Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – again

Back in the late 80’s, I stopped by a favorite bookstore in London…a few blocks North of the British Museum…(by the Goodge sp? Street underground station) and lo and behold, Mr. Adams was signing a collection of all the books in one volume.
Very nice guy…in a brief meeting you could tell he was full of wit and humor.
I’m glad people are still enjoying his work.

But you have to wonder how much will be missed out to turn something that occupied around 3.7% of the book (six pages – I looked) into several minutes of a 27minute show – and all without yet getting close to that particular scenes published punchline. Am I right in thinking that this series is in 6 parts? Either that or 8 – but that is still a lot of time just to explain Marvins leg…There are another three parts of that particular ‘device’ to explain yet!

Flood

According to Douglas Adams in his preface to the HHGttG bundle i have, the book and the radio version differed greatly in details. There just was a lot of editing involved writing one scene/chapter from radio to book and vice versa (the way it was written was of course totally chaotic). That matress-scene surely must be an example of that.

No. Not yet – but they have strung out the matress scene to at least two parts and it only occupies around one chapter – about 8 pages in the book (I think).

Flood

have they mentioned ‘bistromatics’ yet ?

Sounds dissapointing!

Oh dear!
I found it a little ‘old’!
The characters were old – truthfully they are old, in fact – but they really showed it in the broadcast. Zaphod doesn’t sound snappy and snazzy any more – he sounds like the uncle that your parents are embarrassed about who wears tight leather trousers and thinks that he is ‘hip’, but gets puffed out climbing the stairs in the bus before searching for his pensioners transport pass… Ford is no longer breathlessly enthusiastic: he now sounds as though he has the wrong glasses and is experiencing difficulty understanding the words he has to speak (note that I don’t say act…).
In fact none of the characters were believeable as the people they played 25 years ago (understandably) so this made the resultant production feel dated, stilted, clipped – they did sound as though they had almost forgotten how to act and it almost reminded me of a mickey-take on Noel Coward I heard several years ago.
There was too much of the characters setting the scene too: what I remember of the original radio series (repeated not so long ago) was that the scene was eventually described to you through the characters conversations – this time Marvin (the paranoid android) tells the matress Zem about his calculating to ten decimal places the length of pause needed to convey his feelings of contempt for all things matressy: just a throw away but unsaid editorial sentence in a book but a plodding bit of speech for Stephen Moore (the actor playing Marvin).
The combination of the late Peter Jones and William Franklin as the book worked for me though…

Flood

LOL Arthur we don’t need poetry from the lot of you, were poetry unto ourselves. 😉

And make no mistake- what I have, I intend to hold on to dearly.

Ok, Flood you were going to talk about the latest episode or something correct? Go to it! My interest is thouroghly piqued!

Lets get back to talking about Hitchhikers, shall we…?

Flood

Not this again – before you know it, we’ll be writing poetry for the two of you. Mind you, it was NOT a pretty thing the last time that happened.

Yes – you’d better!

Flood

David! LOL*collapses in fit of giggles* Now I have to edit mine!

I love you more.

Grinning? At me? Oh dear! Have to add that I Love You too, now!

Flood

Spectacular.

And oh, yeah… I love you.

Consider it done!

Flood

Oh, even better! Thanks,sweety!

I shall bring a book or two…;)

Flood

Why thank you, Flood. I shall check that out…

Or try this one…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/index.shtml

Flood

Thanks, Martin! What a great concept for a story! I can’t wait to see if I can pick up the books here in the states!