FORD: You stupid Ghent!
ZAPHOD: You said pull, man.
FORD: Yeah, not that hard!
ZAPHOD: How hard did you expect me to pull? Just not quite hard enough actually to pull me up?
FORD: I can’t stand heights!
ZAPHOD: Then don’t worry, we’re on our way down. Listen, we’ll be all right. We may land in the water or something, you know. Can you swim?
FORD: I don’t know.
ZAPHOD: What do you mean you don’t know?
FORD: Well, I don’t like to go into water, you know, in any great detail.
ZAPHOD: What kind of traveller are you man, don’t like heights, don’t like water . . .
FORD: Perfectly natural. I just get a kick out of being on the ground.
ZAPHOD: Well any minute now you’ll have the biggest kick of your life.
FORD: I suppose we couldn’t get picked up by a bird on the way down do you think?
ZAPHOD: A bird?
FORD: Yeah, bird. You know, with wings.
ZAPHOD: Have to be a swutting big one, man.
FORD: Or two of them.
ZAPHOD: Hey will you get your head back on? The chances against one guy falling on to a passing bird are ten to the power of my overdraft, but two . . . well man, just . . . ugghhh!
FORD: Uggg!
BIRDS: Look, this is utterly ludicrous!
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Arthur is in the thick of it. No sooner has he emerged from the cavernous gap between two of the statue’s toes into a thick pall of smoke, than he has been accosted thus:
F/X: THICK SWIRLING SMOKE. A FEW VAGUE LIGHTS VISIBLE AND SOME MENACING BUT ILL DEFINED SHAPES. THIS IS SIGNALLED BY A FEW COUGHS FROM ARTHUR, WHO IS PLAYED BY A REMARKABLY TALENTED AND ABLE ACTOR
FOOTWARRIOR: Halt! Who goes there?
ARTHUR: What?
FOOTWARRIOR: Friend or foe?
ARTHUR: Who, me?
FOOTWARRIOR: Friend or foe?
ARTHUR: Do I know you? Answer! Friend or foe!
FOOTWARRIOR: Answer! Friend or foe!
ARTHUR: Well without knowing you it’s hard to tell. I mean I quite like some people, others not so much.
FOOTWARRIOR: Answer!
ARTHUR: Well, it has to be said that on balance very few of the people I count, or rather counted, as friends – most of them have been disintegrated you see, very few of them have piercing red eyes, black armour and laser rifles, so I think the answer is probably veering towards . . .
FOOTWARRIOR: Answer or I fire.
ARTHUR: Ah, well that clinches it I’m afraid. I don’t think we’re going to be friends.
FOOTWARRIOR: This planet is the property of the Dolmansaxlil Galactiped Corporation. Trespassers are to be shot!
ARTHUR: Whose property? What about the bird people?
FOOTWARRIOR: You have established communication with the avian perverts?
ARTHUR: Well, chatted. Didn’t understand a lot of it to be honest. What do you mean, perverts?
FOOTWARRIOR: Perverts! Subversives! All perverts, subversives and trespassers are to be shot!
ARTHUR: Well, that should keep you busy, ’bye now.
F/X: ARTHUR RUNS OFF. WE STAY WITH HIM AS HE RUNS, SO WE’LL NEED SOME HIGHLY TALENTED PANTING FROM SIMON
FOOTWARRIOR: Halt!
F/X: ZAP. ZAP. ZAP
FOOTWARRIOR: (At an increasing distance) I command you to halt!
F/X: IDEALLY I WOULD LIKE TO CONVEY THAT THE FOOTWARRIOR TRIES TO CHASE ARTHUR BUT IS HAMPERED BY A SLIGHT LIMP
F/X: ZAP. ZAP. ZAP
NARRATOR: And also accosted thus . . .
FOOTWARRIOR 2: Halt, who goes there, friend or foe?
ARTHUR: (Still panting and running) Depends what you like!
FOOTWARRIOR 2: Halt or I fire!
F/X: MORE ZAPS, AND THIS FOOTWARRIOR ALSO ATTEMPTS TO RUN BUT LIMPS SLIGHTLY
F/X: MORE AND MORE ZAPS ARTHUR IS PANTING AND STRUGGLING QUITE BADLY NOW
NARRATOR: And finally thus . . .
LINTILLA: (Lintilla is a girl archaeologist. Bright and sexy)
(In a hushed but urgent whisper) Here! Get down!
ARTHUR: (Startled) What?
LINTILLA: Into the trench, come on, there’s a hidden shelter!
ARTHUR: Oh . . . thanks.
LINTILLA: Shhhh, now.
ARTHUR: Who are you?
LINTILLA: Archaeologist.
ARTHUR: What?
LINTILLA: Shhhh!
ARTHUR: Archaeologist?
LINTILLA: Yes.
ARTHUR: What are you doing?
LINTILLA: Digging, researching, trying to stay alive.
ARTHUR: With that lot around?
LINTILLA: Most particularly because that lot are around.
ARTHUR: With all the laser guns and the armour and things?
LINTILLA: Yes.
ARTHUR: Odd thing. They all seem to be limping.
LINTILLA: Yes.
ARTHUR: Why?
LINTILLA: Blisters.
ARTHUR: Ah. So that’s why they’re limping.
LINTILLA: Yes.
ARTHUR: Why have they got blisters?
LINTILLA: That, whoever you are, is a very good question.
ARTHUR: And the answer?
LINTILLA: That’s what I’m here to find out.
ARTHUR: Really? Strange job for an archaeologist.
GRAMS: JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER
NARRATOR: Why should a nice young archaeologist whose name incidentally is Lintilla be particularly interested in a band of limping soldiers?
Will Ford and Zaphod have to go through all the business with the Wise Old Bird, or will they persuade the bird they’ve so improbably landed on to take them to the ground so that they can get straight on with the next bit?
Find out in the next intriguing episode of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
ANNOUNCER: Parents of young organic lifeforms are warned that towels can be harmful if swallowed in large quantities.
FOOTNOTES
This show was made on 3 December 1979. Ronald Baddiley was Bird One, John Baddeley was Bird Two and the Footwarrior, Rula Lenska (yet another star of Rock Follies) was Lintilla, and the late John le Mesurier was the wise Old Bird.
Curiously, he was the person originally approached to play Slartibartfast, but he was unavailable at the time. However, much of the splendidly world weary side of Slartibartfast’s character was written in specifically with him in mind, and certainly helped round out the character that Richard Vernon in fact played so superbly.
The large bird effects were made by using lots of different bird squawks and then dropping them in between the actors’ words (and sometimes in the middle of them).
The effect of the towel being thrown to Zaphod was made by swishing a microphone cable around and, in order to get the impression of speed as Ford and Zaphod hurtled down on to the bird, a rushing wind was gradually speeded up and their voices were copied through a tape machine with layers of sticky tape round the capstan head, as used with the prophet Zarquon. As has been said, this is jolly good for making voices juddery. It is also very good for making tape machines juddery, and eventually very good for breaking them altogether.
FIT THE ELEVENTH
In which our heroes do a lot of running and digging.
ARTHUR: Don’t ask me how it works or I’ll start to whimper.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Incredible though it may seem, it is in fact possible that the strange and terrible history of the planet Brontitall where Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox are even now falling out of the sky on to curious and aggravating birds, admiring surprisingly large statues of unexpected people, i.e. Arthur Dent, exchanging hostile words with alien soldiers with inexplicable limps and generally having a fairly peculiar time of it, may yet admit of some form of explanation.
Furthermore it is possible that this explanation will have more than a little to do with the m
ysterious somethings or watchamycallits of which the bird people refuse to speak.
On top of which it is also possible that Lintilla the archaeologist (who may possibly turn out to have an almost impossibly strange life story) may play a major part in the uncovering of this explanation.
It is even possible that pigs will fly, or that everyone will live happily ever after. In an infinite Universe everything, even The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is possible.
LINTILLA: Tell me how you got here?
ARTHUR: Impossible.
LINTILLA: What do you mean?
ARTHUR: Well it’s something called the Infinite Improbability Drive. Don’t ask me how it works or I’ll start to whimper.
LINTILLA: But a ship?
ARTHUR: Oh yes, a ship. It’s parked in a cup fifteen miles above us. Please don’t ask me about that either.
LINTILLA: Is there anything you are prepared to talk about?
ARTHUR: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
LINTILLA: What?
ARTHUR: I know. All non-starters really.
LINTILLA: Can you reach your ship?
ARTHUR: From here? No.
LINTILLA: (Clicks her tongue in frustration . . .)
ARTHUR: What’s the matter, you want me to go?
LINTILLA: No, it’s just our ship was found by the soldiers and disabled. We’ve no means of getting off the planet.
ARTHUR: Well I can’t be much help. How many are you?
LINTILLA: Three of us are here. Lintilla.
ARTHUR: What?
LINTILLA: Name.
ARTHUR: Oh, Arthur. What’s yours?
LINTILLA: I just said. Lintilla.
ARTHUR: Oh yes. Sorry. I thought you . . . never mind. Hello.
LINTILLA: Come, you can help us. We’ve a lot of digging to do and the automatic drill’s broken down.
ARTHUR: I don’t think you can dig your way off a planet can you?
LINTILLA: No. I said, we’re archaeologists.
ARTHUR: Ah. You don’t look as if you’re in good condition for digging with your arm in a sling. Is it broken?
LINTILLA: Oh no, it’s just a pseudo-fracture.
ARTHUR: A . . .?
LINTILLA: Pseudo-fracture. It’s artificially induced. All the pain swelling and immobility of a fracture without the inconvenience of the fracture itself.
ARTHUR: Er, is that good?
LINTILLA: Good?
ARTHUR: Er, yes, particularly?
LINTILLA: Well you wouldn’t want me to have a broken arm would you?
ARTHUR: Well no, of course not, I mean I hardly know you.
LINTILLA: Right, but the effect is useful.
ARTHUR: Is it?
LINTILLA: Yes. Of course it is. Crisis psychology. The benefits of working under extreme pressure. Nothing more useless than a bored archaeologist. Come on, this tunnel leads to the work face. See this device?
ARTHUR: Looks like a watch.
LINTILLA: It’s a crisis inducer. Set it to mark nine, and . . .
F/X: LITTLE ALARM BELLS START UP
Hurry! They’re after us!
ARTHUR: Who?
LINTILLA: No one! Come on! Through the tunnel, they’re coming!
ARTHUR: But . . .
LINTILLA: They’re coming.
ARTHUR: Well, if you say so.
F/X: THEY BOTH SCRAMBLE INTO THE TUNNEL, WITH MUCH ROCKY SCRABBLING GRUNTING AND PANTING
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: The major problem which the medical profession in the most advanced sectors of the galaxy had to tackle after cures had been found for all the major diseases, and instant repair systems had been invented for all physical injuries and disablements except some of the more advanced forms of death, was that of employment.
Planets full of bronzed healthy clean limbed individuals merrily prancing through their lives meant that the only doctors still in business were the psychiatrists, simply because no one had discovered a cure for the Universe as a whole – or rather the only one that did exist had been abolished by the medical doctors.
Then it was noticed that like most forms of medical treatment, total cures had a lot of unpleasant side effects. Boredom, listlessness, lack of . . . well anything very much, and with these conditions came the realization that nothing turned, say, a slightly talented musician into a towering genius faster than the problem of encroaching deafness, and nothing turned a perfectly normal healthy individual into a great political or military leader better than irreversible brain damage. Suddenly, everything changed. Previously best selling books such as How I Survived an Hour with a Sprained Finger were swept away in a flood of titles such as How I Scaled the North Face of the Megapurna with a Perfectly Healthy Finger But Everything Else Sprained, Broken or Bitten Off By a Pack of Mad Yaks.
And so doctors were back in business recreating all the diseases and injuries they had abolished in popular easy to use forms. Thus, given the right and instantly available types of disability even something as simple as turning on the three-d TV could become a major challenge, and when all the programmes on all the channels actually were made by actors with cleft pallettes speaking lines by dyslexic writers filmed by blind cameramen instead of merely seeming like that, it somehow made the whole thing more worthwhile.
Meanwhile, Ford Preferct and Zaphod Beeblebrox who have fortuitously landed on the back of a huge alien bird are again finding that the most worthwhile thing in Ford’s possession is something he acquired from the Salisbury branch of Marks and Spencer, shortly before the planet Earth was demolished.
FORD: Take us down to the ground, you stupid bird!
BIRD: No. I’m just going to circle round here for a while and then sooner or later you’ll have to let go and continue your journey. I’m sorry but there it is.
FORD: Zaphod, hold on, I’m going to crawl out along its neck.
ZAPHOD: You’re going to what?
FORD: Crawl along its neck. With my towel.
ZAPHOD: You crazy? Miles up on a mad bird, you’re going to dry it behind the ears?
FORD: You watch.
ZAPHOD: Watch? I’m going to pray, man. Know any good religions?
FORD: You watch. Here I go.
F/X: FORD GRUNTING AS HE CRAWLS SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY ALONG THE BIRD’S NECK
FORD: Zaphod, how am I doing?
ZAPHOD: What?
FORD: How far have I got?
ZAPHOD: How do I know, man, I’ve got my eyes closed. Don’t you know how far you’ve got?
FORD: No. I’ve got my eyes closed.
ZAPHOD: Terrific.
BIRD: Get off my neck!
FORD: No.
BIRD: Get off my . . . ahhh! What are you doing?
F/X: THIS LAST LINE IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE SWISHING
SOUND OF A TOWEL BEING WRAPPED ROUND THE BIRD’S EYES
FORD: I’m wrapping my towel round your eyes, you bird.
BIRD: I can’t see where I’m flying!
FORD: You don’t need to if you fly downwards. Just follow the force of gravity. It’s very simple.
(Fade)
(Fade up)
F/X: FORD & ZAPHOD RUNNING (THEY ARE VERY TIRED)
F/X: THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION IS PUNCTUATED BY THE SOUND OF LOTS OF BIRDS WHEELING ABOVE THEM SCREECHING & CAWING, AND, AT REGULAR INTERVALS A SORT OF HEAVY SLOP SOUND AS OF A LARGE DOLLOP OF WET MATTER HITTING THE GROUND
FORD: Great idea, wasn’t it?
ZAPHOD: Keep running.
FORD: With the towel. Great little number.
ZAPHOD: Keep running.
FORD: ‘Just follow the force of gravity’ I said. It’s simplicity that always works, you know.
ZAPHOD: Will you just keep running, man.
FORD: I’m running. And it’s the simplest ideas that take the greatest intelligence you know. I mean, forget Marvin. I’m the one you know, the intelligent one. When I go to bed at night I don’t need to read a book. I just glance through my brain for half an hour.
ZAPHOD: Run! We got to find shelter.
FORD: There’s something in the distance. Can’t quite make it out.
ZAPHOD: Head for it. And keep running man. How many birds you reckon?
FORD: Couple of dozen.
ZAPHOD: Keep running.
FORD: They can’t keep it up indefinitely. They’ll have to go and eat something – you know? I mean looking at it purely from the biological angle. Then they’ll have to put their feet up for a couple of hours whilst they go through all the digestion bit, and then . . .
ZAPHOD: Keep running.
FORD: Yes. Probably going to need a new towel at some stage.
F/X: WHISTLING NOISE AS OF HEAVY METAL BODY FALLING OUT OF SKY. AND THEN HITTING THE GROUND SO HARD THAT IT BURIES ITSELF SEVERAL HUNDRED YARDS DEEP
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Chronologically speaking, the immediately preceding noise, the . . .
F/X: REPEAT PREVIOUS F/X
NARRATOR: . . . noise does not in fact belong in this position. It has not been heard by Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox, and neither have they witnessed the event that caused it.
It is included at this moment partly to point up certain causal relationships between events past and events to come and partly to create a sense of mystery and wonder, a) as to what it could possibly be, b) as to the nature of these past and future events, and c) as to whether these alleged causal relationships will become important, or indeed apparent.
For the moment suffice it to say that the . . .
F/X: REPEAT PREVIOUS F/X AGAIN
NARRATOR: . . . event has taken place, and that Arthur Dent will very soon encounter one of its consequences. This is the sound of him emerging from the tunnel.
ARTHUR: (A few struggles and gasps for breath)
How . . . how did you manage that? You got here minutes ahead of me . . . and with an imaginary broken arm.
LINTILLA: That’s the whole point. You always over compensate for your disabilities.
I’m thinking of having my whole body surgically removed. Right, crisis over, I’ve turned off our pursuers.
ARTHUR: What? Oh, yes. Good. Look, tell me . . .
LINTILLA: (Calls) Lintilla?
ARTHUR: Yes, you told me your name thanks, I . . .
LINTILLA 2: (Approaching) (Same voice) Lintilla? Where have you been, you’ve been hours.
ARTHUR: Huh? Who’s this?
LINTILLA: I ran into some footsoldiers and had to stay hidden. I found this.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts Page 24