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

Currently these notes only include my notes and such like but there should be some of Matt's on here soon. So if this seems a bit self assured but it'll help us to get rid of all those things we've been dying to say.

EPISODE 1

Prologue
It's probably worth noting at thsi stage that Trap started off as a round robyn story started by Matt but after about episode 2 it was just him and I left behind.
Anyway, this section with the Supreme Dalek and explaining their plan was written by Matt to get us all going.

Ace's Grave
I originally contemplated having a Dalek rise from the grave or something like that but that may have spoilt some of the later revelations.

Dalek's Targetting
Now this was the first scene that I wrote. Sorry to inflict that upon you...

The Brigadier
I'm not sure who's idea it actually was to include the Brigadier but I'm glad we did. His part does tend to tail off towards the end but I still believe that some of the early scenes wouldn't have worked without him.

The Master
Now I always got the impression that this was the Ainley Master and so did Martin as far as I recall. I only mention this because I got the impression that some of the others may have thought him to be the Master from the NAs or even Delgado! Apologises if this leads to any confusion (it confused the hell out of me!).

Weird Link
Hang on, this doesn't make sense! Apologises, I shall have to sort this out and possibly intoduce Martin to a frying pan.

The Supreme Dalek-I wanted to give the Supreme Dalek a large part, I didnt feel that he ever got enough credit in the series. The scene where the Supreme is placed in a new casing was to explain that he has several, which which he changes over periods of time. I also wrote a lot of scenes with him thinking and meditating on recent events to make him seem more intelligent and cunning.

The Rani-Involving the Rani was Mike's idea, At first I wasnt to keen on the idea but I grew to like it.

Davros-I had in fact planned to include Davros my self, but I scrapped the idea, in the end he was included by Mike and proved to be a very good addition to the story.

Duplicates-There were an awful lot of duplicates in this story, andafter a while there was a little too many but they proved to be an essential part of the story after a while.

The Supreme Dalek- I agree with Martin that he deserved a bigger part than on the series. The only problem was the same one that Terry Nation realised, you can't have a Dalek making a huge speech. To this end we added in the Red Dalek to break up the dialogue a bit so that your poor man wasn't fried by trying to hear all these addresses in Dalek speech.

The Rani- I added in the Rani as a sort of irony within the story itself. By this time it had metamorphosised into a "how-many-old-characters-can-you-fit-into-one-post?" competition. So I stuck the Rani in their expecting people to write her off as soon as possible (as Martin did a couple of times). The irony is that she became one of the most serious characters in the plot, as opposed to Davros whow as supposed to be in it but towards the end ends up as a side kick and "handy boff" to the others and that was one of the few things that I felt let the plot down.

Duplicates- Totally with Matt on this one. I could just hear people typing "What?! You killed off my favourite character?! Ha ha! The joke's on you, 'cos they're only a duplicate! Raspberries all round!"

The Supreme Daleks aide-I felt that as ruler of the Daleks the Supreme Dalek should be surrounded by advisors, to this end I added a Red Dalek who was his personal aide, he turned up in the next four parts of the story and in Conspiracy as well.

Finale-I didnt know we were going to do a sequel but it appearedas though it s necessary, my original intention was to have the Master exterminated because the Daleks tired of him, and the Rani assasinate the Supreme Dalek, but again this never happened and the Dalek ship ended up being destroyed instead.

Cardiff- Now, I am Welsh. Yes, yes kill me later but I was going through a bit of a nationalist stage right about then so as I seemed to have control on where the squad landed I landed them slap bang in the middle of the Millenium Stadium. There were a couple of complaints that this was a bit unrealistic at the time but I merely pointed out "The world's a big place. If you find it so likley that they'll always attack London or the home counties then why is Cardiff so bad?"

The Davrites- One of my favourite creations. The idea between Matt and I was that Davros wouldn't spend all his time trying to retake control of his "supreme master race" because he's a level headed scientist. No, he'd create a new race, a better one.

Battle scenes- The battle scenes were added after comaplints (don't worry, some people liked it!) that they weren't getting the Dalek v UNIT fighting they wanted so I added in a scene witht he air force and the guy that actually complained added in a small scene with Yates and Benton.

Davros-With Trap 2 Davros was much more interesting, in Trap 1 he was merely a supporting character, but now he was much more complex and ruthless, much like the Davros of Genesis and Revelation of the Daleks. He also ended up having to ally himself with the Doctor, something we never thought he would ever do! but he did it anyway, and ended up in prison.

Deaths-The Supreme Dalek got pushed down a large shaft at the end of Trap 2, but a new clone of him was imedately activated back on Skaro.
The Master fell down down the generator shaft with the Supreme Dalek, how he survived we have no idea.
The Rani faked her death and got away, since she was basically our arch villain in Trap 2(along wth Davros) she was made a very interesting and cunning character.

The Rani- I'd forgotten to mention her in my last post of thoughts. I have to admit I'd actually forgotten about her until towards the end of the episode so we immediately tried to give her an important part to make it look as if we'd meant it to happen all along...

The Thals-This seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I look at it with utter loathing and pure disgust.

The Celebration-I wrote the celebration scene to round everything off, everyone was happy, an invasion had been repelled, the world had been saved. I always wondered why they didnt have something like this in the series.

Rasputaltron-Rasputaltron is my favourite creation. He was the true villain in Trap of the Daleks(parts 3-5). Rasputaltron is quite a sick and evil person, his grim appearance as a dark robed skeleton added to his menace. I wanted him to be the ultimate villain, the biggest menace the Doctor had ever faced. He is very cunning having brought about an alliance which will make him ruler of the universe, which he then intends to rule as an Emperor. He also holds quite a sick side to his character, he decieves everyone apart from his servant Barok, and has an obsession with Princess Astra, he ruthlessly kills Zigrosi for no reason other than pleasure and he destroys millions of lives throughout the story.

Rasputaltron- This is probably my favourite story for Rasputaltron as he still holds some menace. The reason is simple, it is that he still holds some of his menace which starts to slip in his next story, Chekawowe, and by his most recent story, Conspiracy, has become one of the good guys. In this story he is probably my favourite of all the villains. He's everything a good Who villain should be; ruthless, meglomanic and more than slightly camp!

Barok- Barok is an interesting character but wouldn't really have worked as a bad guy in his own right, he had to be Rasputaltron lacky. I've always wondered Martin, what species is Barok exactly?

Zigrosi- Zigrosi is probably my favourite character from this story (that's why it's part of my nickname). He's an old friend of the Doctor's but unlike all the others who are professors or turned bad he's still good but still different to the Doctor. I created a series of notes on Castellan Zigrosi that I may add on here at a later point.

Tor Garane-Tor Garane was one of my favourite characters in this story, he was an evil buisness man similar to Sil, I never described him in the story, but I imagined him as a sort of reptillian creature wearing long blue robes. I thought that he had good interaction with Sil and the Supreme Dalek, and I'm planning to give him a further appearance in a future story...

Barok species-Barok was a sort of Bat like creature, I dont really know what species he is, but he is small, since he sits on Rasputaltron's shoulder a lot of the time, but not so small he cannot hold a weapon.

Tor Gareen- I don't think I actually wrote any scenes with Tor in but looking back I wish I had. He was a good character with some interesting ideas that were never fully exploited.

Barok species- Why don't we just call him somehting like a... Smallbatlikecreature?

Sil-Sil was always one of my favourite characters in the series. In Trap of the Daleks I think I captured his character well, since I was the only one who wrote any of the scenes with him in.

Flavia-Flavia was a character who should have appeared more than once in the series, since she became President in the Five Doctors. In the series she appeared to be very pleasent, but as the old saying goes "Absolute power corrupts absolutely!" and Flavia has become corrupt and power hungry.

Karlton-I really liked Karlton in the Daleks master Plan and wished he would have been in it more, so I decided to make him a traitor, karlton was a man who deserved his come uppance and that was exactly what he got, as you'll see in Trap 4.

Trap of the Daleks.
Guest Cast-Nicholas Courtney(Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart), Anthony Ainley(The Master), Terry molloy(Davros), Kate O'Mara(The Rani), Angela Bruce(Brigadier Winifred Bambera), Hugh Spight(Supreme Dalek), John Scott Martin(Supreme Daleks aide),

Rik Mayall (Zigrosi 12) Richard E Grant (Zigrsoi 13) Dinah Sheridan (President Flavia) Erik Chitty (Co-ordinator Engin) and Martin Penny as the voice of Rasputaltron