The best iteration of this scene.

Message:

This 1981 TV version absolutely nailed this sequence. The design of Deep Thought is rather impressive for a BBC budget, Valentine Dyall is the perfect choice for Deep Thought and the actors playing the programmer-priests just nail their lines (the frustration on "Well, can you please tell us the question!" is so on point).

The original radio series - here Geoffrey McGiven is playing Deep Thought (doubling up from Ford Prefect), and he's got the proper build up of the lines, but he just doesn't have Valentine Dyall's rich, resonant voice.

The 1979 record album has Valentine Dyall, but the programmer-priests are TOO earnest, and, in my opinion, the entire scene is a bit rushed (this iteration had to deal with the reality of the harsh time limits imposed by being on vinyl). Also, Douglas Adams was still tinkering with lines here and some of them are a bit too on the nose - where the radio show let Slartibartfast tell Arthur the mice were the programmers, and the TV series hit it with the animation overlay, the record changes "And you yourselves shall take on new forms," to, "And you shall take the form of humble rodents."

The 2005 movie? Man, I have to blame the director for that debacle. I assume Cate Blanchett, as a skilled actress, can look at the words in the script and see how the language grows epic and mythic setting up a build to a massively overstated, "...and it shall be called... The EARTH!" so the anticlimax of, "Oh, what a dull name" lands. Cate Blanchett is so understated as Deep Thought she just tosses away the biggest punchline in the story like an aside.

(If you've never seen the 2005 movie, then just don't. I have all six radio series, the script books for the same (which becomes relevant in the next paragraph), the novels, the records, the Infocom game, the comic book adaptation, know *exactly* where my towel is, and can quote long passages from memory... I do not own that movie, which is terrible.)

Back in 2005 a local theater company did the first six radio episodes of Hitchhiker's as semi staged readings as a fundraiser, Fri/Sat at Midnight for four weeks (three episodes a night, except the final week end where we started at 8pm and did all six). They asked me to do sound design. I agreed if 1) I was paid double my fee (which was donated back to the theater, but I was literally trying to price myself out of OC theater at that point and was tired of people not taking "No" for an answer), 2) I ran the show (because it ended up juggling three CD sources and another four minidisc sources in certain scenes and there was no way I was going to be able to train anyone else to run it), 3) I play Deep Thought from the booth. I think I did a pretty good Deep Thought, but, really, I just channelled Valentine Dyall from the TV version - because that was utter perfection. The script books told me what music was originally used, so I was able to get a lot of that, and find suitable replacement music for when I couldn't. Where possible I pulled original sound FX from the radio show (say, the Heart of Gold's doors). Had a lot of fun taking scenes on the Vogon ship, cutting out dialog, and sliding around all the little remaining bits of ambience to reconstruct the background loop.

Oh. The whale hitting the ground... Our stage director let me be indulgent here. That sound was a good 20 seconds. In first cue-to-cue I told the actor playing the book not to start talking until he heard the music come in. I mixed it in surround sound. The whale hit off in the distance... Then the rain of blood... Then the chunks falling... Passing over the audience from front of house speakers to the back of house speakers, then out into the lobby, finally the outside speakers. And one final front of house splat to punctuate the whole thing. Got a huge laugh every night.

Yeah, our board was stereo. Remember, above the four minidiscs and three CDs? This cue used all of them. CD 1&2 had Magrathea ambience house front and house rear, CD 3 was running the music for the whale speech, pulled and crossfaded to the ambience, with a quick trigger of MD 1&2 which was the whale flying over the audience with house front and rear spatter, with MD 3&4 triggered three seconds later to handle the lobby and outside speakers, then cueing up CD 3 for the next music and pausing it while the SFX played out, then triggering CD 3 while pulling out CD 1&2, and standing by on MD 1 to throw the accent SFX of the shattering vase when the guide said "Oh, no, not again!" then rerouting all my mixer channels back to house front and readying Heart of Gold ambience and landing loops for the next scene a paragraph later. Oh, yes, and I'm also mixing levels for the onstage mics. This is why I said I couldn't train someone to run it (not in only three cue-to-cues). The show was more or less wall to wall sound, juggling quick, complex scenes and live mixing the stage. Once we got to prehistoric Earth and it was just a couple of long scenes with no music, no spot FX and only x-fads on a couple ambience tracks I could relax. A welcome respite after the Hagunennon sequence. Hagunennons made the whale look easy!

This is also why I told the stage manager to not even bother trying to call Qs on me, but to trust me as a 25-year fan of the material who'd built the design anyway, to handle the 250-odd sound cues across the three hours of script.

Look, sorry-not-sorry for the long digression, but I absolutely love Hitchhiker's Guide (except the movie), and I had a ridiculous amount of fun building and running it.

Yours,