The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy radio series primarily written by Douglas Adams. It was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and afterwards the BBC World Service, National Public Radio in the US and CBC Radio in Canada. The series was the first radio comedy programme to be produced in stereo, and was innovative in its use of music and sound effects, winning a number of awards.

The series follows the adventures of hapless Englishman Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect, an alien who writes for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a pan-galactic encyclopaedia and travel guide. After Earth is destroyed in the first episode, Arthur and Ford find themselves aboard a stolen spaceship piloted by Zaphod Beeblebrox (Ford's semi-cousin and Galactic President), depressed robot Marvin, and Trillian, the only other human survivor of Earth's destruction.

A pilot programme was commissioned in March 1977, and was recorded by the end of the following June. A second series was commissioned in 1979, transmitted in 1980. Episodes of the first series were re-recorded for release on LP records and audio cassettes and Adams adapted the first series into a best-selling novel in 1979. After the 1980 transmissions of the second radio series, a second novel was published and the first series was adapted for television. This was followed by three further novels, a computer game, and various other media.

Adams considered writing a third radio series to be based on his novel Life, the Universe and Everything in 1993, but the project did not begin until after his death in 2001. Dirk Maggs, with whom Adams had discussed the new series, directed and co-produced the radio adaptation as well as adaptations of the remaining Hitchhiker's Guide novels So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless. These became the third, fourth and fifth radio series, transmitted in 2004 and 2005.DouglasAdams.se Webchat with Dirk Maggs 16 June 2005. Retrieved 5 December 2006. A sixth series, adapting Eoin Colfer's sixth part in the "trilogy", And Another Thing... was broadcast in March 2018.

Development Early development Douglas Adams had contributed comedy sketches for BBC radio programmes produced by Simon Brett (including The Burkiss Way and Week Ending), and was asked to pitch a radio sitcom in February 1977. Adams initially "came up with various ideas and various permutations of people living in bedsits and this sort of thing" as this "seemed to be what most situation comedies tended to be about." Adams said in an interview that when Brett proposed a radio science fiction comedy series, he "fell off his chair...because it was what I'd been fighting for all these years". Adams wrote his first outlines the same month.

Originally to be called "The Ends of the Earth", each episode would have ended with the planet Earth meeting its demise in a different way. While writing the first episode, Adams realised that he needed a character who knew what was going to happen to Earth before the other characters, and therefore made this character an alien. Adams remembered a title he came up with while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria in 1971, and decided that this character would be a "roving reporter" for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a pan-galactic encyclopaedia and travel guide. Recollections by his friends at the time indicate that Adams first spoke of the idea of "hitchhiking around the galaxy" while on holiday in Greece in 1973.

As the first episode's writing progressed, the Guide became the central focus of his story, and Adams decided to base the whole series around it, with the initial destruction of Earth being the only holdover from the "Ends of the Earth" proposal. In Adams' outline, the character of Arthur Dent was called "Aleric B", the joke being that the audience initially assume the character is also an alien rather than a human.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 92 Adams renamed the character for the pilot to "Arthur Dent". Adams' biographer M. J. Simpson suggested that the character was almost certainly named after the 17th century puritan writer Arthur Dent, author of The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven first published in 1601, although Adams himself claimed no recollection of consciously choosing the name.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 93

Pilot and commissioning

A pilot episode was commissioned on 1 March 1977 and the recording was completed on 28 June 1977. Brett and Adams recounted different parts of the pilot episode's genesis, including convincing the BBC that such a programme could not be recorded with a studio audience and should be recorded in stereo sound. Since at the time only BBC Radio Drama programmes were allowed to be recorded in stereo, Hitchhiker's was briefly classified internally as a drama instead of a comedy.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 99

A full series of six episodes (five new episodes, plus the pilot) was commissioned on 31 August 1977. As Brett had since left the BBC and Adams had been commissioned to write a four-part Doctor Who serial ("The Pirate Planet"), the final five episodes in the first series were produced by Geoffrey Perkins.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 105

With conflicting writing commitments, Adams engaged his friend and flatmate John Lloyd to assist in writing the fifth and sixth episodes.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 105 The second episode was produced in November 1977. The script of the last episode of the first series (later retitled "The Primary Phase") was completed in February 1978, and production (including sound mixing and effects) was completed on 3 March 1978.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 108–110

Casting Adams wrote the main parts of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect with actors Simon Jones and Geoffrey McGivern in mind.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 97 According to Jones, Adams telephoned him when he was writing the pilot to ask whether he would essentially play himself; Adams later stated that although Dent was not a portrayal of Jones, he wrote the part to play to Jones's strengths as an actor.

The radio series (and the LP and TV versions) featured narration by comedy actor Peter Jones as "The Book". He was cast after a three-month search for an actor with sonorous, avuncular tones who sounded like Jones, after which the producers hired Jones himself.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 98 Following another actor dropping out of the production, Bill Wallis was called in at short notice to play two parts, Mr. Prosser and Vogon Jeltz. One character appearing in the pilot who was dropped from subsequent incarnations of the story was Lady Cynthia, an aristocrat who helps demolish Dent's house, played by another ex-Cambridge Footlights actress, Jo Kendall.

The pilot featured only a small cast of characters, and following its commission into a series there was a need for additional characters. Many actors were picked for their roles in previous series; Mark Wing-Davey had played a character in The Glittering Prizes "who took advantage of people and was very trendy", making him suitable for the role of Zaphod, according to Adams. Richard Vernon, noted for his portrayal of "grandfatherly types", was chosen as Slartibartfast. Other characters included Susan Sheridan as Trillian and Stephen Moore as Marvin.

First and second radio series

Plot

Earthman Arthur Dent learns his house is about to be demolished to make way for a new road. His friend Ford Prefect informs him that the planet is about to be demolished by a Vogon constructor fleet "to make way for a hyperspace bypass", and that Ford is in fact an alien writer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a pan-galactic encyclopaedia and travel guide. Hitching a ride aboard the Vogon ship which has just destroyed Earth, the pair are ejected and then find themselves aboard a stolen spaceship, The Heart of Gold. On board is Ford's semi-cousin and President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox; a woman Arthur met at a party, Tricia "Trillian" McMillan; and a depressed robot, Marvin. Beeblebrox is searching for the mythical planet of Magrathea, where Arthur meets Slartibartfast and learns the answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything", which it turns out is "42". Arthur and the others find themselves at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, then held captive aboard a Golgafrincham ship about to crash-land on prehistoric Earth.

In series two, Zaphod begins a secret mission by attempting to contact an editor of The Guide, but is captured by government forces from the Frogstar, "the most totally evil place in the Galaxy". After surviving the Total Perspective Vortex on Frogstar World B, Zaphod returns to The Heart of Gold and rescues Arthur and Ford from prehistoric Earth. When the Heart of Gold is attacked by Vogons pursuing the surviving Earthlings, the ghost of Zaphod’s great-great-grandfather transports the ship to Brontitall, a planet populated by a race of bird people. Separated by falling off a giant statue depicting Arthur, they hear about the rudest word in the universe and the Shoe Event Horizon. Escaping using a 900-year-old spaceship, the three find themselves in the offices of the Guide editor, Zarniwoop, and we discover that it was Zaphod who accidentally signed off the Earth for destruction.

Production

One of Adams's stated goals was to be experimental in the use of sound. Being a fan of Pink Floyd and the Beatles, and especially the experimental concept albums both bands produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Adams wanted the programme to have the feel of a "rock album ... to convey the idea that you actually were on a spaceship or an alien planet—that sense of a huge aural landscape".Simpson, Hitchhiker, 108–109 The first series was the first BBC radio comedy to use stereophonic techniques. Adams later said that before Hitchhiker's, stereo was deemed impossible for radio comedy and after it was made compulsory.Adams. Perkins (ed.) Additional material by M.J. Simpson. Page 12 Producer Geoffrey Perkins recalled that the technology available in 1978 for mixing sound effects at the BBC's Paris Theatre radio studio was limited. The production had one eight track tape recorder at their disposal and so many of the effects in the programme were mixed "live" with tape loops of background sound effects strung around the recording studio. Actors whose speech needed to be modified in post-production by radiophonic technicians, such as Stephen Moore's performance as Marvin the Android, were recorded in isolation from the main "humanoid" characters.Simpson, Hitchhiker, 107 Moore recorded most of his performance in a cupboard and met the other actors only after the first session was complete.

Sound and effects were created by Paddy Kingsland, Dick Mills and Harry Parker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Several of the sound effects recorded by Dick Mills for the first series were released on the album BBC Sound Effects No. 26 – Sci-Fi Sound Effects. Other BBC staff members who worked on the first two radio series included Alick Hale-Munro (chief sound engineer) and Anne Ling (production secretary) and the "Technical Team" is given as: Paul Hawdon, Lisa Braun (studio manager), Colin Duff (studio manager), Eric Young, Martha Knight, Max Alcock and John Whitehall.Webb, pages 329–330.

The first radio series (first six episodes) was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March and April 1978. A seventh episode was broadcast on 24 December 1978. This seventh episode was commonly known as the Christmas Episode. This had nothing to do with Christmas except in an early draft (which would have had Marvin the Paranoid Android as the "star" that was followed by the Three Wise Men).Adams. Perkins (ed.) Additional material by M.J. Simpson. Page 147.