FORD: (Slightly drunk now) And the wine list please. (He continues singing)
ZARNIWOOP: It’s terribly simple. (And please can we have no cheap satirical asides at this point if it’s all the same to everyone else?) Long ago, you and I and others planned to discover who it was who was ruling the galaxy, who was making all the decisions behind the President’s back. I found where he was located and retreated to the safe hiding of the bar in the first class lounge of a forgotten spaceship in a . . . can we stop that man singing?
ZAPHOD: Hey, Ford.
FORD: I’ll sing something else.
(He sings something else instead. It sounds exactly the same as what he was singing before)
ZARNIWOOP: . . . In an artificial Universe. Meanwhile, you were doing the most important job. You stole the Infinite Improbability Drive ship, without which it would be impossible to breach the barriers protecting his world. And then you brought it to my hiding place.
ZAPHOD: Ford.
FORD: Oooh, yeah?
ZAPHOD: You’re still singing.
FORD: Am I? (He hums a bit experimentally) Oh yes, so I am. Wassa matter? You don’t like it? I’ll sing something different.
(He does sing something different now. It is very loud and strident and totally without any aesthetically redeeming features whatsoever)
(Actually he can sing the ‘That ol’ janx spirit’ song from the book)
ZARNIWOOP: (Talking more loudly in order to be heard above the din) I’ll just bring your ship down, then we can get out of here and get on with it.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: The major problem – one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of who you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize:- It is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary:- anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary:- people are a problem.
And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they never really notice that they’re not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them – who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to can be allowed to?
F/X: WIND. (IT’S ALWAYS WIND ISN’T IT? I THINK WE’LL HAVE SOME THUNDER AND RAIN AS WELL)
MAN: Pussy pussy pussy . . . coochicoochicoochi . . . pussy want his fish? Nice piece of fish . . . pussy want it? Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think. I imagine this is what will happen, but how can I tell? I think it’s better if I don’t get involved. I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet so who am I to judge? Ah, you’re eating it.
I like it when I see you eat the fish, because in my mind you will waste away if you don’t.
Fish come from far away, or so I’m told. Or so I imagine I’m told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy? And when I hear their questions, all their many questions do you hear questions? Perhaps you just think they’re singing songs to you. Perhaps they are singing songs to you and I just think they’re asking me questions. Do you think they came today? I do. There’s mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on my table, fish in your plate and a memory of them in my mind. And look what else they’ve left me. Crosswords, dictionaries and a calculator. I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions. To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behaviour. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.
F/X: HE LIGHTS A CIGARETTE
MAN: I think I saw another ship in the sky today. A big white one. I’ve never seen a big white one. Only six small black ones. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big white one. Perhaps I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely.
(He pours a glass)
Perhaps some different people are coming to see me.
F/X: CUT TO EXTERIOR. IN OTHER WORDS A SHARP INCREASE IN THE NOISE LEVEL OF THE RAIN.
TRAMPING FEET ON ROUGH GROUND
FORD: In there? (He is still slightly drunk)
ZARNIWOOP: Yes.
ZAPHOD: What, that shack?
ZARNIWOOP: Yes.
ZAPHOD: Weird.
ARTHUR: But it’s the middle of nowhere.
FORD: Oh come on, we must have come to the wrong place.
ZARNIWOOP: Knock on the door.
F/X: KNOCK KNOCK. THE DOOR, A CREAKY OLD WOODEN ONE, OPENS
MAN: Hello?
FORD: Er, excuse me, do you rule the Universe?
MAN: I try not to. Are you wet?
FORD: Wet! Well, doesn’t it look as if we’re wet?
MAN: That’s how it looks to me, but how you feel about it might be a different matter. If you find warmth makes you feel dry you’d better come in.
ALL: (Slightly awkward and embarrassed) Oh, yes thank you.
F/X: DOOR CLOSES AND WE ARE IN AN INTERNAL ACOUSTIC AGAIN
(The visitors are all bewildered and embarrassed)
ZAPHOD: Er, man, like what’s your name?
MAN: I don’t know. Why, do you think I ought to have one? It seems odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.
ZARNIWOOP: Listen. We must ask you some questions.
MAN: All right. You can sing to my cat if you like.
ARTHUR: Would he like that?
MAN: You’d better ask him that.
ZARNIWOOP: How long have you been ruling the Universe?
MAN: Ah, this is a question about the past is it?
ZARNIWOOP: Yes.
MAN: How can I tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?
ZARNIWOOP: Do you answer all questions like this?
MAN: I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
ZAPHOD: Ah that clears it up. He’s a weirdo.
ZARNIWOOP: No. Listen. People come to you, yes?
MAN: I think so.
ZARNIWOOP: And they ask you to take decisions – about wars, about economies, about people, about everything going on out there in the Universe?
MAN: I only decide about my Universe. My Universe is what happens to my eyes and ears. Anything else is surmise and hearsay. For all I know, these people may not exist. You may not exist. I say what it occurs to me to say.
ZARNIWOOP: But don’t you see? What you decide affects the fate of millions of people.
MAN: I don’t know them, I’ve never met them. They only exist in words I think I hear. The men who come say to me, say, so and so wants to declare what we call a war. These are the facts, what do you think? And I say. Sometimes it’s a smaller thing. They might say for instance that a man called Zaphod Beeblebrox is President, but he is in financial collusion with a consortium of high powered psychiatrists who want him to order the destruction of a planet called Earth because of some sort of experiment, should he be allowed to . . .
ZAPHOD: Er, now wait a minute man, hey wait . . .
FORD: Sit down Arthur, sit down . . .
ARTHUR: (Furious) Let go of me.
F/X: THE DOOR IS THROWN OPEN
ZAPHOD: Hey, er . . . Arthur, you know me . . .
FORD: Leave him. We’ll sort it out later.
MAN: But it’s folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know. If they exist.
ZARNIWOOP: Do you think they do?
MAN: I have no opinion. How can I have?
ZARNIWOOP: I have.
MAN: So you say – or so I hear you say.
ZAPHOD: (Aside) Hey, er, Ford . . . the Earthman . . . you think he’s? That’s not it you know, tha
t’s not it at all man.
ZARNIWOOP: But don’t you see that people live or die on your word?
MAN: It’s nothing to do with me, I am not involved with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man.
ZARNIWOOP: Ah! You say . . . the Lord! You believe in . . .
MAN: My cat. I call him the Lord. I am kind to him.
ZARNIWOOP: All right. How do you know he exists? How do you know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what you think of as your kindness?
MAN: I don’t. I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. What else do you do? Please I am tired.
F/X: DISTANT SOUND OF ROCKET ENGINES
FORD: What was that?
ZAPHOD: I dunno man, but I didn’t like the sound of it. Let’s get after the Earthman.
FORD: Er, look sorry to rush, great ruler, keep up the disinterested work, right? See you around.
ZARNIWOOP: Wait . . . there is so much we must discover!
FORD: Later, later . . .
F/X: DOOR OPEN. EXTERNAL ACOUSTIC
FORD: (Shouting) Arthur! Arthur . . . He’s gone.
ZAPHOD: Holy belgium man! So has the swutting ship.
FORD: Was all that true?
ZAPHOD: Oh, what is truth man? You heard the weirdo.
FORD: Fine. Zaphod, whatever may or may not happen from hereon in, I just want you to know something. I want you to know that I respect you.
ZAPHOD: Great.
FORD: Just not very much . . . that’s all.
F/X: JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER
NARRATOR: What does the future hold for our heroes now? What does the past or present hold for that matter?
Will Arthur Dent now embark on a terrible and protracted vendetta against Zaphod Beeblebrox? Will he be all right alone in the Universe with only the Infinite Improbability Drive Ship, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Lintilla the archaeologist, Eddie the shipboard computer, a lot of chatty doors and a battered copy of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for company.
Who will Ford Prefect ally himself with – Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox, or a large Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?
Will there ever be another series of that wholely remarkable and mystifying entity The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? . . . Find out if you can!
FOOTNOTES
The final show in the series very nearly didn’t make it on to the air. Although the actors were recorded on 13 January the actual mixing of the show was all done on the day of transmission, completed some twenty minutes before it was due to go out and then spirited in a fast car down one of London’s busiest roads, the Edgware Road, the three miles to BBC Broadcasting House, where it arrived just a few minutes before transmission.
In fact half an hour before the programme went out the last five minutes of the show were wrapped round the capstan head of a tape recorder and being hacked off in little bits by three people all furiously slashing at it with razor blades.
Keen eared listeners might have noticed that some scenes were remixed for the subsequent repeats, since at the time we had no time to do anything on the last scene but add a little rain and some cat impersonations. However, as with the mice in the fourth programme I’m sure there are some people who prefer the show as it went out for the very first time.
Douglas has this to add about the ending of the series.
Ending
At the end of the first series I didn’t really expect with any confidence that anyone would want me to do any more, so I brought the story to a very definite close. This then caused me huge problems getting the story going again for the second series. At the end of the second series I knew that I would be asked to do more, and deliberately left the ending open so that the next series could get off the ground straight away.
Of course, we never did a third series. [DNA]
David Tate was the Allitnils, and we were able to get the sound right without actually having to record him saying Lintilla and then physically reversing the tape.
Rula Lenska was the Robot Stewardess. The part of Poodoo was especially written for Ken Campbell (the legendary theatre director and madman, famous for such stage shows as Illuminatus, the Warp and of course The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) who we simply asked to be himself in the part.
Strangely the only way we could get Ken to sound remotely like himself was to imitate him down the talkback and for him to copy what we did!
Jonathan Pryce, one of Britain’s most prestigious actors, was originally asked to play the ruler of the Universe, but arrived in the studio to find out that he hadn’t actually been written into the script yet. He kindly agreed to play Zarniwoop and the Autopilot instead.
The name Ron Hate who appears in the Radio Times playing the Man in the Shack is an easily worked out anagram. The show was recorded after the Radio Times had gone to press, and he was in fact played by the ever versatile Stephen Moore, whose only question on being handed the script to the last scene on the now traditional snappies was ‘What are you on Douglas?’
Douglas has this to add on the Delayed spaceship scene.
Delayed spaceship
This was based pretty much exactly on something that happened to me one day, trying to get to Leeds.
The normal way of going from London to Leeds is by train, which is a perfectly quick journey. However, on this particular occasion I had a meeting in London in the morning and another in Leeds at lunchtime, and the only way of making them both on time was to go by plane. Going by plane on a trip like that is a lot more expensive, much less comfortable, much more hassle and, what with having to get out to the airport and so on, only about twenty minutes quicker. It is reasonable to assume that there was a very large proportion of people on the plane to whom those twenty minutes were pretty important . . .
11.15 was the time we were due to take off, 12.15 was when we were supposed to arrive.
At 11.15 we were sitting on the tarmac and nothing much was happening – not in itself unusual.
At 11.20 things were continuing not to happen.
At 11.25 the pilot came on to the public address system and apologized for the delay. He said this was entirely their fault. They had forgotten, he said, to load the bar on the plane, so there were no drinks on board. In order to try and rectify the problem they were trying to acquire some coffee and biscuits, he said, for our flying pleasure.
Five more minutes passed. The passengers were getting restive, but being English, we didn’t say anything. We did, however, look very pointedly at our watches.
Another five minutes passed.
At 11.35, the pilot addressed us again. He said that the coffee and biscuits for our flying pleasure were now aboard the aircraft, and that there would be another slight delay before we took off. He didn’t even say what the delay was for this time. Presumably they had to borrow some sugar from Air France.
Eventually, at 11.45, we took off, half an hour late.
At 12.45 we landed. Half an hour late.
And the whole point of travelling by plane had gone out of the window. The coffee and biscuits had been terrible, of course, and by the time they served them to us we could, according to the original schedule, have been getting them for ourselves in Leeds.
I missed my appointment, but at least I got some jokes out of it. I don’t suppose any of the other passengers did. [DNA]
The end of this scene is not in fact made in the way the effects direction suggests. In order to make the scene more mysterious the Autopilot’s line ‘Return to your seats’ was increased in volume and overlapped on itself in a sinister montage that was made using the effect so tediously described with the dialling chant in episode eight.
Such was the latent hysteria in the recording of this last show that the line ‘Marvin’s got Poodoo’ dissolved the whole cast into almost inexplicable hysteria and stopped the recording for about half an hour. This, sadly, is the answer to the sometimes asked question, ‘What bit seemed funniest when you were recording it?�
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In the collapsing Universe the falling sky was represented by a high-pitched whine and the ground coming up was represented by a deep rumble. In addition these effects were accompanied by a montage of lines from previous episodes (and one which in fact had yet to appear). These were:
‘But there aren’t any real people here at all . . .’ ‘So what’s new?’
‘Share and Enjoy’
‘Well, well, well . . . Arthur Dent’
‘Tell me how you got here?’ . . . ‘Impossible’
‘What we did you see was we flew in . . . we flew in. Oh yes, we definitely flew in’
‘Here’s to your achievement, Zaphod Beeblebrox’ . . . ‘Achievement? . . . Oh, yeah’
Real fanatics, or people who have a got a spare minute or two might like to find out where all these lines come from and ponder their significance. Others might like to ponder the other, as yet unanswered question asked by the Book . . . ‘Will there ever be another series of that wholly mysterious entity The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
If so, maybe it will feature some of the ideas which were discussed but which never made it into the show: the messages in the weather, the Chinese meal with the guardian of the grubby red and white check table cloth, the river with a different attitude to time and spider pornography.
How a ‘Lost’ Episode was Rediscovered
In 2002, while I was researching my book Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, ace Hitchhiker’s Guide collector Terry Piatt loaned me a box of cassettes with various radio interviews and game-show appearances by Douglas. In among them was something called Steafel Plus, a one-off forty-minute show on Radio 4, first broadcast on 4 August 1982 and repeated on 2 October that year. It starred actress/comedienne Sheila Steafel, presenting a mixture of songs and comedy taken from two shows she had performed in Edinburgh and London.
The writing credits on Steafel Plus are truly remarkable: Ray Galton (Steptoe and Son, Hancock’s Half Hour), Johnny Speight (Till Death Do Us Part), Barry Cryer (The Kenny Everett Video Show, Pm Sorry I Haven’t a Clue), Peter Tinniswood (Tales from a Long Room, I Didn’t Know You Cared), Andy Hamilton (Drop the Dead Donkey, The Million Pound Radio Show), poet Roger Woddis – and Douglas Adams. The show was produced by Jonathan James-Moore.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts Page 28