The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase (BBC Audiobooks) [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Each cd phase must be reviewed on its own merits and the Teriary Phase, while having many pluses, was a cheat to lovers of the Secondary Phase. The Quandary Phase takes the fourth and aruably weakest of Adams' HH novels and does a fairly accurate job of putting into HH's original medium -- radio. It, too, has many pluses and some minues.

The pluses are obvious. All the surviving cast (even the main announcer, with his humorous after-show comments) are brought back to their original roles. Guest spots also include Sandra Dickinson and David Dixon, tv's Trillian and Ford Prefect. This is a nice touch. The best decision the producers made is to be confrontation about HH's shakey past rather than covering it up.

The loss of Peter Jones, as in the Tertiary Phases, is an almost insuperable obstacle. Nice as it is to hear Simon and Mark and Geoffrey and Susan and Stephen, as in the Teriary Phase the Quandary Phase "Guide" sounds more like an narrator than an electronic book. And a narrator he is, as someone made the peculiar decision to broadcast gobs of Adams' narrative -- that was written for a book medium rather than radio medium. Has no one there ever heard a dramatization of a book before? These chunks of narrative slow the pace and are often too much to digest.

The biggest problem is that, though it's a sweet story, it simply isn't funny. The Teriary Phase started out well with plenty of laughs; but the entire planet Krikett sequence was tiresome. I have listened to First and Second Phase HH episodes on tape for 20 years and never tire of them; I wearied of some of the Tertiary Phase programs first time through. The same problem plagues the Quandary Phase. Even when something amusing or quirky is happening it doesn't come across as either witty or funny.

Part of this problem is discovered by a simple comparion between the first two phases and the next two. There were many voices in the Primary and Secondary Phases, and every one of them was amusing, either with its timbre, its timing or its odd take on emotions. Hig Hurtenflurst, Lintilla, Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox IV, Poodoo, Roosta, all the Frogstar people, etc. were either funny or, at least, droll no matter how angry, hurt, or evil they were.

Valentine Dyall, David Tate, Richard Vernon and Richard Goolden are gone, but are they forgotten? Stephen Fry certainly does a good job with his role in the Quandary Phase (it might've come right out of the old series) but why give a plum part like Wonko the Sane to Christian Slater (who played it cloyingly straight)? David Dixon's guest part, for another instance, is merely annoying, when an odd new spin might easily have been put on his character to make him humorously flummoed at the disappearance of the dolphins, rather than hurt, as if it was his own selfish personal loss. Jane Horrocks seems like an imspired choice for Fenchurch, but there's nothing at all interesting about her voice, though her character has some intriguing quirks . . . (not to reveal secrets). None of the Earth voices are in the least interesting, and the American voices are the most lifeless, if lifelessness has degrees.

Finally, even when something might have been amusing, the music drags it down. The music may be good in itself, I don't know; but for light entertainment it's downbeat and depressing and plays over too much of the talk. And since neither the FX nor the dialogue is as snappy or well-timed as the first couple of phases, there is little to laugh or even smirk at here. It might easily be merely a sweet little romantic serio-drama, little differentiated from the herd, with only a few moments like "Take me to your lizard" to justify the HH imprimatur.

For the HH completist, it is a must-buy. And it's a bridge to the quintessential phase (which I'm listening to over the air and which appears to be making an attempt at putting everything together. My review for the Quintessential Phase will come when the broadcasts all are over.)

Perhaps the conditions in the old days were more appropriate to comedy. In the Secondary Phase they were all working at a break-down pace, trying to write and record and FX this unique series to get it in the can in time for broadcast (covered in an extras cd in "The Complete Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy"). Also, in the '70s, they may have had the feeling they were doing something slightly renegade. After twenty-five years, HH is now a calcified part of the establishment.