It has been brought to my attention that the links I provided for the movie-style script to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets, shared on Dropbox, don't work if you are not a member of the Dropbox community. Therefore, I have also created a folder named HHGTTG Scripts, containing the latest script revision, on Google Docs. Please go to the following URL and see if you can find and download a copy of the script there. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me and I will do everything that I can to rectify them.
Thanks,
CCarroll
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxfEXJzQniYaRlZUZ0pFOVQ2akE/view?usp=sharing
That's the Missouri Ozarks: where "Olde Ozarks Oaks Folks live under the Faerie Trees"
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
I've just rewritten the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie script, starring the Muppets, into its 3rd Revision. The new version is now available for download. Copy and paste the following URL into a new tab to get your copy of the script.
https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=HHGTTG+Script%2C+Revision+3+PDF.pdf
Just F.Y.I.: The changes made were mostly to fix errors found in editing, plus changes made to make scenes make more sense and not contradict themselves or each other. I was going to change what happened to Trillian and to Zaphod, but I really think that the way they are dealt with works better as is. So, please enjoy this little script and please feel free to leave any comments that you like below.
https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=HHGTTG+Script%2C+Revision+3+PDF.pdf
Just F.Y.I.: The changes made were mostly to fix errors found in editing, plus changes made to make scenes make more sense and not contradict themselves or each other. I was going to change what happened to Trillian and to Zaphod, but I really think that the way they are dealt with works better as is. So, please enjoy this little script and please feel free to leave any comments that you like below.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Just for fun, and to practice script-writing, I have written a movie-style script for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets! I've been posting that script in parts on this blog, and now I've converted the entire thing into a PDF. This will be my first attempt to download the PDF to this page. Here we go: Try going to this link to find the PDF. If you can't click on the URL, cut and paste it into a new tab.
https://docupub.com/docs/f7b21164-5ea9-48c9-9056-520b42a3b0c9/HHGTTG%20Script,%20Revision%202.pdf
Here is the last part of the script to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down for the earlier parts. Please stay tuned and come back for a PDF version of the complete script.
57. INT. BRIDGE, GOLGAFRINCHAN SPACESHIP
The bridge is dotted with computer niches filled with officers toiling away at unknown and probably tedious tasks. In the middle of the bridge is a very large oval bathtub, filled with bubbles and the Captain of the ship, played by Dr. Teeth. The Number One officer, played by Floyd Pepper, walks up to his Captain.
NUMBER ONE: Captain ...
CAPTAIN: Yes, Number One?
NUMBER ONE: Just had a sort of report thingy from Number Two.
Number One passes a red piece of paper to his Captain. The Captain reads it, shaking his head.
CAPTAIN: Oh, dear. It looks like Number Two has captured some prisoners. Oh, well, perhaps that will keep him happy for a bit. He's always wanted some.
The door to the bridge opens. Ford and Arthur come in, followed by Number Two, who waves them in with his weapon.
NUMBER TWO: Prisoners, sir!
FORD and ARTHUR: Er ... hello?
CAPTAIN (Beaming): Oh, hello there. Excuse me for not getting up, just having a quick bath.
Number Two stands in front of the Captain, frustrated.
NUMBER TWO: Interrogate prisoners, sir?
The Captain looks on, bemused.
CAPTAIN: Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?
NUMBER TWO (Agitated): Interrogate! Interrogate!
FORD: We came to rescue you. Your ship is falling onto that planet. You put out a distress call, remember?
NUMBER TWO (Distressed): Interrogate?!
ARTHUR: You asked for help. We came to save you. What part of that don't you understand?
CAPTAIN: Steady on, Number Two. I put out that distress call, just as a matter of course. Regulations, don't you know. But we don't really need the help, do we? This actually is the planet we were headed for. I just sort of gathered that we were supposed to land on it, not crash on it. Crashes require distress calls, don't you know. Just following the rules. Sorry to have bothered you, and all that.
NUMBER TWO (Angry): Interrogate! Interrogate!
CAPTAIN: Oh all right, if you must. Ask them what they want to drink.
NUMBER TWO (Rounding on Ford and Arthur and making them jump): What drink?! What drink?!
FORD: Um, er ... root beer?
ARTHUR: Oh, er, yes, a root beer would be nice.
NUMBER TWO (Bellowing): Ice?
FORD: Oh, yes, please. And do you have any of those little biscuits? You know, the cheesy ones?
NUMBER TWO (Howling): Me ask questions!
CAPTAIN: Shove off and get the drinks, would you Number Two? There's a good chap. I'm trying to have a relaxing bath here.
Number Two stalks off. Number One approaches the Captain.
NUMBER ONE: Haven't you been in that bath for over three years?
The Captain squirms in his bath and gives Ford and Arthur a lame smile.
CAPTAIN: Well, you need to relax a lot in a job like mine.
Number Two returns with Ford and Arthur's drinks.
FORD (To the Captain): Um, I couldn't help but noticing, the bodies. In the hold.
CAPTAIN (Surprised): Bodies?
ARTHUR: Yes, all those dead hairdressers and account executives, you know, down in the hold.
The Captain stares at them for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs.
CAPTAIN: Oh, they're not dead. No, no, they're frozen. They're going to be revived, all of them. Tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name it. We're going to colonize that planet, do you see?
ARTHUR: What, with that lot?
CAPTAIN: Now, don't misunderstand me. We're just one of the ships on the Ark Fleet. We're the 'B' Ark, you see.
FORD: What is a 'B' Ark?
CAPTAIN: This is, this ship. You see, our planet, the world from which we have come was, so to speak, doomed. Oh, I can't, I can't remember why, but it was decided that we pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet. Three ships were built, three Arks in space, do you see? The idea was that into the first ship, the 'A' ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and then into the third, or 'C' ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things; and then into the 'B' ship -- that's us -- would go everyone else, the middlemen, you see. And we were sent off first, to prepare things for everyone else, as it were.
FORD: And the other ships followed on after you, did they?
NUMBER ONE: Well, it's a funny thing you should say that because curiously enough we haven't seen them since we left some five years ago ... but they must be behind us somewhere.
FORD: Well, it seems like you've got a lot of things you're going to need to be doing, then, to prepare for your landing. If you could just show us to the nearest teleport booth, or escape shuttle, we'll be going.
NUMBER ONE: Actually, we don't have any of those things.
ARTHUR: What?
CAPTAIN: Oh yes, so many of those things that you'd expect to see on a starship, like communications arrays or escape pods or landing craft, we just don't seem to have any of them.
FORD: You mean we're stuck here on this ship?
CAPTAIN: Yes, yes in fact, because, I think, so much of the ship's planning, it's trajectory thingy and all that was preset before we left Golgafrincham. Perhaps because I'm not very good with figures ...
ARTHUR: So you mean that we're going to land on that wretched planet with you?
CAPTAIN: Well, not so much land as such, no ... er --
FORD (Sharply): What are you talking about?
CAPTAIN (Carefully): Well, I think as far as I can remember we were programmed to crash on it.
FORD and ARTHUR: Crash?
CAPTAIN: Er, yes, yes, it's all part of the plan, I think. There was a terribly good reason for it which I can't quite remember at the moment. It was something to do with ... er ...
FORD (Exploding): You're a load of useless bloody loonies!
CAPTAIN (Beaming): Yes, that was it, that was the reason.
58. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
Marvin watches the alien ship start to burn as it plunges through the atmosphere, to crash upon the planet below.
MARVIN: There they go, leaving me behind again. Don't worry about me, alone and abandoned on a forgotten spaceship in orbit around an insignificant little blue-green planet out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the galaxy. God, I'm so depressed. I think I'll turn myself off.
59. EXT. SWAMP, PLANETSIDE
NARRATOR: The Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark blazes as it falls to the planet surface. Pieces tear and peel off and dash to the surface like burning meteors. The red-hot ship tears through the sky and belly-flopps into a murky swamp. It sinks in the gray predawn light, taking most of its millions of frozen passengers with it. Thousands survive, however, and dredge themselves out of the muck and onto whatever dry land that they can find. On a nearby hillside, wet and bedraggled Ford and Arthur watch.
ARTHUR: Filthy dirty trick to pull.
FORD (Shrugging): An imaginitive solution to a problem, I'd have thought.
ARTHUR: Why can't people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?
Ford gives a loud, very hollow laugh.
FORD: Forty-two! No, doesn't work. Never mind.
Arthur looks at Ford as if he were a crazy bear.
ARTHUR: What do you think will happen to them all?
FORD: In an infinite Universe anything can happen, even survival. Strange but true.
Ford digs a Sens-O-Matic device from his satchel.
FORD: Broken. All of my tools have been destroyed in the crash, or lost in the swamp.
ARTHUR: What?
FORD: We're in trouble. Unless we can find some way to contact the Heart of Gold up in orbit, our chances of getting off this planet are zero.
Ford tosses everything back in his bag, and walks off.
FORD (Over his shoulder): Coming?
Arthur shrugs his shoulders and follows in Ford's wake.
60. EXT. SURFACE, PLANETSIDE
NARRATOR: Ford and Arthur spend years wandering the surface of the unknown planet, avoiding the Golgafrinchans, occasionally meeting primitive natives, traveling far and wide over landscapes ranging from mountains and valleys to deserts and seas, from forests and plains to icefields and glaciers. Ford occasionally works on his Sens-O-Matic, trying to repair it, to no end. One day, while traveling along the edge of a glacier, Arthur finds Ford crouching near a wall of ice. Ford is tense with excitement.
FORD: Look, look!
Arthur looks. He sees a solid wall of blue ice.
ARTHUR: Yes, it's a glacier. I've already seen it.
FORD: No, you've looked at it, you haven't seen it. Look again.
Arthur peers. He tilts his head from one side to another. He does a double-take. He peers again. His mouth flops open. Sounds come out of his mouth but don't make words. Shadows and lines in the ice seem to drift and overlap from the parallax caused by Arthur tilting his head back and forth. They slowly resolve themselves into enormous words in an alien language. Arthur had seen those words before, in an office on an alien planet far from his home world. Above the words is the outline of a face, a face that he was all too familiar with. It is the face of Slartibartfast.
FORD (Laughing hysterically): Norway!
61. EXT. WOODED GLEN, PLANETSIDE
The Golgafrinchans are gathering in a clearing. In the middle of the clearing is the bathtub from the bridge of the Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark. In the middle of the tub is the Captain. Several Golgafrinchans approach him.
NUMBER ONE: It's time for the afternoon committee meetings, sir.
CAPTAIN: Oh good, those are my favorites.
From a distance Ford and Arthur watch. Ford begins to walk briskly towards the gathering. Arthur follows.
CAPTAIN: All right, I'd like to call this meeting to some sort of order. Is that alright with everybody? When you're all ready.
Ford enters the clearing and approaches the bath.
FORD: I bring you news of a discovery that might interest you.
An officer, Number Three (Played by Zoot), approaches Ford.
NUMBER THREE: Is it on the agenda? Speaking as a management consultant of many years' standing, man, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure.
ARTHUR (Having joined Ford): What?
NUMBER TWO: Address the chair!
FORD: There isn't a chair, there's only a rock.
NUMBER ONE: We call it a chair.
A Marketing Girl (Played by Janice) approaches the rock.
MARKETING GIRL: Shut up, you guys! I want to table a motion, for sure, really.
ARTHUR: You mean boulder a motion.
FORD: This is rediculous. All you do is have meetings, and you haven't even discovered the wheel yet.
CAPTAIN: Oh, the wheel! In fact, we have a committee working on that project as we speak. It sounds like a terribly interesting project.
MARKETING GIRL: Ah, well, we're having a little difficulty there.
FORD: Difficulty? Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single machine in the entire universe!
MARKETING GIRL: All right, Mr. Wiseguy, if you're so clever, you tell us what color it should be.
FORD: Almighty Zarquont, have none of you done anything?
NUMBER THREE: Of course we have! I have the report on fiscal policy ...
FORD: Fiscal policy! How can you have money if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.
NUMBER ONE: Since we decided to a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. But we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut.
Arthur makes sheeshing noises.
CAPTAIN: So in order to obviate this problem and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and ... er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.
FORD: This is crazy! Have you not achieved anything?
MARKETING GIRL: We've started making a fascinating documentary about the cavemen living in the area.
FORD: They're not cavemen.
MARKETING GIRL: They look like cavemen.
FORD: Do they live in caves?
NUMBER ONE: They live in huts.
ARTHUR: Have you noticed that, since you've arrived they've been dying out?
MARKETING GIRL: That's what the documentary is about. That gives it a poignant twist which is the hallmark of the really great documentary!
ARTHUR: Good grief!
MARKETING GIRL: Well, what have you two been doing all this time, then?
FORD: We've been on a journey. We went to try and find out something about this planet, and have we got news for you. We know this planet's future, and it doesn't matter a fetid pair of dingo's kidneys what you all do from now on. Burn down the forests, anything, it won't make a scrap of difference. Your future history has already happened. Two million years you've got and that's it. At the end of that time your race will be dead, gone and good riddance to you. Remember that, two million years!
Ford stalks off into the forest, with Arthur following behind him.
CAPTAIN (With a soothing smile): Well, still time for a few more baths. Could someone please pass me the sponge. I just dropped it over the side.
61. EXT. FOREST
Arthur and Ford walk up a slight incline, towards a group of the aboriginal natives of the planet. Arthur joins one native (Played by Sweetums), who is sitting on the ground tinkering with a board and some small pieces of stone.
ARTHUR: Look, Ford, they're still trying to play the game.
FORD: Play what game? What are you talking about?
ARTHUR: Well, I made a sort of word puzzle game and I've been trying to use it teach the natives how to speak. It hasn't been going all that well. The only word they know is grunt and they can't spell it.
FORD: What's that supposed to achieve?
ARTHUR: We've got to encourage them to evolve! To develop! Can you imagine what a world would be like descended from those, those ... cretins we arrived with?
FORD: Imagine? We don't have to imagine. We've seen it.
ARTHUR: Did you tell them what we'd discovered? Norway. Slartibartfast's signature in the glacier. Did you tell them?
FORD: They weren't interested. Face it, those zeebs over there are your ancestors, not these poor creatures here. Put the game away, Arthur, it won't save the human race because this lot aren't going to be the human race. The human race are currently sitting around a rock on the other side of this hill making documentaries about themselves.
Arthur winced.
ARTHUR: There must be something we can do.
The native, bored with the game, leaves. Arthur picks up a playing piece and holds it in his hand. He puts it down on the board. It is a 'W'.
ARTHUR: Ford, look, if that Question is printed in my brain wave patterns but I'm not consciously aware of it, it must be somewhere in my unconscious.
FORD: Yes, I suppose so.
ARTHUR: Mightn't there be a way of bringing that unconscious pattern forward?
FORD: Oh yes?
ARTHUR: Yes, by introducing some random element that can be shaped by that pattern.
FORD: Like how?
ARTHUR: Like by pulling word game letters out of a bag blindfolded.
Excited, Ford and Arthur sit next to the game board and begin to throw pieces into a bag made from Ford's towel.
FORD: Totally mad, utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense. Come on, come on. Right, close your eyes and pull out a letter.
Arthur closes his eyes and pulls out three letters. He hands them to Ford, who puts them onto the board with the letter Arthur had already left there.
FORD: W, H, A, T ... What! I think it's working!
Arthur pushed more letters towards Ford. Ford puts them onto the board.
FORD: D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh, perhaps it isn't working.
ARTHUR: Here's the next three.
FORD: O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making much sense I'm afraid.
Arthur pulls another two letters from the bag. Ford puts them into place.
FORD: E, T, Doyouget ... Do you get! (Shouting): It is working! This is amazing, it really is working!
Arthur pulls out more letters. Ford quickly puts them into place.
FORD: I, F, Y, O, U ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y ... What do you get if you multiply ... S, I, X ... six ... B, Y, by, six by, ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E ... six by nine ... Come on, where's the next one?
ARTHUR: Er, that's the lot, that's all there were.
FORD: You mean that's it?
ARTHUR: That's it.
FORD: Six by nine. Forty two.
ARTHUR: That's it. That's all there is.
Ford and Arthur stand up and boggle at the game board.
ARTHUR (Sighing despondently): I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
FORD: All for that.
ARTHUR: Yup. It's very sad, you know. Just at the moment it's a very beautiful planet.
Ford and Arthur wander off across the landscape.
FORD: It is, it is indeed. The rich primal greens, the river snaking off into the distance, the burning forests.
ARTHUR: And in only two millions years, bang, it gets destroyed by the Vogons. What a life for a young planet to look forward to. What a waste.
FORD: Well, better than some. I read of some planet up in the seventh dimension, got used as a ball in an intergalactic game of bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole, killed ten billion people.
ARTHUR: Madness, total madness!
FORD: Yeah, only scored thirty points, too.
ARTHUR: Where'd you read that?
FORD: Oh, a book.
ARTHUR: What book?
FORD: Oh, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
ARTHUR: Oh, that thing.
FORD: I wonder whatever happened to it.
ARTHUR: I threw it in the river. I don't think I'll be wanting it any more.
Ford and Arthur walk off into the distance.
57. INT. BRIDGE, GOLGAFRINCHAN SPACESHIP
The bridge is dotted with computer niches filled with officers toiling away at unknown and probably tedious tasks. In the middle of the bridge is a very large oval bathtub, filled with bubbles and the Captain of the ship, played by Dr. Teeth. The Number One officer, played by Floyd Pepper, walks up to his Captain.
NUMBER ONE: Captain ...
CAPTAIN: Yes, Number One?
NUMBER ONE: Just had a sort of report thingy from Number Two.
Number One passes a red piece of paper to his Captain. The Captain reads it, shaking his head.
CAPTAIN: Oh, dear. It looks like Number Two has captured some prisoners. Oh, well, perhaps that will keep him happy for a bit. He's always wanted some.
The door to the bridge opens. Ford and Arthur come in, followed by Number Two, who waves them in with his weapon.
NUMBER TWO: Prisoners, sir!
FORD and ARTHUR: Er ... hello?
CAPTAIN (Beaming): Oh, hello there. Excuse me for not getting up, just having a quick bath.
Number Two stands in front of the Captain, frustrated.
NUMBER TWO: Interrogate prisoners, sir?
The Captain looks on, bemused.
CAPTAIN: Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?
NUMBER TWO (Agitated): Interrogate! Interrogate!
FORD: We came to rescue you. Your ship is falling onto that planet. You put out a distress call, remember?
NUMBER TWO (Distressed): Interrogate?!
ARTHUR: You asked for help. We came to save you. What part of that don't you understand?
CAPTAIN: Steady on, Number Two. I put out that distress call, just as a matter of course. Regulations, don't you know. But we don't really need the help, do we? This actually is the planet we were headed for. I just sort of gathered that we were supposed to land on it, not crash on it. Crashes require distress calls, don't you know. Just following the rules. Sorry to have bothered you, and all that.
NUMBER TWO (Angry): Interrogate! Interrogate!
CAPTAIN: Oh all right, if you must. Ask them what they want to drink.
NUMBER TWO (Rounding on Ford and Arthur and making them jump): What drink?! What drink?!
FORD: Um, er ... root beer?
ARTHUR: Oh, er, yes, a root beer would be nice.
NUMBER TWO (Bellowing): Ice?
FORD: Oh, yes, please. And do you have any of those little biscuits? You know, the cheesy ones?
NUMBER TWO (Howling): Me ask questions!
CAPTAIN: Shove off and get the drinks, would you Number Two? There's a good chap. I'm trying to have a relaxing bath here.
Number Two stalks off. Number One approaches the Captain.
NUMBER ONE: Haven't you been in that bath for over three years?
The Captain squirms in his bath and gives Ford and Arthur a lame smile.
CAPTAIN: Well, you need to relax a lot in a job like mine.
Number Two returns with Ford and Arthur's drinks.
FORD (To the Captain): Um, I couldn't help but noticing, the bodies. In the hold.
CAPTAIN (Surprised): Bodies?
ARTHUR: Yes, all those dead hairdressers and account executives, you know, down in the hold.
The Captain stares at them for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs.
CAPTAIN: Oh, they're not dead. No, no, they're frozen. They're going to be revived, all of them. Tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name it. We're going to colonize that planet, do you see?
ARTHUR: What, with that lot?
CAPTAIN: Now, don't misunderstand me. We're just one of the ships on the Ark Fleet. We're the 'B' Ark, you see.
FORD: What is a 'B' Ark?
CAPTAIN: This is, this ship. You see, our planet, the world from which we have come was, so to speak, doomed. Oh, I can't, I can't remember why, but it was decided that we pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet. Three ships were built, three Arks in space, do you see? The idea was that into the first ship, the 'A' ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and then into the third, or 'C' ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things; and then into the 'B' ship -- that's us -- would go everyone else, the middlemen, you see. And we were sent off first, to prepare things for everyone else, as it were.
FORD: And the other ships followed on after you, did they?
NUMBER ONE: Well, it's a funny thing you should say that because curiously enough we haven't seen them since we left some five years ago ... but they must be behind us somewhere.
FORD: Well, it seems like you've got a lot of things you're going to need to be doing, then, to prepare for your landing. If you could just show us to the nearest teleport booth, or escape shuttle, we'll be going.
NUMBER ONE: Actually, we don't have any of those things.
ARTHUR: What?
CAPTAIN: Oh yes, so many of those things that you'd expect to see on a starship, like communications arrays or escape pods or landing craft, we just don't seem to have any of them.
FORD: You mean we're stuck here on this ship?
CAPTAIN: Yes, yes in fact, because, I think, so much of the ship's planning, it's trajectory thingy and all that was preset before we left Golgafrincham. Perhaps because I'm not very good with figures ...
ARTHUR: So you mean that we're going to land on that wretched planet with you?
CAPTAIN: Well, not so much land as such, no ... er --
FORD (Sharply): What are you talking about?
CAPTAIN (Carefully): Well, I think as far as I can remember we were programmed to crash on it.
FORD and ARTHUR: Crash?
CAPTAIN: Er, yes, yes, it's all part of the plan, I think. There was a terribly good reason for it which I can't quite remember at the moment. It was something to do with ... er ...
FORD (Exploding): You're a load of useless bloody loonies!
CAPTAIN (Beaming): Yes, that was it, that was the reason.
58. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
Marvin watches the alien ship start to burn as it plunges through the atmosphere, to crash upon the planet below.
MARVIN: There they go, leaving me behind again. Don't worry about me, alone and abandoned on a forgotten spaceship in orbit around an insignificant little blue-green planet out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the galaxy. God, I'm so depressed. I think I'll turn myself off.
59. EXT. SWAMP, PLANETSIDE
NARRATOR: The Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark blazes as it falls to the planet surface. Pieces tear and peel off and dash to the surface like burning meteors. The red-hot ship tears through the sky and belly-flopps into a murky swamp. It sinks in the gray predawn light, taking most of its millions of frozen passengers with it. Thousands survive, however, and dredge themselves out of the muck and onto whatever dry land that they can find. On a nearby hillside, wet and bedraggled Ford and Arthur watch.
ARTHUR: Filthy dirty trick to pull.
FORD (Shrugging): An imaginitive solution to a problem, I'd have thought.
ARTHUR: Why can't people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?
Ford gives a loud, very hollow laugh.
FORD: Forty-two! No, doesn't work. Never mind.
Arthur looks at Ford as if he were a crazy bear.
ARTHUR: What do you think will happen to them all?
FORD: In an infinite Universe anything can happen, even survival. Strange but true.
Ford digs a Sens-O-Matic device from his satchel.
FORD: Broken. All of my tools have been destroyed in the crash, or lost in the swamp.
ARTHUR: What?
FORD: We're in trouble. Unless we can find some way to contact the Heart of Gold up in orbit, our chances of getting off this planet are zero.
Ford tosses everything back in his bag, and walks off.
FORD (Over his shoulder): Coming?
Arthur shrugs his shoulders and follows in Ford's wake.
60. EXT. SURFACE, PLANETSIDE
NARRATOR: Ford and Arthur spend years wandering the surface of the unknown planet, avoiding the Golgafrinchans, occasionally meeting primitive natives, traveling far and wide over landscapes ranging from mountains and valleys to deserts and seas, from forests and plains to icefields and glaciers. Ford occasionally works on his Sens-O-Matic, trying to repair it, to no end. One day, while traveling along the edge of a glacier, Arthur finds Ford crouching near a wall of ice. Ford is tense with excitement.
FORD: Look, look!
Arthur looks. He sees a solid wall of blue ice.
ARTHUR: Yes, it's a glacier. I've already seen it.
FORD: No, you've looked at it, you haven't seen it. Look again.
Arthur peers. He tilts his head from one side to another. He does a double-take. He peers again. His mouth flops open. Sounds come out of his mouth but don't make words. Shadows and lines in the ice seem to drift and overlap from the parallax caused by Arthur tilting his head back and forth. They slowly resolve themselves into enormous words in an alien language. Arthur had seen those words before, in an office on an alien planet far from his home world. Above the words is the outline of a face, a face that he was all too familiar with. It is the face of Slartibartfast.
FORD (Laughing hysterically): Norway!
61. EXT. WOODED GLEN, PLANETSIDE
The Golgafrinchans are gathering in a clearing. In the middle of the clearing is the bathtub from the bridge of the Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark. In the middle of the tub is the Captain. Several Golgafrinchans approach him.
NUMBER ONE: It's time for the afternoon committee meetings, sir.
CAPTAIN: Oh good, those are my favorites.
From a distance Ford and Arthur watch. Ford begins to walk briskly towards the gathering. Arthur follows.
CAPTAIN: All right, I'd like to call this meeting to some sort of order. Is that alright with everybody? When you're all ready.
Ford enters the clearing and approaches the bath.
FORD: I bring you news of a discovery that might interest you.
An officer, Number Three (Played by Zoot), approaches Ford.
NUMBER THREE: Is it on the agenda? Speaking as a management consultant of many years' standing, man, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure.
ARTHUR (Having joined Ford): What?
NUMBER TWO: Address the chair!
FORD: There isn't a chair, there's only a rock.
NUMBER ONE: We call it a chair.
A Marketing Girl (Played by Janice) approaches the rock.
MARKETING GIRL: Shut up, you guys! I want to table a motion, for sure, really.
ARTHUR: You mean boulder a motion.
FORD: This is rediculous. All you do is have meetings, and you haven't even discovered the wheel yet.
CAPTAIN: Oh, the wheel! In fact, we have a committee working on that project as we speak. It sounds like a terribly interesting project.
MARKETING GIRL: Ah, well, we're having a little difficulty there.
FORD: Difficulty? Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single machine in the entire universe!
MARKETING GIRL: All right, Mr. Wiseguy, if you're so clever, you tell us what color it should be.
FORD: Almighty Zarquont, have none of you done anything?
NUMBER THREE: Of course we have! I have the report on fiscal policy ...
FORD: Fiscal policy! How can you have money if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.
NUMBER ONE: Since we decided to a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. But we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut.
Arthur makes sheeshing noises.
CAPTAIN: So in order to obviate this problem and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and ... er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.
FORD: This is crazy! Have you not achieved anything?
MARKETING GIRL: We've started making a fascinating documentary about the cavemen living in the area.
FORD: They're not cavemen.
MARKETING GIRL: They look like cavemen.
FORD: Do they live in caves?
NUMBER ONE: They live in huts.
ARTHUR: Have you noticed that, since you've arrived they've been dying out?
MARKETING GIRL: That's what the documentary is about. That gives it a poignant twist which is the hallmark of the really great documentary!
ARTHUR: Good grief!
MARKETING GIRL: Well, what have you two been doing all this time, then?
FORD: We've been on a journey. We went to try and find out something about this planet, and have we got news for you. We know this planet's future, and it doesn't matter a fetid pair of dingo's kidneys what you all do from now on. Burn down the forests, anything, it won't make a scrap of difference. Your future history has already happened. Two million years you've got and that's it. At the end of that time your race will be dead, gone and good riddance to you. Remember that, two million years!
Ford stalks off into the forest, with Arthur following behind him.
CAPTAIN (With a soothing smile): Well, still time for a few more baths. Could someone please pass me the sponge. I just dropped it over the side.
61. EXT. FOREST
Arthur and Ford walk up a slight incline, towards a group of the aboriginal natives of the planet. Arthur joins one native (Played by Sweetums), who is sitting on the ground tinkering with a board and some small pieces of stone.
ARTHUR: Look, Ford, they're still trying to play the game.
FORD: Play what game? What are you talking about?
ARTHUR: Well, I made a sort of word puzzle game and I've been trying to use it teach the natives how to speak. It hasn't been going all that well. The only word they know is grunt and they can't spell it.
FORD: What's that supposed to achieve?
ARTHUR: We've got to encourage them to evolve! To develop! Can you imagine what a world would be like descended from those, those ... cretins we arrived with?
FORD: Imagine? We don't have to imagine. We've seen it.
ARTHUR: Did you tell them what we'd discovered? Norway. Slartibartfast's signature in the glacier. Did you tell them?
FORD: They weren't interested. Face it, those zeebs over there are your ancestors, not these poor creatures here. Put the game away, Arthur, it won't save the human race because this lot aren't going to be the human race. The human race are currently sitting around a rock on the other side of this hill making documentaries about themselves.
Arthur winced.
ARTHUR: There must be something we can do.
The native, bored with the game, leaves. Arthur picks up a playing piece and holds it in his hand. He puts it down on the board. It is a 'W'.
ARTHUR: Ford, look, if that Question is printed in my brain wave patterns but I'm not consciously aware of it, it must be somewhere in my unconscious.
FORD: Yes, I suppose so.
ARTHUR: Mightn't there be a way of bringing that unconscious pattern forward?
FORD: Oh yes?
ARTHUR: Yes, by introducing some random element that can be shaped by that pattern.
FORD: Like how?
ARTHUR: Like by pulling word game letters out of a bag blindfolded.
Excited, Ford and Arthur sit next to the game board and begin to throw pieces into a bag made from Ford's towel.
FORD: Totally mad, utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense. Come on, come on. Right, close your eyes and pull out a letter.
Arthur closes his eyes and pulls out three letters. He hands them to Ford, who puts them onto the board with the letter Arthur had already left there.
FORD: W, H, A, T ... What! I think it's working!
Arthur pushed more letters towards Ford. Ford puts them onto the board.
FORD: D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh, perhaps it isn't working.
ARTHUR: Here's the next three.
FORD: O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making much sense I'm afraid.
Arthur pulls another two letters from the bag. Ford puts them into place.
FORD: E, T, Doyouget ... Do you get! (Shouting): It is working! This is amazing, it really is working!
Arthur pulls out more letters. Ford quickly puts them into place.
FORD: I, F, Y, O, U ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y ... What do you get if you multiply ... S, I, X ... six ... B, Y, by, six by, ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E ... six by nine ... Come on, where's the next one?
ARTHUR: Er, that's the lot, that's all there were.
FORD: You mean that's it?
ARTHUR: That's it.
FORD: Six by nine. Forty two.
ARTHUR: That's it. That's all there is.
Ford and Arthur stand up and boggle at the game board.
ARTHUR (Sighing despondently): I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
FORD: All for that.
ARTHUR: Yup. It's very sad, you know. Just at the moment it's a very beautiful planet.
Ford and Arthur wander off across the landscape.
FORD: It is, it is indeed. The rich primal greens, the river snaking off into the distance, the burning forests.
ARTHUR: And in only two millions years, bang, it gets destroyed by the Vogons. What a life for a young planet to look forward to. What a waste.
FORD: Well, better than some. I read of some planet up in the seventh dimension, got used as a ball in an intergalactic game of bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole, killed ten billion people.
ARTHUR: Madness, total madness!
FORD: Yeah, only scored thirty points, too.
ARTHUR: Where'd you read that?
FORD: Oh, a book.
ARTHUR: What book?
FORD: Oh, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
ARTHUR: Oh, that thing.
FORD: I wonder whatever happened to it.
ARTHUR: I threw it in the river. I don't think I'll be wanting it any more.
Ford and Arthur walk off into the distance.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Part Fifteen of the script to the HHGTTG starring the Muppets introduces an alien creature, which I cannot decide who to have play, so I am for the moment leaving it unsaid.
Here, then, is Part Fifteen of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down to see the earlier parts.
55. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
Zaphod, Ford, Trillian and Arthur are sitting on the seats on the bridge, watching the stars pass by on the wall viewer. Marvin putters around aimlessly in the background.
ARTHUR: What just happened?
FORD: I'll tell you about it after I've had a couple of very large drinks.
ZAPHOD (Laughing): I think the universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?
TRILLIAN: Very good. So what do we do now?
ZAPHOD: Anything we want. Hey, wait, look at that!
On the screen, a long silver spaceship drifts into view. It pulls up alongside the Heart of Gold.
TRILLIAN: We're being hailed.
ZAPHOD: Yeah? So put it on the screen.
Trillian operates some controls and the image of a tall, pale green alien with a flattened head appears on the wall viewer. It holds up a clipboard, consults it, then looks at the group on the bridge of the Heart of Gold.
ALIEN: Are you Arthur Dent?
Ford, Trillian and Zaphod look at Arthur in amazement.
ARTHUR: What? Er ... yes, why yes I am.
ALIEN: Arthur Philip Dent, of Earth?
ARTHUR: Yes?
ALIEN: You're a jerk, Dent. A real kneebiter.
ARTHUR: Er ...
The alien nods to itself, makes a particular alien check on its clipboard, and turns away.
ARTHUR: Er ... er ...
The alien turns back to face him and snaps:
ALIEN: Don't give me that!
The alien reaches for a control and the image disappears, shortly followed by the spaceship flitting away to vanish into the stars.
ARTHUR: What??
Ford, Zaphod and Trillian laugh happily as Arthur's head reels.
ARTHUR: This universe is crazy! It's run by a crazy old man in a shack, administered by crazy bureaucrats who are all fools, and populated by crazy aliens going around making insane insults for no reason! What's the point?!
MARVIN: Now you know how I feel.
TRILLIAN: Calm down, Arthur. It's not as bad as all that. What about this whole Question to the Ultimate Answer thing we're still stuck with? How are we going to figure out what it is?
ZAPHOD: Who cares? We're free to do whatever we want now, so let's go out and do it.
FORD: So what do you want to do?
Zaphod stopped. Several different looks of thought, confusion, and eventually dismay crossed first one face then the other.
ZAPHOD: I don't know! I've spent so much of my life trying to sort out what I've hidden from myself that now that I've done it, I don't know what to do next. Augh!
TRILLIAN: So let's figure out this whole Question to the Ultimate Answer thing. It's got to mean something, doesn't it?
ARTHUR: But how do we find out what it is?
ZAPHOD (Muttering): Excitement and adventure and really wild things ...
FORD: Hey, I've got a really crazy idea --
ARTHUR: Just what we need: more craziness.
FORD: No, listen, what if we program what we know about the Question to the Ultimate Answer into the Infinite Improbability Drive? It's designed to do as close to the impossible as we can get. Maybe it will give us some clues to work with.
MARVIN: It won't work.
TRILLIAN: Stop being so negative, Marvin. It couldn't hurt.
ZAPHOD (Holding his heads): My heads hurt. I need a drink.
While his other head says, 'Make that two drinks,' Zaphod goes to a niche in the back wall and makes a preposterous order.
ARTHUR: So what do we do?
FORD: We start programming.
Ford and Trillian start tinkering with the controls to the Infinite Improbability Drive, talking under their breathes about probabilities, computer logic, and other things that Arthur finds too arcane to follow. Dazed, he steps back. Behind him the niche that Zaphod is standing in begins to glow and to pulse, slowly at first and then more rapidly. Then, in a flash of light that only lasts for the blink of an eye, Zaphod disappears with an audible 'pop'. Arthur spins around at the sound, but sees nothing there. Turning back to Ford and Trillian, who appear to be finishing their task, he says:
ARTHUR: Where did Zaphod get to?
MARVIN: Who knows? Who cares? Nothing is worth getting involved in.
ARTHUR: You're as bad as he is.
TRILLIAN: Arthur, I think we've got it!
FORD: Now, to hit the button and activate the Infinite Improbability Drive!
FORD hits the button. The universe turns itself inside-out, elongates into an infinite whirlpool of light and sound rushing away into a wormhole, and disappears into itself. The universe rushes by at a frenetic pace; then it slows, then it stops. A rubber duck appears from nowhere, turns into one random object after another, and then finally turns into the Heart of Gold spaceship.
ARTHUR: Are we there?
FORD: Where? Where were we going?
ARTHUR: I don't know. You tell me.
TRILLIAN (Working the controls): Let's see what the sensors say. (The controls make electonic sounds.) The sensors say that we're exactly where we were. We didn't go anywhere!
FORD: That doesn't make sense. We had to have gone somewhere. Computer!
EDDIE: Hi, guys! Boy, it's great to see you again! I just know that I'll be happy to calculate --
FORD: Shut up! Just tell us where in Zarquont's name we just went.
EDDIE: You mean when you went, didn't you? Because you didn't travel anywhere in space, but you traveled approximately two million years back in time.
FORD, TRILLIAN and ARTHUR: What?!
MARVIN: Of course you did. You wouldn't want to miss out on all of the depressing things that happened in the past, now, would you?
EDDIE: That's right. The Infinite Improbability Drive has deposited you in the far past, according to the co-ordinates that you input into it. Gee whiz!
FORD: Wow! Zaphod, what do you think about that?
After a moment's silence, they all look around for Zaphod. He's not there.
TRILLIAN: Where'd he go?
ARTHUR: Don't you mean when did he go? Because just before Ford hit the Infinite Improbability Drive button, I was saying --
FORD: Computer! Where did Zaphod get off to?
EDDIE: Mr. Beeblebrox is no longer on the ship.
FORD and TRILLIAN: What?!
ARTHUR: As I was trying to say --
TRILLIAN: Computer, where did he go?
EDDIE: I really don't know. He programmed some really weird stuff into the teleport booth and it took him who-knows-where.
FORD (Shocked): Why would he do that?
TRILLIAN: We've got to find him!
ARTHUR (Retreating to a different niche in the wall): I think I'll just get myself a cup of tea.
An alarm klaxon starts blaring.
FORD: What now?
EDDIE: No worries! It's just that we've picked up a distress signal from a spaceship a long ways from here. They're trapped in a disintegrating orbit around a planet, and their engines have failed. Wow-ee!
TRILLIAN: Do you think it could be Zaphod?
FORD: Anything is possible. Do we check it out?
ARTHUR (Returning with his tea): Aren't we obligated to help when a ship is in distress?
FORD: It's just a suggestion.
TRILLIAN and ARTHUR: Ford!
FORD: Oh, all right! Computer, how far away is that ship?
EDDIE: Many days if we use the star drive. Minutes if we use the Infinite Improbability Drive.
ARTHUR: That sounds risky. Look what happened to us the last time we used it.
TRILLIAN: It's all right. So long as we have the right co-ordinates, we'll be fine. Computer, do it!
EDDIE: Here we go!
The Heart of Gold turns into a red rose, then into one random object after another, then vanishes. It reappears at a different point in space, orbiting a small blue-green planet. Another ship, drifting away towards the planet, can just be seen below it.
FORD: Computer, hail that ship!
EDDIE: No response.
TRILLIAN: Are there any lifeforms on board it?
EDDIE: Several, I think. But the readings are kind of odd. It says that there are many thousands of life signs, but they are abnormally weak. They could be dying.
ARTHUR: Dying? Good grief!
MARVIN: Lucky.
FORD: Can you use the tractor beam to pull that ship into a more stable orbit?
EDDIE: Nope. It's far too much larger than we are for that to work.
FORD: Can we dock with it, or land on it?
EDDIE: I'm afraid not. It doesn't seem to be equipped for that. What an odd design! It's unlike any proper ship I've ever seen. No communications arrays, no sensors, no nothing! Weeeird!
FORD (Pushing his chair back): Well, it looks like they're done for!
ARTHUR: How can you say that?
FORD: Easy! There's nothing we can do, so who cares?
ARTHUR: Real humanitarian, you are.
FORD: Hey! There's no need to get all insulting about it!
TRILLIAN: We've still got to try to help. How about using the teleporter, like Zaphod did?
EDDIE: I wouldn't recommend it. It's programming is still a little bonkers from when Mr. Beeblebrox reprogrammed it.
TRILLIAN: So re-reprogram it. And be quick about it.
EDDIE: No promises.
FORD: Computer!
EDDIE (In a hurt tone): Okay, okay! It's ready. Just step into the booth and I'll try to teleport you over to the alien ship.
Ford, Trillian and Arthur step over to the teleport booth. Ford makes Arthur put down his tea. While Arthur protests ("I haven't finished that, yet!"), the teleport's lights blink. The cup of tea falls over, pouring into the teleport controls. Sparks fly, and there is a small explosion. With a loud popping sound, they vanish. Marvin looks at the destroyed teleport booth and shakes his head.
EDDIE: Oh, dear. That didn't quite go as expected, did it?
Here, then, is Part Fifteen of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down to see the earlier parts.
55. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
Zaphod, Ford, Trillian and Arthur are sitting on the seats on the bridge, watching the stars pass by on the wall viewer. Marvin putters around aimlessly in the background.
ARTHUR: What just happened?
FORD: I'll tell you about it after I've had a couple of very large drinks.
ZAPHOD (Laughing): I think the universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?
TRILLIAN: Very good. So what do we do now?
ZAPHOD: Anything we want. Hey, wait, look at that!
On the screen, a long silver spaceship drifts into view. It pulls up alongside the Heart of Gold.
TRILLIAN: We're being hailed.
ZAPHOD: Yeah? So put it on the screen.
Trillian operates some controls and the image of a tall, pale green alien with a flattened head appears on the wall viewer. It holds up a clipboard, consults it, then looks at the group on the bridge of the Heart of Gold.
ALIEN: Are you Arthur Dent?
Ford, Trillian and Zaphod look at Arthur in amazement.
ARTHUR: What? Er ... yes, why yes I am.
ALIEN: Arthur Philip Dent, of Earth?
ARTHUR: Yes?
ALIEN: You're a jerk, Dent. A real kneebiter.
ARTHUR: Er ...
The alien nods to itself, makes a particular alien check on its clipboard, and turns away.
ARTHUR: Er ... er ...
The alien turns back to face him and snaps:
ALIEN: Don't give me that!
The alien reaches for a control and the image disappears, shortly followed by the spaceship flitting away to vanish into the stars.
ARTHUR: What??
Ford, Zaphod and Trillian laugh happily as Arthur's head reels.
ARTHUR: This universe is crazy! It's run by a crazy old man in a shack, administered by crazy bureaucrats who are all fools, and populated by crazy aliens going around making insane insults for no reason! What's the point?!
MARVIN: Now you know how I feel.
TRILLIAN: Calm down, Arthur. It's not as bad as all that. What about this whole Question to the Ultimate Answer thing we're still stuck with? How are we going to figure out what it is?
ZAPHOD: Who cares? We're free to do whatever we want now, so let's go out and do it.
FORD: So what do you want to do?
Zaphod stopped. Several different looks of thought, confusion, and eventually dismay crossed first one face then the other.
ZAPHOD: I don't know! I've spent so much of my life trying to sort out what I've hidden from myself that now that I've done it, I don't know what to do next. Augh!
TRILLIAN: So let's figure out this whole Question to the Ultimate Answer thing. It's got to mean something, doesn't it?
ARTHUR: But how do we find out what it is?
ZAPHOD (Muttering): Excitement and adventure and really wild things ...
FORD: Hey, I've got a really crazy idea --
ARTHUR: Just what we need: more craziness.
FORD: No, listen, what if we program what we know about the Question to the Ultimate Answer into the Infinite Improbability Drive? It's designed to do as close to the impossible as we can get. Maybe it will give us some clues to work with.
MARVIN: It won't work.
TRILLIAN: Stop being so negative, Marvin. It couldn't hurt.
ZAPHOD (Holding his heads): My heads hurt. I need a drink.
While his other head says, 'Make that two drinks,' Zaphod goes to a niche in the back wall and makes a preposterous order.
ARTHUR: So what do we do?
FORD: We start programming.
Ford and Trillian start tinkering with the controls to the Infinite Improbability Drive, talking under their breathes about probabilities, computer logic, and other things that Arthur finds too arcane to follow. Dazed, he steps back. Behind him the niche that Zaphod is standing in begins to glow and to pulse, slowly at first and then more rapidly. Then, in a flash of light that only lasts for the blink of an eye, Zaphod disappears with an audible 'pop'. Arthur spins around at the sound, but sees nothing there. Turning back to Ford and Trillian, who appear to be finishing their task, he says:
ARTHUR: Where did Zaphod get to?
MARVIN: Who knows? Who cares? Nothing is worth getting involved in.
ARTHUR: You're as bad as he is.
TRILLIAN: Arthur, I think we've got it!
FORD: Now, to hit the button and activate the Infinite Improbability Drive!
FORD hits the button. The universe turns itself inside-out, elongates into an infinite whirlpool of light and sound rushing away into a wormhole, and disappears into itself. The universe rushes by at a frenetic pace; then it slows, then it stops. A rubber duck appears from nowhere, turns into one random object after another, and then finally turns into the Heart of Gold spaceship.
ARTHUR: Are we there?
FORD: Where? Where were we going?
ARTHUR: I don't know. You tell me.
TRILLIAN (Working the controls): Let's see what the sensors say. (The controls make electonic sounds.) The sensors say that we're exactly where we were. We didn't go anywhere!
FORD: That doesn't make sense. We had to have gone somewhere. Computer!
EDDIE: Hi, guys! Boy, it's great to see you again! I just know that I'll be happy to calculate --
FORD: Shut up! Just tell us where in Zarquont's name we just went.
EDDIE: You mean when you went, didn't you? Because you didn't travel anywhere in space, but you traveled approximately two million years back in time.
FORD, TRILLIAN and ARTHUR: What?!
MARVIN: Of course you did. You wouldn't want to miss out on all of the depressing things that happened in the past, now, would you?
EDDIE: That's right. The Infinite Improbability Drive has deposited you in the far past, according to the co-ordinates that you input into it. Gee whiz!
FORD: Wow! Zaphod, what do you think about that?
After a moment's silence, they all look around for Zaphod. He's not there.
TRILLIAN: Where'd he go?
ARTHUR: Don't you mean when did he go? Because just before Ford hit the Infinite Improbability Drive button, I was saying --
FORD: Computer! Where did Zaphod get off to?
EDDIE: Mr. Beeblebrox is no longer on the ship.
FORD and TRILLIAN: What?!
ARTHUR: As I was trying to say --
TRILLIAN: Computer, where did he go?
EDDIE: I really don't know. He programmed some really weird stuff into the teleport booth and it took him who-knows-where.
FORD (Shocked): Why would he do that?
TRILLIAN: We've got to find him!
ARTHUR (Retreating to a different niche in the wall): I think I'll just get myself a cup of tea.
An alarm klaxon starts blaring.
FORD: What now?
EDDIE: No worries! It's just that we've picked up a distress signal from a spaceship a long ways from here. They're trapped in a disintegrating orbit around a planet, and their engines have failed. Wow-ee!
TRILLIAN: Do you think it could be Zaphod?
FORD: Anything is possible. Do we check it out?
ARTHUR (Returning with his tea): Aren't we obligated to help when a ship is in distress?
FORD: It's just a suggestion.
TRILLIAN and ARTHUR: Ford!
FORD: Oh, all right! Computer, how far away is that ship?
EDDIE: Many days if we use the star drive. Minutes if we use the Infinite Improbability Drive.
ARTHUR: That sounds risky. Look what happened to us the last time we used it.
TRILLIAN: It's all right. So long as we have the right co-ordinates, we'll be fine. Computer, do it!
EDDIE: Here we go!
The Heart of Gold turns into a red rose, then into one random object after another, then vanishes. It reappears at a different point in space, orbiting a small blue-green planet. Another ship, drifting away towards the planet, can just be seen below it.
FORD: Computer, hail that ship!
EDDIE: No response.
TRILLIAN: Are there any lifeforms on board it?
EDDIE: Several, I think. But the readings are kind of odd. It says that there are many thousands of life signs, but they are abnormally weak. They could be dying.
ARTHUR: Dying? Good grief!
MARVIN: Lucky.
FORD: Can you use the tractor beam to pull that ship into a more stable orbit?
EDDIE: Nope. It's far too much larger than we are for that to work.
FORD: Can we dock with it, or land on it?
EDDIE: I'm afraid not. It doesn't seem to be equipped for that. What an odd design! It's unlike any proper ship I've ever seen. No communications arrays, no sensors, no nothing! Weeeird!
FORD (Pushing his chair back): Well, it looks like they're done for!
ARTHUR: How can you say that?
FORD: Easy! There's nothing we can do, so who cares?
ARTHUR: Real humanitarian, you are.
FORD: Hey! There's no need to get all insulting about it!
TRILLIAN: We've still got to try to help. How about using the teleporter, like Zaphod did?
EDDIE: I wouldn't recommend it. It's programming is still a little bonkers from when Mr. Beeblebrox reprogrammed it.
TRILLIAN: So re-reprogram it. And be quick about it.
EDDIE: No promises.
FORD: Computer!
EDDIE (In a hurt tone): Okay, okay! It's ready. Just step into the booth and I'll try to teleport you over to the alien ship.
Ford, Trillian and Arthur step over to the teleport booth. Ford makes Arthur put down his tea. While Arthur protests ("I haven't finished that, yet!"), the teleport's lights blink. The cup of tea falls over, pouring into the teleport controls. Sparks fly, and there is a small explosion. With a loud popping sound, they vanish. Marvin looks at the destroyed teleport booth and shakes his head.
EDDIE: Oh, dear. That didn't quite go as expected, did it?
Here is Part Fourteen of the movie script to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down to find the earlier parts.
52. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
TRILLIAN: I can't believe we're doing this. Giving the ship to this character. Traveling who knows where for who knows what reason.
ZARNIWOOP: The reason will be made clear to you shortly. I have programmed the computer with the Improbability Coordinates pertinent to our journey. We will arrive there very soon. Meanwhile, you should try to relax and prepare for your meeting.
FORD: Our meeting with whom?
ZARNIWOOP: We are going to meet the man who rules the Universe.
ZAPHOD: Hey, yeah? Now you've got my undivided attention. And we're meeting this man, why?
ZARNIWOOP: Because he has the answers. All of the answers. And we're going to get them from him one way or another. That was our plan; your plan. Who was behind it all? Who held ultimate power? If not the President of the Galaxy, then who? Why? All of the big questions, all of them answered. And to do that, we needed this ship because the man we want is hidden behind a vast field of Unprobability to which only a handful of men in this Galaxy have a key. But now we have our own key: this ship, the Heart of Gold. Only its Infinite Improbability Drive can penetrate the Unprobability field and take us to the hidden planet at its center.
TRILLIAN: And why you?
ZARNIWOOP: I was Yooden Vranx's partner in the scheme. It was originally his idea, but he was dying and he knew he couldn't complete it. So he had to find a successor. That was you, Beeblebrox. We planned for you to take Yooden's place, and you did. You were to steal the ship, I was to wait for you at Milliways with the coordinates. Then we would proceed to the location. That's all. And the plan has worked perfectly. You should be proud, Zaphod,
ZAPHOD (Savagely): And when all this is done, it's done, all right? I'm free to go and do what the heck I like and lie on beaches and stuff?
ZARNIWOOP: It depends what transpires from the meeting.
ARTHUR (Sarcastically): Will the adventure never end?
MARVIN: It will, but you won't like it.
Everyone answers: 'Oh, shut up!'
53. NARRATOR: One of the major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them -- who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?
54. A grey landscape. A small hut huddles next to a washed-out path near the edge of a sea. It is bucketing down rain, churning and slopping the land into a mudbath. The rain pounds on the corrugated iron roof of the hut. Inside the hut is a shambling figure of a muppet (or a human*), hunched over an old and weatherbeaten cat, waving a fish at it.
MAN (Played either by Cookie Monster or a Celebrity Special Guest Star*): Pussy, pussy, pussy. Pussy want his fish? Nice fish.
The cat seems undecided. It paws at the fish suspiciously, then loses attention.
MAN: Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think. I imagine this is what will happen, but how can I tell? Pussy think,eat fish or not eat fish. I think it is better if I don't get involved.
The man leaves the fish on the floor for the cat, and retires to his seat.
MAN: Fish come from far away, or so I'm told. Or so I imagine I'm told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships, do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy? And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What do their voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you.
The man pauses and thinks about this for a while.
MAN: Perhaps they are singing songs to you, and I just think they're asking me questions. Do you think they came today? I do. There's mud on the floor, cookies on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence, I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions. To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behavior. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.
The man picks up a glass that was lying on the floor and looks at it.
MAN: I think I saw another ship in the sky today. A big white one. I've never seen a big white one, just the six black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who say they come from so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big white one at certain times.
The man sets the glass down on the table.
MAN: Perhaps some other people are coming to see me.
After a short while there is the sound of a starship landing outside, nearby. There is a knocking at the door. The man looks at the door but does not move to open it. After a pause, the knocking returns. The man thinks for a while. The knocking returns again. The man gets up and opens the door.
Zaphod, Zarniwoop, Trillian, Ford and Arthur stand huddled in the doorway, soaking wet.
MAN: Hello?
ZARNIWOOP: Ah, excuse me, I have reason to believe --
ZAPHOD: Do you rule the universe?
MAN (Smiling): I try not to. Are you wet?
They look at him in astonishment.
FORD: Wet? Doesn't it look like we're wet?
MAN: That's how it looks to me, but how you feel about it might be an altogether different matter.If you find warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in.
They go in.
Everyone looks around the tiny one-room shack with distaste, interest, or delight, each as suits their natures.
ZAPHOD: Hey, er ... what's your name?
The man looks at them doubtfully.
MAN: I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.
ARTHUR (Looking at the Man's run-down chair): Is this really the seat of power?
ZARNIWOOP: Listen, I must ask you some questions.
MAN: All right. You can sing to my cat if you like.
TRILLIAN: Would he like that?
MAN: You'd better ask him.
TRILLIAN: Does he talk?
MAN: I have no memory of him talking, but I am very unreliable.
Zarniwoop pulls some notes out of a pocket.
ZARNIWOOP: Now, you do rule the universe, do you?
MAN: How can I tell?
Zarniwoop ticks off a note on the paper.
ZARNIWOOP: How long have you been doing this?
MAN: Ah, this is a question about the past, is it?
Everyone looks at the man in puzzlement. This isn't exactly what they were expecting.
ZARNIWOOP: Yes.
MAN: How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?
Zarniwoop stares open-mouthed at him for a moment, then says:
ZARNIWOOP: So you answer all questions like this?
MAN (Quickly): I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
ARTHUR: What?
Zaphod laughs happily.
FORD: Wait a minute. People come to you, do they? In ships ...
MAN: I think so.
TRILLIAN: And they ask you to make decisions for them? About people's lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?
MAN: Out there? Out where?
ZARNIWOOP (Pointing at the door): Out there!
MAN (Politely): How can you tell there's anything out there? The door's closed.
ZARNIWOOP: But you know there's a whole universe out there! You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!
MAN: You're very sure of your facts. I couldn't trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe -- if there is one -- for granted.
Zarniwoop quivers. Zaphod whoops.
MAN: I only decide about my Universe. My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.
ARTHUR: But don't you believe in anything?
The man shrugs and picks up his cat.
MAN: I don't understand what you mean.
ZARNIWOOP: You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of billions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!
MAN: I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own universes of their eyes and ears.
Trillian, smiling, drags a gape-mouthed Arthur towards the door.
TRILLIAN: I think we're just popping outside for a moment.
Trillian and Arthur leave through the door.
ZARNIWOOP: Do you believe other people exist?
MAN: I have no opinion. How can I say?
Zaphod grabs Ford by the arm and steers him, protesting, towards the door.
ZAPHOD: We'd better see what's up with Trillian and Arthur.
Zaphod and Ford also leave.
ZARNIWOOP: But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?
The man waits until he hears the starship's engines starting, and then he speaks to cover it.
MAN: It's nothing to do with me. I am not involved with people. I am not a cruel man. Please, I think I am tired.
Zarniwoop heaves a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looks about.
ZARNIWOOP: Where did the others go?
The man settles in his chair and begins to stroke his cat.
MAN: What others? I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for ...
ZARNIWOOP: Stuff it!
Zarniwoop runs out into the rain. There is no ship. He hollers into the rain. He turns and runs back to the shack but finds it locked. He pounds on the door but there is no answer. The rain continues to churn the mud.
52. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
TRILLIAN: I can't believe we're doing this. Giving the ship to this character. Traveling who knows where for who knows what reason.
ZARNIWOOP: The reason will be made clear to you shortly. I have programmed the computer with the Improbability Coordinates pertinent to our journey. We will arrive there very soon. Meanwhile, you should try to relax and prepare for your meeting.
FORD: Our meeting with whom?
ZARNIWOOP: We are going to meet the man who rules the Universe.
ZAPHOD: Hey, yeah? Now you've got my undivided attention. And we're meeting this man, why?
ZARNIWOOP: Because he has the answers. All of the answers. And we're going to get them from him one way or another. That was our plan; your plan. Who was behind it all? Who held ultimate power? If not the President of the Galaxy, then who? Why? All of the big questions, all of them answered. And to do that, we needed this ship because the man we want is hidden behind a vast field of Unprobability to which only a handful of men in this Galaxy have a key. But now we have our own key: this ship, the Heart of Gold. Only its Infinite Improbability Drive can penetrate the Unprobability field and take us to the hidden planet at its center.
TRILLIAN: And why you?
ZARNIWOOP: I was Yooden Vranx's partner in the scheme. It was originally his idea, but he was dying and he knew he couldn't complete it. So he had to find a successor. That was you, Beeblebrox. We planned for you to take Yooden's place, and you did. You were to steal the ship, I was to wait for you at Milliways with the coordinates. Then we would proceed to the location. That's all. And the plan has worked perfectly. You should be proud, Zaphod,
ZAPHOD (Savagely): And when all this is done, it's done, all right? I'm free to go and do what the heck I like and lie on beaches and stuff?
ZARNIWOOP: It depends what transpires from the meeting.
ARTHUR (Sarcastically): Will the adventure never end?
MARVIN: It will, but you won't like it.
Everyone answers: 'Oh, shut up!'
53. NARRATOR: One of the major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them -- who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?
54. A grey landscape. A small hut huddles next to a washed-out path near the edge of a sea. It is bucketing down rain, churning and slopping the land into a mudbath. The rain pounds on the corrugated iron roof of the hut. Inside the hut is a shambling figure of a muppet (or a human*), hunched over an old and weatherbeaten cat, waving a fish at it.
MAN (Played either by Cookie Monster or a Celebrity Special Guest Star*): Pussy, pussy, pussy. Pussy want his fish? Nice fish.
The cat seems undecided. It paws at the fish suspiciously, then loses attention.
MAN: Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think. I imagine this is what will happen, but how can I tell? Pussy think,eat fish or not eat fish. I think it is better if I don't get involved.
The man leaves the fish on the floor for the cat, and retires to his seat.
MAN: Fish come from far away, or so I'm told. Or so I imagine I'm told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships, do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy? And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What do their voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you.
The man pauses and thinks about this for a while.
MAN: Perhaps they are singing songs to you, and I just think they're asking me questions. Do you think they came today? I do. There's mud on the floor, cookies on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence, I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions. To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behavior. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.
The man picks up a glass that was lying on the floor and looks at it.
MAN: I think I saw another ship in the sky today. A big white one. I've never seen a big white one, just the six black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who say they come from so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big white one at certain times.
The man sets the glass down on the table.
MAN: Perhaps some other people are coming to see me.
After a short while there is the sound of a starship landing outside, nearby. There is a knocking at the door. The man looks at the door but does not move to open it. After a pause, the knocking returns. The man thinks for a while. The knocking returns again. The man gets up and opens the door.
Zaphod, Zarniwoop, Trillian, Ford and Arthur stand huddled in the doorway, soaking wet.
MAN: Hello?
ZARNIWOOP: Ah, excuse me, I have reason to believe --
ZAPHOD: Do you rule the universe?
MAN (Smiling): I try not to. Are you wet?
They look at him in astonishment.
FORD: Wet? Doesn't it look like we're wet?
MAN: That's how it looks to me, but how you feel about it might be an altogether different matter.If you find warmth makes you dry, you'd better come in.
They go in.
Everyone looks around the tiny one-room shack with distaste, interest, or delight, each as suits their natures.
ZAPHOD: Hey, er ... what's your name?
The man looks at them doubtfully.
MAN: I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.
ARTHUR (Looking at the Man's run-down chair): Is this really the seat of power?
ZARNIWOOP: Listen, I must ask you some questions.
MAN: All right. You can sing to my cat if you like.
TRILLIAN: Would he like that?
MAN: You'd better ask him.
TRILLIAN: Does he talk?
MAN: I have no memory of him talking, but I am very unreliable.
Zarniwoop pulls some notes out of a pocket.
ZARNIWOOP: Now, you do rule the universe, do you?
MAN: How can I tell?
Zarniwoop ticks off a note on the paper.
ZARNIWOOP: How long have you been doing this?
MAN: Ah, this is a question about the past, is it?
Everyone looks at the man in puzzlement. This isn't exactly what they were expecting.
ZARNIWOOP: Yes.
MAN: How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?
Zarniwoop stares open-mouthed at him for a moment, then says:
ZARNIWOOP: So you answer all questions like this?
MAN (Quickly): I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
ARTHUR: What?
Zaphod laughs happily.
FORD: Wait a minute. People come to you, do they? In ships ...
MAN: I think so.
TRILLIAN: And they ask you to make decisions for them? About people's lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?
MAN: Out there? Out where?
ZARNIWOOP (Pointing at the door): Out there!
MAN (Politely): How can you tell there's anything out there? The door's closed.
ZARNIWOOP: But you know there's a whole universe out there! You can't dodge your responsibilities by saying they don't exist!
MAN: You're very sure of your facts. I couldn't trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe -- if there is one -- for granted.
Zarniwoop quivers. Zaphod whoops.
MAN: I only decide about my Universe. My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.
ARTHUR: But don't you believe in anything?
The man shrugs and picks up his cat.
MAN: I don't understand what you mean.
ZARNIWOOP: You don't understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of billions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!
MAN: I don't know. I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own universes of their eyes and ears.
Trillian, smiling, drags a gape-mouthed Arthur towards the door.
TRILLIAN: I think we're just popping outside for a moment.
Trillian and Arthur leave through the door.
ZARNIWOOP: Do you believe other people exist?
MAN: I have no opinion. How can I say?
Zaphod grabs Ford by the arm and steers him, protesting, towards the door.
ZAPHOD: We'd better see what's up with Trillian and Arthur.
Zaphod and Ford also leave.
ZARNIWOOP: But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?
The man waits until he hears the starship's engines starting, and then he speaks to cover it.
MAN: It's nothing to do with me. I am not involved with people. I am not a cruel man. Please, I think I am tired.
Zarniwoop heaves a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looks about.
ZARNIWOOP: Where did the others go?
The man settles in his chair and begins to stroke his cat.
MAN: What others? I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for ...
ZARNIWOOP: Stuff it!
Zarniwoop runs out into the rain. There is no ship. He hollers into the rain. He turns and runs back to the shack but finds it locked. He pounds on the door but there is no answer. The rain continues to churn the mud.
49. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Arthur dash onto the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold and throw themselves into chairs. Marvin the Paranoid Android, having watched them dash by without so much as a 'Hello' shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and trudges away down the hall. They begin to frantically operate the controls.
FORD: Let's get out of here, quick!
TRILLIAN: Right, where are we going?
ZAPHOD: I'm still starving! Let's go somewhere where we can get some food, yeah?
ARTHUR: What? What about this whole Ultimate Question thing?
ZAPHOD: Who cares? Everybody, hold tight! We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Zaphod presses several buttons and pulls a lever. Then he hits the Infinite Improbability Drive button, and the universe turns itself inside-out. The Heart of Gold vanishes from the surface of Magrathea.
50. NARRATOR: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened. There is yet another which states that, In the beginning the Universe was created, and that this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Much later, a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. After seven and a half million years of calculating, Deep Thought gave the answer as Forty-two. This was, of course, unacceptable therefore another, even bigger computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. This computer, called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet -- especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply a part of a gigantic computer program. Sadly, however, just before the critial moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost forever. Or so it would seem. Two of those strange apelike creatures survived, and they are all that remain of the greatest experiment ever conducted -- to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything. At the moment, they are both arguing with a man with two heads, one very hungry stomache, and absolutely no idea where he was was or what he was doing there.
49 Cont. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
ZAPHOD: Hey, it's not my fault we're locked in the ship! I put in the right coordinates, we just seem to be in some sort of holding pattern.
ARTHUR: What do you mean, a holding pattern?
ZAPHOD: The ship is making us wait to disembark. I don't know why.
TRILLIAN: But where are we?
FORD: If I'm reading these sensors right, we're in a parking garage waiting to be assigned a berth so that we can park.
ARTHUR: So what do we do now?
FORD: Wait, I guess. Hey, Zaphod old mate, since we seem to have the time to think about it, I've got a question for you.
ZAPHOD: Lay it on me!
FORD: That whole story about why you became President of the Galaxy, it has several enormous holes in it, you know?
ZAPHOD: I know! Or rather, I don't know. I seem to have forgotten a lot of really important things since, or even before I became President.
TRILLIAN: What do you mean, forgotten?
ZAPHOD: Yeah, of course I forgot! I had to forget. They screen your brain when you get the job, you know. If they'd found out my head was full of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out on the street again with nothing to show for it but a fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of ships and a couple of slit throats.
ARTHUR: Sheesh!
ZAPHOD: The worst part is that if I am meant to be doing some great thing or other, it looks to me as if I was not supposed to know. And I resent that, right? The old me did this to me because the old me knew and cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain -- my own brain! -- and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing. But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has his own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of the brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anyone's puppet, particularly not my own.
FORD: Do you mean that you have absolutely no idea why you did what you did to yourself?
ZAPHOD: Right.
FORD: That can't be right. It has to make some kind of sense, doesn't it?
TRILLIAN: Maybe it's like a puzzle, or a riddle. Maybe if we all put our heads together we can sort it all out.
FORD: Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy, as did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher. Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with ultimate power.
ZAPHOD: It could be a computer for all I know. What difference does it make?
TRILLIAN: Well, if they've gone to so much effort to hide the reality of where ultimate power comes from, that's got to mean something, doesn't it? Who does hold ultimate power? Why are they being hidden from the Universe? What does it all mean?
ZAPHOD: Who knows? Who cares? I already told you that I don't. What difference does it make?
ARTHUR: It makes every difference, because whether you like it or not you seem to be stuck on this quest to find the ultimate whatsit, and we're stuck following you around while you're onto it, is all. You may not care, but we do because we don't know what's going to happen to us next because of it!
FORD and TRILLIAN: Right!
At that moment the Computer came to life, and said (ticker tape, ticker tape):
EDDIE: Hi, guys! I have just been informed by the parking authority that we have finally been assigned a berth. I'm bringing the ship in to land. Welcome to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!
51. INT. FOYER, THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
As Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Arthur enter the foyer of the restaurant, they look around in amazement. The place is all crystal chandeliers, glass walls and glowing neon. One particularly large fixture features the name of the restaurant, Milliways, in large pink neon lights.
TRILLIAN: We should have brought Marvin along. He looked awfully put out that we left him on the ship.
ZAPHOD: This is a restaurant! He doesn't have a stomache. Who cares?
ARTHUR: That's your answer to everything, isn't it?
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Get used to me kid, there's a lot of me to go around. (Laughs.) Now, where's the food?
The maître d' approaches the group.
MAITRE D' (Played by Sam the Eagle): How many?
ZAPHOD: How many what?
MAITRE D': In your party?
TRILLIAN: Four, s'il vous plaît.
MAITRE D': Follow me, please.
The maître d' leads the party into the restaurant, and to a table with a view of the band rostrum. The ballroom floor is covered with dancers enjoying the light music that the band plays.
MAITRE D': Your waiter will be with you shortly.
FORD: Thank you.
ARTHUR: What is this place?
ZAPHOD: Only the greatest restaurant in the whole of everything! Milliways! The restaurant at the end of the universe!
ARTHUR: The what?
FORD: This is the most exclusive restaurant in the universe, and very hard to get into. If Zaphod here weren't President of the Galaxy, we probably couldn't get past the front door!
TRILLIAN: Really? Why?
ZAPHOD: Listen, this is the coolest, most wild and wonderful eating establishment in the universe! How many restaurants at the end of the universe are there?
ARTHUR: End of what?
ZAPHOD: The universe.
ARTHUR: When did that end?
WAITER (Played by Grover, reprising his role from the restaurant sketch on Sesame Street): In just a few minutes, sir. Would you care to start with a few drinks?
ZAPHOD and FORD: Would we!
TRILLIAN: Ooh! Thank you!
ARTHUR: But look Ford, surely if the universe is about to end here and now, don’t we go with it?
FORD: Ah, no, no, no, look, I mean, as soon as you come into this dive I think you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal warp thing. Now imagine this napkin, right? …as the temporal universe, right? And imagine this spoon as the, as the transductional mode in the matter curve - no, no, better still, this fork --
ARTHUR: What?
FORD: Yeah, well, forget that. I mean, do you know how the universe began for a kick off?
ARTHUR: Well, probably not.
FORD: Alright imagine this: you get a large round bath made of ebony.
ARTHUR: Where from? Harrod’s was destroyed by the Vogons.
FORD: Well it doesn’t matter --
ARTHUR: So you keep saying!
FORD: No, No listen. Just imagine that you’ve got this ebony bath, right? And it’s conical.
ARTHUR: Conical? What kind of bath is --
FORD: No, no, shh, shhh, it’s, it’s, it’s conical okay? So what you do, you fill it with fine white sand right? Or sugar, or anything like that. And when it’s full, you pull the plug out and it all just twirls down out of the plug hole … but the thing is …
ARTHUR: Why?
FORD: No, the clever thing is that you film it happening. You get a movie camera from somewhere and actually film it. But then you thread the film in the projector backwards.
ARTHUR: Backwards?
FORD: Yeah, neat you see. So what happens is you sit and you watch it and then everything appears to swirl upwards, out of the plug hole and fill the bath… amazing.
ARTHUR: And that’s how the universe began?
FORD: No. But it’s a marvellous way to relax.
TRILLIAN: Funny man.
FORD: Well it broke the ice didn’t it? Zaphod, you're pretty silent all the sudden. Are you okay?
ZAPHOD: Shhh! We're being watched.
ARTHUR (Looking around): What? By whom?
ZAPHOD: Don't look! He's over there, by the bar. Oh, no, he's coming over here. Be cool.
ZARNIWOOP (Played by either Link Hogthrob or a Celebrity Special Guest Star) (To Zaphod): You took your time coming, Beeblebrox. I was beginning to think you weren't coming. Did you bring it?
ZAPHOD (Very cool): It's you. You're looking very you, you are. Who are you, again?
ZARNIWOOP: The Heart of Gold. You did bring it, didn't you?
ZAPHOD: Maybe. Maybe you just think I brought it.
FORD (Under his breathe): Zaphod, who is this guy?
ZAPHOD (With one head): Beats me. (With the other head): First, tell my friends here who you are and what you're doing here.
ZARNIWOOP: My name is Zarniwoop and you were supposed to come alone.
ZAPHOD: Listen, this is my crew and they need to know what's going on. So tell them already!
ZARNIWOOP: You forget, Beeblebrox, you're not the one giving orders here. We had a plan, and it doesn't include them.
FORD: Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but we have what you want, and if you want to get it, you need to clue us in to what's going on and why we need to give it to you.
ZARNIWOOP: Ask Zaphod, it was his plan; he's the one giving the orders. Oh, wait, you can't. (Laughs.) That Zaphod is gone. He left me in charge, and he left the plan with me as well.
ZAPHOD (Angrily): That's it! You can count me out, from here on in you can count me out. I've had all I want of this. You play your own games.
ZARNIWOOP: I'm afraid you cannot avoid it. Once you stole that ship, you were entwined in the Improbability Field. You cannot escape your fate. Now, for the last time, take me to the ship!
ARTHUR: And I haven't even had my tea yet.
Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Arthur dash onto the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold and throw themselves into chairs. Marvin the Paranoid Android, having watched them dash by without so much as a 'Hello' shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and trudges away down the hall. They begin to frantically operate the controls.
FORD: Let's get out of here, quick!
TRILLIAN: Right, where are we going?
ZAPHOD: I'm still starving! Let's go somewhere where we can get some food, yeah?
ARTHUR: What? What about this whole Ultimate Question thing?
ZAPHOD: Who cares? Everybody, hold tight! We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Zaphod presses several buttons and pulls a lever. Then he hits the Infinite Improbability Drive button, and the universe turns itself inside-out. The Heart of Gold vanishes from the surface of Magrathea.
50. NARRATOR: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened. There is yet another which states that, In the beginning the Universe was created, and that this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Much later, a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. After seven and a half million years of calculating, Deep Thought gave the answer as Forty-two. This was, of course, unacceptable therefore another, even bigger computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. This computer, called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet -- especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply a part of a gigantic computer program. Sadly, however, just before the critial moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost forever. Or so it would seem. Two of those strange apelike creatures survived, and they are all that remain of the greatest experiment ever conducted -- to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything. At the moment, they are both arguing with a man with two heads, one very hungry stomache, and absolutely no idea where he was was or what he was doing there.
49 Cont. INT. BRIDGE, HEART OF GOLD
ZAPHOD: Hey, it's not my fault we're locked in the ship! I put in the right coordinates, we just seem to be in some sort of holding pattern.
ARTHUR: What do you mean, a holding pattern?
ZAPHOD: The ship is making us wait to disembark. I don't know why.
TRILLIAN: But where are we?
FORD: If I'm reading these sensors right, we're in a parking garage waiting to be assigned a berth so that we can park.
ARTHUR: So what do we do now?
FORD: Wait, I guess. Hey, Zaphod old mate, since we seem to have the time to think about it, I've got a question for you.
ZAPHOD: Lay it on me!
FORD: That whole story about why you became President of the Galaxy, it has several enormous holes in it, you know?
ZAPHOD: I know! Or rather, I don't know. I seem to have forgotten a lot of really important things since, or even before I became President.
TRILLIAN: What do you mean, forgotten?
ZAPHOD: Yeah, of course I forgot! I had to forget. They screen your brain when you get the job, you know. If they'd found out my head was full of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out on the street again with nothing to show for it but a fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of ships and a couple of slit throats.
ARTHUR: Sheesh!
ZAPHOD: The worst part is that if I am meant to be doing some great thing or other, it looks to me as if I was not supposed to know. And I resent that, right? The old me did this to me because the old me knew and cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain -- my own brain! -- and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing. But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has his own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of the brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anyone's puppet, particularly not my own.
FORD: Do you mean that you have absolutely no idea why you did what you did to yourself?
ZAPHOD: Right.
FORD: That can't be right. It has to make some kind of sense, doesn't it?
TRILLIAN: Maybe it's like a puzzle, or a riddle. Maybe if we all put our heads together we can sort it all out.
FORD: Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy, as did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher. Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with ultimate power.
ZAPHOD: It could be a computer for all I know. What difference does it make?
TRILLIAN: Well, if they've gone to so much effort to hide the reality of where ultimate power comes from, that's got to mean something, doesn't it? Who does hold ultimate power? Why are they being hidden from the Universe? What does it all mean?
ZAPHOD: Who knows? Who cares? I already told you that I don't. What difference does it make?
ARTHUR: It makes every difference, because whether you like it or not you seem to be stuck on this quest to find the ultimate whatsit, and we're stuck following you around while you're onto it, is all. You may not care, but we do because we don't know what's going to happen to us next because of it!
FORD and TRILLIAN: Right!
At that moment the Computer came to life, and said (ticker tape, ticker tape):
EDDIE: Hi, guys! I have just been informed by the parking authority that we have finally been assigned a berth. I'm bringing the ship in to land. Welcome to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!
51. INT. FOYER, THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
As Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Arthur enter the foyer of the restaurant, they look around in amazement. The place is all crystal chandeliers, glass walls and glowing neon. One particularly large fixture features the name of the restaurant, Milliways, in large pink neon lights.
TRILLIAN: We should have brought Marvin along. He looked awfully put out that we left him on the ship.
ZAPHOD: This is a restaurant! He doesn't have a stomache. Who cares?
ARTHUR: That's your answer to everything, isn't it?
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Get used to me kid, there's a lot of me to go around. (Laughs.) Now, where's the food?
The maître d' approaches the group.
MAITRE D' (Played by Sam the Eagle): How many?
ZAPHOD: How many what?
MAITRE D': In your party?
TRILLIAN: Four, s'il vous plaît.
MAITRE D': Follow me, please.
The maître d' leads the party into the restaurant, and to a table with a view of the band rostrum. The ballroom floor is covered with dancers enjoying the light music that the band plays.
MAITRE D': Your waiter will be with you shortly.
FORD: Thank you.
ARTHUR: What is this place?
ZAPHOD: Only the greatest restaurant in the whole of everything! Milliways! The restaurant at the end of the universe!
ARTHUR: The what?
FORD: This is the most exclusive restaurant in the universe, and very hard to get into. If Zaphod here weren't President of the Galaxy, we probably couldn't get past the front door!
TRILLIAN: Really? Why?
ZAPHOD: Listen, this is the coolest, most wild and wonderful eating establishment in the universe! How many restaurants at the end of the universe are there?
ARTHUR: End of what?
ZAPHOD: The universe.
ARTHUR: When did that end?
WAITER (Played by Grover, reprising his role from the restaurant sketch on Sesame Street): In just a few minutes, sir. Would you care to start with a few drinks?
ZAPHOD and FORD: Would we!
TRILLIAN: Ooh! Thank you!
ARTHUR: But look Ford, surely if the universe is about to end here and now, don’t we go with it?
FORD: Ah, no, no, no, look, I mean, as soon as you come into this dive I think you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal warp thing. Now imagine this napkin, right? …as the temporal universe, right? And imagine this spoon as the, as the transductional mode in the matter curve - no, no, better still, this fork --
ARTHUR: What?
FORD: Yeah, well, forget that. I mean, do you know how the universe began for a kick off?
ARTHUR: Well, probably not.
FORD: Alright imagine this: you get a large round bath made of ebony.
ARTHUR: Where from? Harrod’s was destroyed by the Vogons.
FORD: Well it doesn’t matter --
ARTHUR: So you keep saying!
FORD: No, No listen. Just imagine that you’ve got this ebony bath, right? And it’s conical.
ARTHUR: Conical? What kind of bath is --
FORD: No, no, shh, shhh, it’s, it’s, it’s conical okay? So what you do, you fill it with fine white sand right? Or sugar, or anything like that. And when it’s full, you pull the plug out and it all just twirls down out of the plug hole … but the thing is …
ARTHUR: Why?
FORD: No, the clever thing is that you film it happening. You get a movie camera from somewhere and actually film it. But then you thread the film in the projector backwards.
ARTHUR: Backwards?
FORD: Yeah, neat you see. So what happens is you sit and you watch it and then everything appears to swirl upwards, out of the plug hole and fill the bath… amazing.
ARTHUR: And that’s how the universe began?
FORD: No. But it’s a marvellous way to relax.
TRILLIAN: Funny man.
FORD: Well it broke the ice didn’t it? Zaphod, you're pretty silent all the sudden. Are you okay?
ZAPHOD: Shhh! We're being watched.
ARTHUR (Looking around): What? By whom?
ZAPHOD: Don't look! He's over there, by the bar. Oh, no, he's coming over here. Be cool.
ZARNIWOOP (Played by either Link Hogthrob or a Celebrity Special Guest Star) (To Zaphod): You took your time coming, Beeblebrox. I was beginning to think you weren't coming. Did you bring it?
ZAPHOD (Very cool): It's you. You're looking very you, you are. Who are you, again?
ZARNIWOOP: The Heart of Gold. You did bring it, didn't you?
ZAPHOD: Maybe. Maybe you just think I brought it.
FORD (Under his breathe): Zaphod, who is this guy?
ZAPHOD (With one head): Beats me. (With the other head): First, tell my friends here who you are and what you're doing here.
ZARNIWOOP: My name is Zarniwoop and you were supposed to come alone.
ZAPHOD: Listen, this is my crew and they need to know what's going on. So tell them already!
ZARNIWOOP: You forget, Beeblebrox, you're not the one giving orders here. We had a plan, and it doesn't include them.
FORD: Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but we have what you want, and if you want to get it, you need to clue us in to what's going on and why we need to give it to you.
ZARNIWOOP: Ask Zaphod, it was his plan; he's the one giving the orders. Oh, wait, you can't. (Laughs.) That Zaphod is gone. He left me in charge, and he left the plan with me as well.
ZAPHOD (Angrily): That's it! You can count me out, from here on in you can count me out. I've had all I want of this. You play your own games.
ZARNIWOOP: I'm afraid you cannot avoid it. Once you stole that ship, you were entwined in the Improbability Field. You cannot escape your fate. Now, for the last time, take me to the ship!
ARTHUR: And I haven't even had my tea yet.
Beginning with Part Thirteen, I will be using Revision Two of the script to the HHGTTG, starring the Muppets. Therefore you may notice that the scene numbers are slightly different than those that would have come before, but that's okay. When I'm done posting this in Parts, I'll post a link to the entire thing as a PDF, and then it will all make sense, if that sort of thing matters to you.
In the meantime, Part Thirteen introduces the character of Zarniwoop, who is there to annoy Zaphod. Zarniwoop is played by either Link Hogthrob, shown below, or a Special Guest Star.
In the meantime, Part Thirteen introduces the character of Zarniwoop, who is there to annoy Zaphod. Zarniwoop is played by either Link Hogthrob, shown below, or a Special Guest Star.
And again, for the earlier Parts, please scroll down.
Enjoy!
I'm now working on Revision 2 of the script to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. I've gone back and added the narration for bits that were referred to but skipped over, as is normal film script practice, just to make it more readable.
I've also made changes to the lines given to Marvin the Paranoid Android -- I've had to change his scenes a little, and given him lines where he otherwise didn't have any, just to keep him more involved with the story than he otherwise would be.
I'm also adding a whole second half to the storyline regarding the Question to the Ultimate Answer, with the hopes of concluding that part of the series as well. Anything beyond that will have to be left for a script to a sequel, if there ever is one.
As we move along, you'll see that there have been some changes to the order of scenes compared to the way they were presented in the radio scripts and the books, and some new scenes added, in order to make a coherent story. Therefore, this script will be following in the grand HHGTTG tradition of being as unlike the other stories as possible, while also telling the same story.
This is bound to satisfy no one and yet stay true to the tradition set by Douglas Adams every time he rewrote the story for another format or round of publication. I can only hope to carry forward the 'look and feel' of the original story as much as I possibly can.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing on it. Please feel free to make any suggestions and comments that you like.
Thank you.
I've also made changes to the lines given to Marvin the Paranoid Android -- I've had to change his scenes a little, and given him lines where he otherwise didn't have any, just to keep him more involved with the story than he otherwise would be.
I'm also adding a whole second half to the storyline regarding the Question to the Ultimate Answer, with the hopes of concluding that part of the series as well. Anything beyond that will have to be left for a script to a sequel, if there ever is one.
As we move along, you'll see that there have been some changes to the order of scenes compared to the way they were presented in the radio scripts and the books, and some new scenes added, in order to make a coherent story. Therefore, this script will be following in the grand HHGTTG tradition of being as unlike the other stories as possible, while also telling the same story.
This is bound to satisfy no one and yet stay true to the tradition set by Douglas Adams every time he rewrote the story for another format or round of publication. I can only hope to carry forward the 'look and feel' of the original story as much as I possibly can.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing on it. Please feel free to make any suggestions and comments that you like.
Thank you.
I've been working on the first revision of the script for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets, and I think that -- counting pages, and keeping in mind that one page equals approximately one minute of film time -- I've got up to 40 pages I can use to round out the script and correct for changes I need to make. Therefore, I'm going to pause posting parts of the script for a bit, and go and make those changes.
The only change from what has been posted will be that the parts for the Narrator that have been skipped over (this apparently is standard film practice), I am re-writing so that it makes better reading. This is not standard Hollywood practice, it seems, but who cares, we're just having fun with this anyways!
The biggest changes happen much, much later in the script, so I feel safe in making those because, here on this blog, you won't notice any difference.
Hopefully, when all is said and done, I can find a way to make one single, easily downloadable file -- like a PDF -- that you can read at your leisure.
In the meantime, enjoy the twelve parts already posted, and beginning with part thirteen, I'll start using the revised script to draw from. Thanks for your interest!
The only change from what has been posted will be that the parts for the Narrator that have been skipped over (this apparently is standard film practice), I am re-writing so that it makes better reading. This is not standard Hollywood practice, it seems, but who cares, we're just having fun with this anyways!
The biggest changes happen much, much later in the script, so I feel safe in making those because, here on this blog, you won't notice any difference.
Hopefully, when all is said and done, I can find a way to make one single, easily downloadable file -- like a PDF -- that you can read at your leisure.
In the meantime, enjoy the twelve parts already posted, and beginning with part thirteen, I'll start using the revised script to draw from. Thanks for your interest!
Monday, July 4, 2016
A REMINDER: For those who have only just joined us.
On this blog we are currently in the middle of sharing a new fanfic movie script version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as played by the Muppets. This is a first draft, and as such may be full of errors and etc. That only gives me a reason to write a revived draft, is all. Until then, enjoy the first draft of what hopefully be a continuing series of posts telling one of modern sci fi's favorite funny stories, as seen through the eyes of some of the most popular pop culture characters of the last half century.
Enjoy!
On this blog we are currently in the middle of sharing a new fanfic movie script version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as played by the Muppets. This is a first draft, and as such may be full of errors and etc. That only gives me a reason to write a revived draft, is all. Until then, enjoy the first draft of what hopefully be a continuing series of posts telling one of modern sci fi's favorite funny stories, as seen through the eyes of some of the most popular pop culture characters of the last half century.
Enjoy!
NOTE: It occurs to me during the posting of all of these Parts of the script to the HHGTTG that I may have made a rather large error. In trying to make one conclusive storyline that will fit into the time restraints of a movie, I seem to have started one story (the quest for the meaning of the answer, "42") and then more or less dropped it half-way through.
The Parts shared here already cover that part of the story.
However, the story picks up with concentrating on another quest, that of Zaphod trying to sort out why he did what he did to his own brain.
Oops. You see, this is why these are called "First Drafts," because you then find your errors and have to go back and rewrite the story to make it make sense as a "Second" or "Third Draft," etc.
Well, I shall definitely have to rewrite the script to go and pick up where we left off in the looking for the Ultimate Question. Until then, sorry for any confusion, and stay tuned for the rest of the First Draft as it is.
The Parts shared here already cover that part of the story.
However, the story picks up with concentrating on another quest, that of Zaphod trying to sort out why he did what he did to his own brain.
Oops. You see, this is why these are called "First Drafts," because you then find your errors and have to go back and rewrite the story to make it make sense as a "Second" or "Third Draft," etc.
Well, I shall definitely have to rewrite the script to go and pick up where we left off in the looking for the Ultimate Question. Until then, sorry for any confusion, and stay tuned for the rest of the First Draft as it is.
Here is Part Twelve of the script to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down to see the earlier Parts.
46. INT. HALLWAY, DEEP INSIDE MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Come, you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.
ARTHUR: What were the first two?
SLARTIBARTFAST (Carelessly): Oh, probably just coincidences.
Slartibartfast and Arthur enter a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and Plexiglas awards. A light flashes above the door at the other side of the room. They enter.
TRILLIAN: Arthur! You're safe!
ARTHUR (Startled): Am I? Oh, good.
Ford, Trillian, and Zaphod are sitting around a large table decked with dishes of food. They are stuffing their faces.
ARTHUR: What happened to you?
Zaphod eats with one head, and with the other he says:
ZAPHOD: Well, our guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a nice meal to make it up to us. Here, (passing a bowl of meat to Arthur): Have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious!
ARTHUR: Hosts? What hosts? I don't see any ...
Two mice appear at the head of the table.
BENJY MOUSE (Played by Rizzo the Rat): Hey! Welcome to lunch, Earth creature!
ARTHUR: Ugh! There are mice on the table!
FRANKIE MOUSE (Played by Pepe the King Prawn): I think the costume I am wearing resembles that remark, okay?
TRILLIAN: Let me introduce you. Arthur, this is Benjy Mouse.
BENJY: Hi.
TRILLIAN: And this is Frankie Mouse.
FRANKIE: Hola.
ARTHUR: But, aren't they ...
TRILLIAN: Yes, they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth.
Slartibartfast coughs slightly.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Er, excuse me.
BENJY: Yes, thank you, Slartibartfast, you may go.
SLARTIBARTFAST: What? Oh ... er, very well. I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.
FRANKIE: Ah, well, in fact that won't be necessary. It looks very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any longer. Not now that we have found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Agast): What? You can't mean that! I've got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!
FRANKIE: Well, maybe you can go on a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Skiing holiday! Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculpted contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!
BENJY (Firmly): Thank you, Slartibartfast. That will be all.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Coldly): Yes, sir, thank you very much. (To Arthur): Well, goodbye, Earthman, hope the life-style comes together.
Nodding to the rest of the company, Slartibartfast turns and walks sadly away. Arthur stares after him, not knowing what to say.
BENJY: Now, to business.
Ford and Zaphod clink their glasses together and say "To business!" After a short silence:
FORD: Sorry, we thought you were proposing a toast.
BENJY: Now, Earth creature, the situation we have in effect is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Question to the Ultimate Answer.
ARTHUR (Sharply): Why?
FRANKIE: No -- we already thought of that one, but it doesn't fit the answer. Why? Forty-two ... you see, it doesn't work, okay.
BENJY: Oh, I see, well, eventually just habit I think, to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point -- we're sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on account of those darned Vogons quite frankly gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benjy and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends.
FRANKIE: Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension.
BENJY: Since then, we have had an offer of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to take it.
ZAPHOD: I would, wouldn't you, Ford?
FORD: Oh yes, jump at it, like a shot.
FRANKIE: But we've got to have product, you see? I mean, ideally we still need the Question to the Ultimate Answer in some form or other.
ZAPHOD (To Arthur): You see, if they're just sitting there in the studio looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two, then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see.
BENJY: We have to have something that sounds good.
ARTHUR: Something that sounds good? A Question to the Ultimate Answer that sounds good?
FRANKIE: Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, I for one could do with the exercise.
BENJY: Oh yeah, for certain me too, okay?
ARTHUR (Hopelessly): But ...
ZAPHOD: Hey, will you get this, Earthman? You are a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right up to the moment your planet got the big bang, yeah?
ARTHUR: Er ...
FORD: So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program.
ZAPHOD (With both heads, for emphasis): Right?
ARTHUR: Well ...
BENJY: In other words, there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain -- so we want to buy it off you.
ARTHUR: What, the question?
FORD and TRILLIAN: Yes.
ZAPHOD: For lots of money.
FRANKIE: No, no, it's the brain we want to buy.
ARTHUR: What?
BENJY: Well, who would miss it?
FORD (Protesting): I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically.
FRANKIE: Oh yes, but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared.
BENJY: Treated.
FRANKIE: Diced.
ARTHUR (Shouting): No thanks!
BENJY: It could always be replaced if you think it's important.
FRANKIE: Yes, an electronic brain, a simple one would suffice.
ARTHUR (Wailing): A simple one!
ZAPHOD (Laughing): Yeah, you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? Who'd know the difference?
ARTHUR (Backing away from the table): What?
ZAPHOD: See what I mean?
ARTHUR: I'd notice the difference.
FRANKIE: No, you wouldn't. You'd be programmed not to.
Ford makes for the door.
FORD: I'm sorry, mice, old lads, I don't think we've got a deal.
FRANKIE: I rather think we have to have a deal.
TRILLIAN: Oh, yeah? Well, deal with this, mice!
Trillian screams "Hi-yaaah!" and karate chops the mice off the table. They fly across the room and crash into the wall, then down onto the floor.
TRILLIAN: Let's get out of here!
ARTHUR: I'm with you. Let's go!
Trillian, Arthur, Ford and Zaphod bolt through the door and disappear. The mice pick themselves up off the floor with a groan.
FRANKIE: Hey, you didn't say this scene was going to get all violent, okay.
BENJY: Never mind that, what are we going to do about the Question to the Ultimate Answer? We still need one.
FRANKIE: Difficult. How about What's yellow and dangerous?
BENJY: No, no good. Doesn't fit the answer.
FRANKIE: All right. What do you get if you multiply six by seven?
BENJY: No, no, too literal, wouldn't sustain the viewer's interest.
FRANKIE: Here's a thought, okay? How many roads must a man walk down?
BENJY: Ah! Aha, now that does sound promising! Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!
The two mice dance a little victory dance to celebrate.
46. INT. HALLWAY, DEEP INSIDE MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Come, you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.
ARTHUR: What were the first two?
SLARTIBARTFAST (Carelessly): Oh, probably just coincidences.
Slartibartfast and Arthur enter a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and Plexiglas awards. A light flashes above the door at the other side of the room. They enter.
TRILLIAN: Arthur! You're safe!
ARTHUR (Startled): Am I? Oh, good.
Ford, Trillian, and Zaphod are sitting around a large table decked with dishes of food. They are stuffing their faces.
ARTHUR: What happened to you?
Zaphod eats with one head, and with the other he says:
ZAPHOD: Well, our guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a nice meal to make it up to us. Here, (passing a bowl of meat to Arthur): Have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious!
ARTHUR: Hosts? What hosts? I don't see any ...
Two mice appear at the head of the table.
BENJY MOUSE (Played by Rizzo the Rat): Hey! Welcome to lunch, Earth creature!
ARTHUR: Ugh! There are mice on the table!
FRANKIE MOUSE (Played by Pepe the King Prawn): I think the costume I am wearing resembles that remark, okay?
TRILLIAN: Let me introduce you. Arthur, this is Benjy Mouse.
BENJY: Hi.
TRILLIAN: And this is Frankie Mouse.
FRANKIE: Hola.
ARTHUR: But, aren't they ...
TRILLIAN: Yes, they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth.
Slartibartfast coughs slightly.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Er, excuse me.
BENJY: Yes, thank you, Slartibartfast, you may go.
SLARTIBARTFAST: What? Oh ... er, very well. I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.
FRANKIE: Ah, well, in fact that won't be necessary. It looks very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any longer. Not now that we have found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Agast): What? You can't mean that! I've got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!
FRANKIE: Well, maybe you can go on a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Skiing holiday! Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculpted contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!
BENJY (Firmly): Thank you, Slartibartfast. That will be all.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Coldly): Yes, sir, thank you very much. (To Arthur): Well, goodbye, Earthman, hope the life-style comes together.
Nodding to the rest of the company, Slartibartfast turns and walks sadly away. Arthur stares after him, not knowing what to say.
BENJY: Now, to business.
Ford and Zaphod clink their glasses together and say "To business!" After a short silence:
FORD: Sorry, we thought you were proposing a toast.
BENJY: Now, Earth creature, the situation we have in effect is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Question to the Ultimate Answer.
ARTHUR (Sharply): Why?
FRANKIE: No -- we already thought of that one, but it doesn't fit the answer. Why? Forty-two ... you see, it doesn't work, okay.
BENJY: Oh, I see, well, eventually just habit I think, to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point -- we're sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on account of those darned Vogons quite frankly gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benjy and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends.
FRANKIE: Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension.
BENJY: Since then, we have had an offer of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to take it.
ZAPHOD: I would, wouldn't you, Ford?
FORD: Oh yes, jump at it, like a shot.
FRANKIE: But we've got to have product, you see? I mean, ideally we still need the Question to the Ultimate Answer in some form or other.
ZAPHOD (To Arthur): You see, if they're just sitting there in the studio looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two, then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see.
BENJY: We have to have something that sounds good.
ARTHUR: Something that sounds good? A Question to the Ultimate Answer that sounds good?
FRANKIE: Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, I for one could do with the exercise.
BENJY: Oh yeah, for certain me too, okay?
ARTHUR (Hopelessly): But ...
ZAPHOD: Hey, will you get this, Earthman? You are a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right up to the moment your planet got the big bang, yeah?
ARTHUR: Er ...
FORD: So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program.
ZAPHOD (With both heads, for emphasis): Right?
ARTHUR: Well ...
BENJY: In other words, there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain -- so we want to buy it off you.
ARTHUR: What, the question?
FORD and TRILLIAN: Yes.
ZAPHOD: For lots of money.
FRANKIE: No, no, it's the brain we want to buy.
ARTHUR: What?
BENJY: Well, who would miss it?
FORD (Protesting): I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically.
FRANKIE: Oh yes, but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared.
BENJY: Treated.
FRANKIE: Diced.
ARTHUR (Shouting): No thanks!
BENJY: It could always be replaced if you think it's important.
FRANKIE: Yes, an electronic brain, a simple one would suffice.
ARTHUR (Wailing): A simple one!
ZAPHOD (Laughing): Yeah, you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? Who'd know the difference?
ARTHUR (Backing away from the table): What?
ZAPHOD: See what I mean?
ARTHUR: I'd notice the difference.
FRANKIE: No, you wouldn't. You'd be programmed not to.
Ford makes for the door.
FORD: I'm sorry, mice, old lads, I don't think we've got a deal.
FRANKIE: I rather think we have to have a deal.
TRILLIAN: Oh, yeah? Well, deal with this, mice!
Trillian screams "Hi-yaaah!" and karate chops the mice off the table. They fly across the room and crash into the wall, then down onto the floor.
TRILLIAN: Let's get out of here!
ARTHUR: I'm with you. Let's go!
Trillian, Arthur, Ford and Zaphod bolt through the door and disappear. The mice pick themselves up off the floor with a groan.
FRANKIE: Hey, you didn't say this scene was going to get all violent, okay.
BENJY: Never mind that, what are we going to do about the Question to the Ultimate Answer? We still need one.
FRANKIE: Difficult. How about What's yellow and dangerous?
BENJY: No, no good. Doesn't fit the answer.
FRANKIE: All right. What do you get if you multiply six by seven?
BENJY: No, no, too literal, wouldn't sustain the viewer's interest.
FRANKIE: Here's a thought, okay? How many roads must a man walk down?
BENJY: Ah! Aha, now that does sound promising! Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!
The two mice dance a little victory dance to celebrate.
Here is Part Eleven of the script to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, starring the Muppets. Please scroll down to find the earlier Parts.
42. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
Zaphod is sleeping on a golden floor. Ford and Trillian's feet and legs are shown standing next to him.
TRILLIAN: Zaphod! Wake up!
ZAPHOD: Mmmmmmwwwwwerrrr?
FORD: Hey, come on, wake up.
ZAPHOD (Muttering): Just let me stick to what I'm good at: Sleeping.
FORD: Do you want me to kick you?
ZAPHOD: Would it give you a lot of pleasure?
FORD: No.
ZAPHOD: Nor me. So what's the point? Stop bugging me.
Zaphod turns over and curls up. Cut to a medium shot of Ford and Trillian.
TRILLIAN (Angry): Oh, here, let me! Hi-yaaaah!
Trillian kicks Zaphod. Zaphod pops up.
ZAPHOD: Ow! That's not in the script!
Wide shot showing Zaphod, Ford and Trillian standing what looks like a solid gold landscape. It looks perfectly smooth from horizon to horizon. A huge green catalog number hangs in the air.
ZAPHOD: Is this really all made out of gold? Cool!
FORD: Don't get excited. It's only a catalog.
TRILLIAN: When Ford and I came around a while ago we shouted and yelled till somebody came, and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalog to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape.
ZAPHOD (Bitterly): That's not fair! You wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else's.
FORD: We didn't wake you earlier because the last planet was knee-deep in fish.
ZAPHOD: Oh, man, I miss all the good stuff!
In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalog number. It says, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
In a moment the scene vanishes around them, and is replaced with a springtime meadow dotted with cows. More cows are dropping out of the sky on parachutes, landing on the ground, and running around laughing.
ZAPHOD: Ow! My brains!
FORD: You want to talk about it?
TRILLIAN: You've gotta be kidding, right?
ZAPHOD: Sure. Listen, whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the Government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?
The other two nodded in agreement.
ZAPHOD: So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?
FORD: Oh, yeah, Yooden, what an ultracool guy! (To Trillian): He was a friend of ours, a freighter captain who taught us how to have a really wild time! He later became President of the Galaxy because it was, like, the coolest job he could possibly find.
43. The Narrator describes the office of President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and what it means to be the President.
42 Cont. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
ZAPHOD: And just before Yooden died, he came to see me. He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal it, and the only way I could do that was if I was President.
FORD: Are you telling me that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship? Why? What's so important about having it?
ZAPHOD: Dunno. I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need if for it would have shown up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away.
FORD: So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?
ZAPHOD: He was a heck of a talker!
TRILLIAN: You mean to say that you don't have any inkling of the reasons for this at all?
ZAPHOD: No, I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets. (Zaphod's other head): I can understand that. I don't trust myself, either.
While Zaphod's heads argue about trust issues, the springtime meadow vanishes and a tall Magrathean man appears before them. He says:
MAGRATHEAN MAN: The mice will see you now.
44. INT. SLARTIBARTFAST'S OFFICE, MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Here, I found the recording. Watch this.
The wall viewer comes back to life.
In the same but now very ancient-looking viewing room as was shown before, two severely-dressed men sat and waited. These two are also played by Dr. Honeydew and Beaker, although they are made up to look somewhat different.
LOONQUAWL (Played by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew): The time is nearly upon us. Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion, and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak.
PHOUCHG (Played by Beaker): Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Never… never again will we wake up in the morning and think, “Who am I?”. “What is my purpose in life?”. “Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?” For today we will finally learn, once and for all, the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe, and Everything!
PHOUCHG: Shhh!!
There is a pause while ancient computer panels and consoles come to life. A soft low hum comes from the communication channel.
DEEP THOUGHT: Good day.
LOONQUAWL: Good day, Deep Thought. Do you have ...
DEEP THOUGHT: An answer for you?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes, I have.
LOONQUAWL: There really is one?
DEEP THOUGHT: There really is one.
LOONQUAWL: To everything? To the great question of Life… the Universe… and Everything?
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes.
LOONQUAWL: And are you ready to give it to us?
DEEP THOUGHT: I am. Though I don’t think you’re going to like it.
LOONQUAWL: It doesn’t matter, we must know it!
DEEP THOUGHT: You’re really not going to like it.
PHOUCHG (Angry): Meep meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Tell us!
DEEP THOUGHT: Alright. The answer to everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Life, the Universe, and Everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is……
PHOUCHG: MEEEP!
DEEP THOUGHT: Forty-two.
PHOUCHG: Meepy-meep?
LOONQUAWL: We’re going to get lynched, you know that.
DEEP THOUGHT: It was a tough assignment.
LOONQUAWL (Angry): Forty-two? Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?
DEEP THOUGHT: I checked it very thoroughly and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.
LOONQUAWL: B- b- but it was the Ultimate question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: Exactly. Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is Forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is.
LOONQUAWL: Alright. Can you please tell us the Question?
DEEP THOUGHT: The Ultimate Question?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Of Life… the Universe…
LOONQUAWL: …and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: …and Everything?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Tricky…
LOONQUAWL: But can you do it?
DEEP THOUGHT (Long pause): No.
PHOUCHG: Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Oh no!
DEEP THOUGHT: But I'll tell you who can.
LOONQUAWL: Who? Tell us, tell us.
DEEP THOUGHT: I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me. A computer, whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question, to the Ultimate Answer. A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called… the Earth.
LOONQUAWL: Oh. What a dull name.
The wall viewer blinks out.
SLARTIBARTFAST: So there you have it. Deep Thought designed it, we built it, and you lived on it.
ARTHUR: And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Yes. Ten-million years of planning and work gone, just like that. Well, that’s bureaucracy for you.
ARTHUR: You know all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.
SLARTIBARTFAST: No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that.
ARTHUR: Well perhaps it means that ...
SLARTIBARTFAST: Maybe. Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say “hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me, I design coastlines, I got an award for Norway. Where’s the sense in that? None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fiords all my life, for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award. In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do, and of course, I’m doing it will all fjords again, because I happen to like them. And I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough… what does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day!
ARTHUR: And are you?
SLARTIBARTFAST: No. That’s where it all falls down of course.
ARTHUR: Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.
P.A. VOICE: Attention please, Slartibartfast. Would Slartibartfast and the visiting Earth creature please report immediately, repeat, immediately to the work’s reception area.
Slartibartfast jumps.
SLARTIBARTFAST: I must say, as far as the mice go, their take on management relations is absolutely shocking. Every time they give me an order I just want to jump on a table and scream!
45. NARRATOR: It is, of course, well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said, “Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far, far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space, to a distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time, and a dreadful silence fell across the conference table, as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green, sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapor and at the very moment the words “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle” drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war. Eventually of course, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty starships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet Earth-where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but are powerless to prevent it. “It’s just life,” they say.
42. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
Zaphod is sleeping on a golden floor. Ford and Trillian's feet and legs are shown standing next to him.
TRILLIAN: Zaphod! Wake up!
ZAPHOD: Mmmmmmwwwwwerrrr?
FORD: Hey, come on, wake up.
ZAPHOD (Muttering): Just let me stick to what I'm good at: Sleeping.
FORD: Do you want me to kick you?
ZAPHOD: Would it give you a lot of pleasure?
FORD: No.
ZAPHOD: Nor me. So what's the point? Stop bugging me.
Zaphod turns over and curls up. Cut to a medium shot of Ford and Trillian.
TRILLIAN (Angry): Oh, here, let me! Hi-yaaaah!
Trillian kicks Zaphod. Zaphod pops up.
ZAPHOD: Ow! That's not in the script!
Wide shot showing Zaphod, Ford and Trillian standing what looks like a solid gold landscape. It looks perfectly smooth from horizon to horizon. A huge green catalog number hangs in the air.
ZAPHOD: Is this really all made out of gold? Cool!
FORD: Don't get excited. It's only a catalog.
TRILLIAN: When Ford and I came around a while ago we shouted and yelled till somebody came, and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalog to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape.
ZAPHOD (Bitterly): That's not fair! You wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else's.
FORD: We didn't wake you earlier because the last planet was knee-deep in fish.
ZAPHOD: Oh, man, I miss all the good stuff!
In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalog number. It says, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.
In a moment the scene vanishes around them, and is replaced with a springtime meadow dotted with cows. More cows are dropping out of the sky on parachutes, landing on the ground, and running around laughing.
ZAPHOD: Ow! My brains!
FORD: You want to talk about it?
TRILLIAN: You've gotta be kidding, right?
ZAPHOD: Sure. Listen, whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the Government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?
The other two nodded in agreement.
ZAPHOD: So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?
FORD: Oh, yeah, Yooden, what an ultracool guy! (To Trillian): He was a friend of ours, a freighter captain who taught us how to have a really wild time! He later became President of the Galaxy because it was, like, the coolest job he could possibly find.
43. The Narrator describes the office of President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and what it means to be the President.
42 Cont. INT. PLANET CATALOG, MAGRATHEA
ZAPHOD: And just before Yooden died, he came to see me. He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal it, and the only way I could do that was if I was President.
FORD: Are you telling me that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship? Why? What's so important about having it?
ZAPHOD: Dunno. I think if I'd consciously known what was so important about it and what I would need if for it would have shown up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away.
FORD: So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?
ZAPHOD: He was a heck of a talker!
TRILLIAN: You mean to say that you don't have any inkling of the reasons for this at all?
ZAPHOD: No, I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my secrets. (Zaphod's other head): I can understand that. I don't trust myself, either.
While Zaphod's heads argue about trust issues, the springtime meadow vanishes and a tall Magrathean man appears before them. He says:
MAGRATHEAN MAN: The mice will see you now.
44. INT. SLARTIBARTFAST'S OFFICE, MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Here, I found the recording. Watch this.
The wall viewer comes back to life.
In the same but now very ancient-looking viewing room as was shown before, two severely-dressed men sat and waited. These two are also played by Dr. Honeydew and Beaker, although they are made up to look somewhat different.
LOONQUAWL (Played by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew): The time is nearly upon us. Seventy-five thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion, and in all that time we will be the first to hear the computer speak.
PHOUCHG (Played by Beaker): Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Never… never again will we wake up in the morning and think, “Who am I?”. “What is my purpose in life?”. “Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?” For today we will finally learn, once and for all, the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe, and Everything!
PHOUCHG: Shhh!!
There is a pause while ancient computer panels and consoles come to life. A soft low hum comes from the communication channel.
DEEP THOUGHT: Good day.
LOONQUAWL: Good day, Deep Thought. Do you have ...
DEEP THOUGHT: An answer for you?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes, I have.
LOONQUAWL: There really is one?
DEEP THOUGHT: There really is one.
LOONQUAWL: To everything? To the great question of Life… the Universe… and Everything?
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes.
LOONQUAWL: And are you ready to give it to us?
DEEP THOUGHT: I am. Though I don’t think you’re going to like it.
LOONQUAWL: It doesn’t matter, we must know it!
DEEP THOUGHT: You’re really not going to like it.
PHOUCHG (Angry): Meep meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Tell us!
DEEP THOUGHT: Alright. The answer to everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Life, the Universe, and Everything…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is…
LOONQUAWL: Yes?
DEEP THOUGHT: Is……
PHOUCHG: MEEEP!
DEEP THOUGHT: Forty-two.
PHOUCHG: Meepy-meep?
LOONQUAWL: We’re going to get lynched, you know that.
DEEP THOUGHT: It was a tough assignment.
LOONQUAWL (Angry): Forty-two? Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?
DEEP THOUGHT: I checked it very thoroughly and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.
LOONQUAWL: B- b- but it was the Ultimate question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: Exactly. Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is Forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is.
LOONQUAWL: Alright. Can you please tell us the Question?
DEEP THOUGHT: The Ultimate Question?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Of Life… the Universe…
LOONQUAWL: …and Everything.
DEEP THOUGHT: …and Everything?
LOONQUAWL: Yes.
DEEP THOUGHT: Tricky…
LOONQUAWL: But can you do it?
DEEP THOUGHT (Long pause): No.
PHOUCHG: Meep meep!
LOONQUAWL: Oh no!
DEEP THOUGHT: But I'll tell you who can.
LOONQUAWL: Who? Tell us, tell us.
DEEP THOUGHT: I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me. A computer, whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question, to the Ultimate Answer. A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called… the Earth.
LOONQUAWL: Oh. What a dull name.
The wall viewer blinks out.
SLARTIBARTFAST: So there you have it. Deep Thought designed it, we built it, and you lived on it.
ARTHUR: And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Yes. Ten-million years of planning and work gone, just like that. Well, that’s bureaucracy for you.
ARTHUR: You know all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange, unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world… and no one would tell me what it was.
SLARTIBARTFAST: No, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia, everyone in the universe has that.
ARTHUR: Well perhaps it means that ...
SLARTIBARTFAST: Maybe. Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say “hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me, I design coastlines, I got an award for Norway. Where’s the sense in that? None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fiords all my life, for a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award. In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do, and of course, I’m doing it will all fjords again, because I happen to like them. And I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough… what does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day!
ARTHUR: And are you?
SLARTIBARTFAST: No. That’s where it all falls down of course.
ARTHUR: Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.
P.A. VOICE: Attention please, Slartibartfast. Would Slartibartfast and the visiting Earth creature please report immediately, repeat, immediately to the work’s reception area.
Slartibartfast jumps.
SLARTIBARTFAST: I must say, as far as the mice go, their take on management relations is absolutely shocking. Every time they give me an order I just want to jump on a table and scream!
45. NARRATOR: It is, of course, well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said, “Pity, it sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far, far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space, to a distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time, and a dreadful silence fell across the conference table, as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green, sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapor and at the very moment the words “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle” drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war. Eventually of course, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty starships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet Earth-where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but are powerless to prevent it. “It’s just life,” they say.
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