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Introduction and Background - Finding the Differences - Fit the Third - Fit the Fourth - Fit the Twelfth - Restoring the Lost Material - Credits

Episode 3 - Fit The Third

    
 
         
The two suns of the legendary lost planet of Magrathea. Like mountains of fire boiling into space. (I've seen it. It's rubbish.)
 

In Episode 3, the starship "Heart of Gold" arrives in orbit around the legendary lost planet of Magrathea. The protagonists are attacked by an ancient computer system, but effect an improbable escape. They land on the planet and prepare to step out onto the surface. The door opens, and then...

Scene missing!

What Changed?

A scene was deleted.

Missing Magrathea Scene (episode 3)
  
    << original version    Location: 16:08.742 - 17:47.077    Length: 1:38.334    
    >> CD version    Location: 16:08.742 - 16:31.721    Length: 0:22.979    
  

Approximately 75 seconds of material were edited here: these sound clips contain 10 seconds of audio at the beginning and end of the edited section to provide some context. The script of the missing scene is also available and I have provided some instructions for those wishing to restore the scene to a commercial CD release of HHGTTG.

History

The scene was deleted because of the backing music used within it. Most of the music in the first series of HHGTTG is commercial, taken from albums by Jean Michel Jarre, Ligeti, Terry Riley and various others. Adams explains (in the introduction to the script book) that:

I wanted Hitch-Hiker's to sound like a rock album. I wanted the voices and the effects and the music to be so seamlessly orchestrated as to create a coherent picture of a whole other world.
This sounds very exciting and Adams even attempts to explain what it means:
Though it was now ten years since Sergeant Pepper had revolutionised the way that people in the rock world thought about sound production, it seemed to me, listening to radio comedy at the time, that we still hadn't progressed much.
Adams had some idea about how he wanted each part of the script to sound, and for the surface of Magrathea, that would be Pink Floyd: specifically, the beginning of their classic album "Wish You Were Here". Perfect backing music for "an alien world, millions of light years from home". Adams cleared the inclusion of the piece with Pink Floyd, who just happened to be old friends of his.
    
 
         
The HHGTTG LP restores the missing scene with new music.
 

Alas, a gentleman's agreement is not a copyright licence, and the scene was cut for subsequent repeats and commercial releases.

However, the scene did not disappear entirely, because it reappears in a modified form on the HHGTTG record, where Marvin really does "hum like Pink Floyd" rather than hum exactly Pink Floyd. Like all of the other music featured on the record, it is an original composition by Tim Souster and Paddy Kingsland.

In my view, its presence on the LP is an admission that the producers of the show did not wish to cut it, particularly as other material had to be removed to fit on the limited medium of four LP sides. The running time of one side of an LP is usually between 22 and 25 minutes, compared to the 28-30 minute running time of a radio episode.

Onwards...


       
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