The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Classic Or Dud?

"Gentlemen! This room is surrounded by film!"

When I was a fresher at college and the fifth book was coming out, I outed this long dormant fandom as part of a scattershot 'thing's we have in common' technique, and I was cringing about it within hours. So I suppose I assumed that if I ever retunred to it since then I would find it to be not only a dud, but a humiliating critique on my pre to early teen years.

So last night I watched it with this loaded prejudice. But it was good, I think, looking past the dated production values grafted onto another medium.

'The ships hung in the air in exactly the way that bricks don't.'

If it has a stigma, its our own fault. If we hadn't liked it so much, Adams may have spread his wings a little further in twenty five years.

1. CONCEPT vs EXCECUTION. I mean, the Idea and the ideas are very good indeed - and the way they're actually delivered is not. I DON'T just mean 'bad effects' (often reminiscent of old Dr Who) - I mean Very Bad Acting. Can't recall when I last heard so many awful American accents on TV. And we say acting's got worse?

2. ORIGINALITY: seems greater now than first time around. When I was a child everything seemed to have been done: now I'm grateful for a smidgen of difference, or something. It feels like it was genuinely original and unusual - though also

3. PARODY - of Dr Who / Blakes'7 / other BBC? - but also Star Wars (occasionally overtly) and other things like documentaries, Open University. But beyond that,

4. MELANCHOLY. We watch things like this as adults and cope with them no problem. But when I was a child, programmes like this *mattered* - I took them very seriously, 'misread' the tone, got the music stuck in my head, thought about the end of the world. One day cultural study (or ILM?) ought to talk seriously about How Children Perceive Adult (or even Children's) Culture - which is (in my dim memory, at least) not much to do with simplicity and silliness, much more to do with profound emotions, sadness, fear, hope, love; feeling everything more seriously and intensely. (See also: The Young Ones. !)

5. SOUNDTRACK: so *that's* who this 'Paddy Kingsland' character is...

6. PARANOID ANDROID: it was nice to be reminded what the phrase really means. But then it struck me, that Radiohead must have picked it up as a joke on their own 'depressiveness' - ? The first 'person' I ever heard talk about 'depression'?

7. COMPUTER / HH GUIDE itself - magic of Peter Jones / good graphics / presentation - tremendous wit. A sense of contingency and of leads not followed - a universe of details we don't need to know more about. Proto-internet factor? Nearly forgot -

8. 'ANTHROPOMORPHISM' - I mean, the big joke is frequently a projection of the Human onto the non-Human (Space), so space has bypasses, restaurants, etc. So the world has ended (see MELANCHOLY), yet 'our world' goes on for ever in all directions. And we find that both cheering and saddening; like this programme.

indeed, he had written for doctor who previously. douglas adam's city of death is my favourite tom baker story, featuring a monster with a face like a bowl of pasta, and a plot that was later recycled for one of the dirk gently books.

Pinefox is bang on about the execution of the TV series. I thought some of the acting was shocking on last nights episodes, and the directing wasn't that great either. Too many shots of several people standing around failing to react to what someone else had said. Does anyone know to what extent the radio scripts were recycled for the TV? If they were carried over near verbatim it might go some way to explaining the clunkiness of the telly version; stuff written for one medium (pretty obviously) doesn't necessarily play that well in the other.

BOOKS : Classic (Though I only remembered some of the best parts by readin the other reviews)

Radio Series (1): A lot like the book but funnier because my imagination can't do accents that well.

Radio Series (2): Definetly worse and more confusing,maybe even too confusing with Lentila and Alitnel, though that was one of the good bits.

Anyway, classic, got the radio series on CD, need to get the 'eh okay' TV show on DVD, love the books...

Dan must agree with me on this -- couldn't you see somebody sampling the bit where the Dolmansaxlil Footwarrior says this in response to a query from Arthur Dent:

"PERVERTS! SUBVERSIVES! ALL PERVERTS, SUBVERSIVES AND TRESPASSERS ARE TO BE SHOT!"

...and then creating a perfect bit of 1991-era industrial rave a la Lords of Acid (though you'd have to cut off the 'shot' part for maximum perv impact).

didn't start from the beginning however, so I'll give it another shot.

BRAINS!!!!!!!

*And yes I know that in Mostly Harmless all the characters and everything they stand for are wiped out with utter and absolute finality, but I managed to get around that one somehow.

i assume this will be listen again able for the rest of the week also.

(don't normally get home until about 6.45)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/

Sometime in the mid-80s, I think, a friend got me a many-times-dubbed copy of the BBC radio version on cassette. The quality was wretched, but I listened to it so many times I literally wore it out, laughing every time. Now I wish I had a copy for my teen-age daughter to hear, since she's discovered the books within the past two years and fallen in love.

Saw the BBC TV version once on PBS several years ago, but I don't really have much memory of it, as it was during a difficult time for me.

Anyway, total CLASSIC vote here. All hail the late Douglas Adams. And 42!

???????????

characters: british, robot and alien
setting: space

The basic plot: A man wakes up one morning and finds himself thrust into an intergalactic cosmic headfuck farce that starts with the destruction of the world and then proceeds to get weird.

the story also involves bad poetry, tea and an extremely cool dude with two headaches

the humor is not particularly monty python-esque, but not totally unrelated

just read it

Emily -- the time it will take you to read all the books will be enough to see you through the birth of yer wee one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7619828.stm

Children's author Eoin Colfer has been commissioned to write a sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.

Mostly Harmless, the last Hitchhiker book, was written by its creator, the late Douglas Adams, 16 years ago.

Now Adams's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled And Another Thing...

Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.

"My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series," he said.

"But on reflection I realised that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding on to the spirit of Douglas Adams."

Clearly I am also at first reaction stage.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45024000/jpg/_45024052_721e5eb3-cc4b-4642-8d44-734f8fbba5aa.jpg

l-r: shit-eating grin, douglas adams

what

no

> Now Adams's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled And Another Thing...

she also said, according to radio4 this mornig, that she thought dna would hate the idea.

(pat nevin was great immediately afterwards though, comparing ronaldo to zaphod)

Mice: Now, to business!
Humans: TO BUSINESS!!!
Mice: What are you doing??
Zaphod: Oh sorry, we thought you were proposing a toast.

RIP to Stephen Moore aka Marvin the Paranoid Android. Forever indelible (and as I muttered on another HHG thread a couple of months back, the audiobook recordings he did are kinda definitive in my mind).