h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I once had my thoughts on Mr Benn published in SFX. I'll see if I can find the email with it all in.

But, for now, it revolved around the idea that Mr Benn visits parallel (or maybe parabolic) universes when he steps through the dressing-up room door. Parabolic because the changes that he instigates in the other worlds have visible effects in his origin world.

Also, that the shopkeeper, with his fez - an obvious indication of magician status - is a dimension shifting polymorph. That is to say, that in Benn's adventures he often befriends some individual who guides and assists him in that other world. This individual, I maintain, is the manifestation in that world of the shopkeeper, in the same manner the a moutashoed porty fellow is his manifestation in the origin world. They are all aspects for the same personality.


Geggs

Mr Benn was the inspiration for Quantum Leap, I'm sure. He and Sam both leap into situations where the costume dictates his adventure; they both work hard to make those situations better; and they're both helped out by a man who appears and disappears, seemingly at will.

Though this all falls down when we remember that Sam never helped a zoo-full of animals heard people into their cages... and Mr Benn never leaped into the body of a stripper.

Costumes we might have liked the shopkeeper to hand to Mr Benn, for a giggle:

* Nightclub stripper

* Giant hotdog, to hand out leaflets for a fast-food eatery.

* Golf Sale promoter

* Call-centre worker, in Delhi

* Street corner evangelist

* Sewage worker

* MI5 'spook'

* h2g2 Moderator

... actually no, that's just cruel

You know, that zoo episoide of Benn's was a central plank of my argument for parabolic, rather than parallel, universes in the stories.

As I'm sure you recall, before Benn enters the shop you see a caged bird and leashed animals as Benn walks down the road. In his adventure through the door of the shop, he is a zoo keeper that releases all the animals, and upon his return, the pets are off their leashes and the birdshas been realeased from it's cage.

Hence, Benn's adventure had a real effect on his base reality. So the parabolic world that he entered crossed base reality (or Earth1) at the point at which he shifted into it, moved alway from Earth1 (though still manitaining logical links to it), and finally crossed Earth1 again at the point where Benn returns to normality, with the changes that Benn implimented in the parabolic world echoed, in some way, back on Earth1.

I maintain that this all makes sense.


Geggs

It gives me a nosebleed just thinking about it.