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

I count episode 10-12 of the radio series as my favourite 'moment', since they were largely cut out of the books. The shoe event horizon, the Lintilla's, Belgium... Lost classics!

I quite agree. The last 3 episodes are the best out of all of them. My favourite quote is from Arthur: "Let's all go mad, shall we?"

Deus Ex Machina

Yes the Shoe Event Horizon was excellent making it's point about our own automobile centric society with such devilish satire.

I don't think that was really the intention, as I recall from the scripts book footnotes, it was just DNA had had a really bad shopping trip for shoes, came home and wrote it to get back at all the shoe shops selling crap shoes.

CH

I'm fond of these episodes too - they've a slightly different feel to the others. Though it was years after I heard the first 9 episodes before I heard these - for some reason I didn't have a copy of these last 3 (and couldn't afford to buy the tapes).

The last three are definitely very good.

I especially love the Ruler of the Universe and how philosophical he is.

See the long quote at the bottom of A986231.

Perhaps I just read into it what rings true to me. But taken in context with Ford Prefect having mistaken the automobile as the dominant species when he first arrived on earth (hence the name to "blend in") I think DNA did have some objections to the extent which the car has invaded human society. On the other hand he may have needed a funny "bit" to complete a script and simply used the first thing that came to mind.

Now I am at home with trusted scripts in front of me

DNA Quote "Shoes this was written in rage, after spending three days, three days trying to buy a pair of shoees in central London. Nothing special, just an ordinary pair of shoes. You cannot hurl a brick in Oxford Street without hitting half a dozen shoe shops, and after three dyas, three days, that is exactly what I wanted to do. Can you buy a pair of shoes in them? No. Shop after shop, all virtually next door to each other, carried exactly the same range, and were all out of stock of exactly the same styles and sizeds. Who organizes this? Has he been caught yet? I must stop or I will start ranting and sounding like John Osbourne"

So there you go, apparently DNA spent 3 days looking for shoes

CH

My personal favourite part is Lintilla explaining things to Arthur:

Lintilla: "We're clones."
Arthur: "Ah, I've heard of that. You mean once there was one of you and then exact replicas were made and now there are three of you."
Lintilla: "Yes, except that there are now nearly five hundred and sixty-eight thousand million of us."
Arthur: "That's rather a lot."

The Shoe Event Horizon bit wasn't actually cut out of the book, it's just that it's more of a feature in the radio series.

I know - But it deserves three full episodes of exploration, not a brief aside on the Frogstar.