The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Further Radio Scripts Read online

  ARTHUR: (Passing, in background) . . . Excuse me, could you tell me where the Information Desk is, please . . . good Lord—

  FX: Snorting – a boghog pelts up and bites Arthur in the thigh.

  ARTHUR: Oww! Argh! My thigh!

  FX: Zap gun. Boghog tranquillizer shot. Security man runs up.

  ARTHUR: (Rubbing his thigh) That really hurt! What was it?

  SECURITY GUARD: A boghog. They do that.

  ARTHUR: (Sighs, moves on)

  THE VOICE: Arthur Dent has been in some hell-holes in his life, but never before in a spaceport with a sign saying, ‘Even travelling despondently is better than arriving here.’ To welcome visitors, the Arrivals Hall features a picture of the President of NowWhat, smiling. It was taken shortly after he shot himself, so although the photo has been retouched, the smile it wears is rather a ghastly one. The side of his head has been drawn back on in crayon. The truth is that no one wants to be President of NowWhat. There is only one ambition which anyone on the planet ever has, and that is to leave.

  ARTHUR: (Limping slightly) Uhhh . . . Good morning.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: (Bubbly sort of treatment) Yes?

  ARTHUR: Um – my name is Arthur Dent. I hitched a ride on a robot freighter bound for these coordinates, expecting to find a planet called Earth, and instead I find a planet called NowWhat, and this thing just ran up and bit me in the thigh.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: A boghog? They do that. What coordinates were on the flight plan?

  ARTHUR: ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Well, those are the coordinates of NowWhat. You’ve arrived. Welcome. Eat and buy.

  ARTHUR: (Frustrated) The thing is, you see . . . the shapes of the continents – everything, really, tells me that this is definitely the Earth. But it most definitely is not. And my Hitchhiker’s Guide doesn’t work very well here, so I can’t work out what’s going on. Look—

  FX: Guide switched on, static.

  THE VOICE: The Hitchhiker’s – BZT!

  VOICE OF THE BIRD: (Icy whispery feel) Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen—

  FX: Guide switched off.

  ARTHUR: See?

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Look, one planet may look like another and occupy the same coordinates in space-time, but what coordinates it occupies in Probability is anybody’s guess.

  ARTHUR: (Sighs) But it’s taken me a year to get here. I’m looking for somebody. Somebody I met on the Earth. Here. Or it was here . . .

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Lost on a hyperspace jump, was she?

  ARTHUR: (Ray of hope) Yes – that’s right. Her name was—

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Fenchurch. Female of your species.

  ARTHUR: Good grief, yes.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: One minute she was sitting next to you in a SlumpJet out of Preliumtarn; the next minute the ship did a normal hyperspace hop and she was gone. Her name wasn’t even on the passenger list.

  ARTHUR: (Suspicious) Hang on a minute—

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: You’ve tried every spaceline office between here and Ursa Minor looking for her. Now finally you thought you’d try going back to the place you first met her.

  ARTHUR: Surely you haven’t—

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Nah, sorry, haven’t seen her.

  ARTHUR: (Beat) So how—

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: I’m a telepath. I can read your mind. And in answer to your current thought – I don’t have the time to go and tie a knot in my reproductive organs.

  ARTHUR: (Embarrassed) Ah. Hm. Sorry.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Evidently no one has explained this to you properly. Where’s your ticket?

  ARTHUR: (Produces it) Here.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: She originated in Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, yes? Now check the small print on the back of the ticket.

  ARTHUR: (Reads, scanning the text) ‘. . . Entities whose lifespans originate in any of the Plural Zones are advised not to travel in hyperspace and do so at their own risk. Please do not eat this ticket.’ Oh.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: You need to be careful, too, it could happen to you.

  ARTHUR: (Sighs) I wish it would.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: I know. You would like a cup of tea.

  ARTHUR: (Brightening slightly) You have tea?

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: No. I was just noting the fact that you would like one. Whatever it is.

  ARTHUR: Oh.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Look, in the absence of your planet, I suggest you find somewhere to come to terms with your loss. A place to stay.

  ARTHUR: A hotel room—

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Good grief, not here! Not if you value your sanity. No . . . but your luck’s in because I’m also Resettlement Officer. So. What sort of thing are you looking for?

  ARTHUR: Erm . . . before we start, are you likely to suggest a place called Stavromula Beta?

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Something very nasty happens to you on Stavromula Beta.

  ARTHUR: Yes, but how—? Ah. Right . . . um . . . I don’t want to be anthropic, but I’d quite like to live somewhere where the people look vaguely like me. Sort of human.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Got any skills? A trade?

  ARTHUR: Oh dear. Not really. I came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac. But left to my own devices I couldn’t build a toaster. I can just about make a sandwich and that’s it. I finance my travel by donating to tissue banks. It’s amazing there’s this much of me left, frankly.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Right . . . simple culture, low unemployment, picnic food . . . try this.

  FX: Brochure slapped onto desk.

  ARTHUR: (Reads) Bartledan?

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: It’s got oxygen. It’s got green hills. It’s got sliced bread. And the people look like you.

  ARTHUR: Looks a bit boring.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Sorry, I was going by appearances. Look, there’s a whole Galaxy of stuff out there. Think about it.

  ARTHUR: I know, I do . . . the trouble is that this particular incarnation of the Galaxy seems to lack two things: the world I was born on and the woman I love. Actually, what I really need is, well . . . guidance and advice. I did look them up on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Under ‘guidance’ it said ‘See under ADVICE’. Under ‘advice’ it said ‘See under GUIDANCE’. It’s been doing a lot of that kind of stuff recently.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: Why don’t you try Hawalius? It’s populated entirely by oracles and soothsayers – and has really excellent bathroom facilities. Could be just what you’re looking for. Brochure?

  ARTHUR: (Half-heartedly) Mm . . . thanks.

  PSEUDOPODIC CREATURE: I’m sorry this was the wrong planet. Really I am. (Going) Eat and buy.

  ARTHUR: Oh it’s the right planet all right. Right planet, wrong universe . . .

  INT. – COLD AMBIENCE

  VOICE OF THE BIRD: (Icy whispery feel) Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is now well established that all known gods came into existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at this time.

  The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

  Neither are they, strictly speaking, universes either.

  Any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn’t actually exist either
, but is the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

  There is, for example, the Earth that Arthur Dent grew up on. The Earth where he once met a girl called Tricia McMillan at a party in Islington and had her snatched away by Zaphod Beeblebrox, a tall man with very broad shoulders, on each of which was a head, one perfectly visible, the other camouflaged under a birdcage with a tea towel flung over it.

  INT. – PARTY IN ISLINGTON

  Music: Suitably disco.

  FX: Rowdy chatter. Muffled snoring from Zaphod’s hidden head.

  ZAPHOD: Hold the phone! This is a face in a million . . . does perfection have another name?

  TRILLIAN: (Rather interested) Tricia. McMillan . . .

  ZAPHOD: Tricia. McMillion . . . Billion . . . Trillian . . . Kid – if I followed you home, would you keep me?

  TRILLIAN: (Prepared to flirt) Mm. I’d rather go somewhere new . . .

  ZAPHOD: You want Excitement? Adventure? Really Wild Things?

  TRILLIAN: . . . What do you have in mind?

  ZAPHOD: Twice as much as the other guy. Because when Zarquon made you, baby, he made a laser beam.

  TRILLIAN: He did?

  ZAPHOD: He did. And he set you on ‘stun’! Freeeow! I’d grow back my third arm for you!

  TRILLIAN: Oooh!

  ZAPHOD: Baby, you make me see stars! How about I show you some planets?

  TRILLIAN: (Playful) Hey, I’ve got a doctorate in astrophysics – be careful what you promise.

  ZAPHOD: It’s nothing I can’t deliver, angel lips. What say we make like Allosimanian polar bears and Break the Ice.

  TRILLIAN: Will I need to get my bag?

  ZAPHOD: Nah. We gotta go before you have to be back in heaven.

  FX: Communicator beep.

  ZAPHOD: Eddie – beam us up!

  EDDIE If you’re in the mood, two-headed dude.

  FX: Transporter.

  TRILLIAN: (Swept away) Oooh . . . !

  THE VOICE: That particular Earth was demolished by the Vogons as part of an intergalactic traffic-calming initiative, and Arthur and Tricia – or Trillian – were the only human survivors. After several adventures that particular Trillian became a successful intergalactic reporter for the Siderial Daily Mentioner.

  However, on yet another parallel Earth in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, a blonder, more American-sounding Tricia McMillan utterly failed to get off with Zaphod Beeblebrox at a party in Islington. The precise connection between that event and the fact that Tricia McMillan’s particular Earth did not get demolished by the Vogons is currently sitting at number 4,763,984,132 on the research project priority list at what was once the History Department of the University of Maximegalon, and no one currently at the prayer meeting by the poolside appears to feel any sense of urgency about it. However, like her parallel intergalactic travelling counterpart, ‘Trillian’, the Earthbound Tricia McMillan became a reporter. In the process she learnt two things: One was that as a scientist working in the popular arts, you can make a lot of money covering some very dumb subjects. The other was that you should never go back for your bag.

  INT. – TV STUDIO

  TRICIA McMILLAN: . . . Ms Andrews, you’ve agreed to do this interview because you have a new astrology book out, You And Your Stars, the follow-up to You And Your Black Holes.

  GAIL ANDREWS: But there’s no such thing as a free launch, right?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Er – no . . . quite. Now – putting aside your relationship with the White House for the moment, let’s talk about your area of so-called expertise. Last week astronomers announced that there’s a tenth planet, discovered out beyond the orbit of Pluto. ‘Persephone’.

  GAIL ANDREWS: ‘Rupert’. They’ve nicknamed it after some astronomer’s parrot.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Annoyed at the diversion) Yes – but that must put your astrology calculations out, mustn’t it? Maybe you knew what happened when Neptune was in Virgo, but what happens now Rupert is rising?

  GAIL ANDREWS: It doesn’t change the essential movement of the planets. Whatever influences it has had on events are already factored in.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: If you’d known about Rupert three years ago, might the President be eating boysenberry flavour ice cream on Thursdays rather than Fridays?

  FX: This whole conversation switches to distort around here, as if being viewed on a very very dodgy old TV set . . . Or from millions of miles away:

  GAIL ANDREWS: Miss McMillan, I’m aware that you have a degree in physics and—

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Getting edgy) Astrophysics.

  GAIL ANDREWS: —and I can assure you my services as the astrologer to the President were purely on a personal level.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Admit it, Gail. Astrology is just popular entertainment, and you’ve done well out of it.

  GAIL ANDREWS: In a manner of speaking.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: But it’s not a science! Not unless you apply rigorous scientific methodology to it!

  FX: TV switch-off.

  GREBULON LEADER: This is most interesting. It may help solve our problem. Could be just the answer we Grebulons have been looking for.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: Could it?

  GREBULON LEADER: Of course it could! I think. Which one are you?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: I don’t know. You must be my superior. You’re shouting.

  GREBULON LEADER: I am taller. Does that count?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: How should I know?

  GREBULON LEADER: We have found much to monitor from the Third Planet called Earth. It has provided some interesting information.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: Yes. All New York police lieutenants are fat and bald and suck lollipops. It is a mistake to give a glove-puppet bear a water pistol. And the Teletubbies are very picky eaters.

  GREBULON LEADER: More than that. We have learnt that we are stranded on Persephone, the Tenth Planet popularly called Rupert, and that events here are influenced by the movement of the planets around this sun. And I have had an idea.

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: So you are in charge?

  EXT. – NEW YORK STREETS, UNDER:

  FX: Rain/street atmos. Taxi stops. Tricia gets in.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Club Alpha.

  THE VOICE: One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it’s prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some kind of a grip, whether it’s the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V, where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere.

  It will even live in New York, though that’s hard to know why. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but when it’s autumn in New York, the air smells as if someone’s been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe, the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building.

  INT. – ALPHA CLUB, NEW YORK

  RECEPTIONIST: Ms McMillan, welcome to Alpha. Ms Andrews is waiting for you.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Moving off) Thank you. Stavro not here today?

  RECEPTIONIST: (Calling after her) He’s in London, the new club opens there next week.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Off, calls) You mean I can crawl home after a night out without having to endure business class?

  RECEPTIONIST: (Calls) Better believe it.

  FX: Club bar, under:

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Moving on) Ms Andrews? I got your note. You were upset about something in the interview . . .

  GAIL ANDREWS: Excuse me?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: The note said ‘Meet me at Club Alpha. Not happy. Gail Andrews.’

  GAIL ANDREWS: I was really happy with the interview.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: What
?

  GAIL ANDREWS: Of course astrology isn’t a science. It’s just a set of rules like chess or tennis or . . . what’s that thing the British have?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Er – self-loathing?

  GAIL ANDREWS: Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. Astrology rules use stars and planets as a way of thinking about a problem, which lets a shape emerge.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Ms Andrews – Gail—

  GAIL ANDREWS: When you got so emotionally focused on stars and planets this morning, it seemed to me you weren’t steamed about astrology, but about actual stars and planets. So I asked you here to see if you were OK.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Oh.

  GAIL ANDREWS: There’s something in your past that still upsets you. About astronomy . . . ?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I – I made a decision once. I’m not sure it was the right one.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Who is? Every moment of every day. Every decision we make opens some doors and closes others.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Quite a few years ago I met a guy at a party. He said he was from another planet.

  GAIL ANDREWS: OK.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: And did I want to go there with him. I think he had two heads.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Two heads?

  TRICIA McMILLAN: It was that kind of party. One was disguised as a parrot in a cage. Covered up. It was asleep, I think.

  GAIL ANDREWS: Right . . .

  INT. – PARTY IN ISLINGTON

  Music: Suitably disco.

  FX: Rowdy chatter.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Playful) Hey, I’ve got a doctorate in astrophysics – be careful what you promise me.

  ZAPHOD: It’s nothing I can’t deliver, angel boobs. Let’s go before you’re wanted back in heaven.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I’ll need my bag . . .

  ZAPHOD: Nah, I’m on a meter. Let’s just rearrange the alphabet and put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together—