The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  ARTHUR: Um – need a toothpick?

  SMELLY PHOTOCOPIER WOMAN: Nah. (Sucks teeth) Maggoty bit. Got it, thanks.

  FX: Photocopier stops.

  SMELLY PHOTOCOPIER WOMAN: (Unloads photocopier) Ah. There you go.

  ARTHUR: (Taking sheaf of paper, riffling through it) This is, er, this your advice, then, is it?

  SMELLY PHOTOCOPIER WOMAN: No. It’s the story of my life.

  ARTHUR: Oh, but I—

  SMELLY PHOTOCOPIER WOMAN: You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer can only be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you’ll see that I’ve underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make them stand out. They’re all indexed and cross-referenced. No need to check them now. All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I’ve taken, then maybe you won’t finish up at the end of your life – (Yells in his face) – in a smelly old cave like this!

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: As Arthur Dent absorbs this self-evident truth and a blast of halitosis that would make any self-respecting Bugblatter Beast book an urgent appointment with the one surviving oral hygienist on Traal, events elsewhere move on apace. It is important here to remember that in this collision of realities there are two Tricia McMillans in Arthur’s life. One – the girl he lost to Zaphod Beeblebrox at a party in Islington – is Trillian Astra, intergalactic court affairs correspondent for the Siderial Daily Mentioner. The other – blonder and more American – lives on the replacement Earth. She is Tricia McMillan, also a reporter. And although, in her particular reality, Tricia failed to leave that legendary party with Zaphod Beeblebrox, her chances of leaving the planet are about to take a belated turn for the better as she returns home from New York . . .

  INT. – TRICIA’S HOUSE

  FX: Futzed phone ring and pick up.

  MR BARTLETT: Hallo?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (On phone) Mr Bartlett, I’m back from New York and I was expecting to find the grass cut, and you haven’t touched it.

  MR BARTLETT: (Distort) Well, no, I didn’t want to mess up the evidence. Of the aliens.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: What do you mean, aliens? Illegal immigrants?

  MR BARTLETT: (Distorted) Space aliens, miss. They come down here, land on your lawn and then buzz off again, sometimes with your cat. Mrs Williams at the post office, her cat got abducted. They brought him back the next day but he were in a very odd mood. Sleeping a lot. Right off his fish.

  FX: Muffled sounds of spaceship landing outside, under:

  TRICIA McMILLAN: What’s that got to do with cutting the grass?

  MR BARTLETT: The marks on your lawn are exactly the sort that their landing pads would probably make.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Eric. Please come and cut my grass tomorrow.

  MR BARTLETT: I found a three-leaf clover there, too. Not a regular one with a leaf missing, but a genuine three-leaf.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Please?

  MR BARTLETT: I found a three-leaf clover there, too. Not a regular one with a leaf missing, but a genuine three-leaf.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Please?

  MR BARTLETT: All right. If I were you, though, I’d watch for signs of alien activity in the area. Particularly from the Henley direction.

  FX: Door bell, off.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Must go, someone at the door.

  FX: Phone hung up.

  FX: She goes to door, opens it. Spaceship FX up.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: McMillan? Ms Tricia McMillan?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Awestruck) Yes . . .

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We have been monitoring you. On TV.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: M-monitoring me? How?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: From the tenth planet from your sun. Your people call it – Rupert.

  GREBULON UNDERLING: (Beat) You look much smaller in real life.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  Music: Holy Lunching Friars chanting and burping . . .

  THE VOICE: The history of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of idealism, struggle, success, failure and enormously long lunch-breaks. Most of the surviving stories, however, speak of a founding editor called Hurling Frootmig, who established its fundamental principles of honesty and idealism, and went bust. There followed many years of penury and heart-searching, but then, after a chance encounter with the Holy Lunching Friars of Voondon (who claimed that just as lunch was at the centre of a man’s temporal day, and man’s temporal day could be seen as an analogy for his spiritual life, so lunch should (a) be seen as the centre of a man’s spiritual life, and (b) be held in jolly nice restaurants), he refounded the Guide; laid down its fundamental principles of honesty and idealism and where you could stuff them both.

  As a result the editorial lunch-break played a crucial part in the Guide’s history, since it meant that most of the actual work got done by whatever passing stranger happened to wander into the empty offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing. Shortly after this, the Guide was taken over by Megadodo Publications, of Ursa Minor Beta, thus putting the whole thing on a very sound financial footing, which allowed the fourth editor, Lig Lury Jr, to embark on lunch-breaks of such breathtaking scope that he never formally resigned his editorship, but left his office late one morning and has never since returned. Though well over a century has since passed, Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has merely popped out for a ham croissant and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon’s work.

  Thus Lig’s desk is still preserved the way he left it; with the addition of a small sign which says ‘Lig Lury Jr, Editor, Missing, presumed Fed’. But as time has passed, Ford Prefect and the few other researchers who stayed out in the field have gradually lost touch with the corporate nightmare the Guide has become. The current location of the Guide Building is Antwelm City, on the planet of Saquo-Pilia Hensha. Its editor-in-chief, Stagyar-zil-Doggo, is a dangerously unbalanced man who takes a homicidal view of contributors turning up in his office without pages of fresh, proofed copy. Thus high level of turnover is maintained in both the Editorial and Being Resources Departments. Ford Prefect has lately arrived here, and caught, reprogrammed and renamed one of the flying security robots to help him gain access to Stagyar’s office. By any means necessary.

  INT. – HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE CORRIDOR

  FORD PREFECT: Ready, Colin? After three.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: But—

  FORD PREFECT: Three!

  FX: He runs at the door, smashes it down, rolls across the room with a series of thumps.

  INT. – VANN HARL’S OFFICE

  VANN HARL: . . . Mr Prefect, I assume.

  FORD PREFECT: You’re not Stagyar. (Suspicious) But I do know you . . .

  VANN HARL: My name is Vann Harl.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: A delightful name it is too, sir.

  VANN HARL: What have you done to that security robot?

  FORD PREFECT: I’ve made it very happy. It’s a kind of mission I have. Where’s Stagyar? More to the point, where’s his drinks trolley?

  VANN HARL: Mr zil-Doggo is no longer with us. His drinks trolley is, I imagine, helping to console him for this fact. I am your new editor-in-chief. That is, if the organization decides to retain your services.

  FORD PREFECT: Organization? That word isn’t usually associated with the Guide.

  VANN HARL: Precisely our sentiments. Under-structured, over-resourced, under-managed, over-inebriated. And that was just the editor.

  FORD PREFECT: Tell you what. I’ll do the jokes.

  VANN HARL: No. You will do the restaurant column.

  FORD PREFECT: You what?

  VANN HARL: No. Me Vann Harl. You Prefect. Me editor. You restaurant column. Here—

  FX: Credit card dropped on desk.

  FORD PREFECT: (Impressed even for Ford) Mother of Krikkit . . .

  VANN HARL: A Dine-O-Charge card in your name. Expiry date two years from
now.

  FORD PREFECT: (Awestruck) This is the single most exciting thing I have ever seen in my life.

  VANN HARL: You’re drooling.

  FORD PREFECT: Sorry. Colin, towel . . .

  VANN HARL: Prefect. We at InfiniDim Enterprises—

  FORD PREFECT: (Dabbing) You at what?

  VANN HARL: InfiniDim Enterprises. We have taken over the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

  FORD PREFECT: Megadodo Publications is now called InfiniDim?

  VANN HARL: We spent millions on that name. Start liking it or start packing. The Galaxy is changing. We’ve got to change with it. A new technology for a new future—

  FORD PREFECT: Don’t tell me about the future. I’ve been all over it. Spend half my time there. It’s the same as anywhere else. Anywhen else. Whatever. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air.

  VANN HARL: That’s one future. You’ve got to learn to think multi-dimensionally. Limitless futures stretching out in every direction from this moment – and from this moment – and from this. Billions and billions of shining, gleaming futures! Um. . . I seem to be drooling now; can I borrow your towel?

  FORD PREFECT: Here.

  VANN HARL: Thanks. (Voice up again) Billions and billions of markets!

  FORD PREFECT: I see. So you sell billions and billions of Guides.

  VANN HARL: Try and keep up. We sell one Guide, billions and billions of times. We exploit the multidimensional nature of the Universe to cut manufacturing costs. And we don’t sell something with a plummy pompous pedagogue lecturing to penniless hitchhikers. What kind of positioning was that? The one section of the market that, more or less by definition, didn’t have any money? No! We sell a sultry Brantisvogan Escort Agency VIP vamp voice to the affluent business traveller and his vacationing wife in a billion different futures!

  FORD PREFECT: And you want me to be its restaurant critic.

  VANN HARL: If the quota permits.

  FORD PREFECT: (Suddenly) Aaarrgh! Kill!

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: I’d be delighted . . .

  FX: Colin zooms at Vann Harl, under—

  VANN HARL: Eek! Get it off me—!

  FORD PREFECT: (Shocked) Colin! No!

  FX: Clatter of chair toppling over. Thump of head on wall:

  VANN HARL: Get it off m— (Hits head on wall behind) Unf!

  FORD PREFECT: Er – release!

  FX: Colin stops, hovering.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Happily, he is unconscious. My circuits hum with joy! Shall I kill him as instructed?

  FORD PREFECT: No. No, it was a reflex action on my part. People who use words like ‘quota’ trigger it. Make me shout ‘Kill!’. But only rhetorically.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (A bit disappointed) I can kill him rhetorically if you’d prefer?

  FORD PREFECT: (Moving across to Harl) No. But we could just check his wallet while we’re here . . . First name, Zarniwoop. Where did I come across this suit before . . . ?

  FX: Ford riffles through Vann Harl’s wallet, under:

  FORD PREFECT: Let’s see if there’s a clue . . . cash . . . credit tokens . . . Ultragolf club membership . . . Photos of someone’s wife and family – presumably his own, but as a busy executive he might just rent them for weekends . . . Wait a minute – Ha!

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: An Ident-i-Eeze card. Can life get any better?!

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy explains the function of the Ident-i-Eeze card like this: there are so many different ways in which you are required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life can easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone. Never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous, physical universe. Just look at cashpoint machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant genetic analysis.

  Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. It is smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and semi-transparent. This encodes every single piece of information about you – your body and your life – into one all-purpose, machine-readable card that you can then carry around in your wallet. Thereby representing technology’s greatest triumph to date, over both itself and plain common sense.

  INT. – VANN HARL’S OFFICE

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: With Mr Vann Harl’s card, you can access any level in the building. I think I’m going into orgasm.

  FORD PREFECT: Colin. You want to stay happy?

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Ooh, yes yes, please yes . . . yes!

  FORD PREFECT: Then come down from the ceiling and do everything I tell you.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: I am quite happy hovering up here, thank you. I never realized before how much sheer titillation there was to be had from a good ceiling. I’ll be pleased to explore my feelings about ceilings in greater depth.

  FORD PREFECT: Stay there and you’ll be captured and have your condition chip replaced. So if you want to stay happy . . .

  FX: Colin floats down.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: (Deep sigh) My felicity is clouded by a pang of impassioned tristesse.

  FORD PREFECT: Whatever. Can you keep the rest of the security system happy for a few minutes?

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: One of the joys of true happiness is sharing. I brim, I froth, I overflow with—

  FORD PREFECT: OK. Just spread a little happiness around the security network. Don’t give it any information. Just make it feel good so it doesn’t feel the need to ask for any. Then show me where the Accounting Department is.

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Will this be fun?

  FORD PREFECT: It’ll be more than fun. It’ll be extremely froody . . . Great Zarquon – who rebuilt the door?

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: Oh, the offices are all nanobuilt now. Molecular bots live in the woodwork. They build each other, rebuild the door, disassemble each other and go back into the woodwork to await further damage.

  FORD PREFECT: Well, let’s not keep them waiting— (Effort) Urgh!

  FX: Door kicked down. He runs off, followed by Colin.

  INT. – TRICIA MCMILLAN’S HOUSE

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Gasping) Is that your spaceship on my lawn?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: Our scoutship, yes, Miss McMillan.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Are you . . . are you from . . . Zaphod?

  GREBULONS: (Concerned muttering) Where is Zaphod? Is it far from here? Which direction? We don’t know.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We don’t think so. Not as far as we know.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: You’ve been monitoring . . . me?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: All of you. Everything on your planet. TV. Radio. Computers. Video circuitry. Warehouses. Car parks. We monitor everything.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: How tedious.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: What are these?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Off) Umm – my music collection.

  GREBULON UNDERLING: Look – Elvis Sings Oasis.

  GREBULONS: Ooooh . . .

  TRICIA McMILLAN: You like Elvis Presley?

  GREBULONS: Some of your people think that Elvis has been kidnapped by space aliens.

  FX: Camcorder switched on, under:

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Last I heard, he was alive and well and living out his old age in Memphis. Mind if I video you?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: If you don’t mind us monitoring it.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: OK. Now tell me slowly and carefully who you are. You first. What’s your name?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: I don’t know.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: You don’t know.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: No.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I see. What about you other two?

  GREBULONS: We don’t know.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: OK. Where you are from? Why are you shaking your heads?

  GREBULON UNDERLING: We don’t know where we are
from.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We are on a mission.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: A mission. OK. To do what?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We do not know.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: So what are you doing here on Earth, then?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We have come to fetch you.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Why me?

  GREBULON UNDERLING: Because we have lost our minds.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Uh – I beg your pardon?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: We liked your interview with the astrologer. We are very interested in what the stars foretell. We thought stars might just be fissile gaseous bodies, but as our memories are blank we’ll believe whatever we like. And we like astrology much better. We follow our horoscopes, you see. They give us a purpose.

  GREBULON UNDERLING: Our ship was hit by a meteorite. Our memories were wiped. Our only remaining instructions were to land, and monitor, and . . .

  TRICIA McMILLAN: And what?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: The next bit is not clear yet. But our immediate problem is one of triangulation. Astrology is a very precise science. We know this.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Well—

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: But it is only precise for you here on Earth. So when Venus is rising in Capricorn, for instance, that is from Earth. How does that work if we are out on Rupert? What if the Earth is rising in Capricorn? It is hard for us to know.

  GREBULON UNDERLING: Amongst the things we have forgotten, which we think are many and profound, is trigonometry. You said you are an astrophysicist.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I was. Well, am really.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: You said astrology is not a science unless scientific methodology is applied to it. And that is what we would like you to come and do.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Let me get this straight. You want me to come with you to Rupert, to help you accurately calculate the relative positions of Earth and Rupert to help you work out your horoscopes?

  GREBULONS: Yes.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Pause) Do I get exclusive story rights?

  GREBULONS: Yes.

  FX: Camcorder off.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Wait here while I get my— No. Let’s just go.

  EXT. – HAWALION

  FX: Windy, high-up feel.