The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Tertiary Phase

Like I mentioned in my post on the Secondary Phase, this phase came 24 years later, after the author Douglas Adams passed away, so this phase is a very faithful adaptation of the third novel "Life, the Universe and Everything."  And because the rest of the phases will now follow the books, the Secondary Phase no longer makes sense, and is explained away as one of Zaphod's hallucinations.

Probably my very favorite concept in the whole Hitchhiker world is in this phase - that one Being is constantly reincarnated only to be killed by Arthur Dent every time.  That Being goes by the name Agrajag and because it has happened so many times, Agrajag remembers Arthur and decides he's going to kill him.  But first he brings him to a Cathedral of Hate where all of his incarnations are memorialized so he can explain to Arthur why he's going to kill him.  Arthur's bewilderment and Agrajag's unreasonable anger (well he has a reason, but like Arthur says it's just a humongous coincidence) makes for the funniest scenes, even while I'm sympathizing with both characters.  There's a twist to it near the end of course which for Agrajag means it's impossible to kill Arthur and this will have a pay off down the line in the Quintessential Phase.  The other reason why this scene is so awesome, is that the producers of this audio took Douglas Adams' voice from the audiobook he read, to play Agrajag.  And Douglas does a great job, I really need to listen to the audiobooks!

This phase feels more cohesive as a story than the previous two phases - because the previous phases were more about the group being tossed into different adventures, the group has a purpose in this phase - to prevent the xenophobic Krikkiters from destroying the whole universe.  With a tongue-in-cheek connection between Krikkit and Cricket, the English sport, these mass murderers are somehow whimsical even though they are deadly.  With the Krikkiters, the story takes a look at the kind of narrow-minded, intolerance you see all the time in humanity, and it's scary how there is really no difference in types of unreasoning intolerance.

Even with the focused storyline, there are plenty of asides and fun ideas thrown into this phase - including the Somebody Else's Problem field (or SEP) which builds on the idea that if someone is not expecting to see something than they are more likely to not see it, and makes it a scientific device to prevent people from seeing spaceships for example.  As usual, this series is the height of cleverness and wit, and the characters are just so fun and quirky - I think this phase does a great job in continuing Douglas Adams' legacy.

My posts on:
The Primary Phase   |  The Secondary Phase   |   The Tertiary Phase   |   The Quandary Phase