Dont Panic

by Dont Panic [lit]

  but it comes close - there's a complicated but dependent

  relationship), so what we were doing was completely out of line

  with what normally happens.

  "As much as anything, we were actually having to invent the

  process by which we worked, because nobody was doing multi-

  track recording, electronic effects, and so on. We went about it

  the wrong way at the beginning, simply because we didn't know,

  and then, as we began to understand it, we evolved a way to do it.

  It wasn't simply doing it the wrong way and finding the right

  way, it was more dependent on when we were able to get bits of

  equipment - we didn't have any 8-track recorders to begin with,

  and the final version didn't come about until we had an 8-track

  tape recorder. After a while, I took more of a back seat, because

  everyone knew how to do it, but I was always there, just sticking

  my oar in and making trouble."

  Geoffrey Perkins tells a slightly different story, explaining

  that, "Douglas was thrown out of the director's cubicle from

  about halfway through the first series onwards, because he'd get

  quite excited about putting bits and pieces into scenes. You'd just

  finish a scene and he would say, `I've been thinking. . . we should

  go back and do it again.'

  "`Why?'

  "`Because I think we should have something going Bloobledoo-

  bledoobledooblebloobledoobleblob! in the background. . .'

  "We used to mix the programmes and cut them down, which

  wasn't a great way to do it because everything had music and

  effects behind it. I started off in the early programmes asking

  what we should cut, and he'd come back with a list of odd words

  here and there (`the's and `and's and `but's and things) and we

  couldn't do that. He'd say, `But there's nothing else I want to

  cut!' In the end I stopped asking him. So I can come across as the

  vandal of the programme."

  Douglas Adams had found a natural foil in Geoffrey Perkins,

  and the ideal Hitchhiker's producer. Perkins is currently nowhere

  near as well known as he should be for his work as a writer-

  peformer in Radio 4's seminal comedy RadioActive and BBC2's

  KYTV. He is smaller than Douglas Adams, wears spectacles with

  brightly coloured frames, and is a perfectionist. He was probably

  the only Radio 4 producer who would spend two days simply

  getting a sound effect right, and one of the few people who could

  bully, exhort and cajole scripts out of Douglas, and get them

  almost on time.

  The show was something very different. In the past (and

  today, for that matter) as a rule a radio comedy show is rehearsed

  in an afternoon, recorded in front of an audience that evening,

  then edited the following day before being broadcast. Not only

  was Hitchhiker's not recorded in front of an audience (as

  Geoffrey Perkins has pointed out, all they would have seen was

  an empty stage, a number of actors hiding in cupboards, and

  some microphone leads), it was put together with almost lapidary

  detail, using (albeit in a somewhat Heath Robinson fashion) the

  miracles of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, lots of tape, and

  scissors.

  Douglas Adams says of Perkins's role, "As producer on a

  show of that kind, he was a very crucial and central part of it.

  When I was writing the script, he was the person I would go and

  argue with about what I was going to have in it and what I

  wasn't. I'd do the script and he'd say, `This bit's good and that

  bit's tat.' He'd come up with casting suggestiorls. And he'd come

  up with his own ideas about what to do with bits that weren't

  working. Like throw them out. Or suggestions about how I

  could rewrite. I'd be guided by him, or by the outcome of the

  argument.

  "One of Geoffrey's strengths is that he is very good at

  casting. In some cases, I had very specific ideas about casting, and

  in other cases I had none. Where I had ideas we'd follow them or

  argue, and I'd win or he'd win. When we were in production I'd

  be there, but at that point it was very much a producer's show.

  "The producer gives instructions to the actors, and generally

  if you have anything you want to say, or suggestions or

  disagreements or points you want to make, then you'd say it to

  Geoffrey, and he'd decide whether or not to ignore it. Vary rarely

  do you as a writer actually start giving instructions to the actors;

  it's protocol. To be honest, I'd sometimes step over it, but you

  can't have more than one person in charge. When I wrote the

  script I was in charge, but when it was made, Geoffrey was in

  charge, and the final decisions were his, right or wrong. But we

  rapidly arrived at a working relationship there. Sometimes we'd

  get very annoyed at each other, and sometimes we'd have a really

  terrific time - it's exactly the sort of working relationship you

  would expect."

  Perkins says of his involvement with Hitchhiker's, " It's

  really impossible to say how much involvement I had in the

  story. We used to have meetings and talk grand designs - abortive

  plots which never quite worked out. It's a blur of lunches. I

  changed gerbils to mice because Douglas's ex-girlfriend kept

  gerbils..."

  The first episode casting had been done by Douglas with

  Simon Brett, crucial casting since it involved the roles of Arthur

  Dent, Ford Prefect and The Book.

  The making of the series is covered so well by Geoffrey

  Perkins's notes in the Original Radio Scirpts book that it seems

  redundant to cover the ground again. (Go out and buy a copy of '

  the book if you want to know what happened - you'll get two

  introductions, lots of notes, and the complete texts of the first

  two radio series. Well, almost complete. There are bits in this

  book that aren't in there. But you've already got this book.) (This may prove problematical as the Radio Srripts book is currently out of print.)

  The BBC were unsure what they had on their hands: a

  comedy, without a studio audience, to be broadcast in stereo; the

  first radio science fiction since Journey into Space in the 1950s;

  half an hour of semantic and philosophical jokes about the

  meaning of life and ear-inserted fish? They did the only decent

  thing and put it out at 10.30 on Wednesday evenings, when they

  hoped nobody would be listening, with no pre-publicity, and

  expected it to uphold Radio 4's reputation for obscurity.

  They were undoubtedly surprised when it didn't. After the

  first episode was broadcast, Douglas went into the BBC to look

  at the reviews. It was pointed out to him that radio almost never

  got reviews, and that an unpublicised science fiction comedy

  series was less likely to get reviews than the shipping forecast.

  That Sunday, two national newspapers carried favourable reviews

  of the first show, to the amazement of everybody except Douglas

  and the listeners.

  The series rapidly began to pick up a following, accumulating

  an enormous audience chiefly by word of mouth - people who

  liked it told their friends. Scienc
e fiction fans liked it because it

  was science fiction(In addition to its other awards, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was placed second in the 1979 Hugo Awards for best dramatic presentation, losing to Superman 1. The awards were made at thc World SF Convention, held that year in Brighton, England. When the awards announcements were made, the crowd hissed thc winner and cheered Hitchhiker's. Christophcr Reeve, collecting the trophy, suggested that the awards had been fixed, whereupon a roar of agreement went up in the hall. It is a safe bet that if a few more Americans had heard of the show then it would have won); humour fans liked it because it was funny, radio fans got off on the quality of the stereo production;

  Radiophonics Workshop fans doubtless had a great time ("They talk a lot about the `wizardry of the Radiophonies Workshop' but ninety-five pereent of the first series was natural sound. And I had no idea about sound... at the end of the fourth episode I had the most wonderful explosion- the whole episode built up to it. It sounded magnificent in the studio. Then when it was broadexst the compression hit it and cut most of it out" - Geoffrey Perkins.); and

  most people liked it because it was accessible, fast, and funny.

  By the time the sixth episode had been broadcast, the show

  had become a cult.

  While the first four episodes were written by Douglas on his

  own, the last two were not. This came about in the following

  manner: Douglas had sent off the pilot script for Hitchhiker's to

  the Dr Who script editor earlier in the year, hoping to get a

  commission out of it to do some scripts. The commission came

  through; unfortunately, it came through at the same time that the

  six episodes of Hitchhiker's were commissioned, which meant that

  as soon as Douglas Adams had finished the first four episodes of

  Hitchhiker's he had to write the four episodes of a Dr Who story,

  The Pirate Planet.

  As a result, he was facing deadline problems with the final

  two episodes of Hitchhiker's; he knew how Episode Six ended,

  but he had "run out of words". In addition, he had just been made

  a radio producer. He turned to his ex-flatmate, John Lloyd, for

  help.

  Lloyd remembers: "It's odd, but Hitchhiker's was always

  liked. That's the funny thing about it. It never had to struggle at

  all. Douglas struggled to write it, though; it took him about nine

  months to write the first four episodes. But everyone, from the

  first day, thought it was great - and the department was very

  conservative at the time. Anyway, after nine months Douglas was

  getting desperate, as he'd caught up with the deadline (and passed

  it, as is his wont) and they'd already started broadcasting. They

  were already up to programme two or three, and finally Douglas

  despaired.

  "He rang me up and said, `Why don't you do this with me?

  I think what Douglas had wanted was to prove he was a writer in

  his own right. In the past he had done all this stuff and people had

  said, `It's Chapman (or whoever)'. But now he had proved it.

  "He'd just started on the fifth episode when I came in.

  "I'd been working for a couple of years on a silly science

  fiction book of my own, that had tons and tons of chapters, all

  unconnected, and I dumped it on his lap and said, `Is there

  anything here you think might make a scene or two?'

  "So we sat in the garage I was using for a study at that time

  and wrote the fifth episode together more or less line by line.

  Things like the `three phases of civilisation' and the Haggunenon

  Death Flotilla, who evolved into different creatures, we sat down

  and worked it out word by word. It was actually incredibly

  quick, although very painstaking. Then I was busy on production

  for Episode Six, so although he used stuff I wrote for it, he really

  put the whole thing together.

  "The pressure was fantastic. We were writing it hours before

  it was due to be recorded. (Later on, in the second series, things

  got really silly: he was writing during the recording.)

  "Having written the thing, that was more or less it, and it had

  been great fun. As Douglas said, it was a tremendous relief for

  him not to have to do it on his own, and we both enjoyed it, and I

  didn't think that much about it. It was just a job, and we'd

  written together before.

  "By the broadcast of the first three or four episodes the place

  had gone absolutely mad. I think six publishing companies rang

  up, and four record companies (which is extraordinary with radio

  - usually by the time you've done six series of thirteen episodes

  people have just about heard of it). Hitchhiker's just went

  whoosh! And Douglas and I were getting on tremendously well,

  and were tremendously excited. When the first publisher called

  we went out and bought a bottle of champagne. It was so

  exciting. We were going to do the book together. And then

  Douglas had second thoughts.

  "He decided he had to do it on his own - he felt the first

  four episodes were different in kind, and that the last two,

  although enjoyable enough, didn't have the same sense of

  loneliness and loss and desperation that characterises Hitchhiker's

  in a funny way. Like Marvin, who Douglas says is Andrew

  Marshall, but there is a big chunk of Douglas as well. The thing

  about Hitchhiker's is the wonderful bittersweet quality he gets in.

  The thing is terribly sad at certain points, it really means

  something. And I think that he felt that the other two episodes

  were light by comparison."

  Douglas Adams's version of these events is essentially the

  same: "After the Dr Who episodes I was absolutely wiped out.I

  knew roughly what I wanted to do in the last two episodes so I

  asked John if he'd help and collaborate, and we wrote together a

  bit of the Milliways sequence and the Haggunenon section. And

  then after that I took over and did the B - Ark stuff and the

  prehistoric Earth stuff."

  The Haggunenon sequence from Episodes Five and Six is

  omitted from all later versions of the story (replaced by Disaster

  Area's stunt ship), although it has been used in some of the

  theatrical adaptations of the show.

  Douglas Adams on the casting for the radio series:

  PETER JONES

  That was very curious. We didn't know who to cast. I

  remember saying that it should be a Peter Jonesey voice, and

  who could we get to do a Peter Jonesey voice? We thought of

  all sons of people - Michael Palin, Michael Hordern, all kinds

  of people. Eventually Simon Brett's secretary got very annoyed

  hearing us talking on and on like this and not spotting the

  obvious. She said, "What about Peter Jones?" I thought, "Yes,

  that would be a way of achieving it, wouldn't it?" So we asked

  Peter, he was available, and he did it.

  Peter was extraordinary. He always affected not to

  understand what was going on at all. And he managed to

  transmute his own sense of "I don't know what this is about"

  into "I don't understand why this happened", which was the

  keynote of his performance. He's great to work with, a very

  talented guy. He's never had the recognition he should have had.

  He's terribly good.

 
He rarely met the other actors at all, because he'd be doing

  his bits completely separately. It was like getting session

  musicians in on a multi-track rock album, sitting alone in a

  studio doing the bass pan.

  STEPHEN MOORE

  He was Geoffrey Perkins's suggestion. I had no idea who to

  suggest for Marvin. A wonderful actor, absolutely brilliant. Not

  only did he do Marvin so well, but whenever I had a character

  that I didn't have enough clues about, or didn't know how it

  should be played, we'd say, "Let's give it to Stephen and see

  what happens."

  Stephen would find the character immediately and would

  make it really excellent. One of my favourite things that he did

  was the Man in the Shack - I knew what the character said,

  and why he said it, but I had not the faintest idea of how he

  would sound or what son of a voice he would have.

  MARK WING-DAVEY

  The thing that made me think of him for Zaphod was a pan he

  had in Glittering Prizes. He played a guy who was a film and

  television producer who always took advantage of people and

  was very trendy. He did that so well I thought he would be

  good for Zaphod.

  DAVID TATE

  He was one of the backbones of the series. He can do any voice:

  he could, if he wanted to, be a very successful actor. He's

  deliberately chosen to be just a voice. He's remarkable. In

  Hitchhiker's he played a large number of pans and always got

  them spot on. He played Eddie, he played the disc jockey

  `broadcasting to intelligent life-forms everywhere', he played

  one of the mice, one of the characters in the B - Ark. We had

  him there every week.

  RICHARD VERNON

  He's so funny. He carved himself a niche playing all sons of

  grandfatherly elderly types - Slartibartfast in Hitchhiker's.

  He's not actually as old as he appears. I originally wrote that

  pan with John Le Mesurier in mind.

  SUSAN SHERIDAN

  It's funny, Trillian was never that well-rounded a pan. Susan

  never found anything major to do with the role, but that wasn't

  her fault, it was my fault. A succession of different people have

  played Trillian in different ways. It's a weak pan and that's the

  best I can say. She was a delight to work with.