The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  Must be having a déjà vu The Ecological Man was played by David Dixon, who was Ford in the 1980 BBC TV version of Hitchhiker’s. Thus this line, hinting that Ford (i.e. Geoff) is not the only one with multidimensional issues, far from it, goodness, no, all the Ford Prefects on this show are completely tonto.

  EPISODE THREE

  SIGNATURE TUNE

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

  Sig fades.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: Regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which – while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth – falls short of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects. There are certain omissions from these chronicles which provoke much speculation. What, people ask, about all that stuff off in the wings between Arthur and Trillian? Did that ever get anywhere? What were they up to all those nights on the planet Krikkit? Studying French? Jogging? What happened when Trillian was offered a reporter’s job at the Siderial Daily Mentioner? Indeed, why did she leave? ‘This Arthur Dent,’ comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the Galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a deep-space probe thought to originate from an alien world at a distance too hideous to contemplate, ‘what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and hot baths? Has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, feel the need to copulate?’

  Those who wish to know should listen on. Others with time-travel projectors or functioning remote controls may wish to skip on to the next episode in this Phase, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

  EXT. – HYDE PARK – DAY

  FX: Duckpond, ducks, children playing, etc. Arthur and Fenchurch walking.

  FENCHURCH: (Smiling) I’ll have to remember that you are the sort of person who cannot hold on to a simple piece of paper for two minutes without winning a raffle with it.

  ARTHUR: If I believed in them, and I didn’t have a past that featured events beyond the imagination of any ordinary mortal, I’d say finding you again was a bit of a miracle.

  FENCHURCH: (Laughs) Hold my hand.

  FX: They continue walking, under:

  THE VOICE: For Arthur, who can usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone long enough with a Swiss cheese plant, this moment is one of revelation. He feels like a cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open. From years of abandonment and bootless wandering, in exile from a planet that was destroyed in an encounter with the most unsympathetic bureaucracy in the cosmos, he now has regained his home world, his former life and, in Fenchurch, a woman for whom he would give it all up.

  FENCHURCH: Did you know that there’s something wrong with me?

  ARTHUR: Well, your brother mentioned some vague sort of—

  FENCHURCH: Oh, Russell makes stuff up – because he can’t deal with what it really is.

  ARTHUR: (Worried) Then what is it? Can you tell me?

  FENCHURCH: Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad at all. Just unusual. Very unusual. See if you can work it out.

  ARTHUR: All right . . . your elbow. Your left elbow. There’s something wrong with your left elbow.

  FENCHURCH: Wrong. Completely wrong. You’re on completely the wrong track.

  ARTHUR: This is not going to be easy. Hyde Park is stunning. You are stunning. Anyone who can go through Hyde Park with you on a summer’s evening and not feel moved by it is probably going through in an ambulance with a sheet pulled over their face.

  FENCHURCH: I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me. Arthur? What are you doing?

  ARTHUR: (Slightly off) Hmm. I don’t think it can be your bottom. (Coming back on) . . . Nothing I can see.

  FENCHURCH: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my bottom.

  ARTHUR: Hm. I think I might have to tell you a story.

  FENCHURCH: OK.

  ARTHUR: Which will tell you something of the sort of things that happen to me.

  FENCHURCH: Like the raffle ticket.

  ARTHUR: (Laughs) Yes. Right. I had a train to catch. I arrived at the station. I was about twenty minutes early. So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and went to the buffet to get a cup of coffee.

  FENCHURCH: Did you solve it?

  ARTHUR: What?

  FENCHURCH: The crossword.

  ARTHUR: I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, I’m still queuing for the coffee.

  FENCHURCH: All right, then. Buy the coffee.

  ARTHUR: I’m buying it. I am also buying some biscuits.

  FENCHURCH: What sort?

  ARTHUR: Rich Tea. Now I go and sit at a table. This is the layout. Me sitting at the table. On my left, the newspaper. On my right, cup of coffee. In the middle of the table, packet of biscuits.

  FENCHURCH: Yup, I see it.

  ARTHUR: What you don’t see, because I haven’t mentioned him yet, is the man sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn’t look as if he was about to do anything weird.

  FENCHURCH: But he did.

  ARTHUR: He did. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

  FENCHURCH: What?

  ARTHUR: He ate it.

  FENCHURCH: What on Earth did you do?

  ARTHUR: I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled to ignore it.

  FENCHURCH: What? Why?

  ARTHUR: There was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who quite calmly, sitting in front of me, stole one of my biscuits. There was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice that the packet was already mysteriously open.

  FENCHURCH: But you’re fighting back, taking a tough line.

  ARTHUR: After my fashion, yes. And I ate the biscuit. I ate it very deliberately so that he would have no doubt as to what I was doing. And when I eat a biscuit, it stays eaten.

  FENCHURCH: So what did he do?

  ARTHUR: Took another one. He took it, he ate it. Clear as daylight. And, having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult for me to broach the subject the second time around. So I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigour than previously, and took another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met.

  FENCHURCH: Like this?

  ARTHUR: Yes, well, no, not quite like this. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. And so we went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me . . .

  FENCHURCH: The whole packet?

  ARTHUR: Well, it was only eight biscuits but it seemed like a lifetime. When the empty packet was lying dead between us the man at last got up, having done his worst, and left. As it happened, my train was announced a moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper . . .

  FENCHURCH: Yes?

  ARTHUR: Were my biscuits.

  FENCHURCH: What?!

  ARTHUR: True. I’d been eating his all the time.

  FENCHURCH: No! (She collapses with laughter) You complete pillock! You completely and utterly foolish person!

  ARTHUR: Your turn. Tell me a story. Tell me your story.

  FENCHURCH: Phoof. I’ll try. But maybe you should know that I suffer from sudden startling revelations.

  ARTHUR: Are you about to have a fit or something?

  FENCHURCH: No, no . . . I can tell when it’s going to happen. For days before, the strangest feeling builds in me, as if I was being connected into something.

  ARTHUR: Does the number forty-two mean anything to you at all?

  FENCHURCH: Arthur, this is serious.

  ARTHUR: I’m being serious. Tell me your story. Don’t worry if it sounds odd. Believe me, you are talking to someone who has seen a lot of weird stuff. And I’m not talking biscuits here.


  FENCHURCH: OK. Thing is, it was so simple, when it came.

  ARTHUR: What was?

  FENCHURCH: That’s what I don’t know. And the sense of loss is getting unbearable.

  ARTHUR: Oh?

  Music: Something both appalling and yet richly significant is being remembered here . . .

  FENCHURCH: I was in a cafe. In Rickmansworth, having a cup of tea. This was after days of this build-up, becoming connected up. I was sort of buzzing, gently. And I was watching some work going on at a building site opposite, over the rim of my teacup, which is the nicest way of watching other people working. And suddenly, there it was in my mind, this message from somewhere. And it was so simple. It made such sense of everything. I just sat up and thought, ‘Oh! Oh, well that’s all right, then.’ I was so startled I almost dropped my teacup, in fact I think I did drop it. Yes, I’m sure I did. That was the point at which it seemed to me – quite literally – as if the world . . . exploded.

  ARTHUR: What?

  FENCHURCH: I know everybody talks about big yellow spaceships and how the whole thing was a hallucination, but if it was, then I have hallucinations in big-screen 3D surround sound and should probably hire myself out to people who are bored with movies. It was as if the ground was ripped from under my feet . . . and . . . and I woke up in hospital. I’ve been in and out ever since. And that’s why I seem to have a fear of sudden revelations that everything’s going to be all right.

  ARTHUR: (Unsettled) Yes. Yes, I do too. I’ve fought it, but I do . . . You say you felt as if the Earth actually exploded.

  FENCHURCH: Yes. More than felt.

  ARTHUR: Which is what everybody else says is hallucinations?

  FENCHURCH: Yes, but people think if you just say ‘hallucinations’ it explains anything you want. But it’s just a word, it doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain why the dolphins disappeared.

  ARTHUR: No. No . . . What?!

  FENCHURCH: Doesn’t explain the dolphins disappearing.

  ARTHUR: Which dolphins do you mean?

  FENCHURCH: What do you mean, which dolphins? I’m talking about when all the dolphins disappeared.

  ARTHUR: The dolphins?

  FENCHURCH: Yes.

  ARTHUR: You’re saying the dolphins all disappeared?

  FENCHURCH: Arthur, where have you been, for Heaven’s sake? The dolphins all disappeared on the same day I—

  ARTHUR: Where did they go?

  FENCHURCH: No one knows. Well, there is one man who says he knows, but he lives in California, so people say he’s barmy. I was thinking of going to see him because it seems the only lead I’ve got on what happened to me.

  ARTHUR: (Thoughtful) Better to go in search of the truth than pretend it isn’t there.

  FENCHURCH: Arthur. I really would like to know where you’ve been. I think something terrible happened to you as well. That’s why we recognized each other.

  ARTHUR: Mine’s a very long story. And confusing even for me.

  FENCHURCH: Well, now you’ve got someone you can tell. Well, the bits I hadn’t already found on this—

  FX: She fumbles in her bag.

  ARTHUR: Ah. My Guide.

  FX: Guide switch on.

  THE VOICE: (This under the following dialogue) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, eight to the seventeenth edition. Introduction. Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. For example, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the sentient imagination. Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars. For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy takes five hundred thousand years. The record for hitchhiking this distance is just under five years, but you don’t get to see much on the way . . .

  FENCHURCH: Why does it say ‘Don’t Panic’ on the cover?

  ARTHUR: I think it’s a get-out clause for the warranty. This particular one has been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked in the deserts of Kakrafoon, dropped into the oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused. Its makers think these are exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, so they wrote on it, in large friendly letters, the words ‘Don’t Panic’, hoping no one would ask for their money back.

  FENCHURCH: (Looking at the Guide) Have you been to many of these places?

  ARTHUR: A few.

  FX: Guide switched off around here.

  FENCHURCH: Can we go to them?

  ARTHUR: (Warily, reluctantly) Do you want to?

  FENCHURCH: Yes. I want to know what the message was that I lost, and where it came from. I don’t think that it came from here. I’m not even sure that I know where here is. But I need to find it, Arthur. Not knowing is damaging me.

  ARTHUR: Hm.

  FENCHURCH: (Deep breath, then, brightly) Anyway. There is something wrong with part of me, and you’ve got to find out what it is. You can try and guess on the way home. (Getting up) Come on.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: The problem with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or rather one of the problems, for there are many clogging up civil, commercial and criminal courts all over the Galaxies – especially the more corrupt ones – is this: Change. The Galaxy is a rapidly changing place. A bit of a nightmare, you might think, for a scrupulous and conscientious editor diligently striving to keep abreast of all the changes that arise every minute of every hour of every day, and you would be wrong. The editor, like all the editors the Guide has ever had, has no real grasp of the meanings of the words ‘scrupulous’, ‘conscientious’ or ‘diligent’, and prefers to get his nightmares through a straw. Entries tend to get updated, or not, across the Sub-Etha Net according to ‘if they Read Good’. Thus the entry Ford Prefect filed on the subject of Vogons, while lacking in strict accuracy, was vitriolic enough to qualify for inclusion.

  FORD PREFECT: (Typing) ‘Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy – not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. Their Constructor Fleet ships look as if they have been not so much designed as congealed. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses. In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship you would have to go inside and look at a Vogon, or, worse, inside one. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic – ’ (Spells it to himself) D-Y-? . . . yes . . . (Back to typing) ‘ – liver. Consequently, thinking is not really something Vogons are cut out for. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like. And what they like mostly involves hurting people and, wherever possible, getting very angry.’

  THE VOICE: . . . On second thoughts, it’s accurate enough.

  INT. – GALACTIC HYPERSPACE PLANNING COUNCIL ROOM

  FX: Gavel. Mutterings.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: All persons here to do business at the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council take your seats. The rest of you find something to occupy yourselves before I come and find it for you. Call the first witness.

  VOGON CLERK: Call Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

  FX: Stir in enquiry chamber.

  FX: Gavel.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: Quiet!

  FX: Someone coughs, politely.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: Who coughed? Own up! Clerk, shoot anyone who coughs!

  VOGON CLERK: Yes, Your Vastness.

  FX: Cough. Zap gun. Scream and body fall.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: Thank you. (Voice up) Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. You are responsible for clearing the interstellar hyperspace link between Demosthenes and Ursa Minor. Your orders were to demolish all planets on that route in accordance with the plans we lodged at Alpha Centauri. Your report clearly stated that the planet known as the Earth was destroyed by
your demolition fleet. Yet now a survey of the area has revealed Earth is still there. I put it to you that you have royally screwed the pooch.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: (Yells) It’s a tissue of lies, I deny it utterly, and I volunteer for mucking-out duty in the beast compounds on Traal rather than live a day longer with this vicious smear on my character!

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: (Patiently, for a Vogon) Laudable though it is for you to take an adversarial stance in your desperate situation, I have here holographic plates of the planet in question. Received last week. Vidscreen on.

  FX: Hologram projection on.

  FX: Stir in council chamber.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Bugger. You’re right. I’m guilty as charged.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: (Disappointed) Really?

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Can’t argue with the evidence, there it is in black and white . . . And blue and brown with wispy white cloudy bits. That’s the Earth, all right.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: (Sotto) Doh. Haven’t had a good bit of torture in weeks.

  VOGON CLERK: He’s been saving up some really excruciating poems for this. Don’t spoil it by agreeing.

  FX: Gavel.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: Shut up. What does the defendant have to say for himself?

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: I don’t like leaving a job unfinished any more than the next Vogon.

  FX: Cough. Zap gun. Scream and body fall.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: All right, the Vogon beside him. Give me a chance.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: From this evidence it doesn’t look as if the job was ever started.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: I swear we destroyed that planet. I know we did. Even had a couple of hitchhikers steal aboard trying to escape . . . of course we threw them out of an airlock.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: (Reads) Dent, Arthur? Prefect, Ford?

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Probably. Humans all look alike to me. Freeloading parasites.

  VOGON COUNCILLOR: (Reads) According to the log you picked up Ex-President Beeblebrox, too?