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

Kelli, since the tape belongs to my daughters, it will almost definitely be lying around the house.

Just checking...

I think you're looking at yer basic travelogue hero here.

"My work here is done" is pretty much Lone Ranger-ish but I reckon you'll find it's like "Elementary My Dear Watson" and "Beam Me Up, Scotty" in that it's attributed to a character but was never actually said by them.

I think you're looking at either US serialised movies or early TV shows for the answer, and it dovetails rather nicely with "Hi-Ho Silver - awaaaaay!"

I have indeed been using that phrase on me mail for at least a year, before that it has been my catchphrase since my brother coined it of me circa 1979. I know it was far from original back then. My friends bought me my own tequilla shot Glass with it on (or maybe I bought it myself) a few Christmasses back to add to the collection.
it just kinda fits.

anyway, not all phrases have a quantifable source, i think this is true of this one. It has just grown as a phrase over the development of civilization. The aforementioned grave is a possible starting point, but then he was obviously only repeating the lnguage of his ime. Searching for its first use in a film is equally misleading as it will only be repeating a phrase. It's like trying to find who first said, 'what are you drinking mate?' or 'mines a pint' I don't think there will ever be a single first use. It grew of its own making over time.

or maybe I'm lying and I first used it in a previous incarnation.

The only real fact is that it is a 'bumper sticker truism'. put on T shirts and posters for sad little corporate monkeys like me to buy. It's not Oscar Wilde or Mae West after all guys n grrlz

that's my two shiney gold earrings worth anywho Guvnar

My spousal unit and I were discussing this last night in a restaurant and she suggested that the 'Chaos, panic, disorder, My work here is done' might have also found a refuge in the vocabulary of the Dr. Smith character on the 'Lost In Space' TV programme.

Thought it was worth a mention.

I still think it's from the Epic of Gilgamesh....

Hmmmmmm...Oscar Wilde and Mae West in the same sentence. That would make an interesting play... 'Oscar, Mae, or...weiners...' and all-slinging, all-prancing extravaganza of over-acting, overbites and overbearing arrogance! One night only, while the audience's patience lasts!
Starring Girard Depardieux and Whoopi Goldberg!

I think that it _was_ a media-coined phrase rather than an organically-developed one. It's not the sort of thing one says unless in an over-dramatic sense. I think it is probably from a film or, at the earliest, a book.

Surely it comes either from Westerns or from SF?

I certainly told my soon-to-be-erstwhile colleagues 'My work on your planet is done' when I was finishing a particularly intense contract. There had been much chaos, panic and disorder, and was considerably less by the time we had finished.

an intergalactic super-heroine called Ben

I think it was The Lone Ranger What said it.At least some American TV hero said it,somewhere in my dim and very dusty memory something is stirring.

Incog.

The use of "done" here to mean "finished" is definitely an Americanism, so it is either American or archaic English. Tolkien sprung to mind, as he used archaic English regularly, but the only person who fit the bill was Gandalf, and in fact Gandalf said very little at the end of The Lord of the Rings, and he didn't say this phrase. So it was very likely some American that said it.

No luck with Mary Poppins then Gnomon?

I didn't have a chance to watch the whole of Mary Poppins. The last thing she seems to have said to the children was "spit spot", but it is possible that she said "my work here is done" in an earlier scene.

Incognitas raises another question, albeit unwittingly. Where does the "something is stirring" quote come from?

*RTR*

Hmm Mary Poppins seems relavant as its parodied in the Sherry Bobbins episode of the simpsons.
Tolkein and Gandalf - try the Hobbit rather than LOTR.

I seem to remember a bit at the end of Mary Poppins when she talks to the parrot on the end of her umbrella. I know it sounds like I was on something at the time, but could it have been then?

It was said by Pete's dragon, in the 1977 Disney film "Pete's Dragon".

Oooh. Or was it what'sername from Bedknobs and Broomsticks?

Bill Muray does say it - i think in Groundhog Day or the Christmas one.

It was famously the text of George Eastman's suicide note back in the thirties.

"The christmas one"

Scrooged?

Pete's Dragon didn't talk. Well, he did, but only Pete could understand him.
I don't *think* Mary Poppins said it, but it might have come up in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.