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.