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alt title(s): The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy; Hitchhikers Guide; Mostly Harmless; Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy; The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy; The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Why are people born? Why do they die? And why do they spend much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Don't Panic
A franchise of different media, all telling variations on the same story by
Douglas Adams.
To boil it down to the essentials,
Arthur Dent, a fairly normal if feckless Earthling, wakes up one Thursday and, after a series of confusing events, is spirited away from Earth by his friend, Ford Prefect, right before
the planet is destroyed. He then hooks up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, former President of the Galaxy, current fugitive, and all-around cool guy; Marvin the Paranoid Android, a sarcastic and chronically depressed AI, and Tricia McMillain, AKA Trillian,
The Chick and the only other human being left. Zaphod is on a quest to find The Truth, and everyone else gets pulled along for the ride.
There have been many adaptations over the years, each one starting from this point and then branching off in a different direction. Adams himself has been part of most of these, and thus, they all have some level of "officialness"; it's less a single "original" with an
Expanded Universe, and more a string of multi-media
Alternate Continuities.
The first version was the radio series,
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The first series was broadcast on
BBC Radio in 1978, with another series coming not long after, and a Christmas episode linking them. This material went on to become the foundation of the first two books. However, it has several bits not seen in any later version, including the full-length "Shoe Event Horizon" story. After Adams's death, three more series were broadcast, adapting the plots of the last three books.
Next came the book series,
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, probably the best-known version. Originally, it adapted the plots from the radio series, but took off afterwards, becoming five novels in all; Adams had said, near the end of his life, that he wanted to do a sixth, but this was cut short by his sudden death. A sixth book by Eoin Colfer has been recently announced. (The
Internet Backdraft is already blowing; it would be blowing harder if they hadn't picked, you know,
Eoin Colfer.)
A six-episode TV series version was shown on
The BBC,
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. This, too, was based on the first radio series, and used much of its cast. It was innovative, particularly in its use of pen-and-ink animation to simulate the "electronic" entries of the titular Guide, but suffered from low budgets.
There was an
Interactive Fiction game,
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, that was also largely written by Adams. It's known for being
fiendishly difficult, yet a classic of the genre. A fully playable Java version of the original exists on Adams' own website, and can be found
here
, while the BBC website has two different illustrated 20th Anniversary Editions available on their website,
here. The games have less plot than any of the other tellings, ending when you first set foot on
Magrathea. A sequel was planned but never made.
In 2005, a big-budget Hollywood movie version,
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, came out. The script was based on a previous Adams-written script, and contained several new ideas by him, including the POV Ray and the Vogon homeworld. Reviews were mixed, with some appreciating the wit and ideas, while others grumbled at the large chunks of plot cut out to squeeze everything into two hours. Most reprehensibly, the significance of towels is never explained, even though towels are displayed prominently as if they had been properly explained. Do you have your towel? No? You are doomed.
The series has also been adapted into stage shows, albums and comic books.
This whole bunch of stuff provides examples of:
- The Ace (Zaphod, arguably a subversion)
- Adaptation Decay (intentional by Douglas Adams, who changed the story every time it entered a new medium)
- Adaptation Displacement (Most people are familiar with the series as a five-book trilogy, unaware that it was first a radio program)
- Aliens And Monsters
- Alien Animals (white mice and possible dolphins)
- All There In The Manual: The film doesn't explain things like the importance of towels, or how the Improbability drive works.
- Anti Hero (Arthur, in the "befuddled" sense)
- Applied Phlebotinum
- Arc Number (42)
- Arthur Dent (Trope Namer, obviously)
- Author Existence Failure (Adams died while working on the sixth book; his last published collection of pieces, The Salmon of Doubt, contains an early draft of a Dirk Gently novel that Adams was hoping to rework into a Hitchhiker book)
- Ax Crazy (Random)
- The Blind Leading The Blind: Ford trying to teach Arthur about advanced scientific principles, most notably Time Travel in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
- Bolivian Army Ending (Mostly Harmless)
- Brick Joke (Fenchurch is mentioned in the prologue to book one, but only shows up in book four)
- ...which wasn't even conceived until after the third book had gone to print.
- Catch Phrase ("Life! Don't talk to me about life!")
- Cool And Unusual Punishment (Vogon poetry)
- Cool Starship (the Heart of Gold, the Starship Bistromath and several others)
- Confusing Multiple Negatives (The only way Marvin is capable of complimenting Trillian)
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome (Arthur asking a freaking THUNDER GOD if he "wants to make something of it?")
- Dangerously Genre Savvy (Arthur Dent during the events of Life, the Universe and Everything... until it's all stripped from him during So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. He does, however, return to a Genre Savvy level by the fifth book, which... yeah...)
- Downer Ending (The end of Mostly Harmless. Earth Explodes, Everyone Dies. Adams later admitted "I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background." He had intended the sixth book to give the series a better conclusion.)
- The Drag Along (The characters usually take turns depending on the situation, but Marvin is always this)
- The End Of The World As We Know It (Subversion: The series starts by blowing up the planet.)
- Earth Is The Center Of The Universe (Averted at the beginning of the first book, then played straight for the rest of the series.)
- The Eeyore (Marvin)
- Electric Instant Gratification - in the radio series and in Mostly Harmless.
- Empty Shell
- Evil Minions ("Resistance is useless!")
- Fish Out Of Water
- Fiction 500 (the "plutonium rock band from Gagrakacka Mind Zones," Disaster Area)
- Gargle Blaster (the Trope Namer)
- Genetic Memory (Humans created Cricket out of a racial memory for the Krikkit wars)
- Guide Dang It (The game)
- Think it is hard enough? Try passing a link of it to friends who have both never read the series, nor tell them what it is a game of.
- Hand Wave
- Herald (Ford)
- Heterosexual Life Partners
- Hey Its That Guy- Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox. Plucky comic relief indeed.
- Human Aliens
- I'll Take Two Beers Too (Zaphod ordering Gargle Blasters)
- It Runs On Nonsensoleum (the Heart of Gold and the Bistromathics drive, among other things)
- For instance, a giant cup made out of solid marble being held up fifteen miles in the air by art.
- The Bistromathic Drive is far more efficient than all that mucking about in hyperspace or Improbability Factors because it runs off a form of mathematics based off the calculation of restaurant bills.
- Hey, when you break the laws of physics everything becomes absurdly simple nonsense. It's how bistros stay in business, so why can't we do the same for Casual Interstellar Travel?
- Then there's the literally flying party...
- It Was His Sled ( 42)
- Just Ignore It (The Ravenous Blugbatter Beast of Traal)
- Kill Em All
- Large Ham (In most versions featuring audio of some sort, Zaphod is often played as a fresh large ham)
- Left Hanging (partly because Douglas Adams is now, you know, living-impaired.)
- Lights Off Their Eyes
- Medium Blending (the yarn scene in the movie)
- Memory Gambit (Zaphod setting up a scheme to learn who the ruler of the universe is, which involved giving himself self-imposed amnesia so that he could become president, allowing him to steal a ship equipped with the Infinite Improbability Drive so that he could find the hidden planet used to hide the aforementioned Ruler of the Universe. Subverted, as the entire plan fell apart because the new Zaphod just doesn't care.)
- Message In A Bottle (A fossilized towel, in the original radio version)
- Mr Exposition (The Book, and to a lesser degree, Ford and Slartibartfast)
- Nobody Poops (Lampshaded in the new radio series adaptation of Life, The Universe, and Everything. "You know, in all this time I have never once ''flush'' ).
- Noodle Implements (Twice in the book series: Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged became that way due to an accident involving a particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The other was due to an incident with a time machine and a contraceptive. I think.)
- The second one is the reason that Zaphod's direct ancestors are named in reverse order; his father is Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, his grandfather the Third, and so forth.
- No Respect Guy (Arthur)
- Pajama Clad Hero (Arthur)
- Pardon My Klingon (Apparently, "Belgium" is the most offensive word in the entire galaxy, suitable only for use in serious screenplays.)
- Precision F Strike (in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish and Mostly Harmless)
- Puff Of Logic
- Recycled Script (Life, the Universe, and Everything originated as the script of an unproduced Doctor Who episode starring Tom Baker, but was reworked into featuring Arthur, Ford and Slartibartfast instead. It's arguably much better for this.)
- Reverse Funny Aneurysm (While the Radio Series' Shoe Event Horizon was funny back then, the rise of the Starbucks coffee chain means the world seems to be heading the same way in Real Life.)
- Further, the radio show's Tertiary Phase gives the role of Agrajag to the late Douglas Adams. This makes almost every one of his lines about death, reincarnation and his 'final body' to be more than a little uncomfortable to many listeners.
- Ridiculously Human Robots
- Robot Buddy (subverted with Marvin the Paranoid Android, and just about everything made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation)
- Science Is Wrong
- Sealed Evil In A Can: Krikket
- Seen It All (Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged)
- Seekers (most of the core cast, really)
- Shoot The Shaggy Dog (So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. Not the book itself which has the happiest ending of any in the series, but what Mostly Harmless, the next book in the series, did to this happy 'ending'...)
- Sinister Geometry (the Vogon ships in the movie)
- Somebody Else's Problem (Trope named by the Somebody Else's Problem Field)
- Sound Effect Bleep (in the radio version of Life, The Universe And Everything, "Most Gratuitous Use of the Word *engine roar* in a Serious Screenplay")
- Sound To Screen Adaptation
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien (the mice, the Magratheans)
- Ted Baxter (Zaphod)
- Think Nothing Of It (Zaphod takes this literally.)
- Thirteen Is Unlucky (The evil Guide-bird was kept on floor thirteen.)
- Time Travel
- Time Travel Tense Trouble (Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's handbook willan haven been the quote-giver)
- It should be noted that the Guide itself doesn't even bother with the tenses, and simply mentions that they don't use the future perfect tense, because it was found not to be.
- Too Soon (an in-universe Too Soon: the sheer tastelessness of a genocidal war being reduced to an entertaining British ball game has caused most of the galaxy to shun humanity)
- Also, The BBC provided a content warning when the episode involving the attack on the Guide offices (a giant H-shaped skyscraper) was aired shortly after 9/11 - to their credit they didn't postpone the broadcast altogether.
- Translator Microbes (Lampshaded with the Babel Fish.)
- Tricksters (Zaphod and, to a lesser degree, Ford)
- Warrior Poet (The Vogons, in a depressingly literal fashion.)
- Weenalized (Trillian in the movie)
- To be fair, the books said that she had once been a love interest, but was now involved with Zaphod. They could also be trying to set up for Mostly Harmless, when the two of them have a daughter together (Trillian decided to go to a sperm bank to get a donor, then realized when they said there was only one donor that matched her species that it was probably Arthur).
- And Life, The Universe, And Everything teased a relationship between them. Which promptly went nowhere so he could find Perfect Happiness with Fenchurch in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish
- Weirdness Magnet (the luckless Arthur; more literally, the Infinite Improbability Drive, which creates weirdness)
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome (In the fifth book, Arthur is practically worshipped as a god for his incredible skills at... making sandwiches)
- Write Back To The Future (the towel in the lava flow on prehistoric Earth)
- Unknown Rival (Agrajag and Arthur)
- Unusual Euphemism (Belgium!)
- Xanatos Gambit (In ''Life, The Universe and Everything Hactar takes advantage of his apparent failure to trick the people of Krikkit into destroying the universe to instead plant the real supernova bomb on Arthur and manipulate him into nearly doing so.)
- You Can't Go Home Again (because, as has been mentioned, it exploded)
- Zero G Spot (Arthur and Fenchurch)
