  Then and now
It's twenty-five years since the cast last inhabited these characters, and ten years since I first thought about how to approach the stories. In this digital age the post-production issues differ for us than when Geoffrey Perkins, Alick Hale-Munro, Paddy Kingsland et al made the two original - and brilliant - series.
For a start the raw material doesn't have to go off to the Radiophonic Workshop to be tweaked up, and speeches don't have to be cut together from different sessions. In fact there are situations where I have gone back to traditional ways of recording as much 'live' as possible in the studio in order to get the best performances from the actors - and to make it more fun for them.
For example Marvin: we'd actually have the Marvin voice - with electronic treatment - being played back to the other cast 'live' through a loudspeaker on a stick, so that Stephen Moore could 'be' Marvin but could also move around the studio space with the other actors, which is a terrific bit of interaction.
Actors can play off each other much better then - you get a quicker and more realistic result. We had Ken Humphrey, a very able effects operator in the studio, who did a lot of great physical work, so we tried to get as much of a sense of the movement of air (and bodies through it) "in-the-camera" as possible.  Putting things in order
People are asking how we have 'solved' the problem of the second original radio serial finishing in a different place to The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe novel, the TV series, and Life The Universe And Everything. The thing is that for Douglas this wasn't a problem! He had a sort of re-ordering when he did the TV adaptation and the novelisations.
At first I thought it might put us in a awkward position, but when I started work I listened again - in awe - to the first two radio series - and realised that in Series Two the first of the established characters that appears is Zaphod Beeblebrox. He has stolen away on a freighter bound for the planet where the Hitchhikers Guide headquarters is. So the listener enters the series via Zaphod's perception of things; it's very much from his point of view.
Now remember that Trillian never appears in Radio Series Two at all, and although Zaphod would insist he's had this adventure, she could not be expected to remember it, and things begin not to add up - unless you are in a Universe created by Douglas.
Suppose the Series Two we have experienced is a reality filtered by Zaphod's imagination, including his visit to a kind of virtual reality universe created by a character called Zarniwoop in a Hitchhiker building office. Then it can be reasonably suggested there's no reason to think we are getting the same version of reality we got in Series One - especially filtered through a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster or six!
So everything in Series Two - including the climax where Arthur supposedly steals the Heart of Gold, leaving Zaphod and Ford Prefect stranded with the Man in the Shack, who's actually The Supreme Being - all of this could be in Zaphod's imagination!
 The here and now
At the end of the day, this brings the story in the new series firmly back to the two survivors of the Destruction of Earth - Arthur Dent and Tricia McMillan, whom we know as Trillian. It's very much a crossroads for all the original characters' stories: certain favourites don't proceed beyond this point and others change direction, particularly Trillian who becomes a lot more forceful.
It's very interesting because the strands come back together, and begin to fill in the blanks. For example, we find out why the bowl of petunias says, "Oh, no. Not again."
Douglas was beginning to close a lot of loops here - and opening newer and more ambitious ones which will be resolved in the next series...
Dirk Maggs' biography
Bruce Hyman's report
Dirk & Bruce's Production Diary
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