Don't Panic ! , (07)

Recap, last weeks final episode of the primairy phase, Fit 6

The episode opens with the main characters on the black ship. Soon, they receive a transmission from the second-in-command of the battle fleet, who makes a report to Zaphod, believing him to be the Admiral. This is considered confusing as Zaphod was just presumed to be the Admiral, despite bearing no resemblance to the second-in-command, who looked like a leopard.
Shortly afterward, they receive another transmission, this time with Trillian in the chair. The second-in-command, who now looks like a shoebox, assumes that Trillian is the Admiral.They look up the name "Haggunenon", spoken by the second-in-command, in the Guide, and discover that they are a race of xenophobic shape-shifters. They realise that the Admiral is in fact on the ship, but had shapeshifted. It becomes a "carbon copy" of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. The group split up, Arthur and Ford taking one escape capsule and Zaphod and Trillian attempting to take another.

Arthur notices that the other escape capsule isn't escaping, and presses a button in his escape capsule that ends up teleporting him and Ford to a strange spaceship. Meanwhile, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin are all eaten by copy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, with Marvin's leg coming off in the process, and Zaphod's second head is revealed to know French (via an ad-lib by Mark Wing-Davey). This is the last appearance of the character of Trillian until the Tertiary Phase.The spaceship to which Ford and Arthur have teleported, marked as "Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B" is filled with bodies, such as frozen telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, and advertising account executives. Whilst inspecting the bodies, they are captured by Number Two, the third-in-command of the ship, who takes them to the bridge. Here, they meet the Captain (who is taking a bath in a large bathtub in the bridge, and has been for the last some years). He reluctantly grants permission to Number Two to interrogate Arthur and Ford, and asks him to find out what they want to drink.

Conversing with the Captain, they discover that the bodies are not, as they believed, dead, but frozen. They are intending to colonize another planet, because their original planet was "doomed". The "A Ark" was supposed to contain leaders, the "C Ark" to contain workers, and the "B Ark" to contain middle-men. It becomes apparent that the stories of impending doom were nonsense, and the A Ark and C Ark were never launched. The story resumes some months later, with a meeting of the Colonization Committee. Reports to the Committee include an update on the development of the wheel (it is unclear what colour it should be), and a documentary about the native cave-men of the planet, who have started to die out since the arrival of the Golgafrinchams.

Ford explains that they had done some research on the planet, and that it will last only two million years (but not why - because it is the pre-history of the Earth, and is thus due to be destroyed by the Vogons in two million years time). Arthur attempts to teach the cave-men Scrabble, in order to try to stop the Golgafrinchams supplanting them. The cave-man spells out "FORTY TWO" on the scrabble board, and Ford and Arthur realise that the program must have gone wrong because of the arrival of the Golgafrinchams. They decide to use the same technique (of choosing scrabble letters) randomly to find out what the question in Arthur's brainwave patterns is, although it might be wrong anyway. The question in his brain is revealed as "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE". The episode ends as they decide to rejoin the Golgafrincham colony, and lament the inevitable eventual destruction of the Earth. The regular ending music is replaced with "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. (source wiki)

1996 CD cover "The Secondary Phase." 



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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 (later retitled "The Secondary Phase") were commissioned in May 1979.

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 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."

THHGTTG - Fit 07 (19mb)


1.01 - There Is A Theory
1.02 - Hitchhiking, What Do They Know?
1.03 - I've Recovered
1.04 - It Is Of Course Perfectly Natural
1.05 - There Must Be Some Way
1.06 - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
1.07 - Thanks For The Ride, Guys
1.08 - Several Hours Later
1.09 - Trillian Also Effected A Fortuitous Escape
1.10 - Modern Elevators Are Starange And Complex Entities
1.11 - The Future I Was So Worried About

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