but it comes close - there's a complicated but dependent
relationship), so what we were doing was completely out of line
with what normally happens.
"As much as anything, we were actually having to invent the
process by which we worked, because nobody was doing multi-
track recording, electronic effects, and so on. We went about it
the wrong way at the beginning, simply because we didn't know,
and then, as we began to understand it, we evolved a way to do it.
It wasn't simply doing it the wrong way and finding the right
way, it was more dependent on when we were able to get bits of
equipment - we didn't have any 8-track recorders to begin with,
and the final version didn't come about until we had an 8-track
tape recorder. After a while, I took more of a back seat, because
everyone knew how to do it, but I was always there, just sticking
my oar in and making trouble."
Geoffrey Perkins tells a slightly different story, explaining
that, "Douglas was thrown out of the director's cubicle from
about halfway through the first series onwards, because he'd get
quite excited about putting bits and pieces into scenes. You'd just
finish a scene and he would say, `I've been thinking. . . we should
go back and do it again.'
"`Why?'
"`Because I think we should have something going Bloobledoo-
bledoobledooblebloobledoobleblob! in the background. . .'
"We used to mix the programmes and cut them down, which
wasn't a great way to do it because everything had music and
effects behind it. I started off in the early programmes asking
what we should cut, and he'd come back with a list of odd words
here and there (`the's and `and's and `but's and things) and we
couldn't do that. He'd say, `But there's nothing else I want to
cut!' In the end I stopped asking him. So I can come across as the
vandal of the programme."
Douglas Adams had found a natural foil in Geoffrey Perkins,
and the ideal Hitchhiker's producer. Perkins is currently nowhere
near as well known as he should be for his work as a writer-
peformer in Radio 4's seminal comedy RadioActive and BBC2's
KYTV. He is smaller than Douglas Adams, wears spectacles with
brightly coloured frames, and is a perfectionist. He was probably
the only Radio 4 producer who would spend two days simply
getting a sound effect right, and one of the few people who could
bully, exhort and cajole scripts out of Douglas, and get them
almost on time.
The show was something very different. In the past (and
today, for that matter) as a rule a radio comedy show is rehearsed
in an afternoon, recorded in front of an audience that evening,
then edited the following day before being broadcast. Not only
was Hitchhiker's not recorded in front of an audience (as
Geoffrey Perkins has pointed out, all they would have seen was
an empty stage, a number of actors hiding in cupboards, and
some microphone leads), it was put together with almost lapidary
detail, using (albeit in a somewhat Heath Robinson fashion) the
miracles of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, lots of tape, and
scissors.
Douglas Adams says of Perkins's role, "As producer on a
show of that kind, he was a very crucial and central part of it.
When I was writing the script, he was the person I would go and
argue with about what I was going to have in it and what I
wasn't. I'd do the script and he'd say, `This bit's good and that
bit's tat.' He'd come up with casting suggestiorls. And he'd come
up with his own ideas about what to do with bits that weren't
working. Like throw them out. Or suggestions about how I
could rewrite. I'd be guided by him, or by the outcome of the
argument.
"One of Geoffrey's strengths is that he is very good at
casting. In some cases, I had very specific ideas about casting, and
in other cases I had none. Where I had ideas we'd follow them or
argue, and I'd win or he'd win. When we were in production I'd
be there, but at that point it was very much a producer's show.
"The producer gives instructions to the actors, and generally
if you have anything you want to say, or suggestions or
disagreements or points you want to make, then you'd say it to
Geoffrey, and he'd decide whether or not to ignore it. Vary rarely
do you as a writer actually start giving instructions to the actors;
it's protocol. To be honest, I'd sometimes step over it, but you
can't have more than one person in charge. When I wrote the
script I was in charge, but when it was made, Geoffrey was in
charge, and the final decisions were his, right or wrong. But we
rapidly arrived at a working relationship there. Sometimes we'd
get very annoyed at each other, and sometimes we'd have a really
terrific time - it's exactly the sort of working relationship you
would expect."
Perkins says of his involvement with Hitchhiker's, " It's
really impossible to say how much involvement I had in the
story. We used to have meetings and talk grand designs - abortive
plots which never quite worked out. It's a blur of lunches. I
changed gerbils to mice because Douglas's ex-girlfriend kept
gerbils..."
The first episode casting had been done by Douglas with
Simon Brett, crucial casting since it involved the roles of Arthur
Dent, Ford Prefect and The Book.
The making of the series is covered so well by Geoffrey
Perkins's notes in the Original Radio Scirpts book that it seems
redundant to cover the ground again. (Go out and buy a copy of '
the book if you want to know what happened - you'll get two
introductions, lots of notes, and the complete texts of the first
two radio series. Well, almost complete. There are bits in this
book that aren't in there. But you've already got this book.) (This may prove problematical as the Radio Srripts book is currently out of print.)
The BBC were unsure what they had on their hands: a
comedy, without a studio audience, to be broadcast in stereo; the
first radio science fiction since Journey into Space in the 1950s;
half an hour of semantic and philosophical jokes about the
meaning of life and ear-inserted fish? They did the only decent
thing and put it out at 10.30 on Wednesday evenings, when they
hoped nobody would be listening, with no pre-publicity, and
expected it to uphold Radio 4's reputation for obscurity.
They were undoubtedly surprised when it didn't. After the
first episode was broadcast, Douglas went into the BBC to look
at the reviews. It was pointed out to him that radio almost never
got reviews, and that an unpublicised science fiction comedy
series was less likely to get reviews than the shipping forecast.
That Sunday, two national newspapers carried favourable reviews
of the first show, to the amazement of everybody except Douglas
and the listeners.
The series rapidly began to pick up a following, accumulating
an enormous audience chiefly by word of mouth - people who
liked it told their friends. Scienc
e fiction fans liked it because it
was science fiction(In addition to its other awards, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was placed second in the 1979 Hugo Awards for best dramatic presentation, losing to Superman 1. The awards were made at thc World SF Convention, held that year in Brighton, England. When the awards announcements were made, the crowd hissed thc winner and cheered Hitchhiker's. Christophcr Reeve, collecting the trophy, suggested that the awards had been fixed, whereupon a roar of agreement went up in the hall. It is a safe bet that if a few more Americans had heard of the show then it would have won); humour fans liked it because it was funny, radio fans got off on the quality of the stereo production;
Radiophonics Workshop fans doubtless had a great time ("They talk a lot about the `wizardry of the Radiophonies Workshop' but ninety-five pereent of the first series was natural sound. And I had no idea about sound... at the end of the fourth episode I had the most wonderful explosion- the whole episode built up to it. It sounded magnificent in the studio. Then when it was broadexst the compression hit it and cut most of it out" - Geoffrey Perkins.); and
most people liked it because it was accessible, fast, and funny.
By the time the sixth episode had been broadcast, the show
had become a cult.
While the first four episodes were written by Douglas on his
own, the last two were not. This came about in the following
manner: Douglas had sent off the pilot script for Hitchhiker's to
the Dr Who script editor earlier in the year, hoping to get a
commission out of it to do some scripts. The commission came
through; unfortunately, it came through at the same time that the
six episodes of Hitchhiker's were commissioned, which meant that
as soon as Douglas Adams had finished the first four episodes of
Hitchhiker's he had to write the four episodes of a Dr Who story,
The Pirate Planet.
As a result, he was facing deadline problems with the final
two episodes of Hitchhiker's; he knew how Episode Six ended,
but he had "run out of words". In addition, he had just been made
a radio producer. He turned to his ex-flatmate, John Lloyd, for
help.
Lloyd remembers: "It's odd, but Hitchhiker's was always
liked. That's the funny thing about it. It never had to struggle at
all. Douglas struggled to write it, though; it took him about nine
months to write the first four episodes. But everyone, from the
first day, thought it was great - and the department was very
conservative at the time. Anyway, after nine months Douglas was
getting desperate, as he'd caught up with the deadline (and passed
it, as is his wont) and they'd already started broadcasting. They
were already up to programme two or three, and finally Douglas
despaired.
"He rang me up and said, `Why don't you do this with me?
I think what Douglas had wanted was to prove he was a writer in
his own right. In the past he had done all this stuff and people had
said, `It's Chapman (or whoever)'. But now he had proved it.
"He'd just started on the fifth episode when I came in.
"I'd been working for a couple of years on a silly science
fiction book of my own, that had tons and tons of chapters, all
unconnected, and I dumped it on his lap and said, `Is there
anything here you think might make a scene or two?'
"So we sat in the garage I was using for a study at that time
and wrote the fifth episode together more or less line by line.
Things like the `three phases of civilisation' and the Haggunenon
Death Flotilla, who evolved into different creatures, we sat down
and worked it out word by word. It was actually incredibly
quick, although very painstaking. Then I was busy on production
for Episode Six, so although he used stuff I wrote for it, he really
put the whole thing together.
"The pressure was fantastic. We were writing it hours before
it was due to be recorded. (Later on, in the second series, things
got really silly: he was writing during the recording.)
"Having written the thing, that was more or less it, and it had
been great fun. As Douglas said, it was a tremendous relief for
him not to have to do it on his own, and we both enjoyed it, and I
didn't think that much about it. It was just a job, and we'd
written together before.
"By the broadcast of the first three or four episodes the place
had gone absolutely mad. I think six publishing companies rang
up, and four record companies (which is extraordinary with radio
- usually by the time you've done six series of thirteen episodes
people have just about heard of it). Hitchhiker's just went
whoosh! And Douglas and I were getting on tremendously well,
and were tremendously excited. When the first publisher called
we went out and bought a bottle of champagne. It was so
exciting. We were going to do the book together. And then
Douglas had second thoughts.
"He decided he had to do it on his own - he felt the first
four episodes were different in kind, and that the last two,
although enjoyable enough, didn't have the same sense of
loneliness and loss and desperation that characterises Hitchhiker's
in a funny way. Like Marvin, who Douglas says is Andrew
Marshall, but there is a big chunk of Douglas as well. The thing
about Hitchhiker's is the wonderful bittersweet quality he gets in.
The thing is terribly sad at certain points, it really means
something. And I think that he felt that the other two episodes
were light by comparison."
Douglas Adams's version of these events is essentially the
same: "After the Dr Who episodes I was absolutely wiped out.I
knew roughly what I wanted to do in the last two episodes so I
asked John if he'd help and collaborate, and we wrote together a
bit of the Milliways sequence and the Haggunenon section. And
then after that I took over and did the B - Ark stuff and the
prehistoric Earth stuff."
The Haggunenon sequence from Episodes Five and Six is
omitted from all later versions of the story (replaced by Disaster
Area's stunt ship), although it has been used in some of the
theatrical adaptations of the show.
Douglas Adams on the casting for the radio series:
PETER JONES
That was very curious. We didn't know who to cast. I
remember saying that it should be a Peter Jonesey voice, and
who could we get to do a Peter Jonesey voice? We thought of
all sons of people - Michael Palin, Michael Hordern, all kinds
of people. Eventually Simon Brett's secretary got very annoyed
hearing us talking on and on like this and not spotting the
obvious. She said, "What about Peter Jones?" I thought, "Yes,
that would be a way of achieving it, wouldn't it?" So we asked
Peter, he was available, and he did it.
Peter was extraordinary. He always affected not to
understand what was going on at all. And he managed to
transmute his own sense of "I don't know what this is about"
into "I don't understand why this happened", which was the
keynote of his performance. He's great to work with, a very
talented guy. He's never had the recognition he should have had.
He's terribly good.
He rarely met the other actors at all, because he'd be doing
his bits completely separately. It was like getting session
musicians in on a multi-track rock album, sitting alone in a
studio doing the bass pan.
STEPHEN MOORE
He was Geoffrey Perkins's suggestion. I had no idea who to
suggest for Marvin. A wonderful actor, absolutely brilliant. Not
only did he do Marvin so well, but whenever I had a character
that I didn't have enough clues about, or didn't know how it
should be played, we'd say, "Let's give it to Stephen and see
what happens."
Stephen would find the character immediately and would
make it really excellent. One of my favourite things that he did
was the Man in the Shack - I knew what the character said,
and why he said it, but I had not the faintest idea of how he
would sound or what son of a voice he would have.
MARK WING-DAVEY
The thing that made me think of him for Zaphod was a pan he
had in Glittering Prizes. He played a guy who was a film and
television producer who always took advantage of people and
was very trendy. He did that so well I thought he would be
good for Zaphod.
DAVID TATE
He was one of the backbones of the series. He can do any voice:
he could, if he wanted to, be a very successful actor. He's
deliberately chosen to be just a voice. He's remarkable. In
Hitchhiker's he played a large number of pans and always got
them spot on. He played Eddie, he played the disc jockey
`broadcasting to intelligent life-forms everywhere', he played
one of the mice, one of the characters in the B - Ark. We had
him there every week.
RICHARD VERNON
He's so funny. He carved himself a niche playing all sons of
grandfatherly elderly types - Slartibartfast in Hitchhiker's.
He's not actually as old as he appears. I originally wrote that
pan with John Le Mesurier in mind.
SUSAN SHERIDAN
It's funny, Trillian was never that well-rounded a pan. Susan
never found anything major to do with the role, but that wasn't
her fault, it was my fault. A succession of different people have
played Trillian in different ways. It's a weak pan and that's the
best I can say. She was a delight to work with.
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