The first radio series of Hitchhiker was utterly marvellous, and I believe will stand up in history as the 20th century's equivalent of 'Alice in Wonderland'. The second series never achieved the same zenith, for several reasons:1. It was very much a follow-on to the first series, and thus it could never hope to be as devestatingly original.
2. Although there are one or two grand ideas in the second series -- such as the Platonic concept of a disinterested philosopher actually running the Universe, and Zaphod colluding with psychiatrists to destroy the Earth -- these don't permeate the whole series in the same way that the Earth-as-ultimate-computer idea held almost everything together in the first series.
3. In fact, apart from Zaphod feeling he must find Zarniwoop, our heroes wander fairly aimlessly through the second series, largely reacting to circumstances and just trying to survive.
4. The absence of Trillian means that there is no female protagonist until the three Lintillas arrive in episode 5. Quite apart from the benefit of a female perspective -- if Douglas was capable of writing from one -- a female voice gave additional colour to the first series. Until you've heard a couple of episodes, it can at times be hard to distinguish between the voices of Mark Wing-Davey, Geoff McGivern, and at times, even Simon Jones.
5. One of the many stars of the first series was the background music, which provided a wonderful selection of much of the best 'space' music of the 1970s -- Stomu Yamash'ta, Patrick Moraz, Terry Riley etc. In the second series -- perhaps for reasons of expense -- we get Paddy Kingsland's original music, which is nice enough, but was never going to win any awards or achieve commercial success.
6. Douglas Adams seemed to have used up many of his best philosophical ideas in the first series. At times you definitely feel that Peter Jones, as the Book, has been given a second-rate selection of observations for the second series. The second series contained one or two of Douglas's gripes about the late 70s -- e.g. the noisiness of discos, and the surplus of shoe shops on the high street -- but one wonders whether it was really worth making them a major theme of a sci-fi story.
7. The decision to broadcast episodes 8 to 12 on Monday to Friday of the same week was a mistake. It was just to much to take in so quickly. Perhaps the production team were unaware how the first series became such a cult: university students (particularly in Cambridge) were taping each episode, and very quickly copies of copies of copies of the original broadcast were circulating around the colleges. You really needed to hear each episode at least three times to begin to appreciate all that had been put into it. With episodes coming every night, as they did in the second series, you never stood a chance of getting that familiar before the next episode arrived.
OK, that's all the negative criticism. There are many reasons for liking the second series almost as much as the first series. Stephen Moore is fantastically versatile here -- e.g. as Marvin, as the pupil, and as the disinterested philosopher -- and his achievement really deserved to be compared with Alec Guinness in 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'.
