The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  F/X: HE IS CUT OFF BY THE DOOR HUMMING CLOSED

  VOGON: (To himself)‘. . counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor . . .’ Huh, death’s too good for them.

  F/X: CROSSFADE TO FORD AND ARTHUR STRUGGLING AS THEY ARE DRAGGED DOWN A CORRIDOR

  ARTHUR: Ow, let go of me you brute!

  FORD: Don’t you worry, I’ll think of something.

  VOGON GUARD: (Shouting: see the Coarse Actor’s Guide to Space Ship Guards) Resistance is useless!

  ARTHUR: I woke up this morning and thought I’d have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog . . . it’s now just after four in the afternoon and I’m already being thrown out of an alien spaceship five light years from the smoking remains of the Earth!

  FORD: All right, just stop panicking.

  ARTHUR: Who said anything about panicking? This is still just culture shock. You wait till I’ve settled down in the situation and found my bearings a bit. Then I’ll start panicking.

  FORD: Arthur, you’re getting hysterical, shut up!

  VOGON GUARD: (Still shouting) Resistance is useless!

  FORD: You can shut up as well!

  VOGON GUARD: Resistance is useless!

  FORD: Oh give it a rest . . . do you really enjoy this sort of thing?

  VOGON GUARD: Resistance is . . . What do you mean?

  FORD: I mean does it give you a full satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships?

  VOGON GUARD: Well, the hours are good.

  FORD: They’d have to be.

  VOGON GUARD: But now you come to mention it . . . uppose most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except some of the shouting I quite like. (Shouts) Resistance is . . .

  FORD: Sure, yes, you’re good at that, I can tell. But if it’s mostly lousy then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The leather? The machismo?

  VOGON GUARD: Well . . . er, I don’t know, I think I just sort of . . . do it really.

  FORD: There Arthur, you think you’ve got problems . . .

  ARTHUR: Yeah, this guy’s still half throttling me . . .

  FORD: Yeah, but try and understand his problem. Here he is, poor lad, his entire life’s work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships . . .

  VOGON GUARD: And shouting . . .

  FORD: . . . and shouting, sure . . . and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it.

  ARTHUR: Sad. (Followed by suppressed grunt of pain)

  VOGON GUARD: Well, now you put it like that I suppose . . .

  FORD: Good lad . . .

  VOGON GUARD: But all right, so what’s the alternative?

  FORD: Well, stop doing it of course.

  VOGON GUARD: Mmmmmmmmmm . . . well, doesn’t sound that great to me.

  FORD: Now wait a minute, that’s just the start. There’s more to it than what you see . . .

  VOGON GUARD: No, I think if it’s all the same to you I’d better just get you both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other bits of shouting I’ve got to do.

  FORD: But come on .. . now look (Renewed struggling)

  ARTHUR: Ow, stop that . . !

  FORD: Hang on, there’s music and art and things to tell you about yet! Aaggh!

  VOGON GUARD: (Shouting) Resistance is useless! (Less shouty) You see, if I keep it up I can eventually get promoted to senior shouting officer, and there aren’t usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I’d better stick to what I know. But thanks for taking an interest. ’Bye now.

  ARTHUR: Stop, don’t do it.

  FORD: (Desperate) No, listen, there’s a whole world you don’t know anything about . . . here, how about this . . . ‘Da da da Dum’ (First bar of Beethoven’s Fifth) Doesn’t that stir anything in you?

  F/X: AIRLOCK DOOR OPENS

  VOGON GUARD: ‘Bye, I’ll mention what you said to my aunt.

  F/X: AIRLOCK DOOR CLOSES

  FORD: Potentially bright lad I thought.

  ARTHUR: We’re trapped now, aren’t we?

  FORD: Errrrr . . . yes, we’re trapped.

  ARTHUR: Well, didn’t you think of anything?

  FORD: Oh yes, but unfortunately it rather involved being on the other side of the airtight hatchway they’ve just sealed behind us.

  ARTHUR: So what happens next?

  FORD: The hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a moment, and we’ll shoot out into deep space and asphyxiate in about thirty seconds.

  ARTHUR: So this is it. We’re going to die.

  FORD: Yes . . . except . . . No! Wait a minute, what’s this switch?

  ARTHUR: What? Where?

  FORD: No, I was only fooling. We are going to die after all.

  ARTHUR: You know, it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.

  FORD: Why, what did she tell you?

  ARTHUR: I don’t know, I didn’t listen.

  FORD: Huh! Terrific.

  F/X: CLICK HUM WHHHOOOOOSHHHHHHH AS THE AIRLOCK DOOR OPENS AND THEY ARE EXPELLED. THE SOUND DOESN’T SO MUCH FADE AS ‘EMPTY’ BECAUSE SOUND DOESN’T CARRY IN A VACUUM AND SO IT GETS DISPERSED WITH THE ESCAPING AIR

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND MUSIC

  NARRATOR: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a truly remarkable book. The introduction starts like this: ‘Space’, it says, ‘is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the street to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space. Listen . . .’ And so on.

  . . . After a while the style settles down a bit and it starts telling you things you actually need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion caused by ten million visiting tourist a year, that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.

  In the entry in which it talks about dying of asphyxiation thirty seconds after being thrown out of a spaceship it goes on to say that what with space being the size it is, the chances of being picked up by another craft within those seconds are two to the power of two hundred and sixty seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against which, by a staggering coincidence was also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he entirely failed to get off with. Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have all now been demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are in some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were in fact rescued.

  F/X: POSITIVE MONTAGE OF SOUND. AIRLOCK DOOR OPENING AND THEN CLOSING. RUSH OF AIR. (GASPING AND GURGLING FROM FORD AND ARTHUR) THIS IS OVERLAID WITH THE SOUND OF SEVERAL ELECTRONIC COMPUTER VOICES CHATTERING SEMI-COMPREHENSIBLY SAYING THINGS LIKE ‘Infinity minus two seconds, Infinity minus four seconds, Infinity minus four seconds . . . Alien body intake at entry bay two. High Improbability Factor . . . checking. Improbability Co-efficient Infinity minus one. Co-efficient factorable. Factorise! Alien life forms carbonbased. Intake sector Galactic Co-ordinate ZZ9 plural z alpha . . .’

  THIS IS REALLY A WILD FLURRY OF SOUND WHICH QUICKLY DIES AWAY INTO THE BACKGROUND, AS THE DIALOGUE BEGINS. SOON AFTERWARDS A SLOW QUIET WASH OF SOUND BUILDS UP BEHIND THE VOICES, PARTLY REFLECTING WHAT THEY SAY THEY CAN SEE AROUND THEM, BUT ALSO WITH MANY RANDOM ELEMENTS WITH AN UNREAL DREAMLIKE QUALITY, NOT UNLIKE PARTS OF REVOLUTION NO. NINE FROM THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM. ALL THE SOUNDS CHANGE IMPERCEPTIBLY BEFORE IT’S REALLY POSSIBLE TO HEAR EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE, SO FOR INSTANCE THE SOUND OF THE WASHING OF SEA WAVES COULD ALMOST BE ASTHMATIC BREATHING INSTEAD, AND THE SOUND OF TRAFFIC IN THE STREET COULD AL
MOST BE GALLOPING HOOVES BUT ISN’T

  (NB: It’s worth spending a little time getting the tape right because it will be useful on occasions in the future.)

  FORD: (Gasping) There . . . you . . . are. I told you . . . I’d think of something . . .

  ARTHUR: Oh, sure. (Gasp)

  FORD: Bright idea . . . of mine . . . to find a . . . passing spaceship . . . and get rescued by it . . .

  ARTHUR: Oh come on . . . the chances against it were astronomical.

  FORD: Don’t knock it . . . it worked . . . Now . . . where are we?

  ARTHUR: Well I hardly like to say this, but it looks like the sea front at Southend.

  FORD: God I’m relieved to hear you say that.

  ARTHUR: Why?

  FORD: Because I thought I must be going mad.

  ARTHUR: Perhaps we weren’t rescued after all. Perhaps we died.

  FORD: What’s that meant to mean?

  ARTHUR: When I was young I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend.

  FORD: Perhaps we’d better ask somebody what’s going on. How about that man over there?

  ARTHUR: The one with the five heads crawling up the wall?

  FORD: Er . . . yes (Only a suspicion of doubt in his voice)

  ARTHUR: Sir, excuse me, er . . . excuse me . . .

  F/X: (ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE!) WILD TRUMPETING AND BELLOWING LIKE AN ELEPHANT OR SOMETHING

  ARTHUR: You know, if this is Southend, there’s something very odd about it . . .

  FORD: You mean the way the sea stays steady as a rock and the buildings keep washing up and down? Yes, I thought that was odd . . .

  F/X: A GIRL’S VOICE CUTS THROUGH THE INCREASINGLY DREAM-LIKE QUALITY OF EVERYTHING GOING ON. THERE IS A SLIGHT P.A. QUALITY TO IT, BUT IT IS VERY CLEAR AND PROJECTED. THE GIRL’S NAME IS TRILLIAN

  TRILLIAN: Two to the power of one hundred thousand to one against and falling . . .

  ARTHUR: What was that?

  FORD: Sounds like a measurement of probabilit . . . hey that couldn’t mean . . . no.

  ARTHUR: What?

  FORD: I’m not sure, but it means we definitely are on some kind of spaceship.

  ARTHUR: Southend seems to be melting away . . . the stars are swirling . . . a dust bowl . . . snow . . . my legs drifting off into the sunset . . . hell my left arm’s come off too, how am I going to operate my digital watch now? Ford, you’re turning into a penguin, stop it.

  TRILLIAN: Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling . . .

  FORD: (Shouting. There is a very slight quack to his voice) Hey, who are you? Where are you? What’s going on and is there any way of stopping it?

  TRILLIAN: Please relax, you are perfectly safe.

  FORD: That’s not the point! The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!

  ARTHUR: It’s all right, I’ve got them back now.

  TRILLIAN: Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling.

  ARTHUR: Admittedly, they’re longer than I usually like them, but . . .

  FORD: Isn’t there anything you feel you ought to be telling us?!

  TRILLIAN: Welcome to the Starship Heart of Gold. Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill-effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against, possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway, thank you. Two to the power of twenty thousand to one against and falling.

  FORD: Arthur, this is fantastic, we’ve been picked up by a ship with the new Infinite Improbability Drive, this is really incredible, Arthur . . . Arthur, what’s happening?

  F/X: LOUD GIBBERING OF MONKEYS

  ARTHUR: Ford, there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND

  NARRATOR: The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a few seconds, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood, and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’s under-garments simultaneously leap one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy. Many respectable physicists said that they weren’t going to stand for that sort of thing, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn’t get invited to those sort of parties. Another thing they couldn’t stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible. Then one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: if such a machine is a virtual impossibility then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, then feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea and turn it on. He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after infinite improbability generator out of thin air. It startled him even more when, just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness, he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smartass.

  TRILLIAN: Five to one against and falling . . . four to one against and falling . . . three to one . . . two . . . one . . . Probability factor of one to one . . . we have normality . . . I repeat we have normality . . . anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem. Please relax. You will be sent for soon.

  ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX: Who are they, Trillian?

  TRILLIAN: Just a couple of guys we picked up in open space. Sector ZZ9 plural Z alpha.

  ZAPHOD: Yeah, well that’s a very sweet thought, Trillian, but do you really think it’s wise under the circumstances? I mean here we are on the run and everything, we’ve got the police of half the Galaxy after us and we stop to pick up hitch-hikers. OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, eh?

  TRILLIAN: Zaphod, they were floating unprotected in open space . . . you didn’t want them to die did you?

  ZAPHOD: Well, not as such no, but . . .

  TRILLIAN: Anyway I didn’t pick them up. The ship did it all by itself.

  ZAPHOD: What . . .?

  TRILLIAN: Whilst we were in Improbability Drive.

  ZAPHOD: That’s incredible.

  TRILLIAN: No, just very, very improbable. Look don’t worry about the aliens, they’re just a couple of guys I expect. I’ll send the robot down to check them out. Hey, Marvin . . .

  MARVIN: (Lugubrious robot voice) I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.

  ZAPHOD: Oh God . . .

  TRILLIAN: (Nicely) Well here’s something to occupy you and keep your mind off things.

  MARVIN: It won’t work, I have an exceptionally large mind.

  TRILLIAN: Marvin!

  MARVIN: All right, what do you want me to do?

  TRILLIAN: Go down to number two entry bay and bring the two aliens up here under surveillance.

  MARVIN: Just that?

  TRILLIAN: Yes.

  MARVIN: I won’t enjoy it.

  ZAPHOD
: She’s not asking you to enjoy it – just do it will you?

  MARVIN: All right, I’ll do it.

  ZAPHOD: Good . . . great . . . thank you.

  MARVIN: I’m not getting you down at all am I?

  TRILLIAN: No, no, Marvin, that’s just fine, really.

  MARVIN: I wouldn’t like to think I was getting you down.

  TRILLIAN: No, don’t worry about that, you just act as comes naturally and everything will be fine.

  MARVIN: You’re sure you don’t mind?

  ZAPHOD: No, no, it’s all just part of life.

  MARVIN: Life! Don’t talk to me about life.

  F/X: MARVIN EXITS. DOOR HUMS SHUT

  TRILLIAN: I don’t think I can stand that robot much longer, Zaphod.

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND

  NARRATOR: (Music under) The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines robot as ‘Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with’. The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as a ‘bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes’ with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications for anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that fell through a Time Warp from a thousand years in the future defined the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as a ‘bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.’

  FORD: I think this ship is brand new Arthur.

  ARTHUR: How can you tell? Have you got some exotic devices for measuring the age of metal?

  FORD: No, I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. ‘The Universe can be yours . . .’ Ah, and look, I was right . . . ‘Sensational new breakthrough in improbability physics. As the ship’s drive reaches infinite improbability, it passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously. You select your own re-entry point. Be the envy of other major Governments’. This is big league stuff.