Forty years of that wholly remarkable book...

 

Revisiting The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I think it’s safe to refer to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a phenomenon: one that has embraced pretty well every enterainment medium since its humble debut on BBC radio forty years ago: LP, television, film (eventually), stage show, video games and novels. I may be alone here, but down the decades since its inception, I’ve ignored most of that mass of media iterations in favour of the original medium, in which the majority of its ideas and gags still come across most effectively.

I was a couple of years late coming to Hitch-Hiker’s... the original radio series having been broadcast several times before I first tuned in; and the first series that I heard was in fact the second, broadcast across a single week in January 1980 (these days we’d say ‘stripped’, a term not in use back then). I’d been aware of the programme prior to this, via the listings in Radio Times, which were often accompanied by retro-futurist Barney Bubbles-style graphics. It ticked two boxes that should have immediately appealed to me: science fiction, and comedy, and I’d even read the programme descriptions – although this may have served as something of a deterrent: after all, what kind of a series included characters with such stupid names as ‘Zaphod Beeblebox’? (as I initially misread it).

So why had I not tuned in? The answer to that question is simple (and not 42): radio. Not that I didn’t listen to the radio: far from it. My diaries attest to the fact that I often listened to various repeats of classic radio comedy, as well as contemporary editions of series like I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and Just a Minute. But I was far from being a regular listener, and only did so at specific times of day: lunchtimes and, occasionally, early evenings. The first broadcast of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy went out at 10.30 in the evening: a time at which radio listening was, for me, somehow inconceivable. Indeed, the late evening scheduling may well have been problematic for other listeners, for the series was immediately repeated in the more accessible slot of 11am on Sunday mornings. Yet still I didn’t tune in. Nor again in November of that same year, when a third repeat began on Wednesday evenings at 8.15. Three broadcasts in the space of a year was almost unheard of, and a clear indication of the huge impact the first series had made. But not on me. Not yet, anyway.

In fact, it was only in response to a request for audio recordings that I tuned in to series two on its first outing in January 1980. A guy with whom I’d been corresponding on the subject of Gerry Anderson had asked me if I could record the second series when it went out: he lived in Holland where the broadcasts could not be received in good enough quality. As it transpired, I wasn’t able to provide very good quality copies myself, since I did not possess a decent tape recorder at the time. Our back room hi-fi was the only system in the house equipped with a radio (apart from a near-defunct valve radiogram that lived in my brother’s bedroom), and the ‘Fidelity’-branded unit, though offering stereo reception, did not include a cassette deck (you can see the exact same model in Bob and Thelma’s living room in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads). With the broadcasts going out in stereo, I had to resort to recording them from the monaural Medium Wave transmissions, and on reel-to-reel tape, which somewhat diminished the listening experience, but meant that I was able to employ the primitive method of placing a microphone in front of a single speaker, without losing half the audio. I could tell the guy wasn’t too impressed with this, but I wasn’t about to go out and buy a new hi-fi system just so he could have pristine stereo recordings. 

Radio 4 followed the pattern previously established by the first series of Hitch-Hiker’s... and a Sunday morning repeat of series two began about a month later, when I was finally able to tune in in stereo. It sounded much better that way, but even in mono, on Medium Wave, I’d been hooked. In its favour, series two did start on a particularly strong episode, somewhat untypical of the series as a whole with its focus on Zaphod Beeblebrox, and his encounter with the ‘Total Perspective Vortex.’ The myriad original ideas and comic philosophical annotations courtesy of ‘the book’ convinced me at once that this was my kind of thing, and I’d clearly been missing out.

Unfortunately, the high standard of that opening episode couldn’t be maintained. As is well-documented elsewhere, series creator Douglas Adams had trouble delivering his scripts on time, and by the time that series two was in development, was concurrently working on other projects including the LP record adaptation of the fiest series. The quality of the scripts for the second series didn’t so much decline as drop off a cliff: following two excellent instalments, the shift in the action to the planet Brontitall saw the storyline disappear down a blind and not very interesting alley (dumped by Adams in his subsequent novelisations). The most entertaining aspect of the programmes continued to be the numerous digressions courtesy of the book, and one suspects that it was these elements as opposed to the mechanics of the script which most engaged Douglas Adams (a South Bank Show profile on Adams later revealed the source of inspiration for this aspect of the scripts to have been Flann O’Brien’s comic novel The Third Policeman, which is peppered throughout with bizarrely inventive quasi-scientific footnotes from an idiot-savant philosopher).

At this stage, I hadn’t heard series one, and wasn’t aware of how the story had got started. There were, of course, various references to what had gone before, but these were often perfunctory, glossing over numerous yawning chasms that had opened up in the storyline: how, for instance, had Zaphod recovered the starship Heart of Gold, last seen on the planet Magrathea, from which our heroes had fallen through a time warp into the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? ‘I got lucky,’ says Zaphod. And that’s it. Of course, Adams needed the Heart of Gold back in the plot, because its ‘Infinite Improbability Drive’ provided the ultimate explanation for anything ludicrously coincidental that might crop up in the storyline. But more critically, this seeming lack of attention to matters of plot and continuity gives us a big clue as to the real purpose of the series: it was primarily a vehicle for skewed ideas, warped scientific fantasies such as extrapolating the whole of creation from a small piece of fairy cake. And with comic invention that good on board, did it matter if the plot made sense or whether the various episodes ended up fitting neatly together? Of course not.

Ironically, it was the subsequent attempts of Adams and others to reconcile various conflicting strands of plot that proved to be the series’ undoing for me, and a key reason why I finally gave up on it. When Radio 4 launched The Hexagonal Phase (ie. sixth series) earlier this year, in celebration of Hitch-Hiker’s fortieth anniversary, the first twenty minutes (at least) comprised an attempt to summarise and tie up many of the convoluted twists and turns taken by the plot over Adams’ books (which were posthumously serialised for radio beginning in 2004). I have to say I gave up, just as I’d given up on the third, fourth and fifth series.

I also baled out of the books at, I believe, volume four (comically describing itself as the fourth part in the trilogy), although I’d enjoyed the first of them, which provided me with my introduction to Arthur Dent’s backstory when I read it in December of 1980. Within weeks, the series arrived on television, and so it was this revised version of the plot (the ‘Disaster Area’ version as opposed to the ‘Hagunennon’ version) that I came to know best. The book also clued me in on something of which I’d been totally unaware during the broadcasts of series two: the fact that Zaphod Beeblebrox possessed two heads (and an extra arm). Not knowing about the latter rendered Zaphod’s utterance when he and Ford shake hands on their reunion somewhat meaningless: ‘Put it there! And there! And there!’

I’d done some doodles of my own, visualising characters like Marvin and Zaphod, along with the starship Heart of Gold (described in the book as resembling a sleek running shoe), and primitive though they were, my biro sketches proved to be surprisingly close to what we finally saw on the TV screen. Even so, I began to question whether Hitch-Hiker’s really gained anything from the added visuals: some of the jokes played on the fact that the audience couldn’t see what was happening, and to encumber actor Mark Wing-Davey with a rubber head was probably a step too far. The whole two-head thing, humorous enough as a throwaway line in a radio script, continued to pose a problem for designers and make-up technicians down the years when the simplest answer would have been to ditch it as early as possible, like so many other aspects of the original radio series (certainly the second, which was later conveniently written out of the continuity as having taken place in Zarniwoop’s artificial universe).

The TV series was, in effect, the first radio series with pictures added, and the script remained remarkably close to the original, with some innovative animations providing a context for the often prolix and off-topic interjections from the guide itself. By the time it went to air, I was waiting in eager anticipation and, on the whole, was not disappointed. I’d prefered the radio versions of Ford and Trillian, and only later realised that Geoffrey McGivern didn’t look anything like I’d imagined. Simon Jones, on the other hand, was every inch Arthur Dent, and exactly as I’d pictured him. So too, to some extent, was Mark Wing-Davey, whose Zaphod Beeblebrox on camera was not a million parsecs away from how I’d imagined him on radio (although as the ‘worst-dressed sentient being in the universe’, his wardrobe probably worked a lot better on radio). On the special effects front, things weren’t quite as satisfactory: the design for the ship looked awkward, and the chroma-key overlay effects were juddery and marred by rough edges, with the final result looking rather like a duff episode of Doctor Who.

Radio Times visualises the guide for its readers (January 1980). Not a million miles away from your ipad...

I returned to the radio where, shortly after the conclusion of the TV series, the original run of episodes began again in a 7.30pm timeslot. Unfortunately, this meant that there would often be a clash with TV or other evening activities, and I didn’t catch all the episodes. Sometime during this period, I also borrowed a copy of one of the LP iterations of the series, which impressed me rather less than its radio counterpart. In the event, it wasn’t until 1983 that I finally heard all twelve radio episodes, including the ‘Christmas Special’ that bridged (or perhaps opened) the gap between first and second series, which I’d managed to miss up to now. I was also, finally, able to record them in stereo, having acquired a modern, fit-for-purpose cassette deck as part of a component hi-fi system the previous year.

I stuck with the books, and was aware of the rumours that surfaced from time to time suggesting a movie version might be on the way. By the time a film did emerge, however, I’d long since lost the plot on all things Hitch-Hiker’s and galactic. Quite literally. When all that existed was the first two series, and a couple of novels, it was relatively easy to keep track of who had done what, with which, and to whom. But as subsequent novels added layers of plot and continuity that had somehow to be encompassed within a single, satisfactory timeline, the purpose of the concept, as a vehicle for comic invention, became lost. Sure, you needed a basic plot as an excuse to engage the characters, but Hitch-Hiker’s lost its own plot, somewhere in the black hole between radio, printed page and television. By the time it was revived for radio in 2004, I couldn’t care less about the status of Arthur and Trillian’s relationship, or whether or not they’d had a daughter. I wanted more of that comic stuff from the guide itself, but that might just be me: I’ve never really been one for plotlines, especially when they become as distracting as Hitch-Hiker’s did.

I’d venture to suggest that, when Douglas Adams set out to write the first series, he had no more idea of where he’d end up than did his characters. Series one is almost like a set of six individual playlets, loosely joined (in some cases barely at all) by an ongoing cast, three of whom get eaten in the final episode. No two episodes are quite the same, from Arthur Dent’s failed attempt to save his home through to his and Ford’s being stranded in prehistory. Did Adams even conceive of there being a second series? Not judging by the fate met by Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin in episode six. Series one works quite satisfactorily on its own, and is nicely cyclical in that it manages to return Arthur Dent to his home world. And it found room along the way for some genuinely original science fiction concepts, many of which would have been at home in a serious narrative.

Series two, on the other hand struggles to find a reason for its existence. Zaphod Beeblebrox has sent a mysterious mental message to himself, which sends him in search of Zarniwoop, editor of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But this strand of plot is immediately usurped when he’s whisked off to the Frogstar on an entertaining but ultimately pointless digression. By episode two, our heroes have mostly been reunited on board the Heart of Gold, and survived an encounter with the Vogons, but thereafter, the plot becomes derailed with a detour to a planet whose bird-like inhabitants are the evolutionary outcome of ill-fitting footwear: which would have made a fine short piece from the guide, but when expanded over two episodes of plot rapidly becomes tedious and annoying. There’s another blind alley as Zaphod and Ford find a spaceship that’s been waiting aeons for take off while awaiting a conignment of ‘lemon-scented paper napkins’, but here, ultimately, they find Zarniwoop and the series reaches a conclusion of sorts. 

Even listening for the first time, without any knowledge of where the first series had been, I was aware of this ‘tailing-off’ as the plot just ran out of good ideas. From the upbeat madness of episode one to the bleak emptiness of episode five was a long way to travel in a single week; but there had been enough in those first couple of episodes to engage my enthusiasm, and I subsequently realised that they were much more in the spirit of series one. In fact, considering it all in retrospect, an ‘ideal’ version of the story for me would be the first series, plus the first three episodes of series two, with an open-ended conclusion leaving our heroes free to roam the galaxy. Who needs plot lines tied up, or elaboated upon ad infinitum? Did we honestly need the mind-mangling complexity of what was to follow? Douglas Adams should maybe have followed the advice of his own creation, Marvin the Paranoid Android:

“Make it up? Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.” 

The best ideas don’t have to be complicated, and for me, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would have done better to have abandoned plot altogether in favour of a free-wheeling ride to Zarquon-knows-where. Which, in series one, is very nearly what it did.

Radio 4 Extra has, this past week, been repeating series one and two of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to celebrate the fortieth episode of the original broadcast, and the episodes are going out in their original timeslot of 10.30pm. Listening at that hour is instantly nostalgic, and I’m transported back to January 1980, the Medium Wave, and a borrowed reel-to-reel tape recorder. The intervening years might never have happened. The earth wasn’t destroyed at all. Was it?