I DON’T KNOW

I DON'T KNOW

I don’t know 

It makes no sense to me 

But some seem to think

it’s the best thing ever

So what do I know

Other than I can’t sleep

Due to being anxious 

For the now lost country 

I used to know

MAWH, August 2019

THE COLLECTED RTA DAILY CARTOON (PART NINE) JULY 2019

PODCAST 38 – HHGTTG

Somehow I managed to stagger through reading this in the latest “Round The Archives" podcast from Lisa and Andrew (available at https://soundcloud.com/user-868590968/rta038-episode-38) - this is the text for anyone who couldn't understand my burbled nonsense...

PODCAST ARTICLE 21 (FOR EPISODE 38) – HHGTTG

A long time ago on a small blue-green mostly harmless planet, a group of amoeba were swimming around in the cool blue ocean that had expanded to fill in most of the spaces it found itself snugly fitting into, and one or two of these amoeba got ideas above their station and decided to grow some legs and go and have a look at this ground thing that so many of them had been talking about.

It had been lurking there at the edge of their watery universe, not doing all that much other than popping up above the waves, and occasionally crumbling away at the edges and, whilst it didn’t seem all that much of a threat, they decided that it probably needed looking into, and so, some of the braver ones decided to hitch up their fins and stagger gasping into the fetid air, and go off exploring with a hearty “Because it was there!” sort of excuse as they were waved off with a hearty “Good riddance!” by the ones who considered themselves to be far too sensible for that sort of nonsense.

Because it was hard and rocky, and hurt when you tripped over a fin and fell onto it, a lot of the amoeba dashed back to the safety of the cool waters at the edge of the ground and decided to stick with the gills, and the fins, and the easier breathing, and have a good old time of it becoming tasty enough to become lunch for some of the other amoeba who were really beginning to throw their weight around as the bigger fish.

Meanwhile, their former companions, once they’d got used to a new way of breathing, split up into various factions, generally based around the number of legs it seemed most wise to develop, and most of whom ended up becoming meals for each other. Some of them, unfortunately, also had the additional sideline of becoming clothing, and tools, and – if they happened to be cats - vital components, for the one two-legged faction that developed a huge superiority complex and eventually decided that it knew best.

This particular group, let’s call them “humans” because that is what they were, decided that they quite liked their new lives on this ground thing, or “land” as they now called it, and, because they liked it so much, they began the long, arduous job of ruining it for both themselves and for their former pals now populating the oceans in a manner that was far too tasty to resist.

At some point the land-dwellers decided that life at the top of what they called the Food Chain allowed them enough spare time to get bored instead of getting on with the daily business of survival, and that to fill this time, they needed something they called entertainment, and so, some of the cleverer ones gathered together things like wood and metal - and odd bits of leftover cat - and invented sound radio so that they could listen to other humans whilst they got on with the important stuff like eating, having sex, and working themselves to death to acquire the tokens necessary to buy those radios.

Meanwhile radio itself got made into weapons of mass destruction and the humans would gather around them to hear just what a bloody mess they were making of their world, and some of them found that this was good, and some of them found that it was bad, and some of them found out that they could make a living out of laughing about what was good and what was bad about the whole thing.

Meanwhile, amongst the clever humans, other, grumpier minds worked upon different inventions involving moving pictures and, after a long and brutal war, one bright spark decided that the pictures and the sounds might actually work rather well together like it did in the real world, and so – after some messing about with things like film and mechanics and radio waves - television was born.

Meanwhile, less than one hundred years after radio was invented, one particularly highly evolved amoeboid who had been called Douglas Adams by his immediate ancestors - in the manner they’d agreed upon in their particular genetic survival strategy - wrote an entertainment involving robots and spaceships and pan-galactic cocktails, and his fellow humans enjoyed it so much that they allowed him to buy large quantities of rather neat ideas they called Digital Watches, and Porsches, and cardio-vascular exercise machines, just so long as he didn’t hang around too long and allow them to have too much fun.

But this is not his story.

That said, the story that he wrote was indeed HIS story, but not a story about him.

It’s best to make such things clear, as humans are prone to misinterpreting such things and involving themselves in wars to the death as a result.

Meanwhile, a couple of years after the story involving robots and spaceships and pan-galactic cocktails had been heard, and several years after one particular movie involving robots and spaceships and no cocktails whatsoever had earned some humans a great many spending tokens, during one particularly long lunch involving less multi-dimensional but still highly impressive cocktails, some bright spark had the bright idea of making the radio programme of the story he wrote into a television programme of the story he wrote, and that’s where the problems really began.

But it’s difficult to talk about THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY – for that is the name given to the story we are talking about - because the words written by that particular evolved human are so very familiar and so utterly brilliantly crafted, and to try and pastiche Adams is to fail spectacularly in a manner that fails to grasp the honing and intelligence that made those words and ideas soar; lines of dialogue that have become so familiar that slipping episode one into the shiny disc player - another gadget that seems to be a pretty neat idea - is like putting on a familiar and very cosy overcoat.

Because, in BBC terms, this is not cheap television, either, as it sits there, like a chortling black hole, quietly gobbling up the effects resources for other more familiar series, whilst involving location film, specially filmed inserts, and studio time to tell a very wordy story that might not quite sit well along other sitcom fare of the era for those more used to the “Whoops! There go my trousers through the French Windows!” or “Standing on a chair because - Eek! - There’s a mouse!” type of television comedy.

And then, of course, there are those “state-of-the-art” (air quotes) “computer graphics” (air quotes) that so impressed otherwise befuddled audiences at the time, despite being meticulously hand-crafted using back projection of coloured gels on photographic film by skilled animators.

For this is television pushing at brave new, yet-to-be-discovered boundaries, and yet, as the words of the book are read out by the sublime Peter Jones in that Peter Jones-y voice of his, those very same words appear on screen at the same time meaning that audiences so used to passively being poked by laugh tracks to know when to respond, had actual words to read - just in case they weren’t really listening as the dog chased the cat around the fish bowl, and the fish fingers were placed on trays in front of them, and Great Aunt Mabel’s “trouble” was discussed at length.

A couple of generations later on, this would all become as natural as breathing, but, for the moment, as the old world comes to an end, this was all shiny and new and possibly a little bit frightening.

The narrative itself all begins at 6:30 on a Thursday morning, probably, on an otherwise blank television screen. The captions tell us the time at least, in small unfriendly letters, and, matter-of-factly go on to explain that the destruction of earth is due at 11:46, just slightly after the pubs open, luckily, and we are currently five hours, sixteen minutes and forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five minutes from the end of the world.

Across a vaguely convincing view of green fields, a slightly unconvincing sun rises to greet the last dawn this planet shall ever see as Peter Jones calmly intones those now-so familiar phrases and introduces us to Arthur Dent - first as a graphic display, and then on film, (and represented in this instance by the ape-descendant called Simon Jones) as he starts this unfortunate day after discovering the as yet unseen ironic parallel that is the imminent demolition of his rather lovely little cottage.

This leads to him heading outside, still dressed in his nightclothes, and lying down right in front of the demolition crew to stop them, before having a meaningful discussion about the relative rustiness of people and bulldozers.

Remember, dear listeners, pyjamas are indoor clothes, and it is seldom acceptable to wear them al fresco, but we are prepared to forgive him just this once because, well, the world IS about to end.

And then we cut to the titles in which a gold, space-suited figure, accompanied by the now legendary “Journey of the Sorcerer” theme tune by The Eagles which is, of course, already synonymous with the show, speeds inside the three dimensional lettering making up the series title, and we’re suddenly back at the front of a bulldozer looking into the face of Joe Melia, playing Mr Prosser the would-be cottage demolisher, and having that now classic discussion about display departments and leopards that will resonate with us when similar words are spoken by the Vogon Captain later on in the episode, a plot shift about which, in the narrative so far, our suspicion of which has been none at all.

“None at all” is, of course, the line which introduces us to David Dixon as Ford Prefect, the manner in which is done using a yellow-ish, “Top of the Pops” style video treatment, of a scene we will see in full about a minute later, once the Guide has filled in his backstory a little.

In full, this staring-eyed first major recast from the Radio series is a sight to behold, with his fancy-blazered ensemble dressing in that oddly eccentric way that DOCTOR WHO used to do, despite the author’s intention of him being almost precisely the opposite sort of character.

That said, he does the terribly noble thing here of saving Arthur’s life – if not the world entire - so perhaps his intention of being the Anti-Doctor is slightly exaggerated.

No matter, before we know it, in a puff of fuzzy logic, Mr Prosser is lying down in front of the bulldozer, and Arthur and Ford are off to the pub, pausing only for a sight gag involving a ridiculously expensive looking filmed dinner party, and a brief discussion about the attitudes of two best-selling intergalactic publications on the subject of alcohol, only one of which requires another expensively-staged film insert involving a green-painted Cleo Roccos.

Oh yes, and this sequence also involves the first glimpse of one Zaphod Beeblebrox, albeit only in line graphic form. He will play no further part in the particular episode we are looking at, which is a shame, as there would probably be much to discuss about both his second head, and the crew of his particularly running-shoe-shaped mode of transport, if we weren’t limiting ourselves to merely this opening segment.

Sometimes adhering strictly to a particular format can cause unexpected problems, but hey, it’s not as if the world’s about to end is it? There’s plenty of time.

In the pub several beers are drunk to lessen the impact of imminent matter transportation, and we catch a Hitchcockian glimpse of the writer himself sitting at the end of the bar in a not-at-all-saying “look at me” white jacket, as the talk turns to Arsenal’s chances in the cup final (nil), the huge amount of change from a fiver after buying six pints of beer, the Reader’s Digest accepting clever quotes about lunchtime from certain types of contributor, and, of course, the imminent end of the world.

Meanwhile, via another expensive-looking crane shot of the very “Red Lion” public house our heroes are currently drinking in, the aliens are coming, and, via some expensive-looking stock footage of the kinds of places that spent much of their time looking for alien spaceships, we discover that it was rather a pity that they never spotted these ones coming as they arrive.

Meanwhile, having overcome Ford’s reasoning, Mr Prosser has instructed his men to begin the demolition of Arthur’s lovely cottage – or at least the prop wall surrounding its garden - which leads to Arthur dashing from the pub, leaving Ford to raid the bar for some peanuts, and have a rather poignant final discussion with the bartender about the merits of paper bags as aids to enduring oblivion, before the landlord calls last orders.

And as Arthur rages and rants at the barbarians wrecking his home, his eyes are finally drawn to the yellow un-brick-like spaceship hanging in the air above his head and, in a wide range of practical wind effects, he is joined by Ford as the model spaceships appear above at least two different angles of St Paul’s Cathedral, and, drawing our eye - because it does not escape we smarty-pantsies watching at home - the irony of the man with a “The End of the World is Nigh” placard finally being proved correct whilst surrounded by the panic-stricken crowds exiting the tube, we cut to the impressive make up upon the body of Martin Benson of that Vogon Captain I mentioned earlier, lurking in his triangular alien chair in a studio somewhere, calmly explaining the imminent end of the world.

What do you mean, you weren’t paying that much attention? I don’t know, pathetic bloody listener. I’ve no sympathy at all…

Uh-oh! I’ve really been trying SO hard not to use any quotes or to slip into obvious Adams pastiche, because the originals are so familiar it all smacks of those people in the back of the coach all the way back from France endlessly performing MONTY PYTHON sketches badly, and, let’s be honest, those originals are far too good for my feeble mimicry to emulate with any success.

Just go and watch it for yourself, or, better still, track down the original radio series and have a listen, or, I don’t know, buy the books. They’re all superb, although the movie version does play a little too fast and loose with the source material for anyone brought up on the originals.

Meanwhile, with a red glow, and a slightly squibby BBC VFX explosion, the world ends in moments, and the hopes and dreams of billions of life forms go up in smoke for the sake of a bypass.

Forty years on and humanity is still no wiser.

One of Douglas Adams’ original ideas when he sat down to write the sitcom that eventually blossomed into HITCHHIKER’S was to tell a different story about the world ending in every episode of a series called THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, and this version is, of course, the only one that made it through.

And what a glorious end to the earth this is, but wait… there are five and a bit more episodes you say…?

Funny that…

So, despite the world ending in glorious smudge-o-vision mere moments before, we find Arthur and Ford in a cabin on a spaceship somewhere in a studio in BBC Television Centre.

They have, against all the odds, survived.

Huzzah!

This is not, however, the shiny, sleek, wooden-floored and carpeted world of spaceships we would usually expect in a BBC Science Fiction series of about that time.

In the post-ALIEN, post-Ridley Scott era, this is a bit of a dump. A squalid, fetid hole of a place which includes corridors very familiar to anyone who might have seen ALIEN (or perhaps even WARRIORS’ GATE) and there is a lot of rubbish lying about amidst the scenery and Dentrassi puppets who claim to be trying to sleep.

Arthur is finally introduced to “The Book” – a chunky little number in a slip cover that suddenly appears less than compact in the age of the very iPhone it (sort of) predicted, and whilst he (and us) learn all about Vogon Constructor Fleets, Vogon Grandmothers, and the dietary habits of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal in another excellent graphics sequence, it becomes more apparent that Arthur is still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and, with the loss of Burton the Tailors, and all of the other outlets, is likely to remain so.

A BBC studio wall opens up to reveal a canteenish-looking food dispenser full of blue bread and green goo which looks terrible and apparently is, despite Ford’s reassurances that it would be delicious.

Then, in a slightly wordy bit of exposition that may reveal more of the radio roots of the source material than future film-makers might prefer, we learn of Ford’s background as doors are opened, wide shots are widened, and several vital-seeming natty little Sci-Fi devices that probably seemed like good ideas at the time (Stun guns! Telecoms Systems! Telepathic Helmets! Hypno Rays!) are dismissed in favour of a towel and a fish in the ear - from the sort of practical studio tank built simply for one sight-gag that possibly still gives Sophie Aldred nightmares.

Anyway, happily, for the timing of our plot points, the Vogon Captain repeats his entire announcement for those who didn’t yet have the ability to translate it, and, as we ponder upon quite how good his poetry could possibly be, our heroes have a lie down as the ship makes the jump into hyperspace and we are left to ponder upon the relative sentience or otherwise of glasses of water, and Gin and Tonics, and how cruel humans used to be to such things.

The journey is happily covered by one of the greatest pieces of writing combined with animation in the series as the story behind that little fish – a Babel Fish - gets told in a convoluted God-bothering explanation that might have baffled the post-Top of the Pops crowd many of whom might never once have tuned in to Radio Four in their lives.

And in a puff of logic, and a towel-shifting light-jump, we are in the vicinity of Barnard’s Star, where Ford tells Arthur the sad fate of his home world and tries to comfort him with showing him the entry it had in The Book, which probably seemed a harmless enough idea at the time, but leads to a bit of a post-traumatic row between this most un-dynamic of duos.

However, before any of that can be further discussed, an actual Vogon arrives, and our heroes are captured, and start reflecting again upon the merits of Vogon poetry as a guitar starts being plucked, and the end credits start to roll.

And, as we reach the end of episode one, the reason I started thinking about writing this piece, one of those iconic TV robots which so caught our imaginations in a chat we had several months ago now hasn’t even made an appearance.

I don’t know, you wait an entire article to get to the point of it, and you barely get a mention. Is that all the thanks I get? Do you think that’s a satisfying reason to talk about a television series, because I don’t.

And so, on reflection, is HITCHHIKER’S too ambitious a project for the abilities television had at the time?

Possibly, but this version, directed by Alan J.W. Bell in 1981, manages to do it astonishingly well, and, as the only other version of the books to actually get produced in a visual medium in Douglas Adams’ lifetime was a stage show, this, as they say, was very much the proverbial “it” for several decades, and, despite one or two moments where its ambition exceeds its ability to achieve those ambitions in later episodes, it does a pretty good job of converting some of those wilder imaginings into decent visual form.

Okay, the odd mechanical head looks dodgy, and the strings might be visible on the occasional flying bubble from time-to-time, but - crikey! - those guys made a jolly decent fist of it.

Personally, I only met Douglas Adams once. Well, I say “met” but, well, I went along to one of his book signings for a very peculiar evening in Manchester. The person I went with was “Not A Fan” and disappeared off into the allegedly more intellectual book stacks of Waterstone’s, whilst I engaged uneasily with two diminutive  disciples of the cult of Douglas wearing matching green cagoules and hairstyles.

Later on, whilst reading from the book he was promoting that evening – the ironically titled “Last Chance To See…” - the great man himself almost fell off the unnecessarily high stool the shop had provided for him to sit upon, having had – we suspected – more than a sniff of the rather cheeky little white wine the shop had to considerately provided its customers with for the occasion.

This led to an awkward moment when a young lad sitting cross-legged at his feet (as I remember it, but he possibly wasn’t – there may have been chairs) told Douglas it was just like a moment in one of his books when… and went off on a rambling description of a thing.

The author himself looked almost as totally bewildered as the rest of us, and, as we thought the moment was passing, the rest of the audience shuffled self-consciously as we all slipped into a terribly British sense of mortification and awkwardness as the boy proceeded to try and look up the very moment he was referring to in one of the Hitchhiker books.

Anyway, I bought “Last Chance To See…” and got it signed, alongside a couple of other books I seem to recall, and, of course never saw the man himself ever again.

Then, on one particularly sad weekend morning back in spring 2001, the world found out that we’d lost him, and that really did feel like the end of the world.

Five more episodes of THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY were broadcast in that series, but no more, and the author went on to find huge success with the rest of his increasingly mis-named trilogy of books, alongside several other projects, whilst desperately trying to get the movie version made, one which finally popped into existence a mere seven years after Douglas himself left life, the universe, and everything.

Audio versions of the books, and even one book by another author have all turned up to fill the void, but this first visual version still feels like HITCHHIKER’S when it was still new, and raw, and all rather wonderful, and whilst the radio series might still be the Rosetta Stone of HITCHHIKER’S for most, this television version is probably the most widely-viewed and better known version amongst we lesser evolved amoeboids still (thankfully) inhabiting the planet earth.

Martin A W Holmes, May 2019