Dirk Gently

[tealin]

I have heard, more than once, that while it is less well-known, some people like Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency better than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I DO!

My goodness I do. Oh yes.

I might never have read it, because I'm very bad at making a point to hunt down something someone might have mentioned to me once, but luckily Radio 4 is airing a radio play of it* which I have been enjoying immensely – helped, probably, by my not having read the book and therefore not having a mental movie to compare it to. Helped too, doubtless, by listening excessively to Shada, so I know Professor Chronotis' secret and can revel in crossover geekery, subtext, and dramatic irony. Hee! And it's very Pratchetty. Almost suspiciously so, sometimes. Makes me wonder how much of that was in the book and how much has been brought to it by the production... Not that finding influences is a bad thing, necessarily. Just ... interesting.

This is where I would post a link, but we're on Episode 5 now; if you hadn't been listening, you'd have no idea what's going on, and if you had, you'd know where to find it. Nevertheless, feel free to have a poke around the serial's Official Site.

*What other kind of play would they air, I wonder?

Comments

[trashcanbaby.livejournal.com]

I love love love Dirk Gently.

[brendanm720.livejournal.com]

[snerk]

Ah, Dirk Gently...

I need to read those again. I just finished the Salmon of Doubt not too long ago, and they definitely bear reading more than once.

As for Professor Chronotis... I know what his secret is.

A point of trivia: It's rather interesting that Douglas Adams actually recycled the story from an old Doctor Who episode that he was working on that never got made... :D

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

If you mean Shada, I don't think he recycled the story quite so much as a principal character and some ideas, but yes. It did get kind of made, only a strike interrupted it, and apparently you can get a DVD of the extant footage linked by narration from Tom Baker, but I haven't seen it because of the aforementioned hunting down thing. I have listened to the radio play about fifty times, though. I think it can still be found somewhere in the labyrinth of the BBC's Doctor Who Radio Adventures pages but I'm not wandering through there at this hour. Shada has the Professor's secret, and the true nature of his office, and even several of the same lines. The guy who plays him in Dirk Gently played the villain in Shada and I suspect he's trying to bring in a lot of how Prof. Chronotis was played in the latter, which makes for even more amusing continuity.

It's just a reflection of the fundamental interconnected holistic nature of fiction. :D

[brendanm720.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware that they'd made a radio play from the plot of Shada...

[snerk]

It's just a reflection of the fundamental interconnected holistic nature of fiction.

[snerks again]

[frabjous-mimes.livejournal.com]

I loved Dirk Gently! Not as much as HHGTG, because it was much tougher for me to get through, but it has definite readability. The horse bits were immensely Pratchetty to me.

[mollierms.livejournal.com]

Have you read/heard "Starship Titanic?" Another great find of Douglass Adams'. I love anything and everything written by him. I used to have a long commute and I listened to "Starship Titanic." Which was pretty dangerous, since it made me laugh so hard I would cry.

Interconnectedness

[raisegrate.livejournal.com]

See, now you like to many of the same things I do. It's getting spooky.
Dirk Gently is tied with Going Postal as my favorite book of all time.

If you're enjoying this Radio Play, then you NEED to read the book. The play is good, but a ton of Dirk's humor comes from the narration and descriptions, which are hard to do on radio. I'm quite enjoying this radio adaptation, (the cast is terrific!) but it has managed to take a fairly convoluted story, and make it even more confusing (flashbacks for no apparent reason, and Dirk being able to figure out alot of things that he shouldn't) I'm a fan, so of course I'm nitpicking it to death.

I saw Dirk as a stage play in LA about a year ago, they did a great job. They had a screen for the that the projected the background on to (easy sets) so they also had some space ship animation, and all of Gordon Way was on tape, so he could be transparent and ghostly. (after the intermission, they showed a quick 'recap of the story for people who weren't paying attention', but then after that the did the 'recap for Americans' which was all zooming titles, explosions, and ended with Dirk, Richard & Michael wearing moustaches and all pointing machine guns at each other. It was hysterical (I guess you had to be there.) They guy who played Michael looked exactly like Alan Rickman, if Alan Rickman had been shoved down a flight of stairs (and I mean that in the nicest possible way)

Trivia: Dirk also shares some plot points and characters from Douglas Adams Doctor Who story Shada, as well has his Doctor Who story The City of Death (of the wonderful John Cleese cameo fame)

I spent quite a while trying to get the rights to produce my own adaptation of Dirk as a graphic novel:
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k39/raisegrate/dirk64.jpg?t=1194016096 (Beware! Spoilers!)

Can't wait to hear The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (Dirk Gently #2, now with 20% more Norse Gods!) and how on earth are they going to do Salmon of Doubt?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a fantastic stage production ... very much in the spirit of the thing.

See, I don't mind the convoluted and confusing nature of the radio play, because it's entertaining enough on the surface to keep me interested (unlike their Dracula play which just baffled me from the first), but the various contortions of the plot line will make subsequent listenings all the more rewarding. I hope to get quite a few out of this series, especially because we don't get internet radio at work, podcasts only go so far, and I don't get much done when I'm bored. Life is tough!

Cute comic page!

Isn't Salmon of Doubt just a collection of what was found on Adams' computer after he died?

[raisegrate.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the the convoluted nature of the radio play either, it's just convoluted in an entirely different way than the novel. You should see if your library can get the audio book version of DG read by Douglas Adams. It's the best. (My library found it for me, and they're almost definately larger than yours, mine being a single medium sized room. Or you can probably obtain in pseudo-legally online, not that I'm advocating this)

Have you heard any of the Terry Pratchett Radio Plays? I know they've done several.

The Salmon of Doubt is a collection of misc Douglas Adams writings, including the first several chapters of a new Dirk Gently story called (get this) the Salmon of Doubt. They've announced they're turning SoD into a full radio play, despite the fact that most of the plot hasn't been written.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I have heard nearly all if not all the Pratchett radio plays ... they're okay. Story-wise they're adapted quite well, and the casting is generally good (even if Andy Hamilton didn't play Om), but they are responsible for my keener appreciation of the timing and delivery written in to his dialogue and confusion at how anyone could misinterpret it.

[raisegrate.livejournal.com]

I've only heard Amazing Maurice. (They pronounce it Marr-iss, but I always thought it was More-eece?) I don't remember much about it, but I remember liking it. Plus, David Tennant was Dangerous Beans, so it's gotta be good.

BBC's internet radio player doesn't work on my computer, so I'm never as in the know on these things as I'd like to be.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Ahh, that's by far the best one ... more like a radio movie than a play and full of good character acting. It actually made me like the book which I had been rather disappointed with before. I think Maurice is generally pronounced Morris in the UK (mor-EES being more of a French thing); that's not the first context in which I've heard that.

No radio player?! Have you tried re-installing RealPlayer?

[raisegrate.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've tried everything I can think of. I have a mac, and live in the US, so I guess according to the BBC, that's 2 strikes against me. It plays in real player, but it's all garbled, with a pause every second. Very strange. It sounds like they're speaking an alien language. My friend is a professional computer repair man, and even he can't make it work.

Glad to know the others TP radio plays aren't as good, I'll won't spend as much time looking for them.

I have a friend named Maurice pronounced Mor-EEs, which is I think the standard pronunciation 'round these parts. If you want to be Marr-iss, you have to spell it Morris.

[virusq.livejournal.com]

I love Dirk Gently! ... I wouldn't compare it to Hitchhiker's Guide, though. It's just a completely different beast. o.o

[tony-cliff.livejournal.com]

Ohh, yeah. I stumbled onto this on episode 3. I think I read it one time a long long time ago. It's funnier now.

It has Billy Boyd in it, too! That was weird.

[michiness.livejournal.com]

Yay, Dirk Gently! The Great Dark Tea Time of the Soul is excellent, once you've finished Holisitic.

[truetitipudlian.livejournal.com]

You know I've always rather Richard Macduff as being played by a 20 years younger Hugh Laurie. Now that I look at that site, Billy Boyd as Richard has suddenly ambushed my mental image, clubbed it into submission, and has in good Disney style and has packed it into a trunk and sent it it to Timbuktu.

[sp34k.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Holistic Detective Agency in ages, but I remember being immensely confused and pleased about the whole thing.

[gmonkey42.livejournal.com]

I love Dirk Gently. I think it's better than Hitchhiker's but only by a little bit, because Hitchhiker's is damn near perfect.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__lys_fleurx__/]

the second Dirk gently's "Long dark tea time of the soul" sounds good, but it wasn't. but the First was pretty amazing!

[wondrousstrange.livejournal.com]

Aaah! I wish you had posted this sooner. I LOVE Dirk Gently. That book is just genius. Time Travel + Coleridge+ Bach+ SHADA!

"You have a time machine and you use it for watching television?"

[flamingbentley.livejournal.com]

AHH I DON'T BELIEVE I MISSED THE RADIO PRODUCTION. i remember excitedly fangirling about it when i first heard it was being made. D:

excuse me while i go try and invent a time machine cry in a corner now.

[browncoat.livejournal.com]

I was surprised and delighted to find Dirk Gently had been dramatized by the Beeb. Harry Enfield is great as Dirk Gently, he and Billy Boyd have a wicked chemistry.