PUPIL: (Enthusiastically) Thank you!
F/X: A NICE THRILLING PING
PUPIL: Oo, that feels nice.
COMPUTEACH: Posit: You are living in a stagnant declining civilization. Where are you looking?
PUPIL: Down.
COMPUTEACH: What do you see?
PUPIL: My shoes.
COMPUTEACH: Correct. What do you do to cheer yourself up?
PUPIL: Er, press the button?
COMPUTEACH: Incorrect. Think again. Your world is a depressing place, you are looking at your shoes, how do you cheer yourself up?
PUPIL: I buy a new pair!
COMPUTEACH: Correct.
PUPIL: Can I press the button?
COMPUTEACH: All right.
F/X: THRILLING LITTLE PING AS BEFORE
PUPIL: Oh that’s so nice.
COMPUTEACH: Now, imagine everyone does the same thing, what happens?
PUPIL: Everyone feels nice?
COMPUTEACH: Forget the button! Concentrate! Everyone buys new shoes, what happens?
PUPIL: More shoes!
COMPUTEACH: And?
PUPIL: More shoe shops!
COMPUTEACH: Correct.
PUPIL: Can I . . .
COMPUTEACH: No!
PUPIL: Oh.
COMPUTEACH: And in order to support all these extra shoe shops, what must happen?
PUPIL: Everyone must keep buying shoes.
COMPUTEACH: And how is that arranged?
PUPIL: (Getting bored, reciting things parrot fashion) Manufacturers dictate more and more different fashions and make shoes so badly that they either hurt the feet or fall apart.
COMPUTEACH: So that . . .?
PUPIL: Everyone has to buy more shoes.
COMPUTEACH: Until?
PUPIL: Until everyone gets fed up with lousy rotten shoes. (SUBTEXT: ‘I’m getting fed up with this lousy rotten lesson.’)
COMPUTEACH: And then what?
PUPIL: Why can’t I press the button?
COMPUTEACH: (Sternly) And then what? Come on.
PUPIL: Massive capital investment by the manufacturers to try and make people buy the shoes.
COMPUTEACH: Which means?
PUPIL: More shoe shops.
COMPUTEACH: And then we reach what point?
PUPIL: The point where I press the button again.
COMPUTEACH: (Reluctantly) All right.
F/X: THRILLING ZING AS BEFORE
PUPIL: Ooh! Oo! Oo! That’s so nice, that’s really nice!
COMPUTEACH: And then we reach what point?
PUPIL: (Quite happy and enthusiastic again now) The shoe event horizon. The whole economy overbalances. Shoe shops outnumber every other kind of shop, it becomes economically impossible to build anything other than shoe shops, and bing, I get to press the button again.
F/X: THRILLING ZING AGAIN
PUPIL: Weeehoo!
COMPUTEACH: Wait for permission! Now, what’s the final stage?
PUPIL: Er. Every shop in the world ends up a shoe shop.
COMPUTEACH: Full of?
PUPIL: Shoes no one can wear.
COMPUTEACH: Result?
PUPIL: Famine, collapse and ruin. Any survivors eventually evolve into birds and never put their feet on the ground again.
COMPUTEACH: Excellent. End of lesson. You may press the button.
F/X: SEVERAL ZINGS
PUPIL: Weee! Heeehooo! Gigigigihooo! Ooo, that’s nice! Thank you teach, goodbye.
COMPUTEACH: Aren’t you forgetting something?
PUPIL: What?
COMPUTEACH: Press the other button.
PUPIL: Oh, right.
F/X: A SIMILAR ZING, BUT OBVIOUSLY A DIFFERENT ONE, PROBABLY A BIT DEEPER THAN THE OTHER ONE
COMPUTEACH: Ooooohhhhhh!!! That’s so nice.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: And so forth. Meanwhile, at the Dolmansaxlil base the excitement is of course mounting.
F/X: LINTILLA AND ARTHUR RUNNING TOWARDS US AND SLOWING TO A HALT, PANTING
ARTHUR: You did a good job finding us Marvin. Where have you been?
MARVIN: In a deep dark hole. I climbed out because I started to like it too much.
ARTHUR: Come on, keep moving. We must find a way out of here.
LINTILLA: Right.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: Whilst a mere mile or so to the east, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect are very keen to find their way into somewhere, namely some sort of shelter from the continuing revenge of the bird people. They find it in the form of a derelict building, which is vast, very low, and very very old . . .
F/X: FORD AND ZAPHOD RUNNING TOWARDS US. AS THEY REACH US THEY COME TO A HALT. SPLATS AND ANGRY BIRD NOISES AS BEFORE
FORD: The door! Open it!
F/X: GRINDING NOISE OF A VERY OLD MOTOR STRAINING TO WORK. THE DOOR ONLY HALF OPENS AND SLOWLY
ZAPHOD: Force it man, force it.
F/X: THEY BOTH STRAIN PUSHING AT THE DOOR. IT GRATES ALONG ITS GROOVES
FORD: Ok, get in!
F/X: THE AURAL PERSPECTIVE OPENS UP INTO A VAST DRAUGHTY ECHOEY HANGAR
ZAPHOD: Hey, look at this. Look what we found man.
FORD: Amazing.
ZAPHOD: It’s a derelict space port.
FORD: Looks like no one’s been in for centuries. All these amazing old ships.
ZAPHOD: Yeah.
FORD: Just rust and wreckage.
ZAPHOD: Yeah.
F/X: WE HEAR THEIR FOOTSTEPS WANDERING ABOUT, ECHOING
ZAPHOD: Spooky, man. Like, er, what are those things eggs come out of?
FORD: Birds.
ZAPHOD: No, after that.
FORD: Eh?
ZAPHOD: What do they come out of the birds in?
FORD: Eggshells?
ZAPHOD: That’s it. Like just huge broken eggshells. And all the dust, man. And the huge cobwebs.
FORD: And where you get huge cobwebs, you get . . .
ZAPHOD: Look out man!
F/X: WITH A SORT OF GRUNTY SCREECH A HEAVY BODY DROPS BESIDE THEM
SPIDER: (With a voice like ‘Boris the Spider’) ’Scuse me.
F/X: IT SCUTTLES OFF
ZAPHOD: One huge spider.
FORD: Polite though.
ZAPHOD: Transtellar Spacelines. Must have been real googy ships once, but now . . .
FORD: One look and they’d fall apart. I mean, look at that one . . .
F/X: WITH A GREAT GRINDING RUMBLE A HUGE SPACELINER COLLAPSES INTO ITS OWN DUST
ZAPHOD: (With wonder in his voice) It fell apart man.
FORD: Hey, but look at that one – the big one over there. It’s covered with muck and dust – but – looks like it’s still in one piece.
ZAPHOD: Hey, yeah, and it’s still connected to its supply-lines. Man, feel this supply-line.
FORD: Hey, it’s . . .
ZAPHOD: Yeah.
FORD: Weird.
ZAPHOD: You know what I’m thinking?
FORD: No.
ZAPHOD: Neither do I. Frightening isn’t it?
FORD: Let’s take a look.
F/X: THEY HURRY OVER TO THE SHIP
ZAPHOD: Ford.
FORD: Yeah?
ZAPHOD: Is this ship . . .?
FORD: It feels like it’s on power. Just a very slight vibration.
ZAPHOD: But it must have been here for centuries . . . Hey man, pass me those four bits of tubing.
FORD: These?
ZAPHOD: Yeah – gonna make me a stethoscope and take a listen to this baby. There . . . and there, like that.
F/X: SOUND OF HIM MANIPULATING THE TUBING, TO WHICH HIS LAST SENTENCE REFERS
FORD: You hear anything?
ZAPHOD: Hey . . . yeah, yeah I can hear . . . something . . .
FORD: What is it?
ZAPHOD: (A low slow gasp of horror) Ford . . . I don’t believe what I just heard . . .
FORD: Here, let me listen . . .
ZAPHOD: OK . . . but – you better keep your head screwed on ki
d . . .
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: What has Zaphod heard in the spaceliner, and is it really as horrifying as all that? Will it lead him directly to the discovery of his goal – despite his singular lack of exertion in that direction?
Will it become absolutely necessary to reveal the unpleasant solution to the problem of Lintilla’s clones?
Will everything tie up neatly, or will it be just like life – quite interesting in parts, but no substitute for the real thing?
What is the real thing?
Some of these questions may possibly be answered in the next inexplicable episode of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
ANNOUNCER: Many sentences contained in that programme were of a very dangerous length, and were performed by highly trained vocal practitioners. On no account should inexperienced life-forms attempt to imitate them without proper medical jaw and lung supervision.
FOOTNOTES
This show was recorded on 6 January 1980.
David Tate was the Commentator in Dolmansaxlil training film and also the Computeach, and Stephen Moore was his pupil. Rula Lenska played all her clones as well as Lintilla and Mark Smith only happened to be Hig Hurtenflurst.
The three Lintillas were made by slightly altering the pitch of each one and overlaying them over each other. The first few lines of the narration speech on cloning were cloned about four or five times by putting the lines out of synch several times.
Dolmansaxlil is an amalgam of several well known shoe shops that might be found in Oxford Street. Douglas has this to say on the subject of shoes.
Shoes
This was written in a rage, after spending three days, three days, trying to buy a pair of shoes in central London. Nothing special, just an ordinary pair of shoes. You cannot hurl a brick in Oxford Street without hitting half a dozen shoe shops, and after three days, three days, that was exactly what I wanted to do. Can you buy a pair of shoes in any of them? No. Shop after shop, all virtually next to each other, carried exactly the same range, and were all out of stock of exactly the same styles and sizes. Who organizes this? Has he been caught yet? I must stop or I will start ranting and sounding like John Osborne. [DNA]
The Footwarrior scenes seem slightly surreal in retrospect since I can remember clomping around at four o’clock in the morning the day before transmission with my foot in a waste paper bin full of cigarette ends. (The cigarette ends were not essential for the sound effect but I was just too tired to take them out.)
The Footwarrior’s voice was one of the few that did actually use the Vocoder, which puts the basic voice through a synthesized note and leaves it sounding a little like Sparky’s Magic piano . . . (if anybody remembers that).
FIT THE TWELFTH
In which all is resolved, everyone lives happily ever after, and pigs fly.
MAN IN SHACK: I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: What we find is this: that Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox have broken into an ancient building, concerning which they have reached the following conclusion:
ZAPHOD: (From Fit The Eleventh) It’s a derelict space port!
NARRATOR: . . . and within which they have discovered a large number of . . .
FORD: (From Fit The Eleventh) . . . amazing old ships!
NARRATOR: . . . Whose condition has been described by Ford Prefect in these terms:
FORD: (From Fit The Eleventh) Just rust and wreckage.
NARRATOR: . . . and by Zaphod Beeblebrox like this:
ZAPHOD: (From Fit The Eleventh) Like just huge broken eggshells.
NARRATOR: We find that one ship has caught their eye for this reason:
FORD: (From Fit The Eleventh) It’s covered with muck and dust, but looks like it’s still in one piece.
ZAPHOD: Hey, yeah, and it’s still connected to its supply-lines.
NARRATOR: . . . and that this provokes them into closer investigation. This is what they find.
FORD: It feels like it’s on power. Just a very slight vibration.
ZAPHOD: But it must have been here for centuries . . . hey man, pass me those four bits of tubing.
FORD: These?
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Gonna make me a stethoscope and take a listen to this baby. There . . . and there, like that.
F/X: SOUND OF HIM MANIPULATING TUBING
FORD: You hear anything?
ZAPHOD: Hey, yeah . . . yeah . . . I can hear . . . something . . .
FORD: What is it?
ZAPHOD: (A long slow gasp of horror) Ford . . . I don’t believe what I just heard . . .
FORD: Here, let me listen . . .
ZAPHOD: I’ve been looking at the flight schedules. Man, this ship is late . . . man this ship is very, very late . . . Man, this ship is over nine hundred years late.
FORD: Zaphod – we got to get in there.
ZAPHOD: But man can you cope with what we might find?
FORD: I don’t know. We got to get in there.
ZAPHOD: We got to get in there. What we find, we find.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: What we also find is that Arthur Dent, Marvin and the girl Lintilla who, as has already been established, has now been cloned over five hundred and seventy eight thousand million times and has thus created a problem in some quarters are now thoroughly lost in the Dolmansaxlil base. This is because there is no light, which is in turn because Marvin has done something aggravating to the Domansaxlil power supply, which is in turn because he was anxious to create some confusion under cover of which he could rescue Arthur and Lintilla, which was in turn because they had been captured by Hig Hurtenflurst, which was in turn because . . . and so on back to the initial and highly controversial creation of the Universe. Only two of Lintilla’s five hundred and seventy eight thousand million clones are on the planet Brontitall with her, and it is more than likely that we shall also find them.
LINTILLA 2 & 3: (From a distance) Lintilla?
ARTHUR: Ah, there’s your better half and worse half. Or at least your exactly the same halves. Thirds. Whatever. Why do people lead such complicated lives?
LINTILLA: (Who starts this line about half-way through Arthur’s previous line. Arthur carries on to the end of his line just to himself)
Lintilla! Lintilla! What happened to you?
LINTILLA 2: (Approaching) There were a couple of footwarriors standing guard over us.
LINTILLA 3: But after a while they sat guard over us.
LINTILLA 2: Then they wandered away to find some corn plasters.
LINTILLA 3: And so we escaped.
ARTHUR: Right, where are we going?
MARVIN: How should I know? It’s your Universe. You go where you like.
LINTILLA: We’ll get back to our ship.
ARTHUR: I thought you said it didn’t work.
LINTILLA: There’s a derelict spaceport about a mile or so from here. We might be able to get some parts to repair it with.
ARTHUR: Ah, well I’m not very skilled at repairing spaceships.
LINTILLA: You can learn.
ARTHUR: Take a bit of time, I think.
LINTILLA: You could take some evening classes.
ARTHUR: What here?
LINTILLA: Yes, I’ve got a bottle of them. Little pink ones.
F/X: PILL BOTTLE RATTLE
ARTHUR: Well . . .
LINTILLA: Come on then, let’s get out of here before they restore the power and find us.
F/X: GENERATOR HUM STARTS UP AND ALARMS AS WELL
LINTILLA: They restored the power.
F/X: LAZOR ZAPS START . . . CONTINUE AD LIB
ARTHUR: They’ve found us. Keep down.
F/X: FIRING CONTINUES AND GETS LOUDER. DISTANT SHOUTS OF FOOTWARRIORS
ARTHUR: It probably seems a terrible thing to say, but you know what I sometimes think would be useful in these situations?
LINTILLA: What?
; ARTHUR: A gun of some sort.
LINTILLA 2: Will this help?
ARTHUR: What is it?
LINTILLA 2 : It’s a gun of some sort.
ARTHUR: Oh, that’ll help. Can you make it fire?
LINTILLA: Er . . .
F/X: DEAFENING ROAR
LINTILLA: Yes.
ARTHUR: Right. Look, why don’t you keep firing at them. I’ll make a dash for the next intersection, you throw me the gun, I’ll keep firing and you make a dash for it. Did you ever see Gunfight at the OK . . . no you wouldn’t have done.
LINTILLA: What?
ARTHUR: Never mind.
LINTILLA: No, what?
ARTHUR: Oh, just an old western. Please, I don’t want to talk about it. Right. Everyone understand?
LINTILLAS: (Tutti) Yes.
ARTHUR: Marvin?
MARVIN: Understand? You ask me if I understand?
ARTHUR: Yes or no?
MARVIN: Guess.
ARTHUR: Right, I’m going. You fire, I’ll run. Now!
F/X: ARTHUR RUNS. LINTILLA FIRES. WE STAY WITH ARTHUR. HE IS RUNNING HARD AND PANTING. SHOTS RICCOCHET AROUND HIM
HE STOPS AND PANTS HEAVILY. HE TAKES A DEEP BREATH TO SHOUT
ARTHUR: Right . . .
(A voice, unexpectedly close, slightly coarse and slightly ingratiating interrupts him. It’s owner’s name is Poodoo)
POODOO: Er, excuse me.
ARTHUR: (Caught in mid-shout and off his guard, practically chokes)
Huh? Who are you.
POODOO: Me? Ah well you see what it is you see, is I’m Poodoo, and look, I’m sorry to interrupt, are you busy?
ARTHUR: What? Yes.
POODOO: Can I just ask you something?
ARTHUR: No. In a minute. Please get back. (He turns to shout back to the Lintillas) Right! Lint . . .
POODOO: Only I can see you are busy, so I won’t take up a moment of your time. If I could just . . .
ARTHUR: What?
POODOO: . . . introduce a couple of friends of mine, well three actually. Four if you count the priest.
ALLITNIL 1,2,3: (In turn, but very quickly) Hello. (Identical voices)
PRIEST: Hello.
ARTHUR: Huh?
POODOO: Only we were wondering . . .
ARTHUR: Who are you?
POODOO: Can I just ask you something?
ARTHUR: Look, please . . .
(The firing and pandemonium are continuing in the background, also we should very vaguely and not obtrusively hear shouts continuing in the background from the footwarriors, like: ‘In the name of the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation we demand that you give yourselves up. Come out with your hands up! We’ve got you covered. Shooting us won’t do you any good. Or us for that matter . . .’ etc. etc. ad lib)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts Page 26