The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (TV series)



"The answer to the Great Question Of Life, the Universe, and Everything... is Forty-two."

Fairly straight translation of the radio series/book series by Douglas Adams into miniseries form, keeping much of the original cast, including Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Peter Jones (no relation) as The Book, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Stephen Moore as Marvin. David Dixon replaced Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, and Sandra Dickinson replaced Susan Sheridan as Trillian. As with its earlier incarnations, it followed the exploits of a hapless Englishman who is rescued from Earth by an interstellar journalist, seconds before the planet is demolished to make way for a bypass.

Its cult following admires it for its characters, dialogue and ingenuity, whilst admitting it is one of the more technically inept creations ever put on television; it was notorious even in its day for Zaphod Beeblebrox's animatronic second head, which looked like a lump of putty with a wig on. Far more effective are the amusing illustrated excerpts from The Book, which used traditional animation techniques to imitate complex computer readouts.

This series also cemented a number of the visual aspects of the Series Franchise which had not, at the time, been canonized in the books: most notably, it was not until writing the television series that Douglas Adams realized that Arthur Dent had spent the entire adventure in his pyjamas.

For all versions of the story, see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This show provides examples of: "Ford Prefect: I think this ship is brand-new, Arthur.
 * BBC Quarry
 * Eleventy-Zillion: The TV series extends a line of dialogue from the book and puts in a new number:

Arthur Dent: Why, have you got some exotic device for measuring the age of metal?

Ford Prefect: No. I just found this sales brochure on the floor. It says, "The Universe can be yours for a mere five quilliard Altairian dollars."

Arthur Dent: Cheap?

Ford Prefect: A quilliard is a whole page full of noughts [zeros] with a one at the beginning."


 * Hey, It's That Guy!: In addition to those mentioned above, Inspector Lestrade is the host at Milliways.
 * Hilarious Outtakes on the DVD. Lampshaded at one point by Simon Jones: "That'll make the Christmas edition."
 * Narrator (The Book)
 * Purple Eyes: David Dixon put in purple contacts to make his eyes look stranger. For filming, they decided his eyes looked plenty strange enough, thank you very much.
 * Recycled Set: The Vogon spaceship interiors were from Alien.
 * Shout-Out: The Guide animations contain several shout-outs to the other versions of "Hitchhiker's" such as the Frogstar scout in the "robot" entry.
 * Sound to Screen Adaptation
 * Sudden Videogame Moment: When the Vl'hurg and G'gugvunts battle.
 * This Just In
 * Translator Microbes: The Babel fish.
 * Video Inside Film Outside
 * What Could Have Been: At one point a second series was planned which would've been based on the Doctor Who story which later formed the basis of Life the Universe And Everything.