The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2 Disc Set) (UK)
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Don't Panic
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 200 mins
Retail Price: £24.99
Release Date: 2002
Content Type: TV Series
Synopsis:
It is the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. More popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty Three 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? So that whingeing Earthling Arthur Dent should be very grateful he had a copy!
For after Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, Arthur Dent is let loose in the furthest recesses of the Galaxy armed only with the aforementioned mysterious but indispensable Guide. Follow Dent`s cosmic adventures as he is joined by his pretty weird companions: Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Prefect, Trillian-the-Astrophysicist-he-met-at-a-party-in-Islington and Marvin the manically depressed Android. You never know, they may even find the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything!
Special Features:
Documentary - The Making of The Hitch Hiker`s Guide To The Galaxy
Documentary - Don`t Panic!
Introduction to Episode One by Peter Jones, filmed live at the NFT
Original trailer for Episode One
Deleted scene
Behind the scenes footage
Communicate! - behind the scenes footage of the recording of the radio series
Douglas Adams interview
Tomorrow`s World sequence (report on Zaphod Beeblebrox head)
BAFTA award for Graphic Design, Pebble Mill at One 09-02-1982 featuring the director, Alan J W Bell
Full version of opening title sequence
Out-takes
Photo Gallery
On Screen Production Subtitles
Choice to watch in either the original mono soundtrack or in a digitally remastered stereo version
Video Tracks:
Standard 1.33:1
Audio Tracks:
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 English
Dolby Digital Mono 2.0 English
Subtitle Tracks:
English
Directed By:
Alan J.W. Bell
Written By:
John Lloyd
Douglas Adams
Starring:
Joe Melia
Sandra Dickinson
Simon Jones
Mark Wing-Davey
David Dixon
Peter Jones
Soundtrack By:
Bernie Leadon
Tim Souster
Paddy Kingsland
Editor:
Glenn Hyde
Mike Robotham
Costume Designer:
Dee Robson
Production Designer:
Tom Yardley-Jones
Andrew Howe-Davies
Producer:
John Lloyd
Alan J.W. Bell
Distributor:
BBC
Your Opinions and Comments
The TV series when it came wasn`t as good, but what can ever live up to your first love...
Now - 25 years on or so, what is it like?
I have to say I was impressed. The special effects in the series are tame to say the least by modern standards, but the plot of the whole thing is as good as it ever was.
Nostalgia, as they say, is not as good as it use to be, but its wonderfully amusing to watch this series again.
The astonishment on the barmans face as Ford buys 6 pints of beer, and tells the him to keep the change - from a fiver!! A brief view of a one pound note... ahh those were the days.
But what for me makes this DVD really rock, is the extras.
After viewing DVD after DVD with extras showing how this effect was matted in seamlessly, and how with a little digital magic the presidents suit is transformed into an off the shoulder split to the naval designer t-shirt, the simplicity of some of the stuff done on this disk is refreshing. You feel as though you too could have made a space ship from a couple of washing up bottles and some sticky back plastic.
There is even film of the original radio series being produced, made specially for a BBC2 Open University production on dramatic art I gather. The recording sequence with two guys in a recording studio trying out ideas, then having to phone Douglas to say it just wasn`t going to work the way he wanted.
It all adds up to a remarkable disk, which kept me occupied for a week. Maybe it is all nostaliga, but I like to think of it as a slice of my life replayed and magnified.