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

[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]