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.
“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.
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
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