Trollheart

True Companion

In this section I’ll be looking at what it takes to be a proper assistant to the Doctor, why some Companions rose to the challenge and why some failed, and how each fares against the other. If we ever get that far, eventually I’ll face them all off and see who comes out on top. For now, I’m going to obviously concentrate on Rose, who is the Companion for the first two seasons, and look at the qualities that made her the perfect Companion to accompany the Doctor’s return, and how she manifested those qualities.

I’ve already spoken of how her analytical mind impressed the Doctor from the start: her ability to stay calm in a crisis --- even when facing the dummies on her own, before the Doctor showed up, her mind was trying to make sense of it, find a logical explanation for what she was seeing --- her willingness to listen to his story and her innate human sympathy for him, even though she didn’t know him. Now she shows extreme resourcefulness when, in the midst of a fight between the Doctor and what appears to be her boyfriend --- who has, let’s not forget, just had his head ripped off --- she has the presence of mind to realise that the sooner the restaurant is cleared the easier it will be for the Doctor to do what he has to, and she hits the fire alarm. Talk about a cool head! Sorry, I know: Mickey just lost his. But still.

And of course, it's her that saves the Doctor (and, by extension, her mother and the entire planet) by swinging across the chasm and helping free the Doctor, in the process killing the Nestene Consciousness. Not bad for a bimbo teenager!

Laughter is the best medicine

Not always the most humourous of shows in its original incarnation --- well, not intentionally anyway --- the “new” Doctor Who focusses rather a lot on being lighthearted at times. This could be due to its being aimed more at a family audience and its intention being more to entertain than to scare, or it could be because some of the coming episodes are quite heavy and dark. But whatever the reason, there is humour sprinkled liberally through the so-far seven seasons, each of the actors who assumes the role giving the funny side their own particular and personal twist.

The wheelie bin “eating” Mickey is one of the first of these (it even belches afterwards!), though going back, the scene where the Doctor is wrestling with the animated arm and Rose, with her back to him in the kitchen continues making the tea and jabbering on, is quite amusing. Also Jackie’s coy attempts to woo the handsome man standing just outside her bedroom, while perhaps a little sad, raise a smile too. The best part though is probably when the Doctor is searching for the transmitter and it turns out it’s been in plain sight all along! Also Rose’s comment as he says “Think of it: plastic all over the world, every artificial thing waiting to come alive. The shop window dummies, the wires, the cables, the phones” and she says “The breast implants!” The mind boggles!

Enemy Mine

A section in which I’ll look at the enemy facing the Doctor in that episode, or series of episodes. Classic Who used to have the episodes made into one overarching story, so you could have, say, “The Green Death, part one”, “The Green Death, part two”, etc. They don’t do that anymore but often a few episodes, which will all be titled differently, may go together to form one big story. In those cases, I’ll only run this section in the first part of the story, unless there is a compelling reason for me to do it in the other parts.

The foes the Doctor has faced, in this and Classic Who, range from brilliant to awful, and here I’ll be rating them on a sliding scale, giving them a Dalek rating (why not?) where five Daleks is a superb (or indeed, returning from the classic series like the Daleks themselves) enemy and one Dalek is less than pathetic. I’ll talk about their impact on the show, if any, and any future appearances they may make. I will as ever try not to give away any spoilers for future episodes, though the current writeup will always be complete, so if you’re planning to watch this series and haven’t yet got around to episode one, well too late cos you’ve already had it Spoiled! But beware and take notes for future episodes.

This one, to be fair, is not good, and for the opening episode of a series that has waited to be reborn for over two decades, it’s pretty damn weak. I mean, you can call it a “Nestene Consciousness” if you want Doctor, but it’s just really a big lump of gooey plastic, and looks like the vat Arnie fell into at the end of T2!



Evolution of a Timelord

Here I’ll be charting the progress of the Doctor’s relationship with humanity, mostly through the agency of his Companions, and how he comes to see them as less than just insects he has to protect and more as actual people, lifeforms with their own hopes and dreams and how, despite himself and perhaps to his chagrin, he begins to become just a little bit more like them, more human and less alien.

When this episode kicks off and the ninth Doctor makes his appearance, it’s clear that humanity is in his way. He’s carrying on the work of his previous incarnations, which includes saving the Earth from all dangers, domestic and foreign, as it were (mostly foreign, if you include extraterrestrial) but is a little teed off by it, particularly the fact that nobody even seems to know he exists, much less appreciates the work he does. He’s almost like someone repaying a favour for a friend, doing something he would really rather not do, even if the friend in question is himself. It’s a little as if he’s so used to saving the Earth that he feels he has to keep doing it: in many ways, it’s become something of a raison d’etre for the Timelord.

However we do see the way he interacts with alien species. Where we might see a monster he might see something totally different. His scientific curiosity can be stirred by something we would shrink from, or fear, or loathe. He has a basic and almost unshakeable respect for life in all its forms, and only attacks if he is attacked, or if he is forced to defend. When they encounter the Nestene Consciousness Rose says “Tip your vial of antiplastic into the vat and let’s get out of here!” But the Doctor replies “I haven’t come to kill it”. And he hasn’t. He’s prepared to try to reason with it, convince it to leave this planet, and only if pushed will he resort to deadly force. It’s quite a revelation really, that the Doctor seems to care more for what we would call monsters than he does for the people he seeks to protect.

By the same token, when Rose finds Mickey alive and says it to the Doctor he nods and said it was a possibility, as the consciousness might want to make copies of him. But she is angry that he did not bother to mention this to her, to give her hope. Did he fail to say it because he didn’t want to give her false hope? You’d like to say he did, but in reality he really just was not that bothered about Mickey. He doesn’t know him like he’s starting to get to know Rose, and he certainly doesn’t, at this point anyway, care about him. So he doesn’t figure in the Doctor’s plans. The fact that he’s alive is a bonus --- for Rose, but not for him. It would not matter to him had Mickey died. He’s just not important enough to worry or care about.

A long and lonely life

And here we’ll be looking at the Doctor’s romantic relationships, not just with various Companions but with other humans or even aliens. After all, it’s a lonely task he has set himself and spending all that time alone in a blue box hurtling through space and time with a nubile female, even if she is alien to him, the odd romantic thought must cross his mind. These thoughts get stronger as the series develops, though here of course he wouldn’t even consider such a thing.

This is why,when Rose’s mother flirts with him as he stands outside her bedroom, he laughs at the concept. It’s not that he doesn’t think she’s attractive or sexy, but to him she’s an alien lifeform --- and in his estimation, a far lower one than he --- and the idea of becoming intimate with such a lifeform just doesn’t even cross his mind. Of course, this doesn’t make him any friends with Jackie, who thinks he’s spurning her.

Oops!

There are occasions though when the Doctor, despite living for almost a millennium and having, as Marvin the Paranoid Android would put it, a brain the size of a planet, is out-thought by the “lower lifeform”. Sometimes it’s a case of being unable to see the forest for the trees, his inability to stand back and look at a situation from a totally different angle. Sometimes it’s just being incapable of thinking as humans do. Much of what we base our decisions on is not only logic, but instinct, intuition, a gut feeling. Call it what you will, it defies most mathematical expressions and appears in no textbooks, but often its use is what can turn the tide in any given situation. These are the times when the Doctor may realise, just for a moment, that smart as he is, these “stupid apes” can sometimes show him a thing or two.

He makes a classic blunder here as he tells Rose in exasperation that he can’t believe that the alien consciousness could hide a massive transmitter in plain sight. What would it be like, Rose asks, and he says massive, round, bang in the middle of London. Like a wheel, a dish, close to where they are now. He shrugs: it must be completely invisible, he decides, as Rose eyes the huge, circular, metal form of the London Eye over his shoulder….

Even then, it takes him three looks before he realises what she’s indicating. Brain the size of a planet, indeed!

FAMILY

Like most, if not all dramas, Doctor Who is based solidly around the idea of family. Although much of the time it’s just Rose and the Doctor, they are in themselves something of a small family, and when they return to Earth they often join family life. So Rose’s mother, later father, her boyfriend, and any other figures in her life are all pulled into the story. As with this section as it runs in my other series writeups, I’ll be delving into the relationships between the characters, particularly familial ones, here.

JACKIE
A typical mother, Jackie’s one main concern is her only daughter. When she hears about the explosion at the shop, Jackie is frantic until she confirms Rose is okay. Then she tries to arrange an interview which will get her some money, as she no longer has a job. Later, after the attack of the killer dummies, her first thought when Rose rings her is not to tell her about how she faced death, came close to being killed, but to warn her daughter, to protect her, as is a mother’s natural instincts.

This behaviour will harden as she realises that Rose’s decision to go off with the Doctor is putting her in danger, and her attitude towards the mysterious man she once tried unsuccessfully to seduce will become cold and angry, like a lioness defending her cub against predators.

MICKEY
Though he will not remain in the show past the first season, Mickey is Rose’s boyfriend but comes across as quite childish in ways. He’s very happy-go-lucky and probably doesn’t realise how fortunate he is to have Rose. When he drops Rose off at Clive’s, he acts the macho boyfriend, trying to protect her, though really he’s not a tough guy. Not yet. Seems everyone wants to protect Rose. But after his experiences with the Nestene Consciousness, he regresses, becoming less a child and more a baby, clinging to Rose for something familiar, something friendly, something human. In a very un-macho show of selfishness, he entreats her not to go with the Doctor when he offers, but though she acquiesces initially, even her fondness for Mickey (I doubt it is or ever was or will be love) can’t stop her from running towards her destiny, and Mickey must now know that he comes a very distant second to the odd man in the blue police box.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

I have to take issue with the activation of the dummies. Okay I know this is a sci-fi show and sort of meant to be for kids, and much of it is played firmly tongue-in-cheek, but that’s no excuse for lazy writing, one of my bugbears. When the Nestene Consciousness sends its signal the Doctor tells Rose it’s supposed to activate every piece of plastic on the planet. Why then is it that only the dummies come to life? And why, for the love of God, have they suddenly got weapons built in? Shop dummies aren’t generally fitted with automatic weapons, so why are these? That’s never explained, ever. And that annoys me. It won’t be the only thing that does about this series, despite my love of it, and any others will be noted here.

Also, didn’t Mickey take the plastic arm and throw it away? How come then it is in Rose’s house when the Doctor calls the next morning? Did it somehow claw its way out of the bin, make it back to the house and lie there in wait?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Urban Hat€monger ?

I can explain all of these if you like

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Trollheart

Please do. It really bugs me when things like this surface. I'd like to know I'm just nitpicking but it seems a bit odd the way it turned out.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
—Rod Serling, from the opening titles of season one.

There's no question that The Twilight Zone was groundbreaking, innovative, at the forefront of storytelling and drama and changed the way television was viewed forever. Some of the stories told over its run were truly amazing, from “The monsters are due on Maple Street” to “Time enough at last” and “Dead run” to “Wong's Lost and Found Emporium” and the series made a household name and future screen icon out of creator Rod Serling. It also gave way to other anthology series, some good, some not so good. Series like “The outer limits”, “Tales from the darkside” and “Monsters!” all owe their existence to Serling's genre-defining, rules-breaking, mould-busting brainchild.

But the series was far from perfect, and for every good story there are a handful of real turkeys. It's probably inevitable: any series that relies of tales with a shock and a twist is going to find it hard to maintain the level of quality that would be expected through its entire run, and the odd --- or more than the odd --- stinker is bound to find its way in. Some of these episodes are so bad that they almost don't deserve to share television screen space with the better and more well-known ones, but in a weird kind of way, it's possible they offset the balance of the show and made it feel more real. If it wasn't for the bad episodes, you could argue, the good ones might not exist. For every triumph there is a room full of wastepaper baskets overflowing with failures, and a gem is sometimes only found among a pile of paste beads.

It's these below-par episodes I'll be looking at here, in case you couldn't guess from the title. I mean, I love the show generally but it's been done to death and I feel just running it as one of my normal series would not do anything for me. So I'm going to take the entireity of the series, from its beginnings in 1959 through two resets in the eighties and into the twenty-first century, over a ten-year period stretching from 1959 t0 2003, picking out the really bad episodes and concentrating on them.

Disclaimer: As ever, this is my opinion and I have no innate intention of denigrating the show. I'm a fan, same as you, but every so often I feel it's good to poke fun at a classic, just so if nothing else we can say we don't have sacred cows in this journal. This is mainly meant to be taken in fun, though the comments and observations I will make will be mostly entirely serious. I'm asking the hard questions: how did such an episode survive the cut? How did anyone think it was good enough to be screened? Why was it written, and who thought it was a good idea? Like always, my comments reflect only my own opinions, and you are free to disagree with me if you wish to. You are, though, of course, wrong.

Episode title: “One for the angels”
Series: Original or Classic
Year: 1959
Season: One
Episode: Two
Written by: Rod Serling

You can perhaps allow Serling some leeway here, as this was only the second ever episode in his brand new series, but given that a) he was trying to sell it as a viable show to be broadcast and b) that science-fiction in and of itself, though enjoying something of a golden period in the late fifties/early sixties, was still mostly seen as “something for kids” and finally c) the pilot episode had been so good, well that leeway begins to erode rather quickly. For me, this is more like the sort of episode you might find near the end of a series, when the writer was beginning to run out of ideas, or when the series was announced to be under the axe, and nobody cared any more. If “Where is everybody?”, the season, series and franchise opener, was stunning, particularly in its twist at the end, this was, to be polite, dogshit. And if the sponsors had only seen this episode I doubt they would have wanted their name associated with such a thing.

The story concerns Lou Bookman, who is what used to be called a pitchman: a man who sets up his stall of wares and then shouts at passersby, trying to get them to investigate what he is selling and perhaps buy something. Somewhat similar to the market stall traders of today. A dying art, even back in the fifties, when so many people were turning to department stores and shopping malls for their purchases. Bookman is watched by a strange man who is taking notes, and we are told --- or it is very strongly intimated --- that he is Death. Bookman knows nothing of this though and goes home where he talks to the neighbourhood children, all of whom know him, and is most surprised to find the same man waiting for him in his room. This is, of course, as we have been told, Death, but Bookman, though he is taken aback by the appearance of the well-dressed man in the black suit, does not think to ask how he got in. More to the point, when one of the children knocks to ask him to fix a toy for her, and can't see Death, Bookman seems completely unable to grasp the fact that only he can see the Reaper, despite the fact that “Mister Death” has told him so.

Anyhoo, Bookman is told that his time is up. He will die at midnight, however he also seems unable to understand this. Granted, Death couches the announcement in somewhat flowery language, telling him he should “make arrangements for his departure”, but the pitchman can't suss it at all. “My departure where?” he asks, leading us to believe that the world might after all be better off without him! Too stupid (or innocent?) to live? After all the clues he's been given, after he's been led to the truth and virtually been told who the guy sitting in front of him is, he does not get it until Death reaches out towards one of his plants and it instantly withers and dies. Yeah, Bookman: He's Death! Got it now? Je-sus!

That's all bad enough, but now Serling begins bending and rewriting the rules. We all know, from everything we've read and seen, before this episode and since, that Death cannot be bargained with. He can be evaded, but He always catches you. He can be fooled or cheated. But He cannot be bargained with and the Afterlife, or whatever agency He “works for”, does not provide extensions based on extenuating circumstances. When it's your time, you go: no ifs, buts or maybes. You can cry, you can stamp your feet, you can try to talk your way out of it, but nothing works. Nothing. If you're called, you go. But here, Death tells Bookman there are no less than three categories under which he may “appeal his departure date”. Having no wife or family and not being on the verge of any major discovery, Bookman is ineligible for the first two, but the last, the rather broad “unfinished business”, he can grasp at like a drowning man.

When Death turns down his idea of “making a pitch for the angels” --- the most successful pitch he has ever made in his life, his one big shot --- Bookman basically sulks like a child until Death ... gives in! I mean, come on! This is DEATH! He don't care about your tantrums, your hurt feelings. He doesn't give a toss if you think He's not being fair! Death is not fair, and that's just how it is. Good people can die bad deaths early and bad people can live to be a hundred. There is no sense rhyme or reason to it, and certainly no fairness or equanimity. Let's face it: if by being a good person you could be guaranteed --- and I mean guaranteed --- to live longer then we'd all be doing it, wouldn't we?

But Death caves, and Bookman is allowed his “extension”, whereupon he decides to give up the profession so that he never has to make a pitch again. Death doesn't exactly cover His bases here: He grants the extension with the specific condition that Bookman can live until he achieves this “pitch for the angels”. There's no limitation set, and He looks surprised when Bookman joyously tells Him he may not fulfil the terms of the bargain for several years (if ever); surely Death, in His long existence throughout history, has come across devious and manipulative men and women before? Why does He not place some rider on the deal? Why does He give Bookman the very obvious out, and more, why does He seem surprised then when the pitchman turns His rules back against him?

But Death, though He may be slow here, knows He must redress the balance, and when He realises that Bookman has in fact tricked Him, and has no intention of making his pitch, He decides that someone else must take the pitchman's place. Of course, this turns out to be Maggie, the child who had wanted her toy fixed earlier. She gets hit by a car --- (“She just jumped out into the road, mister! I swear I didn't have no chance to do nothing!”) --- and now she can see Death, and Bookman knows what a terrible mistake he has made in trying to cheat the Grim Reaper.

Now, if the episode had ended there --- Bookman realises he's an old man, he's lived his life, and agrees to go with Death --- I would not have had too much of a problem with it. It would have been a bit twee, a bit predictable even for this series, which set the benchmark, but I could have taken it. But it does not end there. This, my friends, is where it gets decidedly silly. The child lies close to death, literally. The doctor visiting her says they should know by midnight, and indeed as Bookman stands guard, foolishly thinking he can bar Death's way, the black-suited man turns up. Again exhibiting almost as much stupidity as Bookman, Death lets the pitchman know that he is to take Maggie at midnight, but he must be in the room at that precise moment, otherwise ....

Realising he has a chance to make up for his selfish attitude which has landed the child where she is, literally at Death's door (sorry), Bookman sets up his stall and begins his pitch. Unbelievably, Death gets drawn in to the pitch and forgets His timetable, getting so caught up in the sale that midnight comes and goes and Death is still outside the little girl's room. Bookman has made his “pitch for the angels” and the original deal is in place (despite the fact that Death said it could not be reinstated); Maggie will live and Bookman will go with Death.

Why do I hate this episode?

Hate is often too strong a word to use for some of these episodes; I don't hate them, I just don't believe they're anywhere close to good enough to have been selected for screening. But this is an exception. This one I do hate. Why? Because it makes so many fundamental errors and treats the viewer like an idiot. Death's inability to outthink the human, Bookman's stupidity and then then the final turd in the barrel, Death the leveller being distracted by what seems to me to be a very average pitch --- I certainly wouldn't have bought anything from Bookman, much less gasped “I'll take all you have!” as Death did --- to the point where He misses His appointment. These are all things that are hard to accept, unlikely in the extreme.

Now I know the very premise of the show was built on the unlikely, the odd, the fantastic and the unexplained, but really: this is taking things a little too far. I like to be challenged when watching a show like this; like most people, I like to try to work out what's going to happen, how it will turn out. But I could not have predicted this outcome. Not because it is so clever or unexpected, but because it is so stupid. A terrible episode that should never have been allowed see the light of day.

Saving graces?
Here I'll do my best, if I can, to note anything that may lessen the crappiness of the episode. Was there anything I liked about it at all? Any clever touches? Any unexpected stars? A twist I had not forseen, or some reference I got? Anything at all?

The only real point I can make about this episode is that it was I think the first time Death had been depicted as other than a scary figure. Even in “The Seventh Seal” He was shown as a dark, hooded figure with a ghostly face. This may or may not be the case, but it's certainly the first time I recall seeing Death depicted as an ordinary, almost nondescript human being. This personalisation of Death, the Devil and other religious or mythological figures would go on to be a recurring feature of the series, and bleed of course into the representations of those icons in other series too.


Interesting asides

The opening scene shows Bookman with a tray full of toys, some of which are robots. One is the famous Robby the Robot, from the movie “Forbidden Planet”, which would have been popular at that time, having just been released. Product placement? Coincidence? Or a nod to a movie which would become a classic in time and which no doubt had helped fuel Serling's love of science-fiction? You decide.

A simpler time

Indeed. Mr. Bookman's “regular ice cream and social hour”, which he reminds the children of, would be frowned upon and perhaps grounds for at least suspicion if not arrest in these times. An older man consorting with a group of underage children, unsupervised? Would never be allowed today. But back in this era it's seen as harmless and innocent. I hate the fifties and the sixties, but even I have to admit things were a lot more simple and straightforward then. Sigh.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Episode One, in Which the Earth is Demolished, along with Arthur Dent's House, and Arthur Learns that his Friend is an Alien, not at all from Guildford, shortly Afterwards finding Himself Out Among the Stars, with No Chance of Ever Again Having a Cup of Tea

Arthur Dent, a six-foot-tall ape descendant living on a boring little green-blue planet orbiting an unremarkable G-type star out on the far reaches of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, wakes to a sound which makes him think the world is ending. This thought will in fact be vindicated very shortly, much to his annoyance (and that of all of humanity), but for now, all that's happening is that someone is trying to knock down his house. Seems Arthur's home stands in the way of development and progress --- in other words, he lives smack bang in the middle of an area which has been designated as part of the new motorway to be built --- and without so much as a by-your-leave, the council have come to demolish his castle, his resting place, his residence.

Arthur runs out and confronts the foreman, but is told with a condescending smile that the plans for the proposed motorway have been on display for all to see, and that he should have lodged a formal protest before now. Unmoved, Arthur lies down in front of one of the bulldozers, intent on blocking its path. It is then that his friend, Ford Prefect, arrives on the scene. After some conversation with Arthur which basically goes nowhere and then a word with the workmen in which he bamboozles them with spurious logic, he takes Arthur to the pub where he gives him the chilling news that the world is in fact about to end. In approximately ten minutes.

While he's digesting this (along with three pints of beer which Ford has insisted he will need for muscle relaxant) he suddenly hears the sound of his house being knocked down. Running back to his home he rants and fumes, but his attention is suddenly diverted (as is all of humanity's) by the appearance of a massive space ship hanging in the air. An equally massive tannoy booms out, advising the people of Earth that their planet is due to be destroyed, as it is in the path of the construction of a hyperspace bypass! With no sympathy for “apathetic races who take no interest in local affairs”, the leader of the Vogon Constructor Fleet begins his work and the planet is vapourised.

Ford and Arthur, though, survive. Well, they'd have to, wouldn't they, otherwise it'd be a damn short series! Ford has “hitched a ride” on one of the Vogon ships, and Arthur, to his amazement and growing annoyance, finds himself onboard an alien spacecraft, still in his dressing gown. It has not been a good day! Ford hands him an electronic book, which he tells him is the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which will help him make sense of the new situation he is now in. The Book speaks in its own voice, also providing text and animation to accompany its many sections. Ford tells Arthur he is a field researcher for the new edition of the book, and was researching Earth when he got trapped there. “Got stuck on the Earth a little longer than I expected”, he muses. “Went for a week, ended up being there for fifteen years.”

Ford shows him around the --- frankly dingy and ugly --- spaceship, and gives him what he calls a Babel Fish. This is an incredibly useful item which allows anyone into whose ear it is pushed to hear and understand any language: a universal translator, as related below in the quotes section. As they make the jump to hyperspace they are discovered and a Vogon soldier comes to throw them off the ship...

QUOTES

The Book: “The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the most successful books ever to come out of the powerful publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. More popular than “The Celestial Homecare Omnibus”, better-selling than “Fifty-three More Things To Do In Zero Gravity” and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, “Where God Went Wrong”, “Some More Of God's Greatest Mistakes” and “Who Is This God Person Anyway?”

Foreman: “Mister Dent, this bypass has got to be built, and it will be built.”
Arthur: “Why has it got to be built?”
Foreman: “What do you mean, why has it got to be built? It's a bypass! Gotta build bypasses!”

Foreman: “Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months.”
Arthur: “Oh yes! Well as soon as I heard I went straight around to see them. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? Like tell anyone about them or anything.”
Foreman: “But the plans were on display.”
Arhtur: “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar!”
Foreman: “That's the display department!”
Arthur: “With a torch!”
Foreman: “The light's probably gone.”
Arthur: “So had the stairs!”
Foreman: “But you did see the notice, didn't you?”
Arthur: “Oh yes. It was on display, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign hanging outside the door saying “Beware of the leopard”. Ever thought of going into advertising?”

Foreman: “Mr Dent, have you any idea how much damage this bulldozer would suffer if I was to let it run right over you?”
Arthur: “How much?”
Foreman: “None at all.”

Arthur: “Ford, you don't understand: that man wants to knock my house down!”
Ford: “Well he can do that whilst you're away, can't he?”

Ford: “And no sneaky knocking down Mister Dent's house while he's away, all right?”
Foreman: “The slightest thought hadn't even begun to speculate upon the merest possibility of crossing my mind!”

Barman: “Going to the match then sir?”
Ford: “No. No point.”
Barman: “Foregone conclusion eh? Arsenal without a chance?”
Ford: “No, it's just that the world is about to end.”
Barman: “Yes, so you said sir. Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did, eh?”
Ford: “Not really, no.”

Ford: “How would you react if I told you I'm not from Guildford at all, that I'm in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?”
Arthur: “I don't know. Why, do you think it's something you're likely to say?”
Ford: “Drink up: the world's about to end.”
Arthur: “This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

Barman: “Do you really think the world's about to end sir?”
Ford: “Yes. In about three minutes and five seconds.”
Barman: “Isn't there anything we can do?”
Ford: “No. Nothing.”
Barman: “Ain't you supposed to lie down? Put a paper bag over your head or something?”
Ford: “If you like.”
Barman: “Will that help?”
Ford: “No.”

Vogon Captain (on tannoy to Earth): “People of Earth, your attention please! This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you are probably aware, the plans for the development of the outlying reaches of the western spiral arm of the galaxy require the building of a hyperspace express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you very much.”

(To choruses of protest from Earth)

“All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years. So you've had plenty of time to lodge a formal protest, and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

(More protests)

“What do you mean, you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh for Heaven's sake, Mankind! It's only four light years away you know! I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout!”

Arthur: “Ford, if I asked you where we are would I regret it?”
Ford: “We're safe.”
Arthur: “Ah. Good.”
Ford: “We're in a cabin onboard one of the ships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.”
Arthur: “Ah. This is obviously some strange new usage of the word safe that I haven't previously been aware of.”

The Book: “Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it.”

Arthur: “What are you doing?”
Ford: “Preparing for hyperspace. It's rather unpleasantly like being drunk.”
Arthur: “What's so wrong about being drunk?”
Ford: “Ask a glass of water.”

The Book: “The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwaves, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting a telepathically a matrix formed of the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain. The practical upshot of which is if you stick one in your ear you instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech you hear decodes the brainwave matrix. Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-numbingly useful should evolve purely by chance that many thinkers have chosen to see this as final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument runs something like this:

"I refuse to prove I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing."
"Ah, but the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it?" Says Man. "It proves you exist and therefore you don't. QED."
"Oh dear", says God. "I hadn't thought of that." And promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

"Oh that was easy!” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians have claimed this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme for his final book “Well, that about wraps it up for God!”

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between all races and cultures has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of Creation.”

Ford Prefect's logic

Ford talks to the foreman, who is annoyed that Arthur is lying in front of his bulldozer, stopping him from carrying out his duty of knocking Arthur's house down. Ford reflects that, since it's reasonable to assume his friend will be lying there all day, the foreman does not actually need him to be there physically. If it's taken that he is there, then he, Arthur, could slip off to the pub. Unable to refute the logic of this, the foreman ends up lying in Arthur's place, still unsure why he is doing this. Ford has this affect on people. However the foreman is not such an idiot: he realises that if Ford takes Arthur away with him, there is nothing to stop him carrying out his task.

Microcosm/Macrocosm

One thing Douglas Adams did very well was relate little events to larger ones, or to be more accurate, take something that was going on and transfer it to a much larger canvas, to show that essentially, whether they have skin feathers or scales, people are the same all over and the same things that happen to us here on our home planet happen out there in the wider galaxy too, just on a much bigger scale.

The most obvious of these is the correlation between Arthur's house being scheduled for demolition in order to facilitate the building of a bypass, and later this being extended to the whole of planet Earth (you could say, humanity's house) being destroyed to allow the hyperspace bypass to be built. The same protest Arthur raised with the foreman is mirrored here, as the Vogon captain rolls his eyes and says that the plans have been available for anyone who wanted to see them, but just as the council had taken pains to hide away the plans for the demolition of Arthur's house, so too the plans for the hyperspace bypass have been put where Man cannot, yet, reach them, and now never will.

Designing the future

As already mentioned in the Red Dwarf writeups, and a decade before that show even hit the air, Douglas Adams was looking to the future and although much of this series was meant to be taken in jest, there is a lot of truth and even accurate prediction in it. The Book, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is an “electronic book”, in a time when such things weren't even considered. Back then there was hardly email never mind e-books, and yet now they are as common as anything. The idea, too, of mixing sound with images and animations makes this almost one of the first proper multimedia events in history.

The Babel fish, with its clever explanation of how it works, is the precursor to what would become known in science-fiction circles as the universal translator. And Ford drops such items as “hypno-rays” and “telepsychic helmets” with a sneer, as if they are commonplace but possibly useless, yet such things again would only have been in their infancy, even in literature. The idea of destroying planets to make way for a thoroughfare was explored by John Carpenter in “Dark star”, although his space hippies were clearing a path for colonists who were to come after, but it's not entirely unlikely that Adams may have formulated his initial idea for the Vogon Constructor Fleet from this cult movie, upon which, again, much of Red Dwarf is based.

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FAMILY

There are several disparate and divergent meanings of the concept in this episode. We have seen already that the gang all have family of course: mothers, brothers, sisters, etc, and that in some ways, even the criminal gang themselves are a kind of family, albeit probably the most dysfunctional one you could come across. There's no loyalty, there's no support, there's no common ground except when it serves the ends of the gang, or the individual. There is no love lost. (I've always found that be an odd phrase. Surely if there is no love lost, there is plenty of love? In fact, surely in a relationship that is not working love is lost, and if everything is fine there is no love lost, so that the phrase seems to make no real sense to me. But I digress.)

Here however we see the different ways in which each of the criminal gang members regards their family. Darren of course protects Mary, and she tries to protect him. Nidge admits ––– quite happily ––– that he cares for nobody (other than himself of course) apart from his son, Warren. Not even his girlfriend, later to be his wife. He tells Darren that he loves her, but he doesn't care about her. How he manages to separate the two is unclear to me, but there it is. John Boy ––– the one you would perhaps assume to be completely cut off from family ––– keeps an odd connection with his dead brother, Huey, even believing that he is seeing his ghost at night, and also thinks the world of his own living daughter, Kayleigh, who as he waits for her arrival is unaware that he is at that moment receiving a phone call to tell him that Stumpy has been killed on his orders.

Before he dies, we see Stumpy at home with his mother. He is paying an installer for a state-of-the-art security system. It is perhaps odd that, given the fact that John Boy has told him to bring all his money to him, Stumpy seems to have no problem in paying the man what must amount to certainly a few grand. Of course, she is his mother, and we'd all do everything we could to protect and make our mothers safe, wouldn't we? Not to mention that Stumpy takes the money to pay the installer from the box he has been hiding in the attic, the money he is supposed to bring to John Boy. Should the boss discover that he has been skimming from what he now considers to be his money, then Stumpy will have a lot more to answer for. Mind you, in a very short time he will be beyond such worries anyway.

Darren has possibly tried to start his own sort of family unit by hooking up with Luke (a poor substitute for Robbie perhaps?) but what will happen if and when Rosie comes back? She doesn't know Luke, wouldn't want to know him, and Darren is likely to abandon the young lad as he seems to have been abandoned all his life.

HONOUR AMONG THIEVES

Once again we see how false this premise is. Truth to tell, nobody really liked Stumpy in the first place. That said, no matter who is the target the other gang members will fall into line behind the boss. If he thinks someone has betrayed them ––– or more specifically, him ––– then he is right. This is no democracy. There are no votes. there can be no dissenting opinion. When a hit is ordered ––– doesn't matter against who ––– it will be carried out. The person on the end of the contract can expect no help from his erstwhile comrades. Nobody is going to stick out their neck for a man who is ––– figuratively and literally ––– dead to the gang. However, there is a certain amount of mean-spiritedness and almost sadism inherent in how Nidge tells Stumpy everything is okay, that John Boy is annoyed but that is all, when he knows full well that John Boy has ordered the man's assassination.

Of course, it's more than Nidge's life ––– never mind his job ––– is worth to warn Stumpy, or to give him any grounds for suspicion that he might be targeted, but there is a certain sense of satisfaction and cruel delight in how Nidge fools him into thinking that this will just blow over. Everybody wants to please the boss; step out of line, and you could be next, so do as you're told, keep your head down and squeeze the trigger if you're told, even if your best friend is in your sights. Better him than you.

And if you can enjoy yourself while doing so, sure why the hell not?

LETTER OF THE LAW

John Boy's lawyer outlines how easy it is for criminals and criminal gangs to circumvent Irish law, sequestering stolen funds in offshore companies; companies set up in foreign territories over which the Irish government and the Irish police have no jurisdiction. Of course, the police forces of these various countries will render any assistance they can to Ireland, once the appropriate paperwork has been completed. But that's the problem: applications for searches, data information, even permission to visit and investigate these countries all take time and more importantly money, which Ireland is not particularly flush with. And without concrete evidence and proof, all they have are suspicions, hints and possibilities, and these by themselves would not be enough to convince a court to furnish a search warrant, or any other legal documents allowing them to investigate these companies, which may after all turn out to be legitimate.

Once again, the letter of the law defeats the spirit of the law and the odds are stacked in favour of the bad guy.

MIRROR, MIRROR

The double life these criminals lead, often without the knowledge ––– or at least acceptance, and in some cases total denial ––– of their loved ones is again shown when John Boy sits in a restaurant, awaiting the arrival of his daughter for dinner. He takes a phone call before she arrives; seems an innocent enough action, and with most people, it would be. But this call is telling John Boy that, on his orders, Stumpy has been killed by Darren. He smiles, hangs up, and turns to greet his daughter, the perfect, ordinary father on the outside, and she has no idea ––– at the moment ––– what sort of person he really is.

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Episode Two, In Which Arthur Listens to Vogon Poetry, Gets Ejected into Space and Meets a Man he Rather Hoped had perished when the Earth was Destroyed, but Who he now Discovers is not from his Home Planet at all; He is not even Called Phil.

Having failed to convince the Vogon captain not to, Ford and Arthur are thrown off the ship but luckily are rescued by another passing ship, which just happens to have Ford's old buddy and part-time Galactic President, Zaphod Beeblebrox, on board. Oddly, the other member of the crew is someone Arthur knows, or knew, a girl called Trillian, although he knew her as Tricia McMillan at the time. The ship's company is completed by Marvin, the Paranoid Android, who moans about everything and is permanently depressed.

Seems Zaphod has stolen the Heart of Gold, a starship with the prototype Infinite Improbability Drive installed. This revolutionary new way of travelling means that as the ship builds up to infinite improbability, everything becomes possible. The natural laws of physics no longer apply, and anything can happen. The practical upshot of this is that the ship passes through every point in the universe simultaneously allowing one to travel anywhere, instantly. Ford is impressed, not so much with Zaphod as with the ship: he knows Zaphod from way back, but Arthur is less so. He remembers Zaphod as “Phil”, who once spoiled his chances of hitting it off with the very Tricia McMillan who is now with him, calling herself Trillian. At a party on Earth, Zaphod whisked her away from Arthur and, obviously, off the planet.

QUOTES
The Book: “Far out, in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has – or had --- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them seemed to involve the movements of small green pieces of paper. Which was odd, as on the whole, it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean and most of them were miserable. Even the ones with digital watches. Many were of the increasing opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and no-one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one day nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmondsworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time, it was right, it would work, and nobody would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost forever.”

Arthur, having been asked by the Vogon captain to tell him how good his awful poetry is, comes up with this (helped along in part by Ford, who probably can't believe what they're doing): “I liked it. Some of the metaphysical imagery was really particularly effective. Interesting rhythmic devices which seem to counterpoint the, um, surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the, um, humanity --- Vogonity, sorry! --- of the poet's compassionate soul which strives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other. And one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into .. into whatever the poem was about!”

Ford: “Do you enjoy your job?”
Vogon guard: “Well, the hours are good.”
Ford: “They'd have to be.”
Vogon guard: “Mind you, now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy!”

Arthur: “You know, it's at times like this, when I'm stuck in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother used to tell me when I was young.”
Ford: “Why? What did she tell you?”
Arthur: “I don't know! I didn't listen!”

Arthur: “My left arm's disappearing! How am I going to operate my digital watch now?”

The Book explains the theory behind the Infinite Improbabilty Drive: “The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a few seconds, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. The principle of generating small amounts of finite probabilty by hooking the logic circuits of a Bableweeny 57 Sub Meson Brain to an Atomic Vector Plotter suspended in a producer of Brownian motion --- say a nice hot cup of tea --- had long been understood, and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties, by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments move simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the principles of indeterminancy.

Many respectable physicists said they weren't going to stand for that sort of thing, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they never got invited to those sort of parties. Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they kept coming up against while trying to generate the infinite improbabilty field needed to flip a spaceship through the distances between the stars. And in the end, they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

And then one evening, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: if such a machine was a virtual impossibility then it must logically be a finite improbabilty. If so, then all I have to do to make one is work out exactly how improbable it is, feed those calculations into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea and turn it on. The moment he did this, he was rather startled to discover that he had created the long sought-after Infinite Improbabilty Drive out of thin air.

It startled him even more when, just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness, he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists, who had finally realised that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartarse.”

The Book: “The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as “a mechanical appartus designed to do the work of a man”. The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!” The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “A mindless bunch of jerks who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes”, with a footnote from the editors for anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of The Encyclopaedia Galactica which fell through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “A mindless bunch of jerks who were first against the wall when the revolution came.”

Arthur: “I wonder what will happen if I press this button?”
Ford: “Don't.”
Arthur: “Oh.”
Ford: “What happened?”
Arthur: “A sign lit up saying please do not press this button again!”

Marvin: “Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they tell me to take you up to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? Cos I don't.”

Marvin: “Did I say something wrong? Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I said it oh God I'm so depressed!”

Newscaster: “We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms out there, and to everyone else, the secret is to bang the rocks together guys!”

Trillian: “Can we leave your ego out of this? This is important!”
Zaphod: “Hey, if there's anything more important than my ego on this ship I want it caught and shot now!”


Ford Prefect's Logic
Trying to save their lives, Ford attempts to show the Vogon guard throwing them off the ship that his job is mindless and humdrum, and that he should rebel, stand up to the captain. Faced with such a choice though, the guard decides he'd rather be bored, unappreciated, unfulfilled and alive and goes ahead and throws them off the ship anyway. Worth a try though: Ford appeals to his soul by humming Beethoven's 5th Symphony, but the guard is not impressed. Trouble is, there's no real soul there to appeal to in the first place. Ford probably knew this and was just trying to buy time, but the effort was doomed to failure. Vogon ship guards are not known for their wit, initiative, nor their appreciation of the finer things in life. They quite like the shouting, though.

“So that's it, we're going to die!”
Arthur says this so many times during the series --- and they never do --- that it seems a good idea to give it its own section.

The first time he says this is when they are sitting in the airlock of the Vogon ship, waiting to be ejected into space. Fatalistic? Perhaps, but what would you think? As it happens, as we've seen above, neither of them die, due to an extremely improbable set of circumstances, helped along by the Infinite Improbability Drive in the Heart of Gold.

Designing the future
Well, we all expect it will happen, and probably sooner than expected --- we do have phones that can talk to us now and arrange our schedules, digital helpers and so on --- but back in the 1970s Adams was already foreseeing the possibility of computers and robots being given personalities. The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation began testing a system called GPP, or Genuine People Personalities. It resulted in doors that are happy when you use them, and computers who are eager to serve and cheer you up, but the prototype sort of failed with Marvin, giving him a very morose, downbeat, depressed personality. And like everyone of that nature, he is ready to share his doom and gloom with everyone. Life? Don't talk to him about life!

Those clever little touches
Trillian justifies her decision to leave Earth with Zaphod: “Well, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics, it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday!” Zing!

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Episode Three, in Which Arthur Learns some Uncomfortable Truths, is Reunited with an “Old Friend”, Walks the Surface of a Planet That Does Not Exist, and Mysteriously Hurts his upper Arm.

Zaphod Beeblebrox believes he has located the fabled planet of Magrathea, which used to be the centre of a vast planetbuilding empire which constructed custom-made planets for the galaxy's super-rich. Ford does not believe it: Magrathea is a children's tale, he tells his friend. It does not exist. Trillian is more interested in feeding her pet white mice, and is most upset when they escape after the ship has been, against all logic, attacked from a dead planet by an automated missile system. Unlike most missile systems this does not destroy the ship, but then that's because this ship is, remember, the Heart of Gold, which possesses the infinite improbability drive. When there seems no way to escape the missiles Arthur, in a rather uncharacteristic act of both bravery and logic, pushes the button that engages the drive. The missiles are thereafter changed into a bowl of petunias and a large sperm whale.

Having successfully avoided the attempt to stop them landing, the guys bring the ship down to the surface of Magrathea, Zaphod convinced that the wealth of the galaxy lies therein. Arthur is told to stay behind on the surface with Marvin while Trillian, Ford and Zaphod go down a tunnel and into the interior of the planet, Zaphod having remembered that the inhabitants all lived inside the planet. When Arthur asks him if this was due to some natural catastrophe or pollution, he returns “No. They just didn't like it very much!” It is Arthur who seems to make contact though, as the man whom they saw on the hologram advising them of the missile attack walks along the beach and invites him to accompany him.He calls himself Slartibartfast, and advises Arthur that the planet is alive with industry again, awoken from its millennia-long slumber to undertake one custom job.

Arthur is more than amazed to see that the special, custom planet under construction is none other than his home planet, the Earth. Or, as Slartibartfast corrects him, the Earth Mark II. He tells Arthur that the original planet which was his home was one of their creations. He is further amazed and aghast when he is told that the Earth (and the new Earth Mark II) were commissioned and paid for by white mice! Slartibartfast says that the destruction of the original Earth was “a shocking cock-up: the mice were furious!” Even after all he's been through, Arthur can feel his grip on reality slowly slipping away like quicksand beneath his feet.

QUOTES
The Book: “In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high. Men were real men, women were real women, and small blue creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small blue creatures from Alpha Centauri.”

Ford: “Magrathea?”
Zaphod: “Yeah!”
Ford: “You found it?”
Zaphod: “Yeah!”
Ford: “Zaphod, Magrathea is a fantasy planet. It's a fairy story that parents tell their children when they want them to grow up to become economists.”
Zaphod: “No. We're in orbit around it!”
Ford: “Zaphod, I can't help what you may personally be in orbit about, but ...”

The Book: “Arthur's next question is very important and valid, and Zaphod's response to it is wrong in every important aspect.”
Arthur: “Is it safe?”
Zaphod: “Of course it's safe! Magrathea has been dead for over five million years!”

Slartibartfast (in hologram): “It is most gratifiying that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and we would therefore like to assure you that the guided missiles now converging on your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most ... enthusiastic clients. And the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to yoru custom in future lives.”

Zaphod: “Hey! This is terrific! They're trying to kill us! You know what that means?”
Arthur: “We're going to die?”
Zaphod: “Yeah! No! Maybe... look, it means there's something down there they don't want us to have. And if they don't want us to have it that bad, I want to have it worse!”

Ford: “Well, can you fly the ship?”
Zaphod: “No. Trillian?”
Trillian: “No.”
Zaphod: “Fine. We'll do it together.”
Arthur: “I can't either.”
Zaphod: “I guessed.”

Trillian: “Zaphod, do you think we could stabilise our X zero zero if we split the flightpath tangentially across the sum and vector of 9X7G8 with a 5/3 inertial correction?”
Zaphod: “Wha? Oh, yeah, yeah! Just do it, will you?”
Ford: “Hey it worked! Where did you learn a stunt like that?”
Trillian: “Going around Hyde Park Corner on a moped.”

Zaphod: “Hey! Did you do that Earthman?”
Arthur: “Well, all I did was ...”
Zaphod: “That's a pretty hoopy piece of thinking, you know that?”
Arthur: “Well, it was nothing really...”
Zaphod: “Was it? Oh, forget it then.”

Trillian: “What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?”
Marvin: “You think you've got problems? What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No don't try to answer; I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level!”

Marvin: “Life! Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.”

Arthur: “Night's falling, Look, robot! The stars are coming out.”
Marvin: “I know. Wretched, isn't it?”
Arhtur: “But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams! Two suns! It was like mountains of fire, boiling into space!”
Marvin: “I've seen it. It's rubbish.”
Arthur: “Only had the one sun on my planet. I come from Earth, you know.”
Marvin: “I know. You keep going on about it. It sounds awful.”
Arhtur: “Oh no. It was a beautiful place.”
Marvin: “Did it have oceans?”
Arthur: “Oh yes! Great big, wide, blue, rolling oceans.”
Marvin: “Can't bear oceans.”
Arhtur: “Tell me, do you get on well with other robots?”
Marvin: “Hate them.”

So this is it, we're going to die

Not surprisingly, Arhtur says this as it seems they cannot avoid the missiles that have locked onto them from the planet Magrathea. Well, you can hardly blame him really, can you?

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Episode three

Urquhart is back at the Palace, where the king is incensed to find the Prime Minister is still delaying announcing the date of the general election, which he announced some time ago he would hold. As he says in the quote section, Urquhart engages in some verbal fencing with the monarch, clearly enjoying his discomfort and happy to string him along. What he is not happy about, however, is that he knows that the King has been trying to organise opposition against him; principally members of the opposition, as well as some of his own party. His eyes are very cold as he tells the King he will not accept this attempt at a bloodless coup. He has had, as he probably had expected, no success in changing the King's mind ––– his Majesty now intends, apparently, to go on television, making his own television programme ––– and refuses to show Urquhart a draft of the script. He says it's still in production, but of course we know that's not true: he just doesn't want the Prime Minister editing, censoring or changing any part of it. Urquhart goes to see the King's ex-wife, the divorced Princess (who is never named) and explains the dangerous path that her ex-husband is now treading. He is fully aware that she has no interest in saving the king, or dissuading Urquhart from his path. In fact, she would probably be happy to see him destroyed ––- as long as her son, the king in waiting, gets to ascend the throne after he is gone. She makes this clear when they meet; Urquhart now knows that he has another very powerful ally.

With no interference from Urquhart ––– although he can't say it was from lack of trying ––– the King's broadcast goes out on television. He speaks about the poor, the homeless, the jobless, and a new spirit of caring that needs to be fostered throughout the country. His speech, if you will, is a direct challenge to and confrontation with the government and Urquhart does not like it one little bit. He puts a brave face on it the next morning, in front of the reporters, but once the door of 10 Downing Street closes behind them that smile vanishes and he flies into a rage. He is particularly savage with Stamper, blaming him for not keeping the tabloids and the popular press under his heel, as Urquhart had instructed him to do. Stamper is not happy: not only is he chewed out by his boss, it happens in front of Sarah, which adds to his embarrassment and humiliation. When he asks Urquhart for a private word, he is savagely denied. It seems like FU is laying all of, or at least most of, the blame at the feet of the man who used to be his right hand, and who (perhaps foolishly) believed he was also his friend. He is beginning to realise now that Urquhart has no friends ––– he has people he uses, as long as they are useful to him; and when he has no further use for them, he throws away like a crumpled up cigarette packet. In the case of Stamper, it would seem that Urquhart is either giving up smoking, or about to open a fresh packet ––– a pack with Sarah Harding's name on it.

Intending to take out his anger on Brian Brynford-Jones, the newspaper boss he sees as having betrayed him, Stamper is perhaps surprised to find that he ends up more pouring out his heart to him, talking about how "Francis has changed". He's obviously torn between loyalty and a pathological need for revenge. And yet, it's almost as if Stamper is Judas, agonising over betraying Christ, trying to find a different way but really knowing there is none. In the end, as we all know, Stamper will do what is best for Stamper. The friendship he had with Urquhart will be sacrificed to ensure his own survival: exactly as FU would have and will do in his position. He is however rather surprised to find that he may have friends where he did not realise he had any: Brian tells them that, were he to try to fill Urquhart's shoes, he may indeed have supporters and backers. Seems the whole country is getting a bit tired of Urquhart and his policies: a lot of people think it really is time for him to go.

The King's speech has gone over extremely well, so much better than he had expected to it to. But then, when you tell people what they want to hear, when you tell them everything will be okay without actually telling them how you're going to make everything okay, when you throw out grandiose phrases, ideas and promises without any real plan behind what you say, you'll always be popular with the people. Anyone could make such a speech: it's backing it up that's the hard work. It does however cause a serious swing against Urquhart's government, for which he is extremely annoyed and determined to redress the damage. David Mycroft has turned up, after his romantic tryst with his new best friend, and as he, Chloe and the King discuss the performance of the monarch on the television, and the pretty much overwhelmingly positive reaction from the public to that speech, they are unaware that they are being monitored ––– one can only assume by Urquhart or some arm of his government ––– as Chloe tries to push the King further down the political path, telling him in no uncertain terms ––– telling him word for word in fact ––– that Urquhart is his enemy. The King, however, knows that as a constitutional monarch there is only so far that he can go; he has no intention (he says) of taking on the government, much less the Prime Minister.

When the King angrily dismisses Chloe for suggesting that Urquhart is his enemy, and he should go on the offensive against him, David Mycroft, completely unaware that they are being monitored, tells the King that Urquhart will use any and every tactic against him in the coming battle. He agrees with Chloe that Urquhart is the King's enemy, and rather than have this news used against the King, he begins to tell his Majesty about his own homosexuality. It's a brave move, a courageous move, but unfortunately it will backfire spectacularly, as those who now listen in on the King's private meeting with his closest advisers are about to suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, have some major ammunition delivered right to their door. Sadly for them, and luckily for Mycroft, the King holds up his hand and says no: your private life is yours, none of my business, has nothing to do with your job. At that point, as much as the listeners must hate the King for preventing them from finding out what Mycroft was about to tell him, David must love the King even more for being so understanding and so circumspect.

Urquhart finally names the date for the general election, after resisting many calls to settle on a date, from the opposition to the king himself. However he is concerned that the groundswell of support for the king could reflect a backlash against his government, sweep the opposition into power, and he and his party into the gutters of history. Things are further exacerbated when Quilley of all people stands up in the House of Lords and makes an impassioned speech in favour of the measures proposed by the king. Always a bastion of the government, even this high house has now begun to turn on Urquhart and his unpopular government. Things go from bad to worse for Urquhart when off his own back Stamper sets one of the junior ministers, John Staines, to raise a point of order in the House of Commons. As this point of order concerns moral rectitude, decency, family standards, family values and so forth, it is rather unfortunate (and Urquhart knows this, and is fuming about it) that Staines is almost immediately afterwards arrested and charged with sexual crimes against underage boys. Staines has mentioned in his point of order speech that "foxhunters get a better view of things from their high horses, I suppose": it's pretty ironic that his own moral point of view is almost right away shown to be very much more flawed than those of the occupants of the House of Lords.

Urquhart has Sarah draw up a new plan ––– his response to the King's attempt to, as he sees it, drag England back into the days of the welfare state ––– but Sarah is facing problems at home, both from her husband, who has not surprisingly figured out what's going on, i.e. that this is not just a professional relationship ––– ("I can smell him on you!") ––– and from a mysterious voice on the telephone, which warns her not to poke into affairs that don't concern her, specifically enquiries relating to Mattie Storin, unless she wants to end up sharing her fate. Rather than scare her off however, the threat only spurs her to look deeper into the story behind Mattie. She ends up speaking to John Krajewski, Mattie's old friend from the Chronicle, who tells her what seems to be a lot of conspiracy theory: about offices and buildings being bugged; people disappearing, shadow projects, the usual thing. But John knows what he's talking about. He warns her she is in great danger if she is investigating Mattie's death; he tells her that he believes that Urquhart murdered Mattie (or had her murdered), and when she expresses ––– not surprisingly ––– disbelief at this theory, he says that he knows that Urquhart had his hand in the death of Roger O'Neill. But he can't prove any of it as Mattie's tapes were stolen when she died. He believes that he is soon to die himself, and says he just wishes they'd get on with it: he knows too much, and he is a loose end which will have to be tied up. He leaves Sarah in a state of disbelief, but growing suspicion and perhaps just a modicum of acceptance of what must be a dark truth to be revealed.

Urquhart calls in Bruce Bullerby, whose newspaper's coverage has been less than, shall we say supportive? He shows him some photographs, taken of him and the Princess, and Bullerby knows that he is being blackmailed. But it's not as simple as money ––– it never is with FU --- no, Urquhart wants something completely different. First of all, more support from "their friends in the media", a position Bullerby is quite happily to adopt. But that's not all. He now tells Bullerby to release and print the memoirs of Princess Charlotte. Bullerby is understandably reluctant to do this: after all, she only agreed to let him write her memoirs on the understanding ––– the strict understanding ––– they would not be published until after her own death. There are some very embarrassing, damning, humiliating revelations that have been made known to the newspaper editor, and the Princess, apart from her own embarrassment, has been warned that if she exposes royal secrets she could be very much in danger. The promise not to expose her memoirs until she dies had been given to her by Bullerby when they began this enterprise. Now he is being asked ––– ordered really ––– to go back on that arrangement, and to ultimately betray the Princess, who he has actually begun perhaps to have feelings for, or at the very least, not to hate. But as ever, when it's his skin or someone else's, Bullerby will sacrifice whoever needs to be sacrificed. It's the pictures ––– the embarrassing revealing pictures of him and the Princess ––– to be published, or the memoirs. It's his choice. He too now realises he has been played, used by Urquhart, as the man uses everybody.

Krajewski's prophecy turns out to be true when his body is dumped on waste ground, his killing seeming to bear all the hallmarks of an IRA execution. When Sarah hears this on the radio, she is understandably shaken: after all, the last time she saw him the journalist intimated that she might be next. And when she tells Urquhart about it --- and if she's honest with herself, looking deep into his cold, almost reptilian eyes, she must feel the hand of death on her shoulder --- it's pretty clear that the Prime Minister is not happy that she has been researching his ex-lover, and we all know how far he will go to protect his secrets…

Armed with his new weapon, his ace in the hole, Urquhart goes to the King, explaining that should His Majesty toe the line and withdraw from confrontation with the government, and with him personally, Urquhart will be able to "persuade" the paper to refrain from running the article, and thus save the reputation of the Royal family. But of course the price of this deal is the King's silence and allowing himself to be reined back in by Urquhart. The King, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, tells Urquhart to publish and be damned. He will not be blackmailed, and believes he has enough support among the people to be able to take on Urquhart. He tells him that people are tired of muck-raking and scandal, that his tactics will not work. Furious, Urquhart leaves, realising that perhaps once again, he has underestimated the young king. More drastic, serious measures will have to be taken if he is to retain his grip on power.

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days to go!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018