"But you must admit, he did turn out to be from a different planet." " Good God!" "Tricia McMillan!" " Trillian to you." " Are you going to say your line?" " I couldn't hear the computer." " I can't hear it." " (DIRECTOR) Do the computer again!" " Shut up!" " What are you doing here?" "(TRILLIAN) Same as you." "(DIRECTOR) Quiet, please, sorry!" "Looks delicious!" " It's heavy, too, is it?" " Very." " My biceps are at full pelt!" " They are, aren't they!" " Sorry." " Fine." "(ARTHUR) It's fizzy, too." "(DIRECTOR) Move into Trillian, Arthur..." " Shall I go back down the stairs?" " (DIRECTOR) Yep." "And Zaphod, too." "(DIRECTOR) Take this, somebody!" " From "Trillian to you" or...?" " (DIRECTOR) Yes." "Oh, my God!" "Trillian to you." "(COMPUTER VOICE)" " (ZAPHOD) Shut up!" " What are you doing here?" "Same as you." "I hitched a lift." "After all, with a degree in... (DIRECTOR) Once more, please!" "(DIRECTOR) Just from your coming up the stairs." "(ACTORS' VOICES INDISTINCT)" "(DIRECTOR) Nearly there." "(ARTHUR) Just think of something else." "(TRILLIAN) I hope they're not going to send me and you out." "(ARTHUR) So do I." "(DIRECTOR) Ford, back nearer Zaphod, please." "(DIRECTOR) You moved in that time, next to Trillian?" "(ARTHUR) Yep." "(DIRECTOR) And favouring out front when she moves in." "(DIRECTOR) In you come, just rehearsal." " What are you doing here?" " Same as you." "I hitched a lift." "After all, with degrees in maths and astrophysics, it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "Trillian is my semi-cousin... (DIRECTOR) That's fine." "That was fine." "(TRILLIAN) So why didn't you tape the damn thing?" "!" "(ARTHUR) Now, now!" "(DIRECTOR) Stand by!" " Shut up!" " What are you doing here?" "Same as you." "I hitched a lift." "After all, with degrees in maths and astrophysics, it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "This is my semi-cousin, Ford, who shares three mothers with me." "Shit!" "Can I do that again?" "I'm terribly sorry." "(DIRECTOR) From the walking up the stairs." "(ARTHUR) Terribly difficult." "(ARTHUR) It's a hideous last line to have to say." "(TRILLIAN) Mine sounded a bit garbled." "(DIRECTOR) Quiet, please!" "And all right!" "Shut up!" " (DIRECTOR) Again!" " Shut up!" "What are you doing here?" "(DIRECTOR) Time the line for when she's up the stairs." " (DIRECTOR) Just coming up the stairs." " OK." "(DIRECTOR) Take it straight away." " Shut up!" " What are you doing here?" "Same as you." "I hitched a lift." "After all, with degrees in maths and astrophysics, it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "This is Ford, my semi-cousin, who shares three mothers with me." " Is this gonna happen every time we..." " (DIRECTOR) Hold it, please!" "(DIRECTOR) You're hitting the radio mic all the time." "(WHISPERS)" " It's heavy, isn't it?" " It is heavy." " Give your hands a shake." " Let me hold it." "I've got it." "You're going to be so butch!" " (DIRECTOR) Same!" " Up the stairs again?" " Back?" "Down?" " (DIRECTOR) From "Dole queue"." "It was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "This is my semi-cousin, Ford, who shares three mothers with me." "Is this going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability Drive?" "Very probably, I'm afraid." "Zaphod Beeblebrox, this is a very large drink." "Hi!" "Oh, my God!" " Revolting." " (DIRECTOR) Once more." "I'm not hitting the radio mic, but I'm hitting everything around it." "(DIRECTOR) Unfortunately." "One minute to do this." " David's still too far in." " Too in?" " Into him?" " (DIRECTOR) Back 6 inches." " Am I getting it now?" " (DIRECTOR) No." "(DIRECTOR) And cue!" "It was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "This is my semi-cousin, Ford, who shares three mothers with me." "Is this going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability Drive?" "Very probably, I'm afraid." "Zaphod Beeblebrox, this is a very large drink." "Hi!" "(DIRECTOR) Once more, same thing!" "I'm still hitting the mics?" "(DIRECTOR) Keep acting to the end, looking surprised, Simon and David." "I thought we were." "Switched off and quiet." "It was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday." "God!" "Ford, this is Trillian." "This is my semi-cousin, Ford, who shares three mothers with me." "Is this going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability Drive?" "Very probably, I'm afraid." "Zaphod Beeblebrox, this is a very large drink." "Hi!" "(DIRECTOR) Thank you very much indeed, everybody!" "'We're rehearsing a scene in which Arthur Dent, 'the only man who survived when the Earth was destroyed 'to make way for a hyperspace by-pass, 'has an argument with a drinks dispensing machine, the Nutrimat.'" "(MAN) What thrills have we got here?" "Jeff, how do you want me to do this Nutrimat?" "What kind of voice?" "American." "American female." "Pleasant." "All the computers and robots have got things called Genuine People Personalities." "One of the Cybernetic Corporation's..." "'The setting may be outer space, but the comedy is based on something human." "'Here, it springs from the frustration everybody feels 'when confronted with a faulty food or drinks machine.'" "(JEFF) The way it works is very interesting." "(JEFF) No one knows why it does this, because it then delivers a cup of liquid that is almost but not quite entirely unlike tea." "I mean, what is the point?" "Nutrition and pleasurable sense data." " Share and enjoy." " You stupid machine!" "It tastes filthy!" "Take this cup back!" "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink, why not share it with your friends?" "Because I want to keep them." "(That's quite funny)." "Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you?" "'The humour is emphasised by sound effects and voice treatments, 'but at the heart of the programme is Douglas Adams's inventive and witty script." "'Even the names of the characters are amusing and bizarre.'" "A lot of the characters have got funny names." "For instance, one of the funniest of all is a character from the first series called Slartibartfast, who Douglas created by writing down the rudest words and jumbling them up." "Yes." "Because he was such a nice, sad old man, rather dignified, he's got to have something to be sad about, so I saddled him with this terrible moniker." "(JEFF) She's the other character, "Terrible Monica"!" "So I actually composed a portmanteau word, the rudest words I could think of slammed together." "Then I did it bit by bit and changed it until it was broadcastable." "OK, that's fine." "Let's try a read on mic before we do a take." "Simon, if you go in the box over there, and Leueen, since we're going to treat your voice separate to Simon, we'll put you in the microphone cupboard up the back." " All right?" " (JEFF) There's the mic." "You'll hear Simon over the headphones, and he'll hear you." "I'm going to go back to the box, and I'm going to lock you in." "Bye!" "Right, coming up." "You stupid machine!" "It tastes filthy." "Take this cup back!" "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink, why not share it with your friends?" "(ARTHUR) Because I want to keep them!" "(ARTHUR) Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you?" "That drink..." "That drink was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure." "It wants to be a bit slower all the way through." "And can you plonk out the first line more?" " All right?" " OK, let's go again from the top." "Rolling!" "You stupid machine!" "It tastes filthy." "Take this cup back!" "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink, why not share it with your friends?" "Because I want to keep them!" "Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you?" " That drink..." " That drink was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure." " So I'm a masochist on a diet, am I?" " Share and enjoy." " Shut up!" " Will that be all?" "Yes..." "No!" "It's very simple." "All I want..." "Are you listening?" "Is a cup of tea." "Got that?" "(LEUEEN) I hear." "(ARTHUR) Know why I want a cup of tea?" "(LEUEEN) Please wait." "Computing." "'The resources of radio have provided the writer with maximum scope for imagination.'" "(ROBOT VOICES "SING") Share and enjoy!" "(ADAMS) That's more a mind picture if you can possibly do it." "The point was to get the sound of two million robots singing, which you have to sketch in somehow, because we don't have access to that many." "So there you're asking the audience to imagine the scene, and you're not able to supply the real thing." "But you can do that on radio but not on TV." "If you ask the audience to believe there are two million robots, provided you aren't actually listening to one, they're prepared to go along with you." "On TV you've somehow got to find two million robots to show them." "(SYNTHESISED MUSIC)" "Very good." "We've got to add the robots, a flattened fifth out with that, so that stays as it is." "So that when you hear the robots, you'll hear this backing, and you'll hear them singing out of key over the top." "I'll give you an idea of what it'll sound like by singing the words over the top." "It'll be in tune this time." "(SYNTHESISED MUSIC)" "# Share and enjoy Journey through life" "# With a plastic boy Or girl by your side" "# Let your pal be your guide" "# And when it breaks down Or starts to annoy" "# Or grinds when it moves And gives you no joy" "# 'Cause it's eaten your hat... #..." "Oil on your floor Or ripped off your door" "# And you get to the point You can't stand any more" "# Bring it to us We won't give a fig!" "# We'll tell you:" "Go stick your head in a pig!" "#" "'Ead in a pig." "Right, excellent." "How can we make it sound really ghastly?" " We've got to get the two million robots." " Two million..." "If you have two million singing, you won't hear what they're singing anyway." " One million?" " We can get some people singing." "Then we can try to get the robot sound on it." "Then go on from there, to check we can make them sound like robots." " People who can sing?" " People who can sing reasonably well." " Football-type singing." " Anybody out of the corridor would do." " Absolutely." " Let's do that." "All right." "Let's give it a whirl." "If you can make all the words as clear as possible, so when we become two million we can still actually make sense of them." "Get the joke... jokes." "I'll give you a bit for pitch here." "# Share and enjoy Share and enjoy" "# Journey through life With a plastic boy or girl by your side" "# Let your pal be your guide And when it breaks down or starts to annoy" "# Or grinds when it moves And gives you no joy" "# 'Cause it's eaten your hat Or had sex with your cat" "# Bled oil on your floor Or ripped off your door #" " So we can play that about twenty times." " Yes, we can multi-track it." "How do we make them sound like robots?" "We can't use the harmoniser, because it changes the pitch, and the joke's gone." "One of the jokes has gone." "We can make it tinny sounding, if that's what you want." " Let's try it." " Let's have a go." "The tape, which is over here..." "# Share and enjoy... #" "That's how it sounds." "(MAN) And that's with it tinny." "We can put some echo on it." "What's it sound like speeded up?" "Apart from silly!" "The problem is there's no way of preventing that from sounding human." "We're singing so clearly, when we have two million we'll just sound like lots of Noël Cowards!" "Yeah, that's right." "We should scrap that and use the vocoder, perhaps." "The sparkles' magic piano thing, singing piano thing." "The other problem is that there are actually three jokes." "We've basically got a joke of two million robots singing, a joke of robots singing a flattened fifth out of tune, and the joke of the words." "If we're going to get two million robots singing in flattened fifth, we won't be able to make the words out." "So what I'll do is ring Douglas and give him an ultimatum:" "he can have a permutation of two and no more of the jokes." "Hello, Douglas." "Listen..." "The Share and Enjoy Robots singing, we've been trying in all sorts of ways, and basically you have to make a choice." "You've got two jokes, and you can only have one." "Either a joke of two million robots singing anything but not specific words, or a joke of the robots singing your words in a flattened fifth." "I think that the second one is much better than the first." "Yeah?" "So it seems we can simply cut out the words "two million" in the script, and make it: "A choir of robots sing the company song Share and Enjoy"." "OK." "Bye." "(ROBOT VOICE SINGING)" "'We've taken a brief look at three very different comedy shows, 'but no matter what technical resources are available, 'the comedy always depends on the writer and his precise use of words.'" " It couldn't be much worse." " No." "It doesn't matter that you can't hear half the words?" " It's ghastly, anyway!" " It would be nice to hear the words." "There." "Almost exactly where you picked me up." "Yeah." "Hey, that's wild!" "We should have zapped into the Horsehead Nebula." "How come we're there?" "That's nowhere!" "Improbability Drive." "We passed every point in the Universe, you know that." "But picking them up there is too wild a coincidence." "I wanna work this out." "Hey, computer!" "Oh, God!" "(INDISTINCT COMPUTER VOICE)" "Yeah, I think I'll just use a piece of paper." "(ZAPHOD) Shut up!" "Do we have any record of their personal rescue improbability?" "Yes." "(ZAPHOD) Yeah..." "Yeah..." "That's high." "But relative to what we were doing, which was...?" " Infinity minus 1." " Yeah..." "That is pretty..." " Low." " Yeah, yeah." "I got a bad feeling about one big whack of improbability still to be accounted for." "Bat's dos!" "I can't work this out!" "Well..." "Yeah, OK." "Computer?" "(INDISTINCT VOICEOVER)" "Then shut up and work something out for me." " (COMPUTER VOICE)" " Improbability data, yeah!" "(COMPUTER VOICE)" "Telephone numbers?" "Computer?" "Show us the aliens on the monitor screen." "(INDISTINCT VOICEOVER)" "I deliver perfection..." "and don't brag about it!" ":" "D" "Someone came to me after a show, after it'd gone out, and said," ""I don't understand, were you on stilts or did everyone else wear stilts," ""so that you didn't look as tall as you ought to have been?" ""I didn't understand most of it!"" "I said, "I don't understand your question, what do you mean?"" "They said, "You're supposed to be six foot eight" ""and you didn't look it at all."" "I said, "Six foot eight?" "How could I possibly be six foot eight?"" "I know Alan Ladd had to act on a box as he was shorter than his leading ladies," "But this was ridiculous!" "Apparently, he'd misheard an important line early on." "He'd misheard the description that I was a six-foot APE descendant!" "It entirely confused him for the entire run of the series." "He spent the time working out why I was a particular height and everyone else wasn't." "Most peculiar!" "Has anyone any other misapprehensions we can clear up?" "Or if anyone has the nerve to tell me what it was!" "Extraordinary!" "No, it was provided by the BBC and, I would have thought, a fairly standard make." "Having bought it and shown it ceremoniously, and embroidered "AD" on the front pocket, they realised they hadn't got another one and they couldn't find another as it was a deleted line." "So if you've got one, hang onto it!" "There were actual sequences where we went on the raft off to find Norway." "I don't know how much came over on the final episode." "We did come back on the raft." "We had some unfortunate launchings." "One or two effects people cut themselves on bits of scrap that it was made of." "We got totally soaked falling off and falling in." "They had to dry it out before we could go on because it's now irreplaceable." "While there was rumour of a second series, they wouldn't let me have it, not even to open a fìte." "I was terrified that without it, no one would know who I was!" "Hi, Arthur, glad you could make it!" " Arthur, this is..." " We've met!" " What?" " Have we?" "They made this fibreglass body mould like a cross between Roman armour and a suitcase." "It had a prong sticking up." "And... it was agony!" "Absolute agony to wear after a while." "One found that there were all sorts of things wrong with it which meant you couldn't sit down like I'm sitting now, because the thing would ride up and strangle you round here." "(DIRECTOR) Mark, head down, please." "His head." "His head's getting to it." "Forward, Mark." "It had a body-plate here and it was strapped on." "Just down here... in case I'm..." "down there!" "Hi, how are you?" "Glad you could drop in!" "Hi, Zaphod, good to see you, you're looking well." "The extra arm suits you!" "I remember deciding, or suggesting, as a minor little jape, that just as Zaphod could grow a head at will, it might be that he could grow a penis at will, so we decided that he'd have two nine-inch sausage-like things" "which would be dangled down the side of his trousers." "These were dutifully made up by the wardrobe department." "We come to the studio, after the filming, and a rather worried wardrobe person came up and said," ""You know these penises, I'm a little bit worried about them."" "So I said, "What?"" "They said, "Just for the studio, maybe we could make them seven inches long."" "So I had two marginally shrunken penises, none of which is at all visible, even if you freeze-frame the video." "But I knew they were there." "It made me feel good, all that stuff!" "(MARVIN) I suppose you'll want to see the aliens now." "Do you want me to sit in the corner and rust or fall apart where I'm standing?" "I..." "I... er..." "I think it works." "I'm not quite sure." "The problem was, when I was writing it to begin with, both the radio and book," "I didn't actually have a design in mind at all." "It was just a voice." "(MARVIN) Just that." "We speculated whether it should be "androidal" but it seemed to be a bad idea, because the whole joke is that it is obviously a machine which has this curious perversion of a human character." "(MARVIN) Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they tell me to take you up to the bridge." "Call that job satisfaction?" "'Cause I don't." "That seemed to be an argument to making it an old-fashioned traditional-style robot." "I wonder if it's quite right but I don't know..." "Remember those American movies where they draw round the body at the scene of the murder?" "That's what Jim Francis asked me to do." ""Lie on the floor, David."" "He drew the shape of Marvin around me." "It meant no one else could wear the tin can, but there you go." "I appeared on location first, in the body." "The last nut and bolt was screwed into place, the head went on." "Half an hour this took, everyone else was having coffee and moseying around, and "Action" I could hear, and that was probably the last word I heard on location." "I walked and I kept on walking because I couldn't hear what was going on." "Come on." "It wasn't the best of weather on location, it was very grey." "A lot of the Magrathean days that were meant to be sunshine actually turned into very grey days." "I was left on my own on one notorious occasion when everybody else just poked off for a cup of tea up the cliffs." "An umbrella on the side of me was all that was covering me, because I couldn't move." "Eventually, Perry, from Visual Effects, came down and gave me a cup of coffee." ""Here you are, David," plonked a cup of coffee on my shoulder." "I couldn't reach it, that was the point, I couldn't reach it." "They were all having a fine time." "Here's something to occupy you and take your mind off things." "It won't work." "I have an exceptionally large mind." "Marvin!" "Peter had a lot of say in the costumes, funnily enough." "He wanted them very cartoon, kind of very sexy." "I went as far as I felt I was able." "If they'd have got me 15 years, I'd have been like the rest of the old girls, wanting to tear 'em off but..." "The problem was, being plastic, it didn't breathe well, when we were in the clay pits in Cornwall, it was quite hot to say the least." "The planet Magrathea had to be barren, nothing on it at all." "Douglas Adams thought Iceland would be good for this and we thought about going, but unfortunately our filming period, which was immovable, had to be their rainy period, which wouldn't have been a very good idea," "so I'd been to Morocco and I remember it being pretty barren." "So I thought, "Let's try Morocco"." "So my assistant, Mike Cager, and I went out to Morocco and it looked good, and it would have been cheaper than filming in Iceland, and cheaper than filming in Lancashire because you can have a package deal." "Our first experience there was when my assistant picked up his camera to take a picture of a nice building with a sort of fort outline on it and a nice flag fluttering, and a soldier ran out with a machine gun, put it in his chest and took the camera." "Apparently it was a police station, but there was no blue lamp outside or a policeman saying, "Evening, all"." "How are you supposed to know?" "These things put us off." "Then we met a Japanese film unit and they told us to forget it because our equipment would be impounded." "We enjoyed the rest of our holi... our recce, and came back to Cornwall and found a clay pit there." "That was my least favourite memory of the filming, being in the clay pits in Cornwall with no loo anywhere to be seen." "The great thing about the St Austell china clay pits was that they did look like an alien planet." "They were blasted, and the white clay had run in rivulets and fissures and looked like the computerised pictures you see sent back from the planets viewed by NASA." "You chose a cold night to visit our dead planet." " Who are you?" " My name is not important." "Slartibartfast and I were walking on a long distance shot, and the camera crew were quite a long way up the valley, continuing our dialogue, and suddenly he stopped." "I carried on walking and suddenly saw all heads peering up from behind the camera, saying, "Where is he?" I looked round and he'd gone." "He'd fallen down a fissure." "He was like an up-ended beetle, arms and legs in the air, couldn't get out, had to be assisted." " Where are we going?" " Deep into the bowels of the planet." "Even now our race is being revived from its five-million-year slumber." "Magrathea awakes!" "Well, yes, we did our share of fairly bizarre things." "Like travelling in a bubble on the back of a lorry." "It was cleverly disguised." "I don't know how it was never visible but it never was." "On location, we were doing the bubble car which Slartibartfast and Arthur travel along in, done on a low-loader in a tunnel down near Fowey, which was about a half-mile-long tunnel." "This tunnel has fluorescent lights all along it, every 20 or 30 feet, so we wanted those switched off because we were supposed to be travelling through time and space and infinity." "It would be a bit of a giveaway to see a fluorescent tube." "We asked if we could switch them off, but the cost of switching them off - because the man in charge said that if you turn them off, it will cost you x number of pounds - because over half a mile of tubes at least half will burst" "because they've been on for about 15 years." "So we had to leave them on and we thought it would destroy the effect, but in fact the sound effect of the zing, zing, just makes the whole thing and adds to the shot rather than detracts from it," "which was rather a nice surprise." "Excuse me, what is your name, by the way?" "My name?" " My name is Slartibartfast." " I beg your pardon?" "That was comfortable enough, sitting in the bubble like the Pope, with the surrounding countryside going by, but when it came to being hoisted on the end of the crane, on very high-tensile wire, they said weights considerably heavier than ours would not break it." "Both Richard and I said, "I don't think so, thank you very much, I don't think so."" "The shot of the lift-off and the take-off, when they're travelling, was myself playing Slarti and my assistant, Stuart Murdoch, as my co-pilot, and that worked very well, very scary, because we were inside a vacuum and we could hear the wires stretching," "twanging and bits of rust dropping off the crane, and you were 200 foot up the top with a very excited director down the bottom going, "Higher, higher!"" "And one minute we'd be up over the top of the cliff in safety, and then we'd swing over a 200-foot drop, so it was all very exciting, got the adrenaline going." "Over there!" "In one of the episodes, it was required the computer room exploded." "Alan phoned me up, or at one meeting said that what he really wanted was an enormous explosion for this and what was the best way to do it, and, as a throwaway comment," "I just said, "Build the set outside."" " This way." " Yeah, this way." "Hold it, Beeblebrox, we've got you covered." " Cops!" " Anyone else want to guess?" "About a week later, I had a phone call from Alan to say that we'd got a location, we've built the set, now let's blow it up." "Back to the lift!" "That was our all-night shoot." "It was the most tiring, in a way, because come 5 o'clock in the morning, when it gets cold and wet like it's getting now..." "This way!" "We don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" "Suits me fine!" "It was our job to stay standing up, because the set became extremely slippery as we dashed around in panic from the laser guns, which weren't going off." "They were added later." "You still there?" "Yeah!" "That just about wraps it up for this lifetime, I guess." "Well, it's been nice running into you again, Zaphod." "# Zaglabor astragard #" "I remember having to make up whatever that song was." "What the hell are you doing?" "This is an ancient Betelgeuse death anthem." "We made it up on the spot and I'm not sure if it's what we sing on the radio." "It has a hint of the Marseillaise, as I remember." "# Zagrabor astragard" "# Hootrimansion Bambriar #" "We did a test on it about 4 o'clock in the afternoon." "Because it was a one-off explosion, we had to ensure it would work." "We were doing tests and bits of computer landed on holes on the golf course." "We had to cut that down a little bit." "In the end, when we were ready, we just loaded up with enough petrol." "All I can remember is Jim piling petrol-bomb bag after petrol-bomb bag all around the set." "Having been near visual effects designers before, I decided to sort of..." "As each bomb went in, I went one step back, one step back." "I was a considerable way behind the camera, and the magic moment came when he fired it, and there wasn't an eyebrow left in the place." "As well as the computer exploding, there was enough heat to melt the set walls." "I think we got the explosion Alan wanted, anyway." "Hitchhiker was so much my baby," "I was so protective of it and the way I felt it ought to be done that I was there the whole time, both on radio and television, and managed to slip myself in on the television programme," "appearing on the screen from time to time." "There was one particular occasion which I somewhat regret." "What had happened was that there was one actor who was supposed to turn up early one morning to do a particular scene involving walking into the sea wearing nothing." "During the course of the previous evening it became apparent that the guy was ill and would not be able to turn up." "At that point..." "I was the last to become aware of this." "All I was aware of was that people were slipping me a lot of drinks." "I was obviously being softened up for something." "It turned out the following morning, as I turned up for work with a hangover, that what I had been softened up for was to do this particular shot myself." "When you do a scene like that, you have what is known as a closed set." "What happens is that the moment someone gets on the megaphone and shouts, "OK, closed set!" everybody comes running to see what's happening." "I remember Douglas, who was this sort of pauper, let's remember, he was sleeping in garrets, essentially..." "Then by the time the television series was starting," "I think something had turned around in his life, maybe it was Hitchhikers, and he'd got this Volkswagen Golf GTi with a hood and stuff, and this massive stereo system within this thing." "I remember him opening the doors and us all sitting in it, with it blasting out 2001 or something, and us all being impressed with this big car, which was in effect a speaker." "We'd always go everywhere in this very small Volkswagen, and Douglas and Mark would be in the front with the seats far back for their legs, and David and I would be in ante-natal position in the back seat." "I just remember we were always going to restaurants." "It was Douglas who discovered The Good Food Guide and was determined to try the fairly separated restaurants of the area." "Every time you'd think Douglas was up to something important, it'd just be The Good Food Guide, and he'd say," ""I've got a great one."" "We'd go off in convoys, I remember, off to the Horn of Plenty." "It was a highlight of the filming." "We couldn't wait for it to end so we could go and get another gourmet meal." "Would you all like to see the menu or would you care to meet the dish of the day?" " Meet...?" " What is it?" "It's an Amiglion Major cow." "An extra scene in the TV series that wasn't in the radio series was the dish of the day." "Originally I'd written it for Ken Campbell's stage production, and it turned out to be a scene that performed particularly nicely, so we put this into the TV show." "(GRUNTS AND LOWS)" "Good evening, madam and gentlemen." "I am the main dish of the day." "May I interest you in parts of my body?" "Huh?" "I remember when we were filming it, a lot of the guys working on the set, the crew, for the first time in the whole series, they actually found something to laugh at!" "Something they actually thought was funny!" "Apart from the general strangeness of Hitchhiker, the way it was assembled, you couldn't even see what was going on." "This is one scene that just played straight as a funny scene." "Something off my shoulder, perhaps?" "Braised in a little white wine sauce." " Your shoulder?" " Well, naturally mine, sir." "Nobody else's is mine to offer." "You mean, this animal actually wants us to eat it?" "When we looked for who to cast it," "Sandra was very keen that we try Peter Davison, her husband." "Peter was very envious because he wanted to be in it." "During rehearsals one day, Alan Bell said, "We're looking for someone" ""to play the dish of the day," and I thought, "This is his way in!"" "I said, "What about Peter?"" "I'll have a green salad." "May I urge you, sir, to consider my liver." "It must be very rich and tender by now." "I have been force-feeding myself for months." "He had just been made Doctor Who at the time, and I think the Doctor Who office would have been very sort of... about this, except that you didn't know it was him at all because he was in this complete Amiglion Major cow outfit." "Peter adored doing it and Douglas has since said it was his favourite bit." "It was nice that it worked out." "Four rare steaks, and hurry, please!" "Very wise choice, sir, very good." "I'll just nip off and shoot meself." "Oh, God!" "Don't worry, sir, I'll be very humane." "135 take one." "Alan came to me and said we were going to do this penguin scene." "He said, "Do you think you could learn penguin?"" "I said, "Yeah, sure." "Penguin?" "I can learn penguin."" "I went to the zoo." "I tried to find tapes of penguins to hear penguins, met a penguin." "I went to the zoo and talked to one for half an hour." "Penguins, you know..." "learn how to walk like a penguin, like this." "I did all that, and got my penguin quite down." "I can't do it any more..." "I got it pretty good!" " Hey!" " Squawk!" "Who are you?" "Squawk!" "What's going on?" "No..." "I was getting carried away then." "We went off to rehearsal, we did all the sequence and we got to the actual studio and Alan came up to me and said," ""How's the penguin coming along?" I said, "It's brilliant, I'll show you."" "I did it for him and he said, "Very good," ""but just to be on the safe side, I've got this machine" ""and it alters your voice and sounds just like a penguin."" "So that's what they did." " Hang about, look..." " Cut it!" "No one's ever seen my brilliant penguin." "Anybody wants to see a brilliant penguin I'm here." "So there we were, up in prehistoric Lancashire, with the Ark ship lying all around, but the bath has survived." "There's Aubrey Morris playing the Captain in the bath." "I'd like to call this meeting to order, if that's possible." "We're ready to go and he says, "I should have make-up on my shoulders."" "Standing next to him is Beth Porter, showing a great amount of cleavage, may I say." "The make-up artist said, "I've got to go down and get that."" "I said, "We must go because the light's going, we've got to film this."" "He said, "I really ought to have some make-up on my shoulders."" "Beth Porter said, "Honey, when my boobs are on the screen," ""nobody will look at your shoulders!"" "I wouldn't overstress that angle." "After all, one's never alone with a rubber duck." "In episode six, when Aubrey, who's captain of the B ship, has to have a bath, it seems quite a straightforward thing, except that now the ship has crash-landed on the planet, he has to have hot water," "because if he's sitting in a bath acting all day it could be quite a problem." "Douglas had casually written it in, it seemed a sensible idea." "The reality of it was very different." " We've lost the bubbles, does it matter?" " It doesn't matter." "Action!" " And the wheel!" " Look at me." "I can't remember it, I can't see with that lovely lady." "It's 200 metres from the nearest road, up a hillside, and the only place to get hot water from was the local paper mill." "Unfortunately, it uses a lot of chemicals, so what happened was," "I was waiting for it at eight o'clock in the morning and this huge lorry turned up, this water tanker, and all over it there was plastered these danger signs." ""Chemicals!" "Beware!" Triangles, all this." "I said, "For God's sake, don't see that!" "Hurry up and fill the bath."" "So we linked... they don't normally have to go more than 100 feet, I shouldn't think." "200 yards later, all these bits of joined-together piping finally reach the bath, and this machine, which is below the level of where the water wants to be, is roaring merrily away." "After 20 minutes, one filthy blob of water dropped out at the far end, blackened." "Then the pipe burst, the whole sequence of events rolled on." "Two hours later, the crew's there, Aubrey says, "Is this water all right to sit in?"" ""Ooh, trust me, no problem at all."" "So, we're filling it all up..." "in the end, lots of Matey was used, a lot of foam, looked absolutely lovely, and he sat in and seemed to be very happy for the course of the day." "Just time for another bath!" "Sponge, somebody?" "I deliver perfection..." "and don't brag about it!" ":" "D" "Ah!" "Hello." "This is a truly momentous occasion, for the BBC have chosen me from many hundreds of out-of-work actors to be the very first voice to be heard in mono-headphone." "In order to experience the effect of this new concept in sound technology, it's extremely important that..." "Thank you very much." "...the special mono-headphone is worn the correct way on the head." "This is because the sound transmitted through your mono-headphone has been specially treated by the BBC's new Babel Fish Modulator." "This sound, which has been scrambled, intensified, Dolby-ed, scrambled, unscrambled, scrambled again and bounced off a very large piece of toast, relies on the open ambience of the opposite ear to counter-balance the astrometric pressure on the recipient eardrum." "You can just hold this mono-headphone with one hand against one ear, with your elbow on the table..." "Then, you can..." "This doesn't of course leave both hands free to applaud." "Now, can I have your head?" "Is it now?" "Yes." "Excuse me." "Don't put it on the other ear." "Keep it well off the other ear." "So you can now applaud..." "If you wanted to." "Try it!" "Thank you." "That's enough." "Now, next card, I think." "Yes." "Assuming you've got the hang of the thing, let me tell you..." "That'll do, thank you." "Goodbye." "...you're about to hear." "Let me tell you a little about the programme you're about to hear." "As many of you will have realised, the main reason for the gigantic success of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on BBC radio was the choice of actor to play the narrator." "The BBC naturally wanted the very best." "An actor who would bring to the part stature and respect, and I was absolutely thrilled when they came to me and said he wasn't available and would I like to play the part?" "Anyway, the radio show was a success, and they made an LP of it - the BBC didn't, for some reason they chose not to - but this was a great success and so was the paperback." "It was top of the bestseller list for ages." "Douglas Adams went round all the W.H. Smiths around the country, signing copies of it." "In fact, they've got the interesting situation where he signed so many, an unsigned copy by Douglas Adams is worth more than one he's signed!" "He won't thank me for that." "Never mind!" "Now, letters to the Radio Times." "Here's a letter we had..." "Here's another." ""In just about 50 years of radio and latterly television watching," ""this strikes me as the most..." "fatuous, inane, childish drivel!"" "Well, let's not bother with that!" "You'll be pleased to hear they are doing a series on television, and they invited me to recreate my role as the narrator." "I realise now how important my contribution to the series is." "Naturally I held out for better terms than I had for the radio series." "A man can't live forever on free tickets for Any Questions and My Word." "Although, to be fair, they sent me a whole book of tickets for the Proms." "They weren't going to get me on TV for What's on Wogan, that's for sure!" "In the end, we came to quite good terms." "I'd say quite good-ish terms really, on the whole..." "I agreed they could use my voice and in return I would star in my own show." "And they kept their word, and this is it." "They did say no expense would be spared, so they've cut all my expenses." "I'm even sharing a dressing room with a weatherman!" "All gumboots, plastic macs and seaweed!" "Let me tell you about Part 1 of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "Arthur Dent is played by Simon Jones," "Ford Prefect by David Nixon, Mr Prosser by Joe Melia, the Vogon Captain by Martin Benson - there's a picture of him..." "Rather nice that, isn't it?" "And this is a picture of someone else." "Got it?" "There." "And we've got some pictures of the sets, which..." "I hope this is the right way up." "And here's another one." "Looks very similar." "But I can't see it too well from here." "Anyway, all very promising." ""The sets cost a fortune," it says." "Hello?" "No..." "No, it isn't the saloon bar of the Wan Tun!" "What?" "The BBC studio!" "Yes, I'm recording at the moment." "That's very nice of you." "I do get recognised occasionally, of course, but how very nice!" "I'm so pleased." "No, I didn't get the part because I'm Simon Jones's father!" "Cheek!" "Excuse me." "Now, here are some bills, one or two bills." "I don't know whether they've been settled." "This is to impress you with the cost of the production." "Arthur Dent's dressing gown: 30." "Ford Prefect's blazer: 70." "Mr Prosser's raincoat: 55." "Workmen's overalls: 40." "That's one pound and 95 pence on the Oxfam shop alone!" "Here we've another." "75 days times 5, that's £322.46," "BBC Catering supplying cups of tea to the production office." "Now, a special note here about the computer animations." "Confidentially, there wasn't a computer that could provide the standard of animation required, so Pearce Studios were contracted to provide this complex work." "They worked day and night all of last Wednesday." "Zaphod Beeblebrox isn't in this episode, but a two-headed actor has been found." "However, I'm reliably told that he's in two minds about doing it." "Two minds...!" "I do hope you enjoy this mono-headphone presentation of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy!" "Would you ask the weatherman if he's got the key to the dressing room?" "Gone home?" "'The full story of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is long, tortuous, 'and to be frank, pretty obscure." "'Gathering information for it has caused endless problems, 'but if you're the average four-headed, six-tentacled man-about-town, 'you really wouldn't be interested." "'On the other hand, for inhabitants from the speck of dust called Earth 'who happen to be listening, 'this might worry you.'" "People of Earth!" "Your attention, please!" "This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council." "As you are probably aware, the plans for the outlying regions of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy require a hyperspace express route to be built through your star system." "Regrettably, your planet is scheduled for demolition." "'If you do feel worried, alarmed or out and out terrified:" "'Sit back, drink two:" "'and nothing-repeat, nothing - 'is likely to disturb your calm for quite some time.'" "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy begins tonight at 9 p.m. on BBC2." "On BBC2 later this evening, the start of a new series:" "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, adapted from Radio 4's highly successful comedy series, starring Simon Jones and the voice of Peter Jones." "That's on BBC2 at 9 p.m." "Here on 2, we begin a new series." "New to television, that is, because it has been compulsive Radio 4 listening for some time now." "Peter Jones recreates his radio role as the narrator, and Simon Jones can now be seen as the hero of the piece, as we present The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "Now, Arthur and Ford Prefect continue their extraterrestrial journey in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "Next week our intrepid friends find themselves in a Restaurant at the End of the Universe." "Food for thought in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy next Monday." "Here on 2, for all would-be space travellers, we continue, especially for those hoping for a DIY holiday in the Universe," "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." " Can we trust him?" " I trust him to the end of the Earth." " But how far's that?" " About 12 minutes away." " We need... a stiff drink." "That's wrong." " I fell down." "(DIRECTOR) Action!" "You pin-striped barbarians!" "I'll sue the council for every penny it's got!" "I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered and boiled and whipped..." "and then chopped up into bits until until you've had enough!" "(MAN) That was very good!" "(MAN) 67, take 2." "Arthur, don't bother." "There isn't time!" "Bollocks!" "I can't remember the last line." "(MAN) 77, take 1." "(DIRECTOR) Keep your glasses up." "Sorry, stop!" "Sorry." "It's straightforward." ""Lose my grip on the day..." sounds like a line I said yesterday." "Please tell me what the hell is going on." "I'm losing my grip on the day!" "Drink up, you've got three pints to get through." "Three pints?" "!" "At lunchtime?" "!" "Time is an illusion." "Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep." "You should send that in to the Reader's Digest." "Drink up!" "Why three pints?" "Muscle relaxant." "You're going to need it." "Has the world always been like this?" " Did I..." "Sorry." "Line wrong." " (DIRECTOR) OK!" " It's going the right way, though!" " (DIRECTOR) Here we go!" "(MAN) 77, take 2!" " Please tell me what the hell is going on." " Sorry, sorry." "So sorry." "Ready?" "Please tell me what the hell is going on." "I'm losing my grip on the day." "Drink up!" "You've got three pints to get through." "Three pints?" "!" "At lunchtime?" "!" "Time is an illusion." "Lunchtime doubly so." "Very deep." "You should send that in to the Reader's Digest." "Drink up..." "I couldn't remember." "(DIRECTOR) Action!" " Peanuts... how much?" " W-What?" "Become immensely rich." "But we have run into inflation owing to the high level of leaf availability." "Shit!" " (DIRECTOR) All right, once again." " Sorry." "(MAN) 101, second clap." "One of our surviving producers rescued a camera from the wreckage." "He wants to make a documentary about you, Captain." "I don't hear anything!" "(MAN) 101, take 4." "Yes!" "And we also..." "Fuck!" "Start again." "Yes, thank you." "I know." "Yes!" "One of our surviving producers rescued a camera from the wreckage, and he wants to make a... documentary about you, Captain." "Yeah!" "Stop it!" "No, we did something else." "I'm sorry." "(COMPUTER) A computer whose merest operational parameters" "I am not worthy to calculate." "And yet, I will design it for you." "A computer which can calculate..." "etc., etc..." "Very good!" "(COMPUTER) Forty two!" "I think the problem is that you..." "Sorry!" "O Deep Thought!" "Are you not a greater computer...?" "But are you not a more fiendish disputant than the great..." "Gone!" "Can we just clear this up?" "O, Deep Thought!" "Are you not a p..." "OK, Beeblebrox!" "Stop right there!" "We got you covered!" "That's not the right line." "(MAN) 229, take 1." "(DIRECTOR) That's enough." "Sorry, a misunderstanding there." "Beeblebrox, either you all come along with us..." "Sorry!" " Tell her!" " You tell her!" " You tell her!" " You tell her!" " You're the one." " Just tell her!" " Tell her!" " Tell her!" "Wait a minute." "Did I have my glasses on or off?" "Off!" "Shall we shoot them up again for a while?" "Yeah, why not!" "Yes, too much OTT, yes." " OTT?" "!" " Over The Top." "(MAN) 222, take 2." "(DIRECTOR) Quiet!" "And... action!" "Listen..." "Sorry!" "(ARTHUR) What the hell are you doing?" "!" "This is an ancient Betelgeuse death anthem." "(INCOHERENT WAILING)" "What the hell are you doing?" "This an ancient Betelgeuse death anthem." "It means after this..." " (DIRECTOR) Keep going, once again." " I heard something." "Well, it's really been nice running into you again, Zaphod." "I didn't get it." "This is an ancient Betelgeuse death anthem." "It means after this..." "Fuck!" "I can't remember that fucking line!" "What's the matter?" "!" "(DIRECTOR) Still running." "Keep running." "(FORD) Things can only get better." "Well..." "I thought that was rather good." "(MAN) 21, take 1." "(DIRECTOR) Glasses off." "Action!" "(MAN) Mr Dent, the plans were available in the office for the last 9 months." "Oh, yes..." "Sorry." "Hopeless." "I've got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard." "Now." "At the Red Lion" " Why?" " 'Cause you'll need a stiff drink." "Oh, yes!" "As soon as I heard..." "Sorry, I'm ruining it." "My legs won't cross." "No, what about my house?" " He wants to knock your house down." " This is ridiculous." "Sorry!" "I can't go on." "(MAN) 37, take 3." "Listen to me..." "Oh, fucking hell!" "I sound like James Cagney!" "Look, kid, I promise you the live population of this planet is nil plus the five of us." "Let's get in th..." "I screwed it as well, sorry!" "Guard?" "What from?" "You said there was no one here." "These are the greatest known sunglasses in..." "Shit!" "These are the..." "Fuck!" "I'll carry on." " What are you doing?" " I'm trying to teach them to spell..." "Damn!" "Hi, Arthur..." "Fuck!" "I haven't got any monkeys." "They're not sitting on my head?" "We can't have that." "(DIRECTOR) Look at the monkeys." "Turn in." "(DIRECTOR) The other way." "Action!" "Ford?" "There's an..." "Fuck!" "Ford?" "There's an infinite number of monkeys here who want to discuss their script for Hamlet." "(DIRECTOR) Can we get any more monkeys?" "Wonderful." "Back to the lift?" " Fuck!" " No!" "No!" "Earth has been bulldozed to make way for an intergalactic freeway." "Among the survivors were Arthur Dent, wandering space in his Marks  Sparks pyjamas and dressing gown, accompanied by his friend, Ford Prefect." "The plot has the aid of that most useful fictional device, Improbability Drive." "Addicts will not need reminding that Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, having conquered the worlds of radio, paperbacks and even the album charts, is now becoming compulsive viewing on BBC2 on Mondays at 9 o'clock." "The producer of the show is Alan Bell, and the man responsible for the exciting graphics is Rod Lord." "Alan, this was the cult of all cults." "As a radio show, people went crazy about it." "Were you one of the fanatics?" "I'd heard it once, recorded on cassette, and I thought it was absolutely brilliant." "I thought they did it to perfection." "And somebody had said, "Why don't you do it on TV?"" "I listened to the cassette again and firmly decided you couldn't do it on TV." "How were you persuaded otherwise?" "John Howard Davies, head of comedy at the BBC, two days after I had made this firm decision, handed me a script and it said, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "I thought if we've got to do it, we must do it very well." "Now I suppose it's biting the hand that feeds me, but I've always felt that pictures on radio were much better than pictures on TV." " Do you agree?" " Yes, I thought it couldn't be done on TV." "The illusion was so complete." "But very fortunately it turned out that Arthur Dent, played by Simon Jones, he was so much like everybody's idea of how he would look, we were halfway there." "How did you stumble across this chap, Rod Lord?" "That's a very strange story." "I'd been doing a film about The Empire Strikes Back, the making of, and we were in a cutting room in Ealing, playing the soundtrack of R2D2 squeaking away, and a voice came through the door saying," ""Excuse me." "Is that R2D2?" and I said yes." "This little chap, Kevin Davies, suddenly said to me," ""We have an animation company downstairs" ""who really want to work on Hitchhiker." ""Would you have a look at their work?" So I said yes." "We've got to have the best and I don't want to commit too early." "We saw Rod's work, and it turned out to be absolutely brilliant." "We'll be seeing how brilliant in a moment." "Rod, in front of us here, to give people an idea of the volume of work..." "What does this represent?" "That stack represents episode 3 from our point of view." "One episode." " Every envelope and box?" "!" " Multiply it by six for six episodes." "When you were given the storyline - the one we'll look at in a moment is about the dolphins, the dolphins are trying to tell us about the end of the world - how do you set about envisaging it?" "There are a few directions on the script itself as to general requirements, and basically sit down with a storyboard pad and keep throwing sheets in the bin until something feels right." "What is a storyboard?" "Can you explain?" "If you can imagine a comic strip, it's just a series of TV format frames." "In each one we try to draw a picture to suggest a sequence as you can see here." "(HOST) These are squiggles for...?" "(ROD) Very rough scribbles." "(ROD) By no means intended for any presentation purposes." "These are purely to work out the sequence as we may be able to do it, and to remind ourselves as we proceed so we miss nothing out." "If there's more than one person working on the sequence, they can refer to it." "The exciting thing is the sequence we'll see is there in its own right, but throughout the show you superimpose it on live action, and the narrator's voice reads out the words." "A very exciting use of many media, isn't it?" "That's right." "I think my job has been co-ordinating all the different parts of TV." "There's live action, there's filming, the animation." " And there's the soundtrack, don't forget." " One of the most important things." "The drawings here, out of this huge mountain of drawings, you have things which are just little, very simple guides, pencil drawings, showing the detail of planning out the sequence." "From them you move to things like this." "The trace-offs." "It's awful to have to disappoint so many computer experts, but it is a very traditional method of doing animation." "Everybody knows already, but it's how Disney went about it, although the style's very different, and we're not as complex as that." "We're going to put it all together and see the dolphin sequence." "An attractive notion that the dolphins are trying to tell us that the world is coming to an end, and that they're much brighter than we are." "'Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins 'because he had achieved so much." "'The wheel." "'New York." "'Wars, and so on." "'All the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time." "'But conversely the dolphins believed they were more intelligent than man 'for precisely the same reasons." "'Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending demolition of Earth 'and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger." "'Most of their communications were misinterpreted 'as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for titbits, 'so they gave up and left the Earth by their own means, 'shortly before the Vogons arrived." "'The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted 'as a sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault 'through a hoop whilst whistling The Star-Spangled Banner." "'But in fact the message was this:'" "It really does tap to the essence of the humour of it." "Thank you." "I'll just use my Hitchhiker's Guide to find out where we're going next." "Yes, it's Marion Foster, look!" "I deliver perfection..." "and don't brag about it!" ":" "D" "'The planet Earth was an unusual place to film an intergalactic adventure, 'but this had never stopped the BBC before.'" "That's it." "Third left, just after that sun." "Oh, anywhere will do." "The northern hemisphere would be marvellous." "Thank you very much." "'This is about the making of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, 'and Arthur Dent is coming home.'" "Oh, just drop me on the corner." "'The making of the television series 'of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy 'began with filming in 1980 'at this farmhouse somewhere in Sussex.'" "I spent about two months searching all of southern England" "looking for the right sort of house for Arthur Dent to stay in." "I found myself lost one day, when I was on my way back to the BBC." "I turned a corner there and I saw exactly what I was searching for." "So, I knocked on the door and this young lady answered it." "I said, "Can we film here?" "We'll be absolutely no trouble whatsoever."" "I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered... and whipped and boiled!" "Strangely enough, the place is still standing." "It must be 12 years or more since I've been here." "I wonder if I left the gas on." "PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan?" "Argentina?" "The Falkland Islands?" "That's off Scotland, surely?" "Saddam Hussein?" "'Douglas Adams, who created The Hitchhiker's Guide, 'had previously been a hospital porter, 'a chicken shed cleaner and a bodyguard.'" "So, anyway, I was completely broke." "Very little I'd turned my hand to had, sort of, worked at all." "One of the things I tried to persuade people to be interested in was the idea of doing comedy science fiction." "I went to one person after another with one version after another." "Then, oddly, one producer I happened to know" " Simon Brett, who was one person I hadn't approached with this - came to me and said, "You know what I think would be a great idea?" ""Doing comedy science fiction, and you might be the person to do it."" "And then I remembered this thought I had had years earlier when I'd been lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "I thought of Ford Prefect as a researcher for the Guide." "That was when it began to come together." "'The radio series was first broadcast late at night 'in March 1978 on BBC Radio 4." "'And its fame soon spread.'" " Why not share it with friends?" " Because I want to keep them!" "(DOUGLAS ADAMS) Simon nursemaided it through all the difficulties of the programme development groups at the BBC." "It was a very difficult notion to get anyone to accept, but once Simon was on board and pushing it, he eventually got it made." "Geoffrey Perkins then took over for the rest." " The two million robots thing..." " Two million robots." "If you have two million singing, you won't hear what they're singing." "After we made the first episode, it took the BBC a long time to make up its mind about the series." "So I had to find other work from anywhere I could." "An obvious place to send that first script as an example of what I could do was Doctor Who." "The concept is staggering." "Pointless, but staggering." "Gratified you appreciate it." "Appreciate it?" "APPRECIATE it?" "!" "Inevitably, what happened was that commissions to write the rest of the series of Hitchhiker and four episodes of Doctor Who came in in the same week." "So, from then on, I was working crazily." "'Hitchhiker soon became a stage play, 'a book, records, a second radio series, 'more books, records, a computer game and a towel.'" "The first time I had anything to do with Hitchhiker was when somebody in radio said it would make an ideal TV series." "I listened to it and thought there was no chance it could be on TV." "The sets would be too big and the effects too costly." "Three months later," "John Howard Davies, the Head of Comedy then, called me in and handed me a script and said, "I want you to do this for television."" "I looked and it was Hitchhiker." "I said, "It can't be done."" "People of Earth, your attention, please." "'They built studios full of starship holds and bridges, 'constructed corridors, compartments, dining rooms 'and the Restaurant at the End of the Universe." "'On the sound stages of the old Ealing Films, 'super-computers crackled into life, exotic people made toasts, 'whilst in Cornish clay pits, 'sperm whales met their sticky end.'" "Eugh!" "'They took cavemen to the Peak District, 'held shoot-outs at Henley Golf Course 'and flew spaceships over London, 'before finally blowing up the planet." "'And through it all, the actors struggled with their lines...'" "Fuck!" "I can't remember the fucking line!" "'... their costumes, their makeup, 'and last, but not least, the overwhelming technicalities 'of Life, the Universe and Everything.'" "(TRILLIAN) Thank you." "Two to the power of 24,000..." "Ohhh!" "Sorry... shit." "Shit." "When it came to cast the television series, I was in favour of keeping as many of the cast from the radio show as possible, and Alan, I think, wanted to re-cast everything, and we came to a compromise." " I bought some peanuts." " Huh?" "We've been through a matter transference beam." "You've probably lost some salt." "The beer you had should have cushioned your system a bit." "How are you feeling?" "Like a military academy - bits of me keep passing out." "I was very reluctant to take willy-nilly, lock stock and barrel, the radio production and simply put it on TV." "So, we saw the artists from radio." "One by one they came, and Simon Jones was in every way how I had seen Arthur Dent." "'Douglas Adams wrote the part of Arthur with Simon Jones in mind." "'They had worked together before on a little-known comedy show.'" " They are so pretty." " What are?" "The peonies." "Look..." "Isn't it pretty?" "What's this, then?" " A peony." " Oh, you admit that?" ""Out of the Trees" was a television show" "I wrote with Graham Chapman and Bernard McKenna." "And... er... it was... it was only semi-brilliant." "It was in the lower end of brilliant, down towards not terribly good!" "Shurrup!" "We'll ask the owner if he minds us taking a peony." "If he does, I'll pay compensation." "Anyway, it was obstructing the pavement." "Don't try and be clever with us!" " Not yet!" " Got nothing better to do?" "!" "We've got a difficult one." "Sergeant!" "Look, mate, would you like to come to the station and be INTERVIEWED?" "Can be very NASTY being interviewed." "Are you threatening violence?" "Right!" "Send for reinforcements!" "More police cars converge on the area." "There's an accident and ambulances come." "More accidents, then... er... fire brigades." "Then, sort of, nuclear missiles." "Eventually, because this was the point when I took over, as a result of all this, the world blows up." " What happened to the Earth?" " It's been disintegrated." " Has it?" " Yes." "It just boiled away into space." "Listen, I'm..." "I'm a bit upset about that." "Ah, well." "When it came to casting Ford Prefect, it was more difficult, because in televisual terms, I felt we needed somebody a bit odd." "Somebody that looked ordinary, but wasn't quite ordinary." "How long have you known me?" "Five years, maybe six." "Most of it made some sense." "All right, how would you react if I told you I'm not from Guildford, but from a small planet somewhere near Betelgeuse?" "I don't know." "Is it the sort of thing you're likely to say?" "Drink up." "The world is about to end." "We saw a lot of actors, then David Dixon came in." "And he performed intelligently." "He understood the humour, what the author was trying to do." "What you should do here..." "I thought what I'd..." "In real life, when you're bored, you do that." "When you're acting bored, you pretend you're interested." "Alan said he wanted somebody off the wall and who has weird eyes." "He said, "You're off the wall and have weird eyes." So that was it." "He said, "We've cast you because you've got weird eyes," ""but would you mind wearing purple contact lenses?"" "I thought purple contact lenses might become useful, going to see the bank manager or something like that." "Put purple lenses in and ask for a few grand." "Don't knock it, it worked." "Where the hell are we?" "I hardly like to say, but it looks like Southend." "God, I'm relieved to hear you say that." "I thought I was going mad." "I remember being asked to do Hitchhiker, and I had never even heard of it before being asked to do it." "I rushed around and got the record out from the radio programme and thought, "What a good thing." "Shame I missed it."" "Only problem was, there was no money to do it on." "You think, "Do we go to infinity?"" "And Alan Bell was very keen on trying to include the effect that there was always infinity out there." "We decided we'd try and do that on a glass shot." "'Far across the studio, high on a scaffolding tower, 'stood a large sheet of glass, a camera and a bored Frenchman.'" "(ALAN BELL) TV studios have a limitation in size." "You have to make it bigger than you can physically afford to." "So, the conventional way is to get a big lump of glass and paint all the bits of the set you want beyond what the camera sees." "There's a hole in the painting and the studio set is seen through it." "But this tied up one of our few cameras for a whole day." "We had prepared it in advance." "It is all prepared." "It is all ready." "It has been ready for hours." "I'm just standing finishing little bits and pieces that we fancy." "I thought, "We can't do this for subsequent episodes."" "So, I thought about it and thought, "Maybe we can do it in reverse." ""Maybe we can photograph our scene full size," ""take the photograph and slap it on the glass," ""and then have the artist paint it bigger, as big as we want."" "Then he can match his colours to us." "Nobody thought that it would work, so I borrowed some scenery from Top of the Pops and asked my daughter to wander around." "This was during a show, while they were running a film." "They had a camera in the gallery and shot downwards, took a full-frame photo of it, slapped it on a piece of glass and, amazingly, it worked brilliantly." "And so, instead of only being able to have one picture per episode, we sometimes had five or six of these matte shots." "And I think the series benefited from that." "There was always something..." "There was no time to experiment, so there was always something not as we imagined and the perspective wasn't quite right." "For me, the one that worked best was the one in the first programme, the Vogon hull, when Arthur and Ford go in for the first time." "(ARTHUR) Where are we going?" "(FORD) Who knows?" "Off this ship, that's for sure!" "(ARTHUR) Shouldn't we go and say thanks?" "This is a Vogon spaceship." "We just pick up what we need and we get off it, right?" "Right." "Stun guns." " Any good?" " No." "Ford, who ARE you?" "I told you." "I'm a field researcher for the Guide." "Telecom systems." "What excited me about it was that Alan was willing to put more money into the effects side of it to get a higher standard, and also experiment a bit and try new and untried methods, or at least give me the leeway to attempt them." "Normally, model shots are always left to the end and rushed, put in a small corner of one of the studios." "But on this one, we were allowed the whole studio as a model set-up, whereby we could go in and combine all the model shots electronically." "We took camera tracks into the studio, all the backgrounds, and we did get a lot of model shots done for the time that we had, which I don't think would have been done any other way." "(FORD) I think this ship is new." "(ARTHUR) Why?" "Can you date metal?" "No, I found the sales brochure on the floor." "It says the Universe can be yours for five quilliard Altairian dollars." "A quilliard is a whole page of noughts with a one at the start." "Ah, listen!" ""Sensational new breakthrough in improbability physics." ""As the ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability," ""it passes simultaneously through every point in the Universe." ""Be the envy of other governments."" "I mean, WOW, this is really big league stuff!" "Well, it's better than that dingy old Vogon crate." "Gleaming metal." "This my idea of..." "Fuck!" "Bah..." "I'm talking rubbish!" "That'll go in the Christmas tape." "One of the most challenging projects was the book itself." "What is going on?" "!" " Here, have a look at this." " What is it?" "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." "A sort of book." "I like the cover. "Don't Panic."" "That's the first helpful thing anybody's said all day." "That's why it sells so well." "The normal way to do something like this is put a blue screen on it and electronically insert the information we wanted to see." "Unfortunately, that means you're locked off." "You can't move the camera or zoom in." "Which isn't very exciting." "Look..." "Fast wind index" " V." "Vogon Constructor Fleets." "See what it says and I'll keep watch." "'Vogon Constructor Fleets...'" "(JIM FRANCIS) We made up a rig which basically projected onto the back of the book and allowed the artist to move his hand, or the camera to zoom in or out or move round, which made it much more interesting." "(DOUGLAS ADAMS) Of course, we were transferring it from radio to TV, and there were things there specifically because it was radio." "For instance, the narrator." "If it had started on TV, it would never have had a narrator." "But on radio, the narrator had been an integral part of its character." "So, the narrator had to be in the TV series." "So the question is, how do you put a narrator in?" "The answer turned out to be having this graphic display of the readout of the book." "'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is a remarkable book." "'The introduction starts:'" "Something that started out as a problem that arose from transferring from radio to TV, turned out to be one of the most original and rewarding aspects of making the television show." "'None at all is exactly how much suspicion 'the ape descendant, Arthur Dent, had 'that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, 'but was, in fact, 'from a small planet somewhere near Betelgeuse." "'Arthur Dent's failure to suspect this 'reflects the care with which his friend blended into human society 'after a fairly shaky start." "'When he first arrived, the minimal research he had done 'suggested that the name Ford Prefect would be inconspicuous.'" "We had this new young assistant that had just started with us." "He was crazy about Hitchhiker, Doctor Who, anything connected with that." "One day, he disappeared off down the corridor." "Apparently, he'd heard sounds coming from a BBC cutting room." "In there, apparently, was Alan Bell, doing work for Jim'll Fix It about R2D2." "I did a film about The Empire Strikes Back, the making of it." "We were in a little cutting room in Ealing, playing back the soundtrack of R2D2." "And a voice appeared at the door..." "came through the door saying," ""Excuse me, is that R2D2?"" "I said, "Yes"." "And this little chap, Kevin Davies, said to me," ""You know, we have an animation company downstairs" ""who really want to work on Hitchhiker." ""Would you look at their work?"" "I thought, "Fine, but I don't want to commit myself too early."" "But we saw Rod's work and it was brilliant." "We did a pilot, which was the first half of the Babel Fish sequence." "And on the strength of that and the price that that came out at, the rest developed from there." "'Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence...'" "I love these computer graphics!" "Computer graphics?" "What computer graphics?" "For heaven's sake, man, this WAS 12 years ago, you know!" "AAAAAAAH..." "OW!" "So long, and thanks." "Now, look here!" "I can see this will take some explaining." "Now, pay attention, Earthman." "'lf it wasn't computer graphics, then Lord knows how they did it!" "'Rod Lord, that is, Rhodesian-born animator 'and ex-hairy person, who designed and directed 'the Hitchhiker animation." "'There was nothing FISHY here at Pearce Studios 'in the western sprawl of London." "'Rod and his team slaved into the small hours for much of 1980, 'with just Rod's Hendrix cassettes for comfort." "'Watch out, Grandpa!" "The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast is at the door!" "'" "'Pencil drawings were made based on Rod's storyboards." "'These were traced in ink onto clear acetate animation cells." "'The cells were taken into the darkroom, often by young Kevin, 'and turned into photographic negatives." "'The result-clear lines on a black background." "'Back to the studio, 'and a few daubs of black paint will see to any errors, 'whilst Rod chose colours, planned camera moves, 'and timed it to Peter Jones' recordings.'" "A-HEM!" "'Moving swiftly along, then." "'Lots more painstaking hours, 'labouring over a hot rostrum to the strains of Carlos Santana." "'Frame by frame, and lit from below, 'the many different pieces of artwork 'were photographed onto 16mm or 35mm film." "'Often there were over 12 exposures on the same celluloid strip." "'It's hard to believe in these high-tech days, 'but all the lines of computer type in the animated sequences 'were uncovered letter by letter 'with tatty little bits of black card." "'This pile represents the artwork needed for episode one!" "'They certainly boxed clever at Pearce Studios!" "'No wonder Rod Lord won the 1981 British Academy Award, 'and several others, 'for his work on..." "'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy!" "'" "There!" "I think we've cleared that up." "(ROD LORD) I was amazed to be informed that I'd been nominated for a BAFTA award, but it seemed a great opportunity to go for some wine." "The time came to announce the winner and I was flabbergasted to find that I was supposed to walk up to the stage and actually receive this thing!" "The trouble was, because I was so convinced I wouldn't be going up," "I was the only person in the place not wearing a tie!" "Princess Anne was standing there waiting to meet me, and I looked like a real slob!" "They tried adding a laughter track to the show, which I was cringing at." "I couldn't bear the idea of having a laughter track on it." "I think they'd shown it to an audience at the NFT and put a laughter track on it." "Barman, quickly, can you just give me four packets of peanuts?" "I'm just serving this gentleman." "No point." "He'll be dead soon!" "(CANNED LAUGHTER)" "Do you MIND, sir?" "!" "'The pilot episode was screened to 100 sci-fi fans 'in July 1980." "'BBC policy then said all comedy shows should have a laughter track." "'However, after it was shown to critics at a film festival, 'thankfully, the idea was dropped.'" " The world will really end?" " In three minutes, five seconds." " Is there anything we can do?" " No, nothing." "Lie down?" "Put a paper bag on your head?" "(LAUGHTER)" "Yes, if you like." " Will that help?" " No." "Excuse me." "I've got to go." "Oh, well..." "Last orders, please." "Many of you will have already realised that the main reason for the gigantic success of Hitchhiker was the choice of actor to play the narrator." "The BBC, quite naturally, wanted the very best - an actor who would bring to the part stature and respect." "And I was absolutely thrilled when they came to me and said he wasn't available and would I like to play the part?" "I agreed that they could use my voice-over, and in return I would star in a show of my very own." "And they kept their word." "This is it." "Welcome to Starship Heart of Gold." "Please do not be alarmed by anything around you." "You are bound to have initial ill effects, as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power 260,199... (ALAN BELL) The Trillian character was the most difficult to cast." "In the radio series and, I think, in Douglas Adams' book, she is English." "I read the first book and she is described as dark and Indian-looking, or whatever, and I thought I hadn't got a chance." "Alan thought I'd be good in the part of Trillian, but Douglas needed convincing." "When he suggested her I thought he was mad." "Oh, great, for this I get my ears pierced (!" ")" "Listen, with half the wealth of the Galactic Empire stored in it..." "A whole bunch of actresses came in and read for the part." "Trillian is actually not the world's richest and meatiest part." "It doesn't have a huge amount of character texture there." "Trillian?" "Er... er..." "PASS!" "There's not a huge amount for an actress to get hold of." "But when Sandra came in to read for it, she instantly..." "The way she read it, just in terms of rhythm and timing, it was quite clear she was the right person to do it." "(COCKNEY ACCENT) Got to get me Union Jack lenses in." "(DOUGLAS ADAMS) She said, "What accent?" "I'll do whatever you like."" "But I was feeling so much that I'd been proved wrong here, and I said, "No, no, use your own voice."" " This is a rehearse, right?" " No, this'll be a take." "Do you want a rehearsal?" "I'll go for one and if it's no good, we'll do another, OK?" "I'm not sure that was a wise decision." "And not a particularly flattering one for Sandra." "She is a very good actress and she can do a wide range of accents." "It probably would have done her some good if we'd let her show that by doing it English." "We have normality." "I repeat, we have normality." "Anything you still can't cope with is your own problem." " Who are they?" " A couple of guys we picked up." "(ZAPHOD) That's a sweet thought, but is it really wise right now?" "Here we are on the run." "We've got half the Galaxy after us." "(DIRECTOR) Hold it." "I have to say Sector ZZ-9." " Fuck!" " No, just Sector ZZ-9!" "I have to read it off the screen, that's why it's..." "Sure, I didn't realise." "(MUMBLED APOLOGIES)" "So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking!" "They were floating in open space." "You didn't want them to die, did you?" "No, not as such." "A second later and they'd be dead." "So, if you'd thought a moment longer, it would have gone away!" "I didn't pick them up." "The ship did-all by itself." " Hey, what?" "!" " What?" " The ship picked them up itself." " So what?" "Oh, forget it and go back to sleep." "I don't know why I was employed." "Possibly because when I was at university, um... this was..." "I was at university from 1967 to 70." "The big year is'68." ""Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," ""but to be young was very heaven."" "So, I was sort of long haired and kaftaned and all that stuff." "I was also in the Footlights, a Cambridge revue club." "So, I sort of thought, "Maybe it's to do with this."" "That's why they'd cast me." "It was a residual drop-over from that." "But, actually, talking to Douglas, it was nothing to do with that." "It was simply that I'd been in a series, The Glittering Prizes, a TV series about undergraduates and stuff." "We picked them up in Sector ZZ-9 Plural Z Alpha." " Yeah?" " Does that mean anything to you?" "Sector ZZ-9 Plural Z Alpha?" "What does the Z mean?" " Which one?" " Any one." "Would you mind looking at the Galactic charts?" "In a minute." "I've got sunning to do." "They said, "How do you see this guy?"" "And I had sort of seen him as a sort of long-haired beach bum, blond, kind of quick, all that." "He turns out to have red hair, big eyebrows and this head which became my best friend, of course!" "Give me Tropicana!" "Tropicana (!" ")" "HEY!" "..." "HEY!" "What did you...?" "!" "There!" "Almost exactly where you picked me up." "Yeah." "Hey, that's wild!" "(TRILLIAN) Two to the power of 200,000 to one against and falling." "What's that?" "Don't know." "Sounded like a measurement of probability." "What does it mean?" "I had done a bit of science in my time at university." "Not that I knew what I was saying, but it wasn't completely foreign to me." "I'd never done a sort of sci-fi thing quite like that before." "I'd done a few episodes of The Tomorrow People, but nothing where you had to look at something not there so often." "Welcome to the Starship Heart of Gold." "Please do not be alarmed by anything you see or hear." "Part of the problem was, we were getting messages on set," ""We're doing this bit", but nobody would explain what was happening." "(DAVID DlxON) Here we are!" "Over here." "(SIMON JONES) There's no camera." "I can't see one." "It's none of our business." "So, you'd be told to sit there and do that speech." "And you'd think, "What?"" "And of course, all these effects are laid on afterwards behind you." "So it really is a bit, sort of, brain fazing, a lot of it." "(FLOOR MANAGER) Can we keep it quiet, please?" "!" "The transmission light is on, I don't want to have to shout!" "Psych-psych-psych!" "I developed this technique after a while of psyching myself up." "I used to jump up and down and say, "Psych, psych"." "I'd leap about like a maniac." "I think what I meant to say was psycho, but I was probably being a bit too literal." "I was going out of my brains in some ways." "You're just standing in front of all this technology, and people spend a lot of time." "And you need a lot of energy." "Because Douglas's work is full of energy." "I've got wires coming out of my head here!" "I didn't want to get the feeling that I was going to slide into it, like a record slowly going..." ""A-Arthur, this is in-incredible." I wanted to hit it." "This is FANTASTIC, Arthur!" "We've been picked up by... by... by the... thh!" "My leg's drifting off into the sunset." "(SIMON) I was one of the few not surprised by the green screen." "Because we had done radio, if you remember, where we'd done it like a jigsaw, with no special effects at all, no audience, no narrator and half the cast missing." "Perhaps the odd spot effect, but very few of them." "So, the fact we had to imagine all the rest came naturally to me." "It's a children's fantasy game - pretend this, pretend that, pretend what's happening here." "Then pretend your reactions to it." "Quite interesting, really." "Quite an acting exercise." "I'm off, then." "I can put my arms back together, can I?" "Ford, hi, how are you?" "Glad you could drop in." "It's fascinating if you really look at where there's a hi, hi, hi, with three arms, which is just someone standing behind me with another sleeve on." "You can tell which is not my hand, simply because the way that it is acted is not quite an actor doing it." "It's someone doing it, but not really meaning hi." "They're simply doing the gesture." "Zaphod Beeblebrox." "This is a very large drink." "Hi." "Zaphod had to have two heads, there was no question about that." "I thought, maybe as a TV adaptation, we'd get away with one, but we had to have two." "So, the Visual Effects Department did a brilliant job." "They made a head that moved in every way, the eyes blinked, it worked." "If you compare what they did then with what is available now, the animatronics where it really looks 1,000% perfect," "looking back to what our Visual Effects Department did, it was absolute rubbish." "It is, of course, a model, created by the Visual Eppects Department." "Effects Department, that should be." "And it took them less than six weeks, which is pretty good going." "It's designed to act just like a human head." "They have managed to create a head roll, a roving eye a winking eyelid, a nod and a moving mouth." "The workings owe nothing to the ventriloquist's dummy, no strings, no rods or levers." "Instead, an ingenious adaptation of a remote control set as used by model aircraft enthusiasts." "If we look inside its head..." "Wish he wouldn't do that!" "Sorry." "There we are." "We can see the top layer there of his cosmic brain." "These two small black boxes are the signal receivers." "Any instructions sent by the operator arrives in one of these." "It's relayed to the part of the head you want moving." "This black switch here happens to move the eyelid." "Each of the others controls minor actions like eye rolling and mouth twitching." "There's a second layer of electronics underneath that one operating more complex movements such as head roll and nod." "In fact, the head pivots down here on nothing more sophisticated than a model helicopter joint." "He wasn't great... as a head." "Partly, I think, because of the complicated mechanics of it." "That meant it tended to look like a slightly anorexic younger brother of mine." "If you ran, the head bouncing stripped the gears on the mechanism within it." "So, there was a constant war between people saying, "Look, slow down,"" "or, "He's stripped the gears."" "That would be another hour and a half or whatever." "The head also got paid..." "Well, it didn't get paid, but I think it cost more than I got paid for the whole series." "That's not a grudge that I bear it." "It's just a fact." "My first memory of it is Mike McCarthy, who was the sound supervisor, and Alan Bell-director, coming to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop studios." "We talked about my involvement in it." "At that time, there were wrangles going on." "I think Douglas wanted the music done by somebody else, probably Tim Souster." "Mike Oldfield was involved in doing a version of the title music, I think." "Anyway, it was decided that I would do the sound effects for the series and the incidental music." "The first thing to happen was that Alan Bell would do a briefing and tell me exactly what he envisaged for the episode." "(PZ-ZZ ZOOM!" ")" "And there are, like, breakers going inside." "You know, electric breakers going." "(ALAN MAKES SPACE INVADERS SHOOTING NOISES)" " As in a space game..." " The same noises." "Very electronic." "I'll have to go down to Warwick Castle and do some location recording." "(SOFT ELECTRONIC SHOOTING)" "They go on through a couple of..." "(CLUNKING BANGS)" "I think that looks, visually, about the best." "It is reasonably easy, this one, isn't it?" "Yes, it's all right." "Yes." "I've been promising you that for ages!" "You think it's easy when you say it quickly like that, then you go away and you think," ""God, I've another week of this!" "I don't know if I'll last."" "Are you still there?" "Yeah!" " We didn't enjoy that at all." " We could tell!" "My main job was doing music for the computer graphics sections and adding sound effects that went in synch with what was going on on screen." "So you had two tapes that I was providing." "One was a music tape and the other was the synchronised effects tape." "It was better that I did the whole thing, because I could make all the bleeps in the same key as the music." "Mike McCarthy was the sound supervisor for the whole project and he was keen the thing would sound tight." "A lot of Hitchhiker takes place in spaceships on an obviously metal or futuristic material floor." "Actually, people are walking round on cardboard and wooden rostrums." "BBC shows that are done in the studio don't normally run to dubbing on footsteps, but Hitchhiker did." "It took quite a lot of time to do it." "People walking on metal floors was done with a new technique then, which was beer kegs upturned and volunteers treading in synch with people's feet." "'Occasionally, voices had to be re-recorded, too." "'In this instance, because of a noisy wind machine on location.'" "(FAN DROWNS SPEECH)" "I think I'll have a little lie down!" "No, stay here!" "Stay calm!" "Hold this!" "Is your voice all right, David, or is that deliberate?" "I think it'd be better not quite so throaty." "I think I'll have a little lie down." "No, stay here!" "Stay calm!" "Hold this!" "Very good, that one." "'Having spent the morning in a darkened dubbing theatre, 'the cast and crew head off to attend a Vogon costume fitting 'at a special effects workshop in Putney." "'Simon Jones was already a familiar face here, 'as they'd made him a 12-foot monster 'for a stage play of Doctor Who.'" "That's me." "The first costume fitting was quite an entertainment." "I looked at this costume hanging up and it was vast!" "I thought, "I'm not that big!"" "When I got inside, it was hanging in great loops." "I thought, "There is a picture of what I'll look like in 75 years."" "I've done about 83 feature films, including A Shot in the Dark with Peter Sellers," "Goldfinger with Sean Connery," "The King and I, of course, which I did in Hollywood, several others, including one with Errol Flynn." "Hard to remember because I'm not a looking back person." "On a studio day, you sit in Make-up and they put the mask on." "You get into the costume and you feel as heavy as lead, like a deep sea diver." "And then you amble into the studio and you think, "Thank goodness, it won't be long."" "Then Alan says, "I'm very sorry, there's been a delay."" "And you're not sure whether to take it off and have hassle putting it on again, or sweat it out." " So, Earthlings." " I'm no Earthling!" "Quiet!" "I present you with a simple choice." "Think carefully, for your very lives are in your hands." "Now choose." "Either die in the vacuum of space, or... tell me how good you thought my poem was." "I liked it." "I thought some of the metaphysical imagery was most effective." "(VOGON CAPTAIN) Yes?" "You are completely wrong." "I write poetry just to throw my callous interior into sharp relief." "I'll throw you off the ship anyway." "Guard." "Take them to number three airlock and throw them out!" "RESISTANCE IS USELESS!" "Right, hold it." "Read the next piece, please." "No, once more that piece, please." "Let the actors get through the door!" "(DAVID) Have I got green on my face?" " No..." "Ow!" " You've got blood on your head." "Green on our face, blood on our heads, sounds like a Potter play!" "All right, close the door." "I'll tell my aunt what you said." "Terrific (!" ") ARGH!" "Don't worry about the aliens." "They're just a couple of guys." "I'll send the robot to check." "Hey, Marvin?" "I think you ought to know I am feeling very depressed." "Stephen Ward, who I thought WAS Marvin, having heard him on radio, I thought that was perfect casting." "Then I had a call from Alan saying, "We're offering you the part."" "Suddenly, the Hallelujah Chorus went up behind me, and I failed to hear the rest, which was, "By the way, you're not doing the voice!"" "The first studio day was particularly memorable because I was as nervous as anything." "It seemed ridiculous..." "I had the choice of doing it as David Learner in a tin can, or reproducing the stage version Marvin as I thought of him." "Thank goodness I chose the latter." "It meant people in the studio had something to react to, rather than somebody in a tin can doing his shopping list." "Make-up, can we have a sponge here, please?" "Make-up?" "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed." "Here's something to occupy you and take your mind off things." "It won't work." "I have an exceptionally large mind." "In rehearsal, I was actually playing Marvin for real." "The words, feelings, meanings were all exactly what I'd intended had I played the voice." "I don't feel bad about that." "Stephen, for me, WAS Marvin the Paranoid Android." "I was just pleased to play the tin can." "I don't mean to be abusive..." "but that's right for Marvin." "Marvin, kid!" " I was joking!" " A very bad joke, sir." " Hey, how would you like to..." " Lay down my life for you?" "Make the ultimate sacrifice?" "Consign my brain which is the size of a planet to dust?" "Dark... dark..." "There we all were at rehearsal, Acton, episode five, and it was my chance to meet Dave Prowse." "Now, Dave Prowse had, of course, played Darth Vader." "The Star Wars trilogy had just come out." "He was huge in every sense of the word." "I was playing Marvin, but not doing the voice, and he'd played Darth Vader and hadn't done the voice." "And there we were on a three-seater settee." "He was taking up two seats and I was taking up a ledge on the side!" "I said, "You must have been upset to play Darth Vader" ""but not to have done the voice."" "I said, "Why weren't you allowed to do it?"" "And he said..." "(DEVON ACCENT) "Oi've no idea!"" "'No idea is exactly how much of an inkling the Hitchhiker team had 'that they would be asked to look back for a "Making of..." programme 'more than 12 years later." "'Nonetheless, here we all are.'" "Looking back now, over 12 years later," "I think it was well worth the effort." "And it was a great deal of effort." "For most of the artists, it was about four weeks work, but for me, it was three months of really compressed work." "From probably 9 a.m. to 2 a.m., going to the animators, editing, things like that." "I thought it was disproportionate to the end product at the time, but, bearing in mind the technical limitations," "I think everybody did a great job." "And I find it entertaining." "I can forget all the things I did in it." "I watch it as a viewer and think, "Worthwhile."" "(DOUGLAS ADAMS) It's been frustrating for me since then, because there was talk of a movie which never happened." "Now, of course, we have the ability to do fantastic computer graphics." "I always felt that every film that has used computer graphics, it's always been to dress the set." "It's been something pretty to look at." "In Hitchhiker, we said they were a part of the way you tell the story." "But it's magic, isn't it?" "And it lives on forever!" "When I'm old..." "It was great fun." "I really feel honoured to have been part of it." "Good old Douglas, eh?" "Right on!" "I think one of the major benefits of doing the TV series, and we've only just discovered this, is that Simon Jones can afford new glasses." "His old ones were so frightful!" "Resistance is useless!" "Now... either die or reveal all." "Tell me how good you thought this programme was." "Hang on, haven't we been through this before?" "Arthur..." "Arthur..." " David?" " Ford." "Um... shall we go for a walk?" "(ARTHUR) My life seems to be a television programme." "Apparently, I'm played by some actor called Simon Jones." "(FORD) You're bound to be confused." "You've been here a while." "Your blood sugar's probably a bit low." "Here... have a marshmallow." "In here?" "You've been in psycho-virtual reality since we took off." " Have I?" " You wouldn't answer the phone, so I thought I'd better come and get you." "Anyway, let's get out of here." "We'll be landing soon." "Pity." "I wanted to read that Simon Jones's biog thingy." "Action!" "What's that?" "They haven't started." "Probably just your house being knocked down." "WHAT?" "!" "Sorry." "I'm so sorry." "Back to the lift?" " Fuck!" " No!" "No!" "I'm trying to teach the cavemen to spell..." "No, damn!" "Listen to me..." "Oh, hell!" "I sound like James Cagney!" "These are the greatest known sunglasses in the sky..." "Shit!" "These are..." "FUCK!" "I'll carry on." "Over the top?" "What was all that about?" " Over the top (!" ")" " Thank you very much." "I thought he said there was no one here?" "They're SHOOTING!" "You said they weren't going to do." " Yes." " Fuck!" "They're shooting us...!" "Yeah, right!" "(CAMP VOICE) Ooh, did he?" "Quiet!" "Action." "I'll chop you up into little bits until..." "UNTIL YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH!" "'I'd like to point out that Simon Jones 'is in no way related to your very talented and respected narrator." "'Thank you.'" "Ripped with SubRip 1.14 and Verified by CdinT (Cristi_Polacsek@SoftHome.net)" "I deliver perfection..." "and don't brag about it!" ":" "D" " None." " You counted them?" "Twice!" "Raise the crew on the radio?" "Yeah." "I said there were people on board." " And they said?" " "Hi, there!"" "Hi, there!" "And for the benefit of those of you who've not been watching Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, this is the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox." "And this is his second head." "It is of course a model, created by the BBC Visual Eppects Department " "Effects Department, that should be - and it took less than six weeks, which is pretty good going." "It's a model that's designed to look and act just like a human head." "They managed to create a head roll." "A roving eye." "A winking eyelid." "A nod." "And a moving mouth." "The method behind all this owes nothing to the ventriloquist's dummy." "No strings, no rods or levers." "Instead, an ingenious adaptation of an ordinary radio-control set like the ones used by model aircraft enthusiasts." "If we look inside..." "I wish you wouldn't keep doing that!" "If we look inside his head..." "Sorry about this!" "There we are." "We can see the top layer of his cosmic brain." "These two small black boxes are the signal receivers." "Any instructions sent by the radio set arrives in one of these, and is transmitted to the part of the head you want moving." "Take this black switch here." "That moves the eyelid." "The others control minor actions like eye-rolling and mouth-twitching." "There's a second layer of electronics which lies underneath that one, and it operates the more complicated movements such as the head roll and nod." "In fact, the head pivots down here at the back on nothing more sophisticated than a model helicopter joint." "The skin, which I can tell you feels unnervingly human, is made from a lightweight latex foam." "I'm sad to say that this is Beeblebrox's last appearance on TV for a while only, so, until the same time next week, it's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from him."