Picking up where the previous installment left off, the fourth episode of the six-part "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" delivers the goods on why the Earth's destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass has caused such a fuss for a pair of white mice who, to Earthling Arthur Dent's (Simon Jones) ongoing consternation, are the most intelligent beings on his erstwhile home planet, about which the mice had such high expectations--and while their hopes are not completely dashed, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Slartibartfast (Richard Vernon) is the bearer of momentous revelations as he and Arthur take center stage in this exposition-soaked chapter of Douglas Adams's expansive, expressive, exhaustive science-fiction opus enhanced by an extended vignette centered on Deep Thought (voiced by Valentine Dyall), a formidable supercomputer engaged by the mice--actually, they are pan-dimensional beings who only manifest themselves as furry little rodents in our dimension--to determine the Big Answer to the Big Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Cut to the vignette that sees Fook (Timothy Davies) and Lunkwill (Antony Carrick) approach Deep Thought to direct it to find that answer, which Deep Thought replies it can do but it will take some time to run the program--try seven and a half million years.
Just then their repartee is interrupted by philosophers Vroomfondel (Charles McKeown) and Majikthise (David Leland), representing the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and Other Professional Thinking Persons, who demand that Deep Thought be prohibited from trying to formulate the answer since that would put them and other prognosticators out of a job. Deep Thought notes that since it will take some time to run the program, they all could ride a public gravy train speculating about what the answer might be, to which Majikthise mutters appreciatively, "Bloody hell. Now that's what I call thinking."
(The philosophers' protest about labor infringement has its roots in frequent 1970s labor disputes, particularly the 1978-1979 "Winter of Discontent," that affected Britain in various ways including at the BBC, which Douglas Adams, working on both "Hitchhiker's" and "Doctor Who," could have hardly not noticed. Unfortunately, this vignette omits an exchange from other "Hitchhiker's" media in which the philosophers threaten to go on strike if Deep Thought runs its program, to which the retort is, "Who is that going to inconvenience?")
Fast-forward seven and a half million years, and Deep Thought produces its answer, which does not please the descendants of Fook and Lunkwill; however, Deep Thought chides them for not understanding the question. When they ask it if it can tell them the question, Deep Thought replies that it can't but it will design the computer that can tell them the question.
That computer, immense orders of magnitude greater than Deep Thought, turns out to be the Earth, and of course it takes millions of years to formulate the Question to the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything; the Earth was five minutes from delivering that Question when the Earth was demolished to make way for a hyperspace--
--Yes, it's back to the drawing board. Slartibartfast and the Magratheans had been awoken from their five-million-year slumber to build the Earth Mk. II. However, when he and Arthur join Ford Prefect (David Dixon), Zaphod Beeblebrox (Mark Wing-Davey), Trillian (Sandra Dickinson), and Benjie Mouse and Frankie Mouse (Themselves), Arthur discovers that the mice want to make him an offer that could cause him to lose his mind if he accepts it.
Although this episode is a galactic exposition dump, the Deep Thought interludes and the natural rapport Simon Jones and Richard Vernon established in the previous episode make for an engrossing narrative that doesn't leave the others much to do until the closing moments, which, while producing an explosive cliffhanger, feels both pasted-in and hackneyed. The two policemen in the final scene, "Bang Bang" (Marc Smith) and "Shooty" (Matt Zimmerman), portray Noo Yawk cops, but instead of sounding like they're from Brooklyn or the Bronx, they sound--and, in their leather pants, look--as if they just failed an audition for the Village People.
Still, as it passes its midpoint by closing the Magrathea chapter, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" continues to generate interest in where this motley crew are headed next. But wait: What happened to Marvin the Paranoid Android?
POINT TO PONDER: Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only facts and opinions you agree with. It is extremely difficult to avoid. Are reviews "helpful" only if they validate your confirmation bias? Are they "not helpful" if they contradict it? Thanks to the pervasiveness of confirmation bias, a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down is essentially useless as an indicator of whether a review is or isn't "helpful."
