FOR MOST OF THE REST OF THE SERIES.
ZAPHOD: (DAZED.) What the photon happened?
- Draft script for Episode Three (unused).
******************************************************
It was all too easy for Douglas to give Zaphod Beeblebrox an
extra arm and an extra head during the radio series. No one ever
saw him; it was a one-off throwaway line. But if one has the
televisual task of transforming this into something that works on
the screen one thanks one's lucky stars that Douglas did not give
Beeblebrox five heads, or fifty...
Unable to find a bicephalic actor (or at least, one who could
learn his lines), the BBC resorted to Mark Wing-Davey, Zaphod
on radio, and built him an animatronic head and an extra arm
(mostly stuffed, but occasionally, when all hands needed to be
seen to be working, the hand of someone behind him, sticking an
extra arm out, as can be seen quite clearly in the Milliways
sequence of Episode Five).
********************************************************
ASTONISHINGLY ENOUGH, ONE WALL OF
THE BRIDGE APPEARS TO GIVE DIRECTLY
OUT ONTO QUITE A LARGE SUNNY
PATIO, WITH GRASS, A DECKCHAIR, A
TABLE WITH A LARGE BRIGHTLY
COLOURED SUNSHADE, EXOTIC
FLOWERS AND SO ON. SEATED IN THE
DECKCHAIR WITH A DRINK IS AN
EXTRAORDINARY LOOKING MAN. HE
HAS TWO HEADS. OBVIOUSLY ONE OF
THESE IS GOING TO BE A FAKE UNLESS WE
CAN FIND AN ACTOR PREPARED TO
UNDERGO SOME VERY EXOTlC SURGERY.
THE REAL HEAD AND THE FAKE HEAD
SHOULD LOOK AS FAR AS POSSIBLE
ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL: ANY
SHORTCOMINGS IN THE REALISM OF THE
FAKE HEAD SHOULD BE MATCHED BY
THE MAKE-UP ON THE REAL ONE. THE
FAKE SHOULD HAVE AN ARTICULATED
MOUTH AND ARTICULATED EYES.
- Draft TV script for Episode Two.
****************************************************
There was a problem with Zaphod's head. It looked false, and
stuffed, and stuck there. This is not because it was a less than
sterling piece of special effects work (although it wasn't that good),
but also because things went wrong, and even when they didn't
the batteries tended to run down in rehearsals, so by the time a
scene was filmed, the head just lolled around expressionlessly. As
Douglas Adams says, "It was a very delicate mechanism, and it
would work wonderfully for 30 seconds and then break down or
get stuck and to get it working properly you'd have to spend an
hour taking it apart and putting it back together again, and we
never had that hour so we fudged as best we could."
As Mark Wing-Davey remembers, "The difficulty with the
television series for me was Alan Bell (who we all know and
love). I don't think he wanted the original members of the radio
show at all, because he wanted the freedom to pick and choose a
bit, but we were supposed to have first option so we came in and
read for it. They didn't want any input from me on the way the
character would look (I'd visualised him as a blonde beach bum).
I quite liked the final design, but I refused to wear the eyepatch
- I said, `Give the other head the eyepatch, because I'm not
having one! It's hard enough acting with another head, but with
one eye as well...' (This was decided after the initial animation had been done, so the Zaphod graphics in Episode One sport two eyepatches. Come to that, in the graphics of Episode One Arthur Dent doesn't have a dressing gown...)
"The other head was heavvvvvy. Very heavy. I was wearing
armour plating made of fibre glass, and because I wanted to be
able to alternate the two right arms I had a special cut-out.
"There was a little switch hidden in the circuitry of my
costume which switched the head on and off. We were under
such pressure in the studio that occasionally I forgot to switch it
on, so I'm acting away and it's just there. It cost f3,000 by the
way - more than me!"
Costume design for the series was primarily the responsibility
of Dee Robson, a veteran BBC designer with a penchant for
science fiction. It was she who designed Ford Prefect's precisely
clashing clothes - based on what could be found in the BBC's
wardrobes, and it was she who gave Zaphod Beeblebrox yet
another additional organ: examining the costume worn by Mark
Wing-Davey reveals two trouser flies (one zipped, one buttoned)
and, Dee's original costume notes explain, Zaphod has a "double
crotch, padded to give effect of two organs. "
As Mark Wing-Davey explained, "I said to wardrobe, you've
seen Mick Jagger in those tight trousers - make me a pair. So I
had these nine inch tubes down the front of the trousers for
filming. When we got into the studio Dee came up to me to say
she was `worried about those... things. I thought they might be
a bit obvious, so I've cut them down to six inches.'"
One of the most famous costumes, however, was Arthur
Dent's: a dressing gown, over a pair of pajamas. The dressing gown
first appeared in the books following the television series: there is
no mention of what Arthur is wearing in the first two books. That
Arthur remained in the dressing gown throughout the TV series
was Alan Bell's idea: Douglas had written a sequence on board the
Heart of Gold in which the ship designed Arthur a silvery jump-
suit. The whole sequence was scrapped, and Alan ensured that
Arthur stayed in his dressing gown. As Bell explained, "What was
special about Arthur was that he was in a dressing gown. Silver
jump-suits are what they wore in Star Wars."
Alan J.W. Bell is a BBC Light Entertainment director and
producer; having worked on such shows as Maigret and
Panorama as a film editor, he won a BAFTA award for Terry
Jones's and Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns, a BAFTA nomination
for the long-running geriatric comedy Last of the Summer Wine,
and a Royal Television Society Award for Hitchhiiker's.
I met him initially in his office at the BBC, which still
contains a number of items of Hitchhiker's memorabilia. It's a
show he is proud of, and has many fond memories of. On his
desk was a small plastic fruit machine which he urged me to try. I
pulled the handle, but nothing happened; it should have squirted
me with water. Alan pointed out to his secretary that it was her
job to keep it filled, and we began the interview: this was BBC
Light Entertainment.
"The first time I heard of Hitchhiker's was in a bar
somewhere - I was asked if I'd heard it on the radio. I hadn't, so
I listened to it, and I thought it was marvellous, inspired stuff, but
there was no way it could be done on TV. It was all in the mind,
all in the imagination.
"So about three months later I was asked to do it, and I said
that I thought it couldn't be done, but they said `We're going to
do it!', so that was it. I had to do it.
"Now, I work for Light Entertainment, not Drama (who do
Dr Who and have experience of things like this), and w
e had no
idea what the budgeting would be. All I could do was put down
what I thought it would cost, and I was out by thousands of
pounds. For the first episode, for example, we had to throw away
$10,000 of model shots of spaceships, because they wobble, and
they looked like models. That first episode was about $40,000
over budget, which is vast in TV terms. But it had to be done
right. Otherwise it would have been awful."
The first episode of Hitchhiker's was made very much as a
pilot, and Alan Bell presented it to the heads of department at the
BBC. Some of them didn't like it. They didn't understand it, nor
for that matter did they realise it was meant to be funny. And the
cost of the first episode = over $120,000 - was about four times
as much as an equivalent episode of Dr Who.
In order to demonstrate the humour of the show, Alan Bell
arranged for a laugh track. This was done by assembling about a
hundred science fiction fans in the National Film Theatre, playing
them the first episode, and taping their reaction. As a warm-up to
this a ten minute video was played, featuring Peter Jones reading
hastily felt-penned cue cards in a bewildered fashion, assuring the
audience that Zaphod Beeblebrox would be in the next episode,
and, with the ubiquitous Kevin Davies, demonstrating the use of
the headphones.
This is Peter Jones's only on-screen appearance in the
Hitchhiker's television series.
The audience loved the show, laughed on cue and generally
had a good time, and while the BBC hierarchy had agreed that the
next five episodes should be made (although they were made for
more like $40,000 a show - one reason why the sets begin to get
a little rudimentary towards the end), it did not insist on a laugh
track. This was undoubtedly a good thing.
As Bell remembers, "The first episode was only a pilot, but
by the time we had got half-way through, they had already
commissioned the series, but we still didn't know the resources
that would be required because all we had to go on were the radio
scripts.
"When we'd finished it, the Powers That Be thought that the
viewers wouldn't know that it was comedy unless we added a
laughter track. So we hired the National Film Theatre and
showed it on a big screen and gave all the audience headphones so
they could hear the soundtrack nice and clearly, and they laughed
all the way through. It did help that that audience was composed
of fans..."
While much of the casting was the same on television and
radio, there were a few variations.
"I wanted to keep everyone from the radio series, but
sometimes people's voices don't match their physical appearance.
"For example, I wanted someone for Ford Prefect who
looked slightly different, and when I saw Geoffrey McGivern I
thought he looked too ordinary. Ford should be human but
slightly unnerving, so we looked around for someone else. My
secretary (It should be noted that most of the really important pieces of casting in Hitchhiker's seem to have been done by secretaries. Whether this phenomenon is unique to Hitchhiker's, or whether it is extant throughout the entertainment industry has not been adequately investigated, at least, not by me.) suggested David Dixon. He was great, but I thought
we'd change the colour of his eyes and make them a vivid blue, so
we got special tinted contact lenses which looked marvellous in
real life, but when it came to television the cameras just weren't
sensitive enough to pick up on it - except in the pub scene at the
beginning.
"Sandra Dickinson got the part of Trillian after we had
interviewed about 200 young ladies for the role. None of them
had performed it with the right feelings. The girl had to have a
sense of humour. And then Sandra Dickinson came in and read it
and made the lines more funny than any other actress who'd done
an audition. "
Sandra Dickinson was a surprising choice for Trillian; the
character was described in the book as a dark-haired,
dark-complexioned English woman; Sandra played it (as indeed
she is in real life) as a small blonde American with a squeaky
husky voice. As Douglas Adams said of her, "She could have
done a perfect `English Rose' voice, and looking back I think
perhaps we should have got her to do it. But it was such a relief to
find someone who could actually read Trillian's lines with some
humour, and give the character some life, that we just had her do
it as herself, and not change a thing."
Another surprise casting came with Episode Five: Sandra's
husband, Peter Davison, the fifth and blandest Dr Who. He
played the Dish of the Day, a bovine creature which implores
diners to eat it. As Alan Bell explains, "Sandra came to me and
said that Peter wanted to play a guest part in Hitchhiker's and she
suggested the Dish of the Day. I said, `You cannot put Peter
Davison in a cow skin', but she said, No, really he wants to do
it!'. I said OK, and we booked him. We didn't pay him star
status; he just did it for the fun of it. And he played it very well."
Early on in the press releases for Hitchhiker's, great play was
made of the fact that they would not be filming in the quarries
and gravel pits in which Dr Who has always travelled to distant
planets. And they wouldn't have any of the plastic rocks that
made Star Trek's alien worlds so strangely unconvincing.
Instead, they would go abroad. Iceland, perhaps. Or Morocco.
The Magrathean sequences, one was assured, would be filmed
somewhere exotic.
Alan Bell: "Douglas wanted us to film the Magrathean
sequences in Iceland. So I looked up the holiday brochures, and it
was very cold and there weren't any hotels of any note, but I had
been to Morocco years before and I remembered there was a part
of Morocco that was very space-like. We went to look, but we
had so much trouble getting through customs - without cameras
- and we met a Japanese film crew who said, `Don't come
because they deliberately delay you so you'll spend more money!'
- they'd had all their equipment impounded for three weeks.
"So we ended up in this rather nice clay pit in Cornwall,
where we also did the beach scenes: Marvin playing beach ball
and Douglas going into the sea."
Most of the cast and crew have memories of the Cornish clay
pit. Some of them have to do with the fact that there were no
toilets down there. Others have to do with David Learner, the
actor inside Marvin, who, due to the length of time it took to get
in and out of the Marvin costume, was abandoned in the clay pit
during the occasional rain showers during filming, protected from
rust by an umbrella.
Prehistoric Britain was filmed in the Lake District, during a
cold snap, which meant that Aubrey Morris (playing the Captain
of the B - Ark, in his bath), and the extras clad in animal skins
who played the pre-Golgafrincham humans, were all frozen to
the bone, and spent all their time when not on camera bundled u
p
in blankets and drinking tea.
The other interesting location was that of Arthur's house-
discovered by Alan Bell while driving, lost, around Leatherhead.
(The gate, which is all one sees knocked down by a bulldozer,
was built especially).
It was while the pub scenes at the beginning were being
filmed that the union troubles began for Hitchhiker's - the
precise nature of which no one seems clear on anymore, but
which apparently involved a trip to the pub by some members of
the cast and crew which might have been recreational, but which
the union representatives assumed was professional, and as such
they felt they should have been invited, or something.(The story changes according to who you talk to and I never really understood any of the versions. I also had the impression that nobody telling me quite understood their version either. This is one of the few examples of woolly reporting in an otherwise excellent book, and should not be counted against it.)
The computer room at the end of Episode Four (the Shooty
and Bang Bang sequence) was actually filmed on Henley Golf
Course. "We wanted somewhere near at hand which we could
build and blow up", Alan Bell remembered. "It was just
sufficiently out of London that we could warn the locals that if
they heard a bang at two in the morning, don't pay any attention
to it - it's only us! You can't see it on the show, but it's actually
raining into the set - it was open at the top."
Union problems continued when the filming returned to the
studios: "The Milliways set was actually the biggest set they've ever
put into the BBC's biggest studio. The unions said they wouldn't
put the set in, and we had to cut bits out, which was a pity.
"But the way we filmed it you never saw it all at once
anyway, just parts at a time. My reason for that was that. . . well,
if you've ever watched a variety show, they'll spend all their
money on a set, the singer sings, the camera pulls back, and you
see the set. And song after song you see the set, and you get
bored with it.
"So I said, when we do Hitchhiker's we'll leave things to
people's imaginations, so even though we had this huge set there
isn't one shot where you see it all. Only parts of it, because then
you think it's even bigger than it is. You never see the edges of it.
"Things got very rushed toward the end. The series was
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