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The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy Returns With the Original Cast (arstechnica.com)

Jonathan M. Gitlin reports via Ars Technica: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy deserves a special place in the geek pantheon. It's the story of hapless BBC radio editor Arthur Dent, his best friend Ford Prefect, and the adventures that result when Prefect saves Dent when the Earth is unexpectedly destroyed to make way for a galactic bypass. Written by the late, great Douglas Adams, THGTTG first appeared as a radio series in the UK back in 1978. On Thursday -- exactly 40 years to the day from that first broadcast -- it made its return home with the start of Hexagonal Phase, a radio dramatization of the sixth and final book of an increasingly misnamed trilogy.

Although Adams died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2001, the universe he gave birth to lived on. Beginning in 2004, the original radio cast was reunited to dramatize the third, fourth, and fifth books. In 2005, a film adaptation was released, and then in 2009 came a final novel in the "trilogy," And Another Thing..., written by the novelist Eoin Colfer. It's this story that the BBC is now dramatizing, again using many of the original cast, along with newcomers like Jim Broadbent, Lenny Henry, and Stephen Hawking. Yes, that Stephen Hawking.

17 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. You can say what you want by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    but Trillian was the object of many fantasies!

    1. Re:You can say what you want by CeasedCaring · · Score: 5, Informative

      TV Trillian is Sandra Dickinson, who married Peter Davison - the 5th Doctor Who. Their daughter, Georgia Moffet, is married to David Tennant, the 10th Doctor.

    2. Re:You can say what you want by uohcicds · · Score: 2

      Not just that, she was in Doctor Who as well...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
    3. Re:You can say what you want by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Given that Sandra Dickinson was Married to Peter Davidson (Time Lord known as The Doctor) and their daughter Georgia Moffett (Also a Time Lord and daughter of The Doctor) is married to David Tenant (Also a Time Lord known as The Doctor). Christmas dinner round there's must have been a hoot!

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    4. Re:You can say what you want by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

      Don't confuse the role with the actor. They could all be assholes privately.

      Pfffft sense of humor failure there

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  2. Hashtag sorry-not-sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was one Matrix movie, three Star Wars films, and FIVE Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. NOT. SIX. Fuck that E-oin Culpepper or whoever, and the shit he wrote. No, like, seriously. Fuck that shit. (I actually tried to read it, but when you start out with, "throw away the entirety of the previous books," you might as well just write a different story.) I don't give a good god damn if Adams' widow "AUTHORIZED">/I> the novel, HE did not, and I'm confident WOULD not, and I'm sure you'd all agree, especially if you'd read the fifth book, and witness the effort Douglas Adams went to to TIE the story up in a neat little bow, for some asshole to come along and try to rip-off and capitalize on an INFINITELY better writer's work, his blood, his sweat, and his tears... no, fuck 100% of that shit. Any book(s) E-oin Codswallup shit out and tried to attach to the series is nothing more than shit-smelling fan-fiction, it's NOT CANON, and never can or will be. It is the Star Trek, the Animated Series of HHGTTG, and is more of an insult than that atrocious, god-fucking-awful filthy, pus-dripping abortion that was the "movie" they made of it. Why do lesser people have to take something great someone made before, and wipe their ASSES with it? This shit is just straight-up sad. Fucking sad.

    1. Re:Hashtag sorry-not-sorry by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Funny

      You might want to have somebody LOOK into that random caps-lock KEY of yours.

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    2. Re:Hashtag sorry-not-sorry by itsdapead · · Score: 5, Interesting

      but when you start out with, "throw away the entirety of the previous books,"

      What, a bit like Douglas Adams did when he produced multiple radically different versions of the story for the original radio play, the LP, the book, the TV series, (and the play? - and ISTR he was at least partly responsible for the film version), or the big chunk of the story that turned out to have taken place in a virtual reality universe in the HHGTTG offices? The unresolved cliffhanger at the end of the second radio series where Arthur runs off in the Heart of Gold with a rather nice archaeologist? Or book 4-5 when it turns out that there are parallel universes in which the earth wasn't demolished? Or the lampshading of how an exploding computer transports the gang to the end of the universe (in the versions where that happened)?

      Seriously, the HHGTTG doesn't have "canon" - it has "cannelloni" that you ordered in that odd little bistro that wasn't there when you went back, and if you're going to worry too much about a consistent story, then you'd better put your analyst on danger money,

      --
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    3. Re:Hashtag sorry-not-sorry by bickerdyke · · Score: 4, Informative

      (I actually tried to read it, but when you start out with, "throw away the entirety of the previous books," you might as well just write a different story.)

      I'm afraid to burst your bubble, but THAT happened at the 3rd book. Could anyone imagine a better end than when at the end of the 2nd book, all literally comes together and the story forms a perfect circle?

      Yes, Douglas Adams put lots of his typical humor in the next three volumes - but it will always feel like an add-on that's just loosely attached. And then... what is canon? I'd go for the books, but they already were re-writes that would not match a hypothetical "radio series canon".

      My only consolidation is that Douglas Adams himself said, he didn't care about continuity because he had so much fun re-inventing the whole story again and again for each medium and rather cared what worked in that form (from TV to computer game) than what matches the previous installments.

      --
      bickerdyke
    4. Re:Hashtag sorry-not-sorry by gnick · · Score: 2

      He's just excited because he's addressing blasphemy. Continuing HHGTTG after Adams is like continuing Dune after Herbert.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  3. "exactly 40 years to the day from first broadcast" by Snufu · · Score: 5, Funny

    The BBC couldn't wait two more years?

  4. Douglas Adams : Killed by OS-X by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Funny

    https://www.engadget.com/2014/...

    I was going to wait till the summer to install it, but I succumbed and installed it last week. It takes a little getting used to, old habits are hard to reform, and it's not quite finished (what software ever is), and much of the software that's out to run on it is Beta.

    But...

    I think it's brilliant. I've fallen completely in love with it. And the promise of what's to come once people start developing in Cocoa is awesome...

    A few weeks later he was dead.

    --
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  5. Why? by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 3, Informative

    "And Another Thing..." is awful. There are no original ideas in it at all, it's just a rehash characters from the previous books.

    You should never allow another author to play in your universe, Dune and Harry Potter alone are proof of that.

  6. Re:Aging and aged publications by Kiuas · · Score: 2

    I used to be amused by THGTTG, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but that it is a long time ago.

    Aha, found the guy working for the complaints department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation!

    The Hitchhiker's Travel Guide describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as:

    "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

    Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which conveniently fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as:

    "A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

    Only their complaints department survived the general economic implosion of the company as a whole.

    --
    "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
  7. Unexpectedly? That is a lie and you know it! by portwojc · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unexpectedly destroyed? Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz makes it quite clear that all the planning charts and demolition orders were on display for fifty Earth years.

  8. Re:Where can we listen to all 6? by gnick · · Score: 2

    Trivia: The theme music played between episodes of that show is "Journey Of The Sorcerer" by The Eagles.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  9. Jones and Franklin by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

    the rest of the cast doesn't matter - the only one who does is Peter Jones, the book itself. Unfortunately he died in 2000 but was taken over by William Franklin who sounds just like him.

    When I play Startopia, it's always a fuzzy feeling because of the voice over, done by Franklin.

    Unfortunately he died in 2006 so they've got Hawking to be the book, but he doesn't sound anything like rural Shropshire.