Against all odds, Ford and Arthur have completely and utterly failed to find a way to prevent being thrown out of an airlock by the captain of the Vogon ship. And against all probability, Ford and Arthur are picked up before they die, rescued by a sleek new starship which is powered by the revolutionary (and inexplicable) Infinite Improbability Drive. Ford is elated to find that the ship in question, the Heart of Gold, is under the command of his two-headed, three-armed, usually-inebriated semi-cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox. And Arthur is stunned to find out that he’s not the only surviving member of the human race; a girl named Trillian (who Arthur knew as Tricia McMillan) is traveling with Zaphod, who convinced her at a party to leave Earth and join him several months ago – even though Arthur was attempting to get friendly with her at the same party. Ford and Arthur also meet Marvin, the ship’s permanently-depressed robot. There’s only one problem with the Heart of Gold (in addition to the fact that Zaphod barely knows how to fly it): Zaphod stole it, and now every cop in the galaxy will be hot on his trail.
written by Douglas Adams
directed by Alick Hale-Munro
music by Paddy KingslandCast: Peter Jones (The Voice of the Book), Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect), Stephen Moore (Marvin), Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Susan Sheridan (Trillian), Bill Wallis (Vogon Captain), David Tate (Vogon Guard / Eddie)
Notes: The original radio broadcast attributed the worst poetry in the universe to Paul Neil Milne Jonhston, an actual acquaintance of Douglas Adams who – perhaps understandably – objected to this dubious tribute, especially when it came in the form of a radio program broadcast across Britain. In later LP releases, the novels, the television series, and even the version of the radio shows syndicated to America, this name was changed to “Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.”