Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Turns 42

The cup is miles up, and you have a limited view out of it. Would need to get to the edge and look down to see the ground, at which points... oops!

 

There's a dude on YT making animated bits for "scenes" from the second radio series.




and the one I remember best from the books...

...only the tank doesn't say "hell's bells" as he plummets 15 storeys and smasheS himself to bits on the ground below.

 

I've got nothing to add, I just wanted to have the 42nd reply.

 

But like the real "answer", it ended up being #43

 

Thanks for finding these!

 

How very Petty of you.

(That's an American sports reference, so apologies to those who don't follow.)

 

I've seen some series 1 clips there as well. Not sure if he's avoiding the wrath of the BBC by doing short clips, but there are a couple longer ones too.

I wouldn't mind seeing complete episode clips.

 

There's a few deleted videos on his playlist, so perhaps some wrath of the Beeb has already been incurred?

 

Yes, he did have a couple of full episodes as I watched them some time ago. But, as noted, they are no longer there.

 

Youtube filters do tend to leave shorter clips alone. I have a few M*A*S*H clips that are super short, but when I get over a minute, they get flagged. BBC maybe has a little more tolerance than FOX.

 

IIRC, Zaphod is already at the edge of the cup when he says there's no ground.

And he'd pretty much have to be. From the POV of those well inside the cup, there's no way to see ground level. For all they know, they could already be there.

 

Weird huh?

 

My first experience with HH was the BBC TV miniseries. I instantly fell in love with it, causing me to get the books, which again came as a surprise because there was so much more to the story than what was shown in the series. I then learned about the radio version, although I didn't get the CDs for those until recently (and still haven't listened to them yet...)

But that movie...Ugh...just ugh. Don't even get me started about that.

I think that in the right hands, the entire HH story would make a fabulous regular TV series. There's more than enough material for at least several seasons.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to add...Mostly Harmless sucked.

 

The beauty of Douglas Adams was, he took different routes to tell the same story in radio, book and TV versions. The TV series being only 6 episodes was extremely truncated, but the radio & book versions had some different scenarios that makes them both must-have.

I have the DVD set for the TV show, the only format I have anymore, plus the movie. Not terrible, it feels like they were trying to stay true to Adams' vision, it just wasn't British enough for some people.

 

Agreed. I use to dislike the film, but once I recognized how Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy works best as an evolving form with each format, I was more accepting of the changes in the film. I always enjoyed the cast so accepting those changes helped me enjoy the film a lot more in subsequent viewings.

 

I really likes parts of the 2nd radio series. The whole Haggunenon sequence on the all black ship is better than the Disaster Area version, and how Zaphod and crew survive being eaten is brilliant. The story bogs down in the last two episodes. The whole "seance" thing drags and feels like filler.

 

The LP versions are different yet again. They're being re-released on CD later this year. I suspect the play was also different but I never managed to see that.

 

The BBC has got to do a proper animated release of that radio show! The show that spawned a book series and that short-lived live-action show that cut out too many jokes, which were in the radio show and I'm preaching to the choir again. That and the animation reminds a bit like Family Guy and South Park but still looks very cool (and the green screen computer bits were very nice indeed).

 

After years of reading "heavy" sci-fi books: Herbert, Heinlein, Clark, Asimov and the rest of the greats from the 40's and 50's, I got a copy of HGTTG. It was like a slap in the face.

I had no idea that science fiction could be funny, irreverent and down right silly. I liked that it asked hard questions and posed tough moral quandaries. But Hitchhikers fell right into my Ven diagram of Sci-fi, Monty Python, Comedy. After which I found the awesome Red Dwarf fell into that area too.

Read all of the books, read Dirk Gently too (not as good). I liked the British TV version, I liked the movie when it stuck to the source material (citrus helmet? WTF?). Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin, just fucking brilliant. Plus a cameo of the original Marvin.

I have copies of the book on my bookshelf right now.

 

I just bought all the HHGTTG audiobooks and I'm almost to the end of the Secondary Phase. I've just gotten to the scenes on the planet Brontitall. I have a question:

You know where Arthur meets the flocks of birds living in his statue's ear? I could have sworn that some of the background bird voices were done by Monty Python actors (in their Pepperpot voices). Can anyone confirm?

I mean, Douglas Adams has written and acted for Python before (he was in some episodes of the 4th season), so it stands to reason they'd return the favor....