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Report on Don't Panic and Dirk Gently by Dougl
DOUGLAS ADAMS (WHO?)
A report on DON'T PANIC and DIRK GENTLY and their relation to Doctor Who
by Lee Whiteside
(from the Magrathea BBS 602-833-9216 and The TARDIS Index File
of The Arizona Regional Doctor Who Interest Society)
Douglas Adams is best known as the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy (Radio series, TV series, book series,stage play, computer
game, future movie, etc.). Two recent paperback releases should be of
interest to Hitchhiker fans as well as Doctor Who fans (who are
sometimes the same people). Pocket books has just released the
paperback version of Adam's latest novel "Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency" ($4.50) as well as a large paperback book written by
Neil Gaiman called "DON'T PANIC: The Official Hitch-hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy Companion" ($7.95) (referred to as Dirk Gently and HHG
Companion the rest of this article).
Dirk Gently has been out in hardback for almost a year now, but with
it's release in conjunction with the HHG Companion, it becomes obvious
that Doctor Who and HHG are much related through Adam's work over the
last decade. The HHG Companion covers Adam's entire career, including
his stint as a Doctor Who script editor up to the finishing up of Dirk
Gently for publication.
Starting out with Dirk Gently, Adams breaks away from the
science-fiction/comedy genre a bit, creating a
"ghost-horror-detective-time travel-romantic comedy epic" as the
promotional copy on the hardback release claims. It does combine
several divergent plotlines that mostly come together at the end. The
main characters include a computer programmer, a mysterious detective,
and an eccentric professor along with an Electric Monk, and an ancient
ghost (as well as a more recent one). Part of the plot line of the book
is similar to the Doctor Who story "City Of Death" with the main
characters involved with an alien being from the past and using a time
travel machine to defeat it. The time travelling done in Dirk Gently
seems to be done by TARDIS. The professor in the book is Professor
Chronotis from the Doctor Who story Shada that was written by Douglas
Adams but was never completed. The setting of Cambridge, is also the
same. Overall, it is an enjoyable book, although a bit hard to follow
at times.
With the release of the HHG Companion book, even more links with Doctor
Who are made known. Neil Gaiman has done a good job chronicling the
history of the Hitchhiker's Guide along with the rest of Douglas Adams
career to date. HHG and Doctor who have been intertwined almost from
the beginning. After unsuccessful collaborations with Graham Chapman of
Monty Python, Adams convinced the BBC to produce a pilot episode of The
Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series. While waiting for a
decision to be made on going ahead with the series (all the BBC
executives were on summer holiday), he submitted a copy to the current
Doctor Who script editor, Robert Holmes, hoping to write a script for
the show. As it turned out, he got commisioned to write the rest of the
radio series as well as the Doctor Who story, The Pirate Planet both at
the same time, resulting in a rushed effort for both scripts.
The HHG Companion goes on to cover the second radio series, Adams's
stint as Doctor Who script editor, the HHG TV series, the aborted
attempts at a HHG movie, the computer games, the other HHG books, and
ends up with the completion of Dirk Gently. Throughout the book are
excerpts from the radio scripts and TV scripts that were left out. There
are also interviews with some of the people involved with the various
versions of HHG along with many quotes from Adams himself.
The Appendices contain additional trivia of interest. This includes a
reproduction of the original synopsis of HHG, a summary of the
differences between the variant texts of the series, and comments by
Adams on the characters in the series, revealing the people in real life
that inspired the characters.
Also included is part of a story outline for "Doctor Who and the
Krikketmen", which had been written for a possible film starring Tom
Baker. When the time came for the third book in the trilogy,"Life, the
Universe, and Everything", the basic plot from that outline was used
with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and the rest filling in for The Doctor in
defeating the Krikketmen. The HHG Companion makes for very good
reading, providing a lot of background on the entire Hitchhiker's Guide
phenomenon. It also goes behind-the-scenes on the TV, book, movie, and
computer industry in covering the various projects that Adams has been
involved in (and almost always late in delivering). The amount of
research work that Neil Gaiman has done shows in every chapter, making
it a must for any fan's bookshelf.
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