The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts

by Douglas Adams

  And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex, just to show her. And in one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a fairy cake, and in the other end he plugged his wife, so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

  To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock annihilated her brain, but to his satisfaction he realized he had conclusively proved that if life is going to exist in a Universe this size the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. And it is into this Vortex that Zaphod Beeblebrox has been put, and from which a few seconds later he emerges.

  ZAPHOD: Hi.

  GARGRAVARR: (Stunned) Beeblebrox. You’re . . .?

  ZAPHOD: Fine, fine. Could I have a drink please?

  GARGRAVARR: You have been in the Vortex?

  ZAPHOD: You saw me kid.

  GARGRAVARR: And you saw the whole infinity of creation?

  ZAPHOD: The lot, baby. It’s a real neat place, you know that?

  GARGRAVARR: And you saw yourself in relation to it all.

  ZAPHOD: Yeah, yeah.

  GARGRAVARR: And what did you experience?

  ZAPHOD: It just told me what I knew all the time. I’m a really great guy. Didn’t I tell you baby. I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox.

  GRAMS: JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER

  NARRATOR: Is it really true that Zaphod Beeblebrox’s ego is as large as the Universe?

  Does this actually have any bearing on anything else in the story, or indeed on anything else at all?

  Has everyone totally forgotten about the increasingly mysterious Zarniwoop, last heard of taking an inter-galactic cruise in his office?

  Is it worth hanging on to find out the answers to these exasperating questions? Find out in the next unedifying episode of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

  ANNOUNCER: Information about package holidays on the Frogstar can be found in the leaflet ‘Sun, Sand and Suffering on the Most Totally Evil Place in the Galaxy.’

  ZAPHOD: Hey, man, is that a piece of fairy cake? My stomach’s completely out to lunch. Mmmmmmm. Yeah.

  FOOTNOTES

  This show marked the start of the second series. The first series had been launched in a blaze of silence but the new series had the unusual distinction for a radio show of being on the front cover of the Radio Times. Douglas said he found the experience rather like running down the street stark naked (something I believe he has been known to do in the early hours of the morning).

  The pressures of having to live up to the first series help explain why it took three separate recordings to finish this episode, starting on 19 May 1979. Had the rest of the shows taken three recordings some of the cast would have been set up for life (or, being radio, a week) with the multiple recording fees they were receiving.

  The pressures on the production team were almost as strong, with the series scheduled to go out on Radio Four every night of the week from 21 January 1980, meaning that every programme had to be finished by 25 January.

  This first programme was previewed for the critics the week before transmission in a scene that rather recalled the five hundred and seventy third meeting of the colonization committee of the planet of Fintlewoodlewix in its smooth efficiency. For complicated reasons the BBC’s Press playback room is staffed by people who are almost, but not quite, technical staff and almost, but not quite, employed to look after hospitality. So while they knew a little bit about tape recorders they didn’t actually know how to work the one in the Press playback room, and while they brought a tray of drinks into the room they didn’t actually offer anybody one. In their efforts to get the highly sophisticated BBC playback machine to work several attempts were made to get it started by pressing the record button so it’s a miracle that the programme came out of the room without little gaps in the middle of it. A sort of sound was finally achieved through a small mono speaker in the corner of the room round which all the critics crowded, and it was an act of great charity on their part that they still managed to write very favourably about the show.

  David Tate was once more Eddie, as well as the Frogstar Prison Relation Officer and the sepulchral Valentine Dyall (who played Deep Thought on the first Hitch-Hiker’s record) was Gargravarr.

  The dramatic descent of the Heart of Gold and the accompanying earthquake were in fact made in a very mundane way. The earth cracking was essentially the sound of a tree falling down and the furious firing of the rockets was made by blowing a raspberry into the microphone.

  By telling Ford to ‘Put it there’ four times (a line, incidentally, ad libbed in recording) Zaphod suggest that a further addition has been made to his quota of arms.

  The Book’s towel speech was originally part of the other speech on towels in programme seven.

  To record the robot disco scene Zaphod and Roosta were fed loud rock music through their headphones in order to get the right level of projection, and the various robot disco girls were played by the other actors who were dotted individually around the microphone cupboard, corridors etc and later mechanically treated.

  The other worldly disco music was in fact the Bee Gees Staying Alive made in 7/4 time by cutting out a note every two bars, and then played backwards (some people might think this a distinct improvement on the original). It was made to sound deafeningly loud, without actually being deafeningly loud, by feeding it through a speaker in another room and then recording that.

  The basic voice treatment of Gargravarr was made from a flanger and tape echo (a technique first used ages ago by The Small Faces on Itchycoo Park), Two tape recorders are used, one of which is slightly out of synch, in order to give a swirling effect. Some of Gargravarr’s lines were repeated, being dotted around the stereo picture to help create the sense of a lack of physical presence. There is probably a very easy way of doing this, but we didn’t know it at the time and so just copied each line we wanted to repeat and then overlapped them.

  The basis of the Vortex itself was a synthesizer drone with a high pitched whooshing noise added, all put through the inevitable flanger. The impact noise was made by banging the insides of a very expensive Beckstein piano . . . an effect that had the additional benefit of a horrible scream caused by hitting the piano so hard that it knocked the strut away and the lid fell on my fingers.

  FIT THE NINTH

  In which our heroes have the chance to chew the fat with some old enemies and Arthur Dent has an unpleasant cup of tea.

  EDDIE: Man and machines share in the stimulating exchange of . . . aaargh.

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND

  NARRATOR: Having been through the Total Perspective Vortex Zaphod Beeblebrox now knows himself to be the most important being in the entire Universe, something he had hitherto only suspected. It is said that his birth was marked by earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, firestorms, the explosion of three neighbouring stars and, shortly afterwards, by the issuing of over six and three quarter million writs for damages from all the major landowners in his Galactic sector. However, the only person by whom this is said is Beeblebrox himself, and there are several possible theories to explain this.

  F/X: HEART OF GOLD BACKGROUND

  ARTHUR: Ford.

  FORD: Yeah?

  ARTHUR: He’s totally mad isn’t he?

  FORD: Well the border between madness and genius is very narrow.

  ARTHUR: So’s the Berlin Wall.

  FORD: The . . .??

  ARTHUR: Berlin Wall. The border between East and West Germany. It’s very narrow. The point I’m . . .

  FORD: Was very narrow. Get your tenses right.

  ARTHUR: Thank you.

  FORD: Anything wrong?

  ARTHUR: On Earth we have . . .

  FORD: Had.

  ARTHUR: Had . . . a word called tact.

  FORD: Oh yes?

  ARTHUR: Yes.

  FORD: And what happened to it?

  ARTHUR: Well, apparently it’s not in common usage.

  FORD: Not the word, the Eart
h.

  ARTHUR: You know very well. It got demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

  FORD: But that was all done away with centuries ago. No one demolishes planets anymore.

  ARTHUR: The Bogons did.

  FORD: Vogons. Odd that.

  ARTHUR: You mean . . .

  FORD: They had another reason? Could be. Probably not important though. I only bring it up because I’ve been watching the screen and there’s been a Vogon fleet five light years behind us for the last half hour. Where’s Zaphod?

  ARTHUR: A Vogon fleet?

  FORD: Yes. Where’s Zaphod?

  ARTHUR: He’s in his cabin signing photographs of himself. ‘To myself with frank admiration’. But why are the . . .

  FORD: Hey, Marvin.

  MARVIN: What do you want?

  FORD: Give Zaphod a yell will you?

  MARVIN: Ah. Mind taxing time again is it?

  FORD: Just get on with it.

  MARVIN: I’ve just worked out an answer to the square root of minus one.

  FORD: Go and get Zaphod.

  MARVIN: It’s never been worked out before. It’s always been thought impossible.

  FORD: Go and . . .

  MARVIN: I’m going. (As he goes) Pausing only to reconstruct the whole infrastructure of integral mathematics in his head, he went about his humble task, never thinking to ask for reward, recognition or even a moment’s ease from the terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side. Fetch Beeblebrox they say, and forth he goes . . .

  F/X: HIS FADING VOICE IS CUT OFF BY THE CLOSING DOOR

  DOOR: Glad to be of service.

  ARTHUR: (Sympathetically) Don’t you think we should do something for him?

  FORD: We could rip out his voice box for a start.

  ARTHUR: What are you in such a mood about?

  FORD: I’m worried about them.

  ARTHUR: The Bogons?

  FORD: The Vogons. Yes.

  GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND

  NARRATOR: Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons. His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects. Not that he ever went swimming of course. He was the way he was because billions of years ago, when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the planet’s virgin shores . . . when the first rays of the bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the forces of evolution had simply turned away in disgust and given up on them there and then. They never evolved again: they should never have survived.

  The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick willed slug brained stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? – they said to themselves – Who needs it? And what nature refused to do for them they simply did without until such time as they were able to rectify the grosser anatomical inconveniences with surgery. Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder.

  They brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees which the Vogons cut down and burnt the crab meat with; elegant gazelle like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.

  Thus the planet Vogsphere passed the miserable millenia until by an unhappy chance the Vogons discovered the secret of interstellar travel. Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis cluster – the political hub of the Galaxy – and now form the immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service.

  They have attempted to acquire learning, they have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty seven thousand scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from their native planet and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits with iron mallets. Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz is a fairly typical Vogon in that he is thoroughly vile.

  VOGON: Is that definitely the ship?

  VOGON 2: Affirmative captain. We have confirmed positive identification.

  VOGON: Don’t answer back!

  VOGON 2: What?

  VOGON: I said don’t . . .

  VOGON 2: But I was just answering your . . .

  VOGON: Don’t interrupt!

  VOGON 2: I wouldn’t dare captain.

  VOGON: Yes you would, you just did. You dare to lie to me!

  VOGON 2: No captain.

  VOGON: Don’t contradict me!

  VOGON 2: I didn’t captain, I . . .

  VOGON: Well you did just then.

  VOGON 2: What?

  VOGON: I said . . .

  VOGON 2: I didn’t mean to captain, I . . .

  VOGON: Don’t interrupt! Guard!

  GUARD: Captain?

  VOGON: Take this object away and shoot it.

  GUARD: Shoot him captain?

  VOGON: Don’t question my orders!

  GUARD: Of course not captain, I wouldn’t dream of it.

  VOGON: You dare to patronize me!

  GUARD: No captain, honestly, I . . .

  VOGON: When you’ve shot the prisoner . . .

  GUARD: Yes captain?

  VOGON: Shoot yourself.

  GUARD: Myself? But . . .

  VOGON: Then throw yourself out of the nearest airlock.

  GUARD: Yes captain. At once captain.

  F/X: DOOR CLOSES BEHIND HIM

  VOGON: (Raising his voice) I will not have this insubordination in my crew. The next peep out of any of you, you all get it in the neck. Is that understood? . . . Well?

  GENERAL : Yes captain.

  FRIGHTENED VOGON: VICIOUS ZAPS AND SCREAMS FROM THE VOGONS AS THEY ALL COLLAPSE DYING

  (Peace descends again)

  VOGON: Computer! (Pause) Computer?

  COMPUTER: (Nervous little voice) Er . . . yes captain?

  VOGON: Get me a long distance sub-ether line to my brain care specialist.

  COMPUTER: At once captain.

  F/X: ELECTRONIC SWITCHING

  GAG HALFRUNT: (Distort) (He’s German remember) Ah, hello Captain Prostetnic. And how are we feeling today?

  VOGON: I appear to have wiped out half my crew.

  GAG HALFRUNT: So you appear to have wiped out half your crew have you?

  VOGON: That’s what I said.

  GAG HALFRUNT: So that’s what you said is it?

  VOGON: That is what I said.

  GAG HALFRUNT: I see. So that is what you said is it?

  VOGON: Yes.

  GAG HALFRUNT: So your answer to my question ‘that is what you said is it?’ is yes.

  VOGON: (Firmly) Yes.

  GAG HALFRUNT: I see. Well this is very interesting.

  VOGON: Mr Halfrunt, I have just wiped out half my crew.

  GAG HALFRUNT: So you’ve just wiped . . .

  VOGON: Yes!!

  GAG HALFRUNT: Well this too is very interesting.

  VOGON: Well?

  GAG HALFRUNT: I think this is probably perfectly normal behaviour for a Vogon. The natural and healthy channelling of aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence, the . . .

  VOGON: That is exactly what you always say.

  GAG HALFRUNT: Well I think that is probably perfectly normal behaviour for a psychiatrist. Excellent. We are clearly both very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today. Now tell me – what news of the mission?

  VOGON: We have located the ship.

  GAG HALFRUNT: Good, and the occupants?

  VOGON: The Earthman . . .

  GAG HALFRUNT: Yes.

  VOGON: The Prefect, Being and . . .

  GAG HALFRUNT: Yes?

/>   VOGON: Zaphod Beeblebrox.

  GAG HALFRUNT: Ah. This is most regrettable.

  VOGON: A personal friend.

  GAG HALFRUNT: Ah, no. In my profession we never make personal friends.

  VOGON: Professional detachment.

  GAG HALFRUNT: No. We just don’t have the knack. But Beeblebrox you see is my most profitable client.

  VOGON: Is that so?

  GAG HALFRUNT: Oh yes. He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts. Ach, it will be a pity to lose him. But you – you are feeling well adjusted to your task?

  VOGON: To make sure there are no survivors from the planet Earth? Yes, this time there will be no failure.

  GAG HALFRUNT: Good. But first there’s a small financial matter I must deal with, then when I give the order, destroy the ship.

  MARVIN: And Beeblebrox?

  GAG HALFRUNT: Well, Zaphod’s just this guy you know?

  (Fade out)

  F/X: FADE UP: HEART OF GOLD BACKGROUND

  F/X: DOOR OPENS

  DOOR: Glad to be of service

  ZAPHOD: Hi guys.

  FORD: Zaphod, there’s a Vogon fleet on our tail. They’re coming up on us.

  ZAPHOD: I can relate to that. The guys just want to be close to me I guess. I’ll turn my charisma down a notch. They’ll soon get bored and drift away.

  ARTHUR: It looks like a battle formation.

  ZAPHOD: Hey! Didja hear that!

  FORD: What?

  ZAPHOD: The monkey spoke! Pure history, man, a talking monkey!

  FORD: Just ignore it Arthur.

  ARTHUR: Ignore what? I’m going to get some tea.

  F/X: DOOR

  DOOR: Thank you.

  ZAPHOD: Battle formation hey?

  FORD: Yes.

  ZAPHOD: Neat. Computer!

  EDDIE: Hi there! We going to have a conversation?

  ZAPHOD: No. You’re going to tell me what those Vogons want and how they’re armed.

  EDDIE: Then shall we have a conversation?

  ZAPHOD: What?

  EDDIE: According to my programming, in the evening leisure periods the crew will like to relax and enjoy pleasant social activities with the wide range of shipboard robots and computers. Man and machine share in the stimulating exchange of . . . aaaaaghh!