The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV Mini-Series

After the success of the first seven episodes of the radio series, Douglas Adams was commissioned to deliver a pilot script for a television. A fully animated version was briefly discussed, but it was eventually decided to make most of the series feature live action and only animate The Guide's entries.

In early 1980, production on the pilot episode began on several fronts. Rod Lord directed a 50-second pilot, hand-animated, giving a 'computer graphic' feel to the Babel Fish speech of the first episode. Douglas Adams and Alan J.W. Bell were both pleased with the animation, and Lord was given the go-ahead to do all of the animation for Episode 1, and subsequently the complete TV series. Gaps in production made for some continuity problems between the pilot episode and the remainder. Notably, Simon Jones's hair was cut short for another role and he wears a noticeable hairpiece in later episodes.

The program is particularly notable for its mock computer animation sequences, actually produced on film using traditional cell animation techniques. Another production problem was that, being a visual adaptation, a solution had to be found to display Zaphod's three arms and two heads. For this TV series, a radio-controlled animatronic head was designed and built, however, the head was unreliable and in many scenes merely sits there. The third arm was mostly tucked into Zaphod's jacket, but when needed, Mike Kelt would hide behind Zaphod and slip his arm into the appropriate sleeve.