Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:35:12 PM

Login with username, password and session length

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase

Started by Replies From View, March 09, 2018, 10:05:36 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

It was partially drowned out by the washing machine, but I did laugh a good few times at this first episode. Admittedly, I'm not that well versed in the originals (e.g. I quite like the film in spots - Sam Rockwell in particular).

The Ford Prefect joke doesn't really make sense. Even if he's never seen a car, he obviously knows what vehicles are, being a hitchhiker. Plus, he looks like a human, so why wouldn't he assume a human name?

phantom_power

I think they idea is that he is so advanced from humans that to him humans and cars are interchangeable. That's how I read it at least.

Twed

Or if you see lots of posters in a city for "FORD PREFECT" an alien might think "that must be a very important person". But on the other hand, you probably wouldn't name yourself after a famous person... meh. He wasn't expecting to stay on Earth and was a traveler who had little respect for places he visited, so it works well enough for me.

phantom_power

From Wikipedia:
"The Ford Prefect was a popular British car manufactured from 1938 to 1961, and Adams later clarified in an interview that Ford "had simply mistaken the dominant life form" of Earth.""

Twed

Ah. That works well as a throwaway thing but in the context of world-building in a larger work not so much. I guess it was written in the earlier days.

Replies From View

Quote from: Twed on March 12, 2018, 03:51:57 PM
Or if you see lots of posters in a city for "FORD PREFECT" an alien might think "that must be a very important person". But on the other hand, you probably wouldn't name yourself after a famous person... meh. He wasn't expecting to stay on Earth and was a traveler who had little respect for places he visited, so it works well enough for me.

I thought it was because those cars were so ubiquitous at the time and he chose the name to blend in almost unnoticed.

ajsmith2

Quote from: Twed on March 12, 2018, 04:04:35 PM
Ah. That works well as a throwaway thing but in the context of world-building in a larger work not so much. I guess it was written in the earlier days.

A bit like Zaphod's 2nd head, a throwaway bit on radio that would become a huge 'head'ache for most of the visual incarnations.

It's weird, cos its not like even on the radio or print versions that he ever has 2 voices or argues with himself or anything. (unless I'm forgetting something) It doesn't add anything to the character, it's completely cosmetic.

olliebean

There's an extended version of the first episode here, if anyone's interested: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060h1b2



Bhazor

Honestly, the only bit of Hitch Hikers I think is truly great is the first episode of the TV series. It was all downhill after that.

Replies From View

Quote from: Bhazor on March 13, 2018, 04:29:20 PM
Honestly, the only bit of Hitch Hikers I think is truly great is the first episode of the TV series. It was all downhill after that.

Not a fan of the radio version?  How come?

ajsmith2

The best Hitchhikers episode in any medium is episode 8 (or series 2 episode 2 if you like) imo. (the one where Zaphod enters the total perspective vortex) The episodes immediately surrounding that on either side are nearly as good, but that's the sweet spot. One of the best episodes of anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq3hO0m3O2U&list=PLxAWuGWxUMSxQHexHz2MwbyV0xac0-am1&index=9

Bhazor

Honestly it's been ages since I watched the originals. But the last two Adams books left such a bitter taste it may have tainted the memories of the earlier ones.

Oh and the new episode is dreadful.

olliebean

Quote from: olliebean on March 12, 2018, 09:48:06 PM
There's an extended version of the first episode here, if anyone's interested: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060h1b2

FWIW, what's been added seems to be extra guide entries and bits of narration, i.e., afaic be arsed to t, entirely John Lloyd.

Danger Man

Quote from: Bhazor on March 13, 2018, 04:29:20 PM
Honestly, the only bit of Hitch Hikers I think is truly great is the first episode of the TV series. It was all downhill after that.

Hmmm....

But to be honest the radio series was just ok when it first aired. There was nothing it had to compete against apart from the Burkiss Way so no wonder it seemed like a work of genius at the time.

We all forgave the "Let's go over there" "Over there?" "Yes, over there" time wasting because Peter Jones was brilliant and his bits of the script were worth listening to. Anything else was a bonus.

JesusAndYourBush

If it's not written by Adams this is essentially fanfiction, right?  Reading the blurb on the BBC site where it says "with our first glimpse of Eccentrica Gallumbits and a brief but memorable moment with The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal" just confirms my suspicions that this is fanwank.  Well, I'll give it a listen but my expectations are set very low.

Quote from: Replies From View on March 11, 2018, 11:14:40 AMI wouldn't mind the movie version of Hitchhikers, but for the fact that somebody clearly didn't bother to understand the source material.

There was a story that Adams told that in one of the many discussions he had with producers over the years in his various attempts to get a film off the ground, the producer told him he thought the ultimate question part was quite good but he'd have to cut the "42" part because audiences wouldn't get it.  That's when he realised what morons he'd be working with and that it'd be an uphill struggle to get the film made the way he wanted it.  Then he died and we got a monstrosity of a film.

ajsmith2

The structure of Hitchhikers really isn't suited to being crammed into a standard commercial 90-120 minute feature film length. It would much more suit the pace of one of those Netflix Original series they have these days.

gilbertharding

The fact that Hotblack Desiato is a Camden estate agent is a better joke that anything which will be presented as funny in these last radio series.

Replies From View

What do peeps here think of the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases?

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: Replies From View on March 14, 2018, 06:57:00 PM
What do peeps here think of the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases?

Masterpieces compared to this latest offering.

I'm about 25 minutes into the extended version.  There's very little plot, they just seem to be making as many references to previous things as possible.  Fanwank of the highest order.  It's like listening to a bunch of students parroting Python quotes.  This is crud.  And the guy doing the Marvin voice could at least have made an effort.

Oh and Stephen Hawking is in it.  Bet he was thrilled...

mjwilson

Quote from: Replies From View on March 14, 2018, 06:57:00 PM
What do peeps here think of the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases?

I generally enjoyed them but the attempt to put a happy ending on them was kind of a mess. You can't turn a bleak and depressing story into a cheerful one just by adding a post-credits scene. (I may be simplifying a bit, it's a few years since I've heard them.)

olliebean

Quote from: Replies From View on March 14, 2018, 06:57:00 PM
What do peeps here think of the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases?

I felt they didn't quite hit the mark, tbh. They were definitely missing something that the original 2 series had, despite being directly based on Adams' work (and personally I enjoyed all the books, and didn't think there was a significant drop in quality after the first two, so it wasn't - for me, anyway - a matter of the source material being weaker).

They were bloody Shakespeare compared to this one, though.

ajsmith2

#53
The 3rd/4th/5th series were were about as good as they could be with no direct Adams involvement. As a Hitchhikers fan growing up in the 90s, it always frustrated me that there were only 12 episodes of the radio show when to me it was the best incarnation, and I always thought 'It would be so easy just to get the cast back in the studio and crank out adaptations of the later books instead of Adams wasting his time on the movie'. Then Peter Jones died, and soon after that Adams himself, and it was like 'oh well', so it was a nice surprise when Maggs managed to rally everyone else into doing decent adaptations of the last 3 books that only featured minimal fanwankiness and if I'm being honest managed to be less boring than the last 2 books were to me. I'm always fascinated by the story (it's in one of the biogs) of Adams writing most of the script of a radio adaptation of the beginning of 'Life The Universe And Everything' in 1993 'to prove it could be done' and then not returning to it.. is it true that Fit The Thirteenth is mostly based on this script and so is credited as being 'By Douglas Adams' rather than the rest which are 'adapted from the book'? (I could be misremembering this, but sure I read that in one of the books).

The movie was terrible, but I could see why it happened: it had been talked up for 2 decades, it was the final and ultimate medium that the property hadn't yet conquered etc etc.. it was inevitable it was gonna happen. I can leave it or leave it, it doesn't do any real harm, it's just another iteration.

I've never seen any good reasoning for why the 6th book had to happen though. I know it got very mixed reviews on release, and clearly it's reception was frosty enough that a Coifer written 7th book hasn't been forthcoming, but if anything I feel it doesn't get enough stick for how rotten it is. It's this ugly bolted-on bit of fan fiction that suddenly we're meant to take as seriously as the Adams - written stuff, and Simon Jones, McGivern and Wing Davey have to be marched into a studio to do the official radio version of. I don't see why it gets immediately shunted into the main canon when it's not even a 'Colonel Sun'.

Replies From View

I agree with all of that, ajsmith.  Especially your response to Coifer's book and the baffling way it has been absorbed into the canon of real Adams stories.

The only way the material for a sixth book should have been released was as bonus material in a book of unfinished Adams fragments, with the blessing of his estate.  "Finishing" it into a fan-wank novel (and now radio series, which just adds salt to the wound because Hitchhiker's in radio series format should be given far more reverence than this) should never have occurred, but somebody somewhere must have thought it would make more money this way.  Which is pretty sickening really.

idunnosomename

Heard some while cooking the tea

This is phenomenonally bad

And they keep trailing the balls off it.

ajsmith2

Also, I'm pretty sure Marvin isn't even in the Coifer novel. SO WHY BRING HIM BACK IN THIS JUST TO HAVE HIM PLAYED BY JIM BROADBENT???!!

Phil_A

Quote from: Replies From View on March 15, 2018, 10:03:54 AM
I agree with all of that, ajsmith.  Especially your response to Coifer's book and the baffling way it has been absorbed into the canon of real Adams stories.

The only way the material for a sixth book should have been released was as bonus material in a book of unfinished Adams fragments, with the blessing of his estate.  "Finishing" it into a fan-wank novel (and now radio series, which just adds salt to the wound because Hitchhiker's in radio series format should be given far more reverence than this) should never have occurred, but somebody somewhere must have thought it would make more money this way.  Which is pretty sickening really.

I suspect that's exactly what happened - someone on the business side of things probably the thought the Adams "brand" could do with a refresh, and started rummaging around for material that could be plundered for another radio show. Hey, there's a whole other book we haven't used yet! QUIDS IN, LADS

Replies From View

Things like this diminish the original too.  The original is harmed when more casual listeners start to think that, because of this new one, maybe the original radio series wasn't as good as they thought at the time.

ajsmith2

#59
Listening to part 2 now.. they've included Zaphod's 2nd head singing (Elvis style) the 'teleportation song' that was previously only in the book of the 'Restaurant at the end of the Universe', and that I always thought was weirdly out of place. Stuff like that must be making up the 'new Adams content' quota of this.