The first episode was screened to a selected audience at the National Film Theatre in January 1981 and featured a specially recorded introduction by voice-of-the-book Peter Jones - his only on-screen appearance in his Hitchhiker's capacity.
Arthur Dent, a perfectly ordinary Earthman, is surprised to wake up one day to find bulldozers outside his house with orders to knock it down to build a bypass. He is even more surprised when his best friend Ford Prefect reveals himself to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. The two are forced to hitch a lift on one of the advancing Vogon spacecraft which proceed to blow up the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Our two heroes find themselves trapped in a storage room in hyperspace, with only a menacing Vogon guard for company.
Arthur and Ford have been discovered. Vogon Captain Jeltz tortures them by reading his poetry. He then has Arthur and Ford thrown off his ship, to what must be certain death - except for one improbable miracle. At the last second, an infinite-improbability prototype ship (which can pass through every point in the Universe simultaneously) rescues them. What is rather surprising is that Zaphod Beeblebrox, the hip cat who stole the spaceship, is vaguely familiar to Arthur. And so is Zaphod's companion, Trillian.
The final minutes of studio recording for Episode Two on Saturday, November 8, 1980 were a fraught affair, with time seriously running out. A 15-minute overrun was formally agreed but it still meant lights-out at 10:15 P.M., whether the scene was completed or not. Watch the timecode as it counts down towards the cut-off point of 22:15:00 and you'll begin to feel some of the tension experienced by all concerned...
A short sequence cut from Episode Two of the TV series prior to transmission.
The starship Heart of Gold is headed for the planet Magrathea, a planet which it is generally agreed does not exist. In trying to land on Magrathea's surface, the crew faces an ancient nuclear missile defence system, escaping only when Arthur turns on the Infinite Improbability Drive. This helpfully replaces the missiles with a bowl of petunias and a very surprised sperm whale, who learns about the ground before he hits it. Later on, deep in the core of the planet, an unknown enemy attacks Trillian, Zaphod and Ford while Arthur meets Slartibartfast, an old man who designs planets for a living. Slartibartfast takes Arthur on a tour of the factory floor, showing off his latest project - Planet Earth, Mark Two.
Arthur learns about the Great Project - the second most powerful computer in existence, called Deep Thought, created to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The computer comes back online much later on to give its final answer - 42. The scientists are understandably hacked off, even more so when Deep Thought cannot tell them what the Ultimate Question is, and a new computer, called the Earth, has to be built for that purpose. The current owners of the Great Project, Trillian's pet mice, want to cut open Arthur's head to find the Question, but when the crew are all trapped behind a bank of exploding computers, all appears lost.
Arthur, Ford and the gang arrive at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe on Magrathea, built on the ruins of a planet-building complex, transported there by the exploding computers. Here, thanks to compound interest, you can enjoy a vast five-course meal and cabaret at no cost whatever while the universe collapses and dies around you. Arthur and Ford are surprised to find Marvin still waiting for them in the restaurant's star-ship park. He has been there rather a long time. They decide to steal a space-ship, but unfortunately it turns out to be the stunt ship of Disaster Area, the loudest rock band of all time, and is programmed to plunge directly into the sun. So what next?
Fortune is on the crew's side - the transporter on the ship is still working, but needs someone to manually operate it. Marvin is therefore pressed into volunteering to sacrifice himself so the rest of the group can escape. Arthur and Ford get separated from Zaphod and Trillian and find themselves on board a space ship about to crash-land into the prehistoric past of a planet that the two of them find strangely familiar. If this is indeed Earth, then history as they know it is about to be changed, and so is the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything....
Kevin Davies' hour-long documentary from 1993. Packed with unbroadcast and archive material, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Simon Jones, David Dixon, Mark Wing Davey, Sandra Dickinson, Douglas Adams and Alan J. W. Bell.
Kevin Davies revisits his footage from "The Making of..." documentary, to bring together a further 20 minutes of interviews and other material that didn't make it into the final program.
Unique behind-the-scenes footage from the rehearsal rooms and the studio floor, showing the cast and crew grappling with the scenery, the props and the text of the Hitchhiker TV series.
A high-definition featurette showcasing the BAFTA-winning graphic animation created by Rod Lord and his team at Pearce Animation Studios. The segment highlights the painstaking manual process of creating the Guide's "computer" displays using cells and lit-from-behind transparency before the era of digital CGI.
The earliest known filmed interview with Douglas Adams. Young, unemployed Anthony Hodgins interviews Adams about his unhappy childhood. An audio extract from Hitchhiker's is illustrated with library footage, making this the earliest visual interpretation of the story on television.
Numerous outtakes from the TV series revealing the scope of effort required to perfect the final piece.
An unused title sequence for the TV series employing the Doctor Who slit-scan tunnel, subsequently rejected in favour of the final computer-generated sequence.
An Easter egg clip from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series showing the destruction of the Earth.
An Easter egg clip featuring the Heart of Gold spaceship sequence. The Heart of Gold graphics won a BAFTA for the series.
The main behind-the-scenes documentary included in the 2018 Blu-ray release of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series. Features cast and crew interviews and on-set footage from the original 1981 production.
Actor/director Dirk Maggs breaks down the voice performance and sound design behind Marvin the Paranoid Android and Zem the mattress from the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series.
