Starship Titanic

[Tony Tony Tony]

Not sure if this might belong in Oscillations but here now anyway.

Radio 4 are doing an adaptation of the Douglas Adams "inspired" Terry Jones story featuring Michael Palin in Starship Titanic.

It's billed as being a meeting of Hitchhikers Guide and Monty Python.

Sounds promising?

Details

[Zetetic]

I think I've read the novel that Terry Jones (apparently) knocked out in 3 weeks for Adams - can't remember any of it, while I still remember bits and pieces of the game and manual/magazine that came with it.

Edit: The Digital Village and h2g2 are really odd bits of early digital history, or so it seems to me. Like they weren't ever really influential, but given another 5 years - and the cash and a living Adams - they might have left a bit more of legacy.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I read the book earlier this year and really struggled with it, there's the odd okay moment but it's largely oddly annoying, and Jones' obsession with sex and the female form was borderline dodgy.

[Pranet]

Good god the original website promoting the game is still up.

http://starshiptitanic.com/

[idunnosomename]

haha the resolution. i remember this but didnt have a big enough computer to play it. wasnt the thing that the NPCs were like chatbots so you could ask to rim their asshole and they'd be like "I am not sure about that, sir!"

[Tony Tony Tony]

Good god the original website promoting the game is still up.

http://starshiptitanic.com/

Gawd that was a trip into history/nostalgia.

Not sure which is more frightening, the fact that I am getting excited about a Douglas Adams 'project' coming up on Radio 4 or the realisation that the website, I remember playing on, was from around 22 years ago.

Like other folks here I did read the book years ago and was puzzled as feck once I finished. Still that's Douglas Adams for you "Brain the size of a planet and they ask me to write on  a piece of paper. Call that job satisfaction? I don't". 

[Mobbd]

Good god the original website promoting the game is still up.

http://starshiptitanic.com/

That's just... so lovely somehow!

"Copyright 1998 The Digital Village"

[Endicott]

Good god the original website promoting the game is still up.

http://starshiptitanic.com/

Just mad that that is still up!

[mjwilson]

Good god the original website promoting the game is still up.

http://starshiptitanic.com/

The FAQ includes "Does it work on XP?"

[idunnosomename]

Is it still up because it's related to that hg2g website that's also a bit of a web 0.9 relic?

[Pimhole]

Did anyone manage to actually finish the game? I found it impossible. There wasn't really enough in-game guidance and the open world was too big, so I just ended up wandering around endless rooms not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. It was fun though that you got to interact with characters voices by Adams, Jones & Cleese.

EDIT: It's on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/467290/Starship_Titanic/

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Doesn't this feel a bit desperate? It seems like Radio 4 have mined all the other Adams-related content it's possible to mime, including that grave-pissing Hitchhiker's fan fiction by Eoin Colfer, and now they've ended up at this. What next, six-part adaptation of Adams & Lloyd's Dr Snuggles episode? Does Dirk Maggs do anything except Adams stuff now?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I don't know about finishing the game, I never finished the book. Binned it in a state of despair after 30 pages, this state of despair not helped by the inside picture of the perpetual nudist writer sat by his word processor in his perpetual state of nudity, right up there with the second Rutles documentary in its state of Late Post-Pyhon wretched unfunniness.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It seems like Radio 4 have mined all the other Adams-related content it's possible to mime

I wouldn't have thought it was possible to mime anything on the radio.

[Pauline Walnuts]

Did anyone manage to actually finish the game? I found it impossible. There wasn't really enough in-game guidance and the open world was too big, so I just ended up wandering around endless rooms not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. It was fun though that you got to interact with characters voices by Adams, Jones & Cleese.

EDIT: It's on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/467290/Starship_Titanic/

This guy has:

I suspect that review will be funnier than the actual play.

[Old Nehamkin]

Doesn't this feel a bit desperate? It seems like Radio 4 have mined all the other Adams-related content it's possible to mime, including that grave-pissing Hitchhiker's fan fiction by Eoin Colfer, and now they've ended up at this. What next, six-part adaptation of Adams & Lloyd's Dr Snuggles episode?

Adams' 1987 text adventure game Bureacracy is just sitting there waiting for a touch of that patented Maggs magic.

[Old Nehamkin]

Just having a skim through Dirk Maggs' wikipedia page which I suspect must have been largely written by the man himself based on how overly long and detailed it is for an article about a radio drama producer. Anyway, big wanking gesture at this from the opening paragraph:

David George Dirk Maggs (born February 1955) is a British freelance writer and director. During his career as a Senior Producer in BBC Radio he made radio drama in the form of "Audio Movies," using a cinematic-sounding approach combining filmic story construction, layered sound effects, cinematic music and digital technology. Maggs pioneered the use of Dolby Surround in BBC Radio and was among the first nominees for the Directors Guild of Great Britain Outstanding Achievement in Radio Award.

Putting aside the fact that "Audio movies" is a term that you'd have to be a total fanny to come up with, it's reminded me that the overbearing musical score was my least favourite aspect of the (otherwise tasteful enough) Hitchhiker's Guide series 3-5. Those sort of sweeping, urgent dramatic notes that kept coming in underneath dialogue just felt completely removed tonally and aesthetically from the original radio shows and like a bit of overreach on Maggs' part. 

[Pranet]

Book getting dunked on (I've never read it).

Wonder what the original submitted by Robert Sheckley was like? I've read bits and bobs by him (including the one Douglas Adams was accused of ripping off, Dimension of Miracles) and to be honest not been that impressed. Grumpy old science  fiction writers like Brian Aldiss used to say that he was better than Adams. Can't say I agree from my admittedly limited experience.

[Famous Mortimer]

I liked him a lot as a younger man, he made a lot of entertaining and often funny sci-fi. I did, however, read "Immortality, Inc." by him recently, after watching the movie it was based on (Freejack) and found it had both incredibly insightful things in it, and shockingly bad things.

[Mister Six]

I read the book earlier this year and really struggled with it, there's the odd okay moment but it's largely oddly annoying, and Jones' obsession with sex and the female form was borderline dodgy.

Same on most counts, although I found it breezy enough to read. Not really side-splitting, but quite surprising how solid it was given that he only had 21 days to write it in, really. Shame Adams wasn't able to do it himself (and that Jones didn't have a proper run-up), but the publishers demanded it come out at the same time as the game, which he was already busy with. As though "a new novel by the author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" wasn't selling point enough.

Although given Adams' habit of procrastination, it might never have happened at all, otherwise.

[Jake Thingray]

I miss Jemble Fred.

[Tony Tony Tony]

On right now and not shit.

Best bits so far deffo Palin's bits.