The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Extraordinary Phase

As all real Hitch-Hiker's fans know, the only True Versions of the show are the pure audio ones: the original radio series, and the LP records. All other versions - TV, books, plays etc - are pale shadows of this original genius. Even the later radio series , while interesting and fun, were originally written as books, and don't really reach the level of the original two (now known as the Primary and Secondary Phases).

Unfortunately, as we also know, every version of H2G2 is different - sometimes in small ways, sometimes in huge, contradictory ways. In the past I have been frustrated, while listening to the Primary Phase, to constantly be thinking "That line is better on the other version", or "There's a great bit missing here".

At some point in the 1980s I made a crude edit using chunks of the radio and records versions, but I always wanted to do it "properly". Then the BBC TV version came out, and while it had flaws, most of them were visual - Zaphod's head, famously, and the SFX in general when seen with modern eyes. But, when considered as an audio recording, the TV version is actually pretty good, and there is a small amount of new material, too.

So for many years I thought about merging these recordings into a single, definitive version of the Primary Phase. But attempting to create the "best" version of the story would inevitably mean leaving bits out -- mainly because the story between Milliways and the 'B' Ark is completely different in the original radio version. So, I decided to include *everything* - the longest version of every scene, every line that was cut from the original radio recordings, according to the published scripts (and the Pink Floyd scene which is missing from the CDs) , and in fact every joke and every idea that had ever been recorded. That meant I'd have to find a way to weave the two conflicting storylines together into a single, consistent narrative...

To include everything, I'd need to jump backwards and forwards between the various versions in a single scene -- or in some places, within a single line of dialogue, editing phrases and even individual words together. To do this I used an S-VHS edit VCR, which allowed me to edit down to 1/25th of a second. I didn't use an edit controller; it was all done by hand, running the two versions in parallel and judging the pre-roll time so that the edit occurred at precisely the right moment.

Some of these edits are nearly impossible to hear (even to me), but inevitably, there are some which are more obvious - either because the background music or ambiance is completely different, or because different actors are performing the lines. Luckily the main cast doesn't change much, apart from Trillian (who is different in all three versions, though she sounds very similar on the radio and records) and Ford (who is different on the TV version).

It took several weeks of intense evenings and weekends in 1996, slaving over a hot VCR. In 2008 I digitised the recordings, and used Audacity to clean them up and tweak the level and equalisation in some places. It would certainly be a lot easier to do the edit today, using modern digital tools, but that wasn't an option back in the 90s!

Although it's not perfect, I'm pretty happy with the result, and it has become the definitive version of the Primary Phase as far as I'm concerned - the only version I ever listen to. I now consider the original versions to be the abridged, Reader's Digest versions, like in-flight movies with all the good bits missing, that I only keep for historical interest.

Enjoy

Andy