Funny you should—
ECOLOGICAL MAN: – you would know that there is no need for further contributions.
ARTHUR: Well, I’m glad the appeal was such a success.
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Are you doing this to wind me up, or are you as stupid as you look?
ARTHUR: (Affronted) Look, I was passing, I saw the shop, I thought I’d give you some money to—
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Tell you what. Why don’t you find another endangered species – Rhinos. Gorillas . . . Your own particular branch of Homo sapiens – put your money somewhere useful.
ARTHUR: Well, if you’re going to be like that about it—
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Leave. Now. Before I set about you with this plaster rhinoceros.
ARTHUR: Very well.
FX: Shop door closes.
ECOLOGICAL MAN: Pillock.
FX: Shop door ope
ns again, for:
ARTHUR: Um – you wouldn’t happen to know this part of North London well, would you? I’m looking for a cave.
INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE
FX: Seawashy feel, under:
THE VOICE: Eight hours west of Arthur Dent – as the crow flies by passenger jet – sits a man alone on a beach, mourning an inexplicable loss. He can only think of his loss in little packets of grief at a time, because the whole thing is too great to be borne. He watches the long, slow Pacific waves come in along the sand, and waits and waits for the nothing that he knows is about to happen. And as the time comes for it not to happen, it duly doesn’t happen.
The beach is a small sandy stretch somewhere along the coastline that runs west from Los Angeles. Then north up towards the misty bay of San Francisco, where it’s very easy to believe that everyone you meet is also a space traveller – starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying ‘hi’. There, barely inland from the ocean, lies the house of this inconsolable man. A man whom many regard as insane. His name is simply John Watson, though he assumes a more bizarre style of address. He has lost everything he cares for, and is now simply waiting for the end of the world; little realizing that it has already been and gone. One of the many reasons people think him insane is not through his choice of name, but because his house is called the Outside of the Asylum. In the house are a number of strange things, including a grey glass bowl engraved with eight words.
EXT. – MEWS, ISLINGTON – DAY
FX: Footsteps on cobbles (under end of above). They stop.
FX: Arthur presses door buzzer, audible from within.
FENCHURCH: (Distort, intercom) Yes?
ARTHUR: Er, hello, I’m wondering if you could help me, I’m researching the prehistoric limestone caves of this part of London and it appears that these mews cottages were constructed on the site of one that I . . . er . . . lived in.
FX: Muffled feet on stairs (under above). Door opens.
FENCHURCH: (Breathless) I thought you were going to phone me first.
ARTHUR: (Codfish) Fenchurch?
FENCHURCH: (After a moment) Close your mouth, Arthur. Unless you’re going to throw up, in which case I’ll fetch a bucket.
ARTHUR: You live here?
FX: Door closed – interior acoustic.
FENCHURCH: Yes – why are there bits of plaster in your hair?
ARTHUR: I was struck by a rhinoceros.
FENCHURCH: (Picking something up from hall table) Oh, right. Ah, mustn’t forget – my brother found this in his car.
FX: The Guide switched on.
THE VOICE: (Distorted, from Guide) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
FENCHURCH: Yours?
ARTHUR: (Cagey) Yes . . .
FENCHURCH: I think we need to talk, don’t you?
INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE
THE VOICE: What strange geographical glitch has led Arthur to Fenchurch’s front door? How much does she know of his past? And can Ford Prefect get some sleep aboard the robot ship before he exhausts his supply of Playbeing magazines? The centrepiece unfolds in the next full-frontal instalment of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . .
ANNOUNCER: If you would like to make a contribution to a leading animal conservation charity, please send as much as you can to ‘Adopt A Vogon Prostetnic Captain For Christmas’, Planet Vogsphere, and don’t expect any tax relief on it because there won’t be any.
FOOTNOTES
Trying to predict the future These last two Hitchhiker books are a mixture of character study (So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish) and ruminations on modern technology (Mostly Harmless), making them impossible to dramatize without a lot of hands-on reworking and some drastic pruning. But the novels possess – as ever with Douglas – so many terrific ideas per page that one cannot just jump in with a chainsaw. However, there were a couple of occasions when there was no material in the novel for the Voice to set up a context; thus for this opening narration the opening line is from Douglas’s essay ‘Predicting the Future’ (The Salmon of Doubt, p. 102 of the Macmillan hardback edition).
Ford, the BT operator and the Speaking Clock An expanded version of the joke which is set up very cryptically in So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish and then explained by Ford in flashback towards the end of the novel. In fact Ford is given quite short shrift in this book. To my mind Ford and Arthur get too few scenes together in the later novels, and as he lined up the video camera to watch us recording this scene with Geoff McGivern and Ann Bryson, Kevin Davies expressed exactly the same thought. Perhaps Douglas was husbanding his resources by having Arthur and Ford in separate adventures, saving up the witty repartee between them for the end of both books. A bit like King Kong – the monkey doesn’t turn up till the fifth reel . . .
Whatever the philosophy, it all comes down to the nitty-gritty: on day one of recordings for these new series Geoff rolled up with a big gappy smile – his lower front teeth were missing. ‘Over Chrishmash I had a bit of an encounter with a Brashil nut,’ he said. ‘But no worriesh. It won’t advershley affect my shpeech.’ Grateful thanks to the dentist who provided replacements within twenty-four hours.
Arthur’s first hours at home In the novel, after having arrived home and discovered the strange grey glass bowl engraved with the words So Long, and Thanks . . ., Arthur visits his local pub and explains he has been away in California, but in the process gets steadily more inebriated and more space-lagged until he makes no sense at all. Although this served to re-establish that the Earth he has arrived on is, in many ways, the place he left (though of course, in other and more salient ways, very much Not), the pub scene itself is one of the very few passages from the book that could be cut without any harm to either character development or plot.
When do moles stop hibernating? Arthur phoning the Head of BBC Radio Light Entertainment to apologize for not being in to work for months was an opportunity to discover more about his ‘day job’ – uncoincidentally similar to the one that Douglas briefly held down in the late seventies – and a gentle bit of fun-poking at the ‘old’ BBC Radio Light Entertainment.
BBC Radio Light Ent, as it was in the seventies when Douglas and Geoffrey Perkins were there (under David Hatch), and the eighties, when I was among the next generation of occupants (under Martin Fisher and Jonathan James Moore), is very much an analogue for the offices of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Douglas describes them. On a daily basis the first floor at 16 Langham Street was mostly deserted from twelve noon until three o’clock, as everybody was out at the pub. Therefore it is quite likely that much of the comedy output of the BBC radio networks at that time was actually accomplished by casual visitors, who found the offices empty and thus could easily have sat down at the typewriters to bang out the odd sketch for Week Ending or News Huddlines, or indeed the entire formats of all of the quiz shows that were running at the time.
There wasn’t one about wallpaper but a lot of them could have been.
The offices that Douglas, Geoffrey and I spent so much time in at 16 Langham Street have been demolished now to make room for the new BBC Broadcasting House extension. This was not such a sad loss, as the building was a remarkably ugly mid-sixties office block; the truly sad loss was the BBC’s simultaneous non-renewal of its lease on the Paris Studio in 1994 (where the original Hitchhiker phases were recorded and many other historic shows). That was the moment when Radio Light Ent ceased to exist as a unique BBC entity, thereafter meekly being folded into the open-plan anonymity of Broadcasting House, with its key shows transplanted into the barn-like Radio Theatre, once the BBC Concert Hall and hugely unconducive to comedy. It can only be a matter of time before melon-sized flying BBC security robots fly around the fifth floor of BH, checking Ident-i-Eeze passes and unauthorized expense claims.
After the Tertiary Phase had been broadcast, in 2004, I met Geoffrey Perkins for a drink and we reminisced about our experiences as producers in the ‘old’ Radio Light Ent, with all its eccentr
icities. That conversation inspired this scene and I hoped he would cameo as Arthur’s HLER. For Geoffrey is not just the man who midwifed Hitchhiker’s Primary and Secondary Phases through their labour pains, he is not just the TV producer responsible for myriad timeless classics such as Father Ted, he is not just a Proper Comedy Actor (as evidenced in Radio Active and KYTV), he is also a former BBC Television Executive and thus can bring just the right level of bemused sympathy to the role.
The ‘Richard’ and ‘Maureen’ alluded to in the scene know who they are (Richard Willcox and Maureen Trotman, just in case they don’t) and, along with all our other producer and production-assistant colleagues in the department (including Douglas) and, indeed those catatonic writers, are celebrated here with fond memory and much affection in a sort of mini-Week Ending sketch.
The Raffle Woman One of the few occasions where I could directly transcribe scenes full of dialogue from the novel, and then wonderful actors like Simon Jones, Jane Horrocks (as Fenchurch) and June Whitfield (as the Raffle Woman) would show why Douglas has such a good grasp of comedy timing in his writing. The ensuing scene with the barmaid is another case in point. Douglas never lost his ‘ear’ for lines that, when acted, could come off the page, even in the novels. Roy Hudd (more of whom anon) used to say about certain New Huddlines gags that seemed funny till they fell flat in performance, ‘It works better written down.’ Douglas’s best lines worked both ways.
At the third stroke This was the voice of the British Telecom Speaking Clock at the time of recording – Brian Cobby, a wonderfully rich English voice, real old school stuff and perfect for Ford’s nefarious purposes.
I have a diary Bill Paterson’s emotionally wracked performance of this Rob McKenna speech had everybody in silent contortions. He invested Rob with a tearful comic pathos I had not thought to ask for.
The Xaxis ship An example of a speech by the Voice which does not exist at all in the novel but which is sorely needed to explain Ford’s situation and the path down which he is likely to proceed. It is fun too to re-establish a continuum that runs through the saga; the flying ratchet screwdrivers introduced as a sidebar in the Tertiary Phase actively enter the story here, just as Arthur comments in the previous episode that his ‘mattress smelled of swamp’.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts Page 22