The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Primary and Secondary Phases
The terms Primary Phase and Secondary Phase describe the first two radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first broadcast in 1978. These were the first incarnations of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise. Both were written by Douglas Adams and consist of six episodes each.
The series followed the aimless wanderings of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and his book, the eponymous Guide. It introduced unfamiliar music, mind-stretching concepts and the newest science mixed together with-out of-context parodies, unfeasibly rude names, "semantic and philosophical jokes", compressed prose, and "groundbreaking deployment of sound effects and voice techniques". By the time the sixth episode was broadcast, the show had a cult following. A Christmas special would follow, many repeats and a second series. The two original series were followed by three more in 2004 and 2005 and a final, sixth series in 2018.
The following article is a list of episodes from the Primary and Secondary Phases. For information on its production, see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The Primary Phase
The first radio series was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March and April 1978. It was split into episodes, known as "Fits". The original series comprised Fit the First to Fit the Sixth. Fits the Fifth and Sixth were co-written by John Lloyd; subsequent versions of the story omit most of Lloyd's material.The success of the series encouraged Adams to adapt it into a novel, which was based on the first four Fits and released in the second week of October 1979. A slightly contracted double LP re-recording of the first four Fits was released in the same year, followed by a single LP featuring a revised version of Fits the Fifth and Sixth and the second book, both in 1980.
Fit the First
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 8 March 1978 10:30pm
Arthur Dent is attempting to prevent the local council from bulldozing his house to make way for a bypass. Dent's friend, Ford Prefect takes Arthur to the pub. At the pub, Ford explains that he is an alien and that the world is about to end. After Arthur and Ford return to the ruins of Arthur's house, a fleet of Vogon Constructor Ships arrives in the sky, and Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz broadcasts an announcement that they are to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Panic ensues. Ford uses his "electronic thumb" to hitch a lift onto one of the ships, taking Arthur with him, just moments before the Earth is destroyed. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, as the Vogon Captain tortures them by reading them some of his poetry before ejecting them into space.
Music:
"Journey of the Sorcerer" from One of These Nights by Eagles; "A Rainbow in Curved Air" from A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley; Lontano and Volumina by György Ligeti.
Fit the Second
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 15 March 1978
Arthur and Ford Prefect are rescued after 29 seconds, by a starship. They have been picked up by the Heart of Gold, which has been stolen by Ford's semi-cousin and President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox. The Heart of Gold works on the basis of infinite improbability, allowing its drive to do anything for which the improbability factor is known. Also onboard are Trillian, née Tricia McMillan, also from Earth, and depressed Marvin the Paranoid Android. As the episode ends, Eddie the Shipboard Computer announces that the ship is moving into orbit around the legendary planet of Magrathea.
Notes: First appearance of Marvin the Paranoid Android, Trillian, Eddie the computer, Gag Halfrunt, and Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Music: "Wind on Water" from Evening Star by Fripp & Eno; "A Rainbow in Curved Air" and "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" from A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley; "Cachaça " from The Story of I by Patrick Moraz.
Fit the Third
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 22 March 1978
After a threat of attack by missiles from the planet, Arthur comes to meet planet designer Slartibartfast on Magrathea. Arthur recognizes the latter's latest project as a copy of Earth. Slartibartfast explains that the original Earth had been destroyed five minutes too early, and they are constructing a replacement. The original Earth, which Arthur and Trillian came from, had been commissioned by some mice in order to find the "Ultimate Question".
Notes: For copyright reasons, many versions of this episode remove the Pink Floyd played by Marvin and Arthur's reference to it.
Music: "Kotakomben" from Einsteig by Gruppe Between; "Space Theme" from Go by Go; Continuum by György Ligeti; Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre; "That's Entertainment!"; "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd*; "Rock and Roll Music" by The Beatles*; "Wind on Water" from Evening Star by Fripp & Eno; "Over Fire Island" from Another Green World by Brian Eno
Fit the Fourth
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 29 March 1978
Slartibartfast explains that mice are colossal pan-dimensional beings who created a supercomputer named "Deep Thought" to answer the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything". After 7.5 million years, it delivered its answer: 42. When the mice expressed confusion, Deep Thought offered to design a greater computer to clarify the question. The computer was Earth.
The Vogons destroyed Earth five minutes before it was to deliver its findings. The mice contracted the Magratheans to build a replacement, but then, reasoning that the findings might be accessible via the last remaining products of Earth—Arthur and Trillian—summon them to a conference room where they begin negotiations with the humans to obtain the information. A Galactic Police ship, pursuing Zaphod for grand theft, arrives and the officers start shooting, destroying a Magrathean computer bank.
Music: A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley; "Moon City" from In Search of Ancient Gods by Absolute Elsewhere; Mikrophonie I by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Fit the Fifth
- Written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 5 April 1978
Arthur, Ford, Trillian and Zaphod awaken disoriented, and find themselves at Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe—a restaurant built on the ruins of Magrathea in a time bubble at the exact moment the Universe ends. The exploding computer created a time warp that deposited them there. Marvin was not affected, and has been waiting throughout Magrathean history for them to arrive. They join him in the carpark where they discover a sleek, frictionless black ship. They steal it but they can’t control it. It enters hyperspace and exits the galaxy where it becomes part of a massive battle fleet.
Music: Melodien by György Ligeti; "The Engulfed Cathedral" from Snowflakes Are Dancing by Isao Tomita; A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley; "Wind on Water" from Evening Star by Fripp & Eno.
Fit the Sixth
- Written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd
- Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 12 April 1978
On the black ship, they receive confusing transmissions from the second-in-command of the battle fleet, who first resembles a leopard and then a shoebox. They consult the Guide and learn that the fleet belongs to the Haggunenon, a race of xenophobic shape-shifters. The fleet commander is hiding onboard, and shifts into the form of the Bugblatter Beast of Traal. The stowaways try to escape the ship, but Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin are eaten by the commander.
Arthur and Ford teleport to a Golgafrincham Ark, run by a small crew so consumed with offering pleasantries and comfort that nothing ever gets done. The bulk of the ship carries service industry workers, maintenance personnel and junior corporate executives in suspended animation. The captain believes that the ship is part of a fleet in which his entire race is escaping their dying world; Ford and Arthur deduce that there are no other ships, and the rest of the race has expelled the least useful elements of their society into space.
The Ark crashes on an Earth-like planet. Arthur and Ford discover that on leaving Milliways they have traveled into the distant past, returning to the original Earth two million years before its destruction. The Golgafrinchams begin colonising in earnest, establishing a bureaucratic society so bogged down with trivialities that it can't reach meaningful decisions. The native hominids, which are part of the computer program, begin dying out.
Arthur tries to preserve the hominids by teaching them Scrabble. When one of their number chooses random tiles and spells out "forty two", Ford and Arthur realise the program has already gone wrong. They use the same random method to access the "Ultimate Question" supposedly contained in Arthur's brainwaves, and discover it is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Bemoaning the useless chaos of the Universe, they rejoin the Golgafrincham colony.
The regular ending music is replaced with "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong.
Music: Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre; Volumina by György Ligeti; "Volkstanz" from Einsteig by Gruppe Between.
The Secondary Phase
What became "Fit the Seventh" actually started as a "Christmas Special" episode, and an early draft included a reference to the holiday, though the episode, as transmitted, does not. Five further episodes, to complete the second series were commissioned in May 1979. These final five episodes were "stripped", or broadcast on each of five days in a single week in January 1980.Trillian is entirely missing from this series. Her fate is addressed in Fit the Seventh, that she had effected an escape but had then been forcibly married to the President of the Algolian chapter of the Galactic Rotary Club. The character returns in The Tertiary Phase, where she dismisses most of the events of the Secondary Phase as having been one of Zaphod's "psychotic episodes".