The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  ROB McKENNA: Help yourself.

  ARTHUR: Thanks.

  FX: Click.

  PETER DONALDSON: (Distorted) And David discovers evidence of reverse-temporal engineering in Brian Aldridge’s past . . . and just before news of the continuing situation in London, The McMillan Report returns next week to BBC1.

  FENCHURCH: Continuing situation?

  ROB McKENNA: Yeah, haven’t you heard the news?

  FENCHURCH: We’ve been in California.

  (Here Tricia self-idents)

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Distorted, under Arthur/Fenchurch at first) Gail Andrews was astrologer to the Good and the Great in Hollywood, and is now consultant to the White House, her name high on the list of Special Advisers to the President of the United States. This week I’m in New York asking, in the wake of the Damascus bombing, what role does stargazing play in the formation of US foreign policy? The first exclusive, interview with Gail Andrews. Hard news; where it happens in The McMillan Report next Tuesday, with me, Tricia McMillan.

  FX: Time signal and Radio 4 news intro, under:

  ARTHUR: Good grief . . . Tricia McMillan?

  ROB McKENNA: Phwoar . . . there’s a photo of her in the Sun – coming out of some club in New York . . .

  FX: Newspaper.

  ARTHUR: Good grief . . . Trillian! But blonde.

  ROB McKENNA: She can try on my galoshes anytime . . .

  FENCHURCH: (Low, to Arthur) Wasn’t Trillian the name of the girl you met . . . up there?

  ARTHUR: (Low, puzzled) Yes . . . but this one’s American.

  ROB McKENNA: Oh, she’s English by birth. Still lives here, I think. Worked over there too long, probably.

  CHARLOTTE GREEN: (Distorted, under above, on radio) BBC Radio 4. The News, with Charlotte Green. There has been an emergency session of Parliament to debate the imposition of a state of National Emergency, following the arrival of the huge flying saucer which landed on Knightsbridge three days ago.

  ARTHUR: What?

  CHARLOTTE GREEN: (Distorted) The Home Secretary has issued a bulletin urging the public to remain calm and to keep clear of the immediate area. Meanwhile, the pattern of pub riots across West London seems to have died down, though reports are coming in of an isolated incident last night in the buffet car of a Great Western express train.

  ARTHUR: Oh dear. Pub riots. Buffet cars. It’s a familiar pattern.

  FENCHURCH: What?

  CHARLOTTE GREEN: In a separate development, speaking from the pile of rubble that was Harrods, Nathan—

  FX: Click. Radio off.

  FX: Lorry comes to halt. Air brakes.

  ROB McKENNA: We’re here.

  FENCHURCH: That’s very kind of you, Mr McKenna. Arthur, this is your cottage, is it?

  ARTHUR: What? Uh, yes. Thank you.

  FX: Door opens.

  EXT. – ARTHUR’S HOUSE – DAY

  FX: Lorry leaves.

  FENCHURCH: (Off, cheerfully) Thank you!

  FX: Nearer us, keys fumbling in front-door lock.

  ARTHUR: (To self) Hm. Just as I thought. The front-door lock’s been picked.

  FENCHURCH: (Approaching) Everything all right?

  ARTHUR: Erm – yes . . . tell you what, can you pop to the shop and get some milk and bread? I’ll, er – put the kettle on.

  FENCHURCH: (Going off) Sure.

  ARTHUR: (To self) . . . after I’ve found out how drunk our guest is . . .

  INT. – ARTHUR’S HOUSE

  FX: Door opens with a creak. Cautious footsteps.

  ARTHUR: Hallo . . . ?

  FORD PREFECT: (Snoring, off)

  ARTHUR: Of course. Ford, wake up. And get your shoes off the coffee table!

  FORD PREFECT: Hm? Oh, hallo, Arthur. (Yawns and stretches, then:) Have you the faintest idea how hard it is to tap into the British phone system from the Pleiades? I can see that you haven’t, so I’ll tell you over the very large mug of black coffee that you are about to make me.

  ARTHUR: (Placidly, moving off) You’d better come into the kitchen, then.

  FX: Kettle on. Kitchen foley under:

  FORD PREFECT: (Entering) I’m a little space-lagged.

  ARTHUR: (Fills kettle, coffee ingredients, etc.) You look as if you’ve been sleeping in a corridor for a month. One that doesn’t get hoovered.

  FORD PREFECT: I have been. And before that I was on a scoutship of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, from where I was trying to get a BT operator to help me, but they keep asking you where you’re calling from and you tell them Letchworth and they say you couldn’t be, coming in on that circuit. What are you doing?

  ARTHUR: Making you black coffee.

  FORD PREFECT: (Oddly disappointed) Oh. What’s this?

  ARTHUR: Rice Krispies.

  FORD PREFECT: And this?

  ARTHUR: Paprika.

  FX: Cereal box drops.

  FORD PREFECT: The boxes don’t stack up very well. What was I saying?

  ARTHUR: About not phoning from Letchworth.

  FORD PREFECT: Ah yeah. You know how I hate those smug Sirius Cybernetics salesmen. Slick-suited creeps of the cosmos, flogging computer operating systems that crash more often than aircars built on the Friday shift. They have persuaded the universe that if it doesn’t continually upgrade itself at enormous expense it has no right to call itself froody. This guy was on a five-year mission to seek out and explore strange new worlds, and tell them to Share and Enjoy his overhyped bloatware. Where’s that coffee!

  ARTHUR: I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.

  FORD PREFECT: Use the hot tap! (Wandering off into the other room) Ah. I have now remembered what I did next. I saved civilization as we know it. I knew it was something like that. So there I was . . .

  FX: Foreground, Arthur finishes making the coffee. In the background Ford is yelling and destroying a living room chair, indistinctly.

  ARTHUR: (Anxiously) I can’t hear what you’re saying . . . Ford? What are you doing? (He moves off) I’ve got your coffee . . .

  INT. – ARTHUR’S LIVING ROOM

  FX: Crashing noises, just coming to a stop.

  ARTHUR: (Entering) Oh, for goodness’ sake. That was a perfectly good chair.

  FORD PREFECT: (Annoyed) Where have you been?

  ARTHUR: Making some coffee.

  FORD PREFECT: You missed the best bit! You missed the bit where I jumped the guy! Now I’ll have to jump him all over again! Yeurgh!

  FX: Ford demolishes another chair.

  ARTHUR: That also was a useful chair. Slightly worn but perfectly serviceable.

  FORD PREFECT: (Sullen) First time was better.

  ARTHUR: I see. And, er, what are all the ice cubes for?

  FORD PREFECT: What? You missed the suspended-animation facility! That’s where I put the guy. Well, I had to, didn’t I?

  ARTHUR: So it would seem.

  FORD PREFECT: Don’t touch that!!!

  ARTHUR: But it’s off the hook.

  FORD PREFECT: I know. But listen to it.

  SPEAKING CLOCK: (Distorted) . . . one thirty-five p.m. and ten seconds . . . beep beep beep . . .

  ARTHUR: It’s the speaking clock.

  FORD PREFECT: Beep, beep, beep, is exactly what is being heard all over that guy’s ship, while he sleeps, in the ice, going slowly round a little-known moon of Sesefras Magna. The London speaking clock!

  ARTHUR: I see. (Pause) Why?

  FORD PREFECT: Why? With a bit of luck the phone bill will bankrupt the buggers!

  ARTHUR: Oh. (Hangs it up) I’ve really had enough of phones. Keeps ringing and ringing and just when I get to it, it stops.

  FORD PREFECT: Ah. Sorry. That was me. Wanted to see if you’d found out the Earth had suddenly reappeared. In the end I assumed you had because you didn’t meet me in the bar in Han Dold City. Which had the virtue of being a lot less boring than helping the people of the planet Krikkit learn how to bowl a leg-over, but was, in fact, a dump.

  ARTHUR: Leg-spinner. And I’m not surprised. Now – regret thoug
h I may the answer . . . how did you get here?

  FORD PREFECT: (Plonks onto the sofa) Where’s the cassette player? Ah. Here – I taped it for you.

  FX: Click. Cassette on. News actuality:

  PETER DONALDSON: The flying saucer was decribed as ‘coming down with a complete disregard for anything beneath it including a large area of Knightsbridge, which it has flattened.’ It is estimated to be nearly a mile across, with a hatchway which crashed down through the Harrods Food Halls, demolishing Harvey Nichols. After some time an immense silver robot, a hundred feet tall, emerged:

  FX: Three huge footsteps (under end of that):

  XAXISIAN ROBOT: (It’s huge) I come in peace. (Grinding noises, then:) Take me to your lizard.

  FX: Click. Cassette off.

  FORD PREFECT: Dramatic arrival, don’t you think?

  ARTHUR: You stowed away aboard that robot’s ship?

  FORD PREFECT: Yes.

  ARTHUR: ‘Take me to your lizard’?

  FORD PREFECT: It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see.

  ARTHUR: What? A world of lizards?

  FORD PREFECT: No. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people. They use brainwashing. Reality TV, lifestyle magazines, the usual stuff.

  ARTHUR: If it’s a democracy, why don’t people get rid of the lizards?

  FORD PREFECT: It honestly doesn’t occur to them. They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want, so they go back to watching TV.

  ARTHUR: You mean they actually vote for the lizards?

  FORD PREFECT: Oh yes, of course.

  ARTHUR: But why?

  FORD PREFECT: Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?

  ARTHUR: But that’s terrible.

  FORD PREFECT: Listen, bud, if I had an Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say, ‘That’s terrible,’ I wouldn’t be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin. But I haven’t and I am. Anyway, what have you gone all placid and moon-eyed for? Are you in love?

  ARTHUR: Yes, as a matter of fact.

  FX: Front door opens, off.

  FORD PREFECT: With someone who knows where the gin bottle is? Do I get to meet her?

  FENCHURCH: (Entering living room) Arthur, Arthur . . . Hallo—?

  FORD PREFECT: Hi. Where’s the gin? What happened to Trillian?

  ARTHUR: Er, this is Fenchurch—

  FORD PREFECT: Like the station?

  FENCHURCH: Not really.

  FORD PREFECT: Oh yeah, I remember now, Trillian, she went off to be a reporter. Got a kid now, I think.

  ARTHUR: (Despite himself) Good grief . . . where from?

  FORD PREFECT: Oh, Zaphod, probably. He’s calmed down a lot since those high-altitude heroics over Krikkit. His psychiatrist says at least one of his heads is now saner than an emu on acid.

  ARTHUR: Perhaps the effect of all those Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters has finally worn off.

  FORD PREFECT: Doubt it. He’s still obsessed he was right about something very important and somebody called Zarniwoop can prove it. He’s going to—

  FENCHURCH: Arthur, who is this?

  ARTHUR: Ford Prefect. I may have mentioned him in passing.

  FENCHURCH: Not passing anything memorable. (To Ford) Did you arrive on that spaceship?

  FORD PREFECT: Certainly did.

  FENCHURCH: Can you get us on board?

  EXT. – LONDON STREET – DAY

  FX: Crowds hubbubbing. Occasional police sirens. Suitable sound effects like news actuality to run under the following:

  NICK CLARKE: The World at One. This is Nick Clarke with thirty minutes of news and comment, coming to you live from the BBC’s commentary position in Knightsbridge, behind the crowd barriers, within sight of the immense silver saucer. The giant robot returned here last night from the beach at Bournemouth and now appears to be about to depart. With me is the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore . . . Patrick, what do you make of the scene before us?

  SIR PATRICK MOORE: Well, Nick, the immediate perimeter is fenced off and patrolled by tiny flying robots. Staked out around that is the army who, in turn, are surrounded by a cordon of police – though whether they are there to protect the public from the army or the army from the public, or to guarantee the ship’s diplomatic immunity and prevent it getting parking tickets, we just don’t know.

  NICK CLARKE: Thanks, Patrick. Well, the story so far certainly is strange enough; the robot stood here for three days and nights after its arrival, we think now waiting for a deputation of lizards. Several politicians thought to have lizard-like characteristics were sent to parley with the robot but were fried by the flying arc-welding kits which defend this area. That resulted in the almost complete annihilation of the Cabinet and many Opposition MPs. A turning point did seem to come when a crack team of flying wire-strippers discovered the Zoo in Regent’s Park, and most particularly the reptile house.

  SIR PATRICK MOORE: Yes, Nick, some of the larger iguanas were brought to the giant silver robot, who tried to conduct high-level talks with them, but to no avail. One of the rivet guns found a pet shop with some lizards, but it instantly defended the shop for democracy so savagely that little in the area survived.

  NICK CLARKE: Immediately afterwards the flying tools constructed an immense gantry which bore the robot south to the seafront at Bournemouth, where it announced it had been led to expect one of the most exciting places on any world in the known Galaxy and was very disappointed.

  SIR PATRICK MOORE: It was, of course, by far the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Bournemouth. Not that the robot was, in fact, doing anything but lying on the beach.

  NICK CLARKE: Yes – on its face. Yesterday a journalist from the local paper did manage get a list of questions for the robot to one of the flying screwdrivers. They were: ‘How do you feel about being a robot?’, ‘How does it feel to be from outer space?’ and ‘How do you like Bournemouth?’ Almost immediately it returned here to London. This morning we’ve heard grindings and rumblings from within the saucer; there’s a tense, expectant atmosphere here among the crowd. What next, do you think, Patrick?

  SIR PATRICK MOORE: Very, very, difficult to say. The tense expectation among the crowd is probably due to the fact that they tensely expect to be disappointed. This wonderful extraordinary thing has come into their lives, and now it’s simply going to fly off without them, largely through their inability to kill it.

  INT. – LONDON TAXI

  ARTHUR: (Fumbling about) Have you got a pencil?

  FENCHURCH: (Rummaging in rucksack) I did have – trouble is I’ve packed so many towels in here . . .

  ARTHUR: You really shouldn’t listen to Ford.

  FENCHURCH: (Finds pen) Ballpoint. (Click) How reliable is he?

  ARTHUR: How reliable is Ford Prefect? Hah! How shallow is the ocean? How cold is the sun? Still, there’s always a first time. Now what was it . . .

  FENCHURCH: What was what?

  ARTHUR: Ah. Yes. (Writes) . . . Quentulus Quazgar Mountains. Sevorbeupstry. Planet of Preliumtarn. Sun – Zarss. Galactic Sector QQ7 Active J Gamma.

  FX: Crowd and siren sounds audible outside.

  FENCHURCH: And God’s Final Message to His Creation is there?

  ARTHUR: Fenchurch. You’re sure you want to do this.

  FENCHURCH: It’s the only clue we’ve got. If it’s the same message I had in that cafe in Rickmansworth, I want to know what it was.

  TAXI DRIVER: (Off) This is as close as I can get, guv, it’s chokker.

  ARTHUR: Then we’ll get out here, thanks.

  EXT. – LONDON STREET – DAY, CONTINUOUS

  FX: Bullhorn announcements, ‘nothing to see’ etc.

  ARTHUR: (Pushing through) Looks like the army and police have
moved back. But how are we going to get through this crowd to that ship?

  FX: Robot ship ramp rising.

  FENCHURCH: We’re too late. The ramp’s going up.

  ARTHUR: (To self, cynical) Typical Ford—

  FX: The crowd stirs. A megaphone is heard.

  FORD PREFECT: (Through megaphone) All right, you people! Hold it!

  ARTHUR: Everything at the last minute.

  FORD PREFECT: (Through megaphone) There has been a major scientific break-in! Through. Breakthrough!

  ARTHUR: What’s in his shopping trolley?

  FORD PREFECT: Stand back, everybody!

  FX: Electronic thumb deployed.

  FENCHURCH: What’s that thing he’s got with lights on? A gun?

  FX: Robot ship ramp lowers again.

  ARTHUR: An electronic Thumb.

  FENCHURCH: What?

  ARTHUR: Half the electronic engineers in the Galaxy are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming hitchhiker Thumbs, while the other half are constantly trying to find fresh ways of jamming the jamming signals.

  FENCHURCH: It worked. The ramp’s coming back down.

  ARTHUR: Not for long enough.

  FORD PREFECT: (Off, yells) Quick, Arthur, Fenchurch!

  ARTHUR: (Yells) We’ll never get to the ramp! Too many people in the way!

  FORD PREFECT: (Yells) Yes, you will— (Through megaphone, flinging phones) Come and get ’em! Offworld duty-free mobile phones! Latest Sirius Cybernetics models, all with novelty ringtones! Share and Enjoy!

  FX: Crowd furore. Novelty ringtone cacophony.

  FX: Ford, Arthur and Fenchurch pelt up the steel ramp, which closes up beneath them.

  INT. – ROBOT SHIP – CONTINUOUS

  FX: Running ship sounds. Muffled ringtones fade. Flying ratchet screwdrivers zip past.

  ARTHUR: (Breathless, over din) I take it all back. I take back everything I ever said to deny you are a thieving amoral scoundrel.

  FORD PREFECT: I didn’t know you bothered.

  ARTHUR: I don’t.

  FENCHURCH: Grab something – we’re moving—

  EXT. – LONDON STREET – DAY, CONTINUOUS

  FX: Crowd gasps and some screams as the robot ship leaps off the ground. As it roars away the ringtones remain. Dip, for:

  NICK CLARKE: (Off air) Actually, Patrick, that phone’s my lucky colour. Want to swap for this one?