"I deliver perfection..." "and don't brag about it!" ":" "D" "The theme music for the original radio series was "Journey of the Sorceror" by The Eagles from their 1975 album "One Of These Nights"." "The version used here is by Tim Souster, taken directly from the vinyl LP of "Hitchhiker's Guide"." "The TV theme was released as a single in January 1981." "Douglas Adams played rhythm guitar on the B-side." "Episode 3 was first screened on Monday 19th January 1981, on BBC2." "This is one of the few examples of traditional top-lit cartoon cel animation in the series." "The model rocket was carved from Jelotung by visual effects assistant Perry Brahan." "John Austen-Gregg is the guy..." "Zoe Hendry is the girl and Jim Francis is the small furry creature." "He was lying on top of the cockpit, his arms inserted down through the puppet's own arms." "Due to the enormous volume of effects in episodes 2  3, there was an entire day of model shooting on video at BBC TV Centre on Tuesday 28th October 1980." "This was a luxury that most shows couldn't afford." "Rod Lord's team at Pearce Studios had plenty of experience animating graphs like this for dozens of boring 1970s corporate films His handmaidens (in alphabetical order) were:" "Nicola Critcher, Jacoba, Lorraine Paul, and Susie Silvey The rich merchant himself was John Dair." "Another matte painting by Jean Peyre, using the new post-production method created by Alan J.W. Bell." "The "planet building" animation was itself built up, from multiple exposures of yet more back-lit, hand-drawn artwork by Rod Lord and his team." "The script suggested Hogarth-style engravings of alien poverty and depression at this point." "The Heart of Gold model, also built by Perry Brahan." "The perspex mouse cage was custom built by the Visual Effects team." "The video recording day for episode 3 was Friday 21st November 1981 in BBC Studio TC4." "At one stage Eddie was actually going to be an old juke-box." "The Visual Effects team designed Eddie with its clever optical illusion of a complex internal lighting system." "More argument about the planet's identity was cut from this point." "The squeaking is not Arthur wiping his ears - obviously it's Trillian making kissing noises at the mice - who were adopted after the series by Charlie Pinnock, wife of the assistant floor manager, Cliff." "Douglas Adams was very specific about the content of the graphics on the screen at this point." "Eddie was scripted to spew out a tickertape giving a permanent record of everything it says." "Totally useless to everyone, it spills into a waste receiver." "The "ears pierced" line was an ad-lib by Sandra Dickinson at rehearsals." "Peter Jones was "the" voice of "The Hitchhiker's Guide"..." "Notable for his radio work in the 1950s with Peter Ustinov," "Peter Jones was the mainstay of the long-running game show "Just a Minute", a regular in "The Rag Trade", and supported Spike Milligan in "Q6"." "Douglas Adams said:" ""Peter was extraordinary." ""He always affected not to understand what was going on..." ""He rarely met the other actors at all, because he'd be doing his bits completely separately."" "One popular misconception by many people is that Peter Jones (The Book) and Simon Jones (Arthur) were father and son, or in some other way related." "This is not the case Simon Jones's father was actually estate manager for the Earl of Suffolk Sandra Dickinson's father was one of America's leading psycho-analysts." "...and Mark Wing-Davey's mother (actress Anna Wing) was Lou Beale in the BBC soap "EastEnders"." "The hologram character was simply called "Magrathean" in the script." "Later we will get to know him by his proper name, which for now is not important..." "The transparent hologram was achieved simply by mixing in an image of the old Magrathean standing against black drapes, elsewhere in the studio." "The rear views over Arthur's shoulder, with the others in the background, required Simon Jones to face a blue screen, well away from the set and his fellow cast members..." "Mark Wing-Davey was chosen for the rôle of Zaphod in the radio series after appearing in "The Glittering Prizes", Frederick Raphael's drama series about people who met as Cambridge undergraduates in the 1950s." "Video projection systems were of insufficient quality in 1980, so the material for the screen was shot on 35mm film." "Mark Wing-Davey had always imagined Zaphod Beeblebrox as a blonde, mid-Atlantic surfer." "He refused to wear an eyepatch like the dummy head, and found the permanent "designer stubble" an irritation." "Douglas Adams watched a monitor behind the set, performing Eddie's lines into a microphone." "This made Eddie's lights flash, and helped to cue the actors David Tate, the original Eddie, dubbed his voice on later." "The revolving platform was borrowed from the set of the game show "Blankety Blank"." "Mike Kelt is behind Zaphod in this shot, performing the right arm." "Mark's own right hand hits the switch A dummy arm flopped from the console in the subsequent shot." "The underside detail is only ever visible in this shot." "Careful study reveals five pairs of feet in this shot, but only four characters." "Mike Kelt is trapped underneath Zaphod, the still performing extra arm!" "His are the big shoes beneath Arthur's flailing legs." "Eddie sings, "You'll Never Walk Alone", a number one hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers in November 1963." "Trillian may be the focus of this particular moment, but Ford's facial expressions are worth noting..." "More model work from the special studio day Does anybody have a good reason for the controls being in English?" "Falling objects included:" "a windmill, bus, train, banana, bread, brick, leek, pot plant, giraffe, whale, and lots and lots of glitter..." ""Everything is higgledy piggledy," said the script." "The bridge was redressed, Trillian's skirt changed into leggings and the missiles were animated (by hand) into their new identities..." "Arthur Dent's initials, embroidered on his dressing gown pocket, are clearly visible in this shot." "The 35mm projector beam was bounced off a huge mirror, increasing the image size in the confined space behind the set." "Douglas Adams wrote this scene for the radio version after watching an episode of the US detective series "Cannon" People were getting killed for no apparent reason, their deaths going unmarked, and the arbitrary nature of all this disturbed Douglas." "He decided to create a character especially to be killed off, and see if he could make the audience care about it, even if the other characters didn't." "The whale's monologue was performed by Stephen Moore, the voice of Marvin the paranoid android." "He was also the Man in the Shack at the end of the radio storyline." "Animator Betty Day painted the whale's eye view of the landscape..." "Douglas Adams's experiment in making people care about an incidental character worked - the BBC received letters of complaint about the whale's cruel demise However, Douglas did wonder if they would have cared so much if it had been a human character...?" "The plants on the set were pulled by wires during this camera judder." "Trillian's adaptable costume now gains a plastic jacket for their excursion onto the planet's surface..." "Narration missing from here explained that Trillian's missing mice would have commanded greater attention if it had been realised that humans were only the "third" most intelligent lifeform on planet Earth instead of... the second." "Here's that same bit of curved corridor from episode 2, economically shot from yet another angle..." "David Tate as Eddie gets to demonstrate his "Prep school Matron" voice, called for by the script." "The Heart of Gold model was actually filmed landing in a blast of smoke, "Thunderbirds"-style, but was cut for reasons of timing." "This scene concludes the use of the Heart of Gold interiors, and was the final scene recorded in the studio on 21st November 1980." "This, however, was the first scene shot on the second day of location filming, more than 8 weeks earlier..." "The planet surface was actually a china clay-pit near St. Austell in Cornwall, England." "A "hanging miniature"" " Model ship in foreground, actors in the distance rather more convincing than this model shot." "Iceland, Morocco, Israel, even Ireland were all considered as locations for these Magrathean scenes." "Eventually they settled for a clay-pit near St. Austell in Cornwall, on the week commencing Monday 22nd September 1980." "These early scenes of episode 3 were filmed on the second day, and David Learner remembers the weather being "vile"." "Trillian's P.V.C. jacket helped protect her from the wind on this particular day, but subsequent days were brighter, and the plastic jacket became rather "too" warm." "The gruesome exploded carcass of the whale was originally going to be seen in graphic detail here." "Douglas Adams had asked for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" from the album "Wish You Were Here"" "to be playing from the moment they arrived on the planet." "At this point Arthur would have pointed out that Marvin hums like Pink Floyd The copyright clearance would have been too expensive." "In the script, Marvin watches as they descend into the whale carcass." "This provokes one of his "Life..." quotes." "Douglas Adams was always keen to show the whale carcass, and finally got his wish in a photo for the large format book "The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" in 1994." "Upon seeing the enormous whale carcass," "Arthur's feeble suggestion was:" ""I suppose there's no point in trying to bury it?"" "On one of the takes of this shot, a lamp-stand above them fell over, nearly hitting Simon Jones." "The tunnel entrance was faked up in the quarry by the design department, but the actual interiors coming up next were filmed the day before, somewhere else..." "Douglas Adams asked for the tunnel scene to be filmed for authenticity, and indeed it was - in the former railway tunnel linking the villages of Par and Fowey." "These symbols were made on fake sections of rock wall by the design department, and placed in the real tunnel location." "The Joo-Janta 200 SuperChromatic Peril-Sensitive sunglasses were a new addition, making their first appearance in the "Hitchhiker's" story here in the TV version." "In a moment the glasses have to turn black." "They were made of two polarising filters, and a third one was placed on the camera lens." "On cue, the one on the camera was simply revolved 90 degrees, making the filters on the glasses appear totally black Cliff Pinnock's idea, that was." "Try it at home with two pairs of polarised sunglasses..." "David Learner first wore the Marvin costume during this location shoot." "Stephen Moore voiced Marvin for radio whilst appearing as a National Theatre player." "He later appeared as Felicity Kendal's lover in the sitcom "Solo", and appeared in "Brideshead Revisited", along with Simon Jones (who played "Bridie")." "Stephen Moore cornered the market in TV rôles as long-suffering fathers, including that of a certain Adrian Mole (Aged 13 3/4), and of Harmony, the girl in the children's serial "The Queen's Nose and most famously he played the exasperated parent of awful "Kevin the teenager" in "Harry Enfield and Chums"." "Paddy Kingsland's music sets the mood wonderfully, as it did in the second radio series." "He provided all the sound effects for the TV series, too." "The actor's name was Richard Vernon, and of course he played the hologram of the ancient Magrathean we saw earlier." "The script was ambiguous as to whether this was necessarily the same character..." "Richard Vernon was in films from the 1940s onwards, including appearances in classics "Village of the Damned", "Goldfinger" and "Gandhi"." "Simon Jones really did lose sight of Richard Vernon at one point on the location shoot Richard Vernon had fallen down a hole, and had to be helped up again by the crew." "When he said "Nothing much seems to have changed", in the script Douglas Adams suggests the old Magrathean was referring to his measurements of the stars." "Before settling on Cornwall, Producer/Director Alan J.W. Bell and his assistant Mike Cager made inquiries about taking Douglas Adams to Iceland to look for locations." "Bell and Cager did actually go on a recce of Morocco, but a visiting film crew there warned them of long delays clearing camera gear through customs." "David Learner was frequently left standing around in the awkward robot costume, and one time stood alone in the clay-pit with an umbrella over him while the more mobile folk went for a tea-break." "The design team actually went around the quarry spraying the few sprigs of grass a variety of weird colours, but the day-for-night filters on the camera cancelled most of it out." "The script mentioned an aircar moving "silently and unbidden" towards them." "Alan J.W. Bell decided aircars were too "Star Wars"." "He wanted... a bubble." "This wouldn't be the last science fiction-looking plastic bubble in a quarry near St. Austell." "The amazing geodesic ETFE domes of the Eden Project was built nearby at the Bodelva china clay-pit, twenty years later." "The aircar was going to be a complete transparent sphere like Zaphod's transport in the novel, but the 6 ft diameter canopy alone cost £800." "Jim Francis and his team took a mould from that, to produce the lower half Jim and assistant Stuart Murdoch doubled for the actors here, suspended from a 180 ft crane." "This was filmed in the Par-Fowey tunnel on the first day of location shooting in Cornwall." "The bubble car and camera rails were mounted on a low-loader truck, which then drove up and down the tunnel The team had wanted the strip lights to be switched off, but the reflections were enhanced with sound effects, making a virtue of the problem." "This "Dolphins" sequence of animation was unusually tightly described by Douglas Adams in his script." "Douglas Adams was by now scripting for Rod Lord's animation style." "The two elements began to complement each other even closer, although the two men rarely met face to face." "Note:" "Rod Lord's self-portrait And Douglas Adams at his typewriter." ""So Long and Thanks For All the Fish" is the title of the fourth "Hitchhiker's Guide" novel by Douglas Adams." "Video effects disguise the fact that the lorry and its bubble were simply driving out into daylight." "The same massive 35mm projector as used on the Heart of Gold screen was employed for the back projection here." "It was set up in the studio for episode 3 on 21 November 1980." "The platform they are approaching was cannibalised for a model in the series "Blake's 7"." "Another matte shot painted by Jean Peyre, which had some foreground detail removed." "This is back in studio, 8 weeks after the location shoot." "The light grey object on the floor to the left was a hired piece of set dressing." "It had once been the main body of the laser gun in the James Bond movie "The Man With The Golden Gun"."