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

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: The Guide.

  FORD PREFECT: What Guide?

  COLIN THE SECURITY ROBOT: The Guide version II – Pro. It’s quite wonderful and very frightening. Not that I’d know fear, being so happy—

  FORD PREFECT: Shut up, Colin. Brace me while I find the catch . . .

  FX: Explosion.

  INT. – ARTHUR’S SANDWICH SHOP

  TRILLIAN: (Entering) Nice sandwich shop. (Calls outside) Random, do come inside.

  RANDOM: (Off, outside) No.

  ARTHUR: I’m happy here, Trillian. They like me, I make sandwiches for them, and . . . er, well that’s it, really. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything, er, a sandwich? Try one. They’re good.

  TRILLIAN: (Bites, mouth full) It is good. What’s the filling?

  ARTHUR: Ah yes, that’s, um, that’s Perfectly Normal Beast.

  TRILLIAN: It’s what?

  ARTHUR: Perfectly Normal Beast. A bit like a buffalo. Large, charging sort of animal.

  TRILLIAN: You talk as if there were something odd about it.

  ARTHUR: Nothing, it’s Perfectly Normal.

  TRILLIAN: I see.

  ARTHUR: It’s just a bit odd where it comes from. And goes to.

  TRILLIAN: (Stops chewing) Where does it come from, and where does it go to?

  ARTHUR: They suddenly appear a point slightly to the east of the Hondo Mountains. Thousands of them, They stampede across the great Anhondo Plains and, er, disappear again. That’s it really.

  TRILLIAN: Sorry, I don’t quite—

  ARTHUR: In the spring they do it again, only the other way round.

  TRILLIAN: (Swallows reluctantly) But . . . why are they called Perfectly Normal Beasts?

  ARTHUR: Old Thrashbarg calls them that. He says that they come from where they come from and they go to where they go to and that it’s Bob’s will and so it must be Perfectly Normal.

  TRILLIAN: Oh. Who is Bob?

  ARTHUR: Don’t ask . . . Um . . . (Calls) Random – would you like a Perfectly Normal Beast sandwich?

  RANDOM: (Off, outside) I’m a vegetarian.

  ARTHUR: Ah. Um. You look well.

  TRILLIAN: I’m well. I’m very well. I expect you’re wondering how I found you.

  ARTHUR: Yes! I was wondering exactly that. How did you find me?

  TRILLIAN: Well, as you may know, I work for one of the big Sub-Etha broadcasting networks that—

  ARTHUR: Yes, you’ve done very well. That’s terrific. Must be a lot of fun. All that rushing around.

  TRILLIAN: Exhausting.

  ARTHUR: I expect it must be, yes.

  TRILLIAN: We have access to virtually every kind of information. I found your name on the passenger list of the ship that crashed.

  ARTHUR: (Astonished) You mean they knew about the crash? They knew I’d survived?

  TRILLIAN: Yes.

  ARTHUR: But nobody’s ever been to look or search or rescue. There’s been absolutely nothing.

  TRILLIAN: There wouldn’t be. It’s an insurance thing. They bury it. Pretend it never happened. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for insurance-company directors?

  ARTHUR: Really? For what offence?

  TRILLIAN: What do you mean, offence?

  ARTHUR: Oh . . . I see.

  TRILLIAN: Anyway. It’s time for you to take responsibility, Arthur. For your daughter.

  ARTHUR: My daughter? But . . . we never – I mean, I wanted to but – surely Zaphod would have—?

  TRILLIAN: Not the same species, Arthur. When I decided I wanted a child they ran all sorts of genetic tests on me and could find only one match anywhere. It was only later that it dawned on me. They don’t usually like to tell you, but I insisted.

  ARTHUR: You mean you went to a DNA bank?

  TRILLIAN: Yes. But she wasn’t quite as random as her name suggests, because, of course, you were the only Homo sapiens donor in the Galaxy.

  ARTHUR: Yes . . . It was how I could afford the seat upgrades. Some of those flights are very long, you know.

  TRILLIAN: Mmm. You were quite a frequent flyer, weren’t you?

  ARTHUR: But when . . . how . . . ?

  TRILLIAN: How old? Well, in my time line it’s about ten years since I had her, but she’s obviously quite a lot older than that. I spend my life going backwards and forwards in time, you see. The job. I used to put her into daycare time zones, but you drop them off in the morning, and you’ve simply no idea how old they’ll be that evening. I left her at one place for an hour, and when I came back she’d passed puberty.

  ARTHUR: Awkward.

  TRILLIAN: Isn’t she. I’ve done all I can. It’s over to you. I’ve got a war to go and cover. Nice to see you, Arthur. (Pecks him on cheek, leaves, to Random:) Goodbye, darling. I love you.

  ARTHUR/RANDOM: You’re just leaving me?

  TRILLIAN: (Off) Must dash. Deadline.

  ARTHUR: Trillian, for goodness’ sake, I’m all for sharing the load, but—

  FX: Ship liftoff in distance. Murmur of villagers in background.

  RANDOM: (Enters, furious) She’s just dumped me here? In this stinking peasant-hole?

  ARTHUR: Bu— Wh— I – ju—

  RANDOM: You’re supposed to be my father? This is complete pants!

  ARTHUR: (Clears throat) There’s no point in pretending this isn’t hopeless, but I—

  RANDOM: (Laying rules already) Don’t tell me you love me. Don’t start that positive-parenting crap. I’ve had it with the whole part-time-parent-on-a-guilt-trip thing.

  ARTHUR: Look: I don’t love you. I’m sorry. I don’t even know you yet, but – your name really is Random, is it?

  RANDOM: Random Frequent Flyer Dent.

  ARTHUR: Oh, Belgium.

  EXT. – SPACE – RUMBLE OF VOGON CONSTRUCTOR FLAGSHIP

  THE VOICE: Despite the Vogons’ reputation for bureaucratic zeal, over-reliance on paperwork and sheer bloody-minded pedantry, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to – BZT!

  VOICE OF THE BIRD: – the Galaxy Pro – soon to be available – contact your local InfiniDim Enterprises stockist to pre-order, quoting the priority code ‘TPV’ – BZT!

  THE VOICE: – to the Galaxy points out that they are not above a little bribery and a lot of corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds. And certainly not averse to the odd covert skulduggery either. When a Vogon Prostetnic captain in command of one of its Constructor Fleets hears the words ‘integrity’ or ‘moral rectitude’, he reaches for his dictionary. And when he hears the chink of ready money in large quantities he reaches for the rule book. And throws it away.

  INT. – VOGON CONSTRUCTOR SHIP – BRIDGE

  VOGON HELMSMAN: Coming up on ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha surveillance coordinates, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Excellent. Heave to in stealth mode. Patch into the Grebulon base monitoring circuits.

  THE VOICE: In seeking so implacably the destruction of the Earth to clear the site for a new interstellar bypass, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz has moved somewhat above and beyond the call of his professional duty. Indeed, there is now considerable doubt as to whether said bypass ever needed to be built at all, but the paperwork remains unfinished and Vogon pride unfulfilled. Jeltz’s problem is that, having destroyed a planet located in one of the Galaxy’s Plural Zones, the Earth has been replaced by an identical world – identical in all respects but for an absence of sentient marine life and the occasional duplication of one or two existing humans. One of these is Tricia McMillan, in most respects a doppelgänger of Arthur Dent’s friend Trillian; the exceptions being her accent, the colour of her hair, her lack of a daughter and the fact that she did not leave the Earth after meeting Zaphod Beeblebrox at a party. However, she has now managed to be abducted by aliens – in a nice way – and is currently visiting the remote world of Rupert, recently discovered tenth planet in Earth’s solar system, and new home of the stranded and media-hungry Grebulons.

  EXT. – GREBULON BASE ON RUPERT

/>   FX: Howling wind. Alien feel.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Brrr! It’s not exactly a paradise planet, is it?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: Rupert is far from the star that warms your Earth. But it is an excellent location for monitoring.

  FX: Airlock door opens/shuts.

  INT. – GEBULON BASE ON RUPERT

  GREBULON LEADER: Miss McMillan, I hope you enjoyed the tour of our base. Now, you are our guest, we must entertain you lavishly.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: Er – really, I’m not – I mean, I don’t know what sort of food—

  GREBULON LEADER: FastBurger and Fries!! Nothing but the best! Here – have a Nugget.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: I’m confused – you have all this technology far beyond us – but your quarters are furnished with home-cinema systems, imitation coal fires, lava lamps . . . How did you . . . where did you get . . . this?

  GREBULON LEADER: By mail order.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: They sent it by post?

  GREBULON LEADER: Hah! Not here! No! Ha ha! We have arranged a special box number in New Hampshire. We make regular pick-up visits. Ha ha!

  TRICIA McMILLAN: How do you pay for these things?

  GREBULON LEADER: American Express.

  TRICIA McMILLAN: But how do you get them? The Kids’ Menu Specials?

  GREBULON LIEUTENANT: Very easy, Miss McMillan. We stand in line!

  GREBULONS: (Fall about laughing)

  FX: Laughter cuts into distort. Heard aboard Vogon ship.

  INT. – VOGON CONSTRUCTOR SHIP BRIDGE

  TRICIA McMILLAN: (Distorted) After we’ve eaten, do you mind if I videotape an interview with you?

  GREBULON LEADER: (Distorted) Of course not, Miss McMillan. We have nothing to hide.

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: Nothing to hide?! Ow . . . Helmsman?

  VOGON HELMSMAN: Yes, Captain?

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: My face aches strangely. What is wrong with it?

  VOGON HELMSMAN: (With dawning horror) You’re – you’re smiling, sir . . .

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: You lie! You lie, like a Dentrassi food-taster!

  FX: Zap gun – body fall.

  VOGON HELMSMAN: Urk!

  PROSTETNIC VOGON JELTZ: All the same . . . I do feel strangely . . . amused. Yes. I am moved to write a poem about irony. Let’s see . . . ‘O globbet of dribble oozing from the upturned corner of my mouth . . .’

  INT. – THE BOOK AMBIENCE

  THE VOICE: According to the writings of Old Thrashbarg, the planet Lamuella was found fully-formed in the navel of a giant earwig at four-thirty one Vroonday afternoon, and although any seasoned galactic traveller with basic passes in physics and geography might have fairly serious doubts about this, it was rather a waste of time trying to argue with Old Thrashbarg as he would invoke the Will of Almighty Bob and that would be an end to the matter. Undeniably, however, on Lamuella the days were just a little over twenty-five hours long, which for an Earthman basically meant an extra hour in bed every single day and, of course, having regularly to reset his watch, which Arthur Dent rather enjoyed doing. He also felt at home with the number of suns and moons which Lamuella had – one of each – and with the fact that the planet orbited its single sun every three hundred days, a good number because it meant the year didn’t drag by. Well, it didn’t used to.

  EXT. – LAMUELLAN VILLAGE

  FX: Iron Age atmos. Busy village in background. Pikka birds.

  ARTHUR: (Approaching, defensive) Random, someone’s been using my carving knife to dig up stones to throw at the pikka birds. And I think I know who it is, because I watched them doing it!

  RANDOM: You can buy another knife, can’t you?

  ARTHUR: They don’t sell them in bulk here! This is a subsistence economy!

  RANDOM: It’s only a knife!

  ARTHUR: (Icy) Look. Not content with being surly, bad-tempered, wanting to go and play in the Paleozoic Era, not seeing why we have to have the gravity on the whole time and shouting at the sun to stop following you, now you ruin my carving knife! And I don’t even know if they had a Paleozoic Era on this planet!

  RANDOM: I hate it. I want to leave. They’re all stupid here.

  ARTHUR: No, they’re not. You refuse to acclimatize. Your mother shouldn’t have let you have that Sub-Etha TV implanted in your wrist, the news alone is making you hyperactive.

  RANDOM: That’s because news is happening everywhere but here! And my mother dumps me here to go off and report on some war which didn’t happen.

  ARTHUR: It’s not her fault. The ship that was sent to fight it never arrived.

  RANDOM: Has she come back to fetch me? No. All I have for fun is the vid channels.

  ARTHUR: Yes, well you must stop showing those to the villagers. Huge spaceships crashing into each other may be amusing to you but not to them. These people only ever saw one spaceship crash, and it was so frightening and shocking that they don’t realize it’s entertainment. It certainly wasn’t for me.

  RANDOM: What’s this?

  ARTHUR: Er—? That’s my watch.

  RANDOM: I don’t get it.

  ARTHUR: My watch. It’s to tell the time. Where did you find it?

  RANDOM: You left it by the waterfall after your shower. I know what it’s meant to do. But you keep on fiddling with it, and it still doesn’t tell the right time. Or even anything like it. My Sub-Etha wristband can.

  FX: Sub-Etha wristband.

  SUB-ETHA VOICE: (Speaking Clock voice) Allowing for orbital momentum and star location, Lamuella time – sponsored by Accutentacle – is getting on for about half-past four, precisely—

  FX: Click off.

  RANDOM: Your watch doesn’t do any of this precisely. Why do you keep it?

  ARTHUR: (Changing down a gear) Sentiment, really. I was given it on my twenty-second birthday by my godfather. He was probably feeling guilty that he’d forgotten every birthday I’d had up till then. He’d even forgotten my name. Look at the back.

  RANDOM: (Reads) ‘To . . . Albert . . . on his twenty-first birthday’.

  ARTHUR: He got the date wrong too.

  RANDOM: What’s that noise?

  ARTHUR: Ticking. The mechanism that drives the watch. It’s called clockwork.

  RANDOM: It’s all hardware . . .

  ARTHUR: Yes, it is.

  RANDOM: Could have looked after it better.

  ARTHUR: That watch has survived stuff in the last few years which falls well outside the warranty – which presumably limited its guaranteed accuracy to the Earth, providing the day was twenty-four hours long and the planet didn’t get too demolished by Vogons. Which it did. Utterly. And which is why I am here. And that reminds me: Random, I forbid you to marry a Vogon!

  RANDOM: You what?

  ARTHUR: Nothing. Just fulfilling a promise I made to myself a long time ago.

  RANDOM: At least you were born somewhere with a name. Do you know where I was born?

  ARTHUR: (Embarrassed) No.

  RANDOM: I was born in a spaceship that was going from somewhere to somewhere else, which only turned out to be another somewhere that my mother had to get to somewhere else again from.

  ARTHUR: Yes, that would make it hard—

  RANDOM: It makes you feel you’re always supposed to be somewhere else. Always in the wrong place. Add to that the fact that we were travelling through time as well, and I was not only always feeling I was in the wrong place, but at the wrong time. I don’t ever fit.

  ARTHUR: You can fit if you want.

  RANDOM: What? Here? In the worst place she ever dumped me? With the father who gave me this precious and magical burden of life in return for a seat upgrade?

  FX: Bustle and commotion among pikka birds.

  OLD THRASHBARG: (Approaching busily) Sandwich Maker! Sandwich Maker! Bob has sent us another sign!

  RANDOM: (Calls) What, has Kirp caught another two-headed fish that’s really two fish cut in half and sewn together, badly?

  OLD THRASHBARG: (Arriving) Quiet, wench, or Bob will cast you into the
outer darkness.

  RANDOM: (Low) Fine by me, I was born there.

  OLD THRASHBARG: Sandwich Maker, a silver chariot descended this morning into the Anhodo foothills and a creature of metal came out. He gave unto Drimple this sacrificial gift in return for a thumbprint and a scrape of skin from the nape of his neck!

  ARTHUR: Express Delivery by robot drone.

  FX: Package seized by Random, under:

  RANDOM: Let me see—

  OLD THRASHBARG: It is a sign. The Perfectly Normal Beasts are about to return.

  FX: Envelope torn open.

  RANDOM: The waybill says it’s from Antwelm City on Saquo-Pilia Hensha. That’s where they have a year-round carnival. Let’s open it!

  OLD THRASHBARG: Calm youself, Sandwich Maker’s daughter. Let your mind dwell on the ineffable mystery of the giant earwig.

  RANDOM: There is no giant earwig, you stupid smelly old fart.

  OLD THRASHBARG: Bob preserve me . . . I shall intercede for you with the Almighty. (Going off a little way) O Ineffable and Wondrous Bob, vouchsafe unto this Sandwich Maker’s daughter the wisdom to follow the path of repentance and contemplation . . . (etc., mumbled, under:)

  ARTHUR: You shouldn’t upset him. Do you know the number of spaceship crashes he’s had to start incorporating into his holy stories to keep the villagers interested?

  RANDOM: Let’s open the package.

  ARTHUR: No.

  RANDOM: Why not?

  ARTHUR: It’s not addressed to me.

  RANDOM: Yes, it is.

  ARTHUR: No, it isn’t. It’s addressed to Ford Prefect, care of me.

  RANDOM: Ford Prefect? Is he the one who . . .

  ARTHUR: Yes.

  RANDOM: What do you think it is?

  ARTHUR: I don’t know. Something very worrying, though.

  RANDOM: How do you know?

  ARTHUR: It always is when Ford Prefect’s involved.

  RANDOM: Well, that’s ridiculous.

  ARTHUR: No, you don’t understand. It’s like me trying to explain the watch. It ticks, but that’s about all you can say for it so far from Earth.

  RANDOM: And you don’t understand that there’s somewhere this watch belongs! Where it works. Where it fits. Who do you think I am, just your upgrade?