Not long after parting ways with the Doctor, Frobisher is just slipping back into his private eye routine when the TARDIS materializes in his office – the Doctor has come to ask the shape-shifting penguin to reconsider his departure. Frobisher brusquely asks the Doctor to kindly butt out of his life so he can get on with his detective work – and just in time, too, as a sultry female client walks into his office with a new case. But once he starts investigating on what few leads his new customer will give him, Frobisher realizes he’s in over his head – and as a result, that head could soon be on a platter being delivered to tyrannical business magnate Josiah W. Dogbolter. Ditching his penguin disguise, Frobisher shapeshifts into a familiar humanoid form – a tall man with curly blond hair and an appallingly colorful coat, and quite possibly the one man who can help him now.

written by Robert Shearman
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Robert Jezek (Frobisher), Toby Longworth (Josiah W. Dogbolter), Jane Goddard (Alicia Mulholland), Alistair Lock (Chandler)

Review: An hour-long, off-format subscriber exclusive distributed with Neverland, The Maltese Penguin is perhaps better suited to a self-contained, half-hour Doctor Who Magazine pack-in CD. (more…)

Arthur, Lintilla, Marvin, Lintilla and Lintilla are trapped, pinned down by Brontitall Foot Warriors, but they get an unexpected bit of help from a number of clones all named Allitnil, all of whom are quite taken with Lintilla. Meanwhile, Ford and Zaphod make their way into the still-viable derelict, discovering that the crew is in suspended animation – at least until they awaken. But they’re suddenly removed from Brontitall by Zarniwoop, the man about whom Zaphod left himself a message. Together with Arthur, they meet the man who’s supposedly running the universe. And when he reveals that it was, in fact, Zaphod who ordered the demolition of the Earth, no one expects Arthur Dent to do what he does next.

Cast: Peter Jones (The Voice of the Book), Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect / Priest), Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Stephen Moore (Marvin / The Man in the Shack), David Tate (Eddie / Allitnils), Rula Lenska (Lintilla / Stewardess), Ken Campbell (Poodoo), Jonthan Pryce (Zarniwoop / Autopilot)

Originally broadcast: January 25, 1980

Momentous events are afoot on Brontitall as Arthur and Lintilla (and a couple of her five billion or so clones) discover a layer of ancient shoes beneath the planet’s surface. This proves Lintilla’s theory that Brontitall may have once been a shoe-based economy, eschewing every other sector of commerce in favor of the production, marketing and sale of footwear. Meanwhile, Ford and Arthur have rather haphazardly made their way to the planet’s surface via bird, where they find a graveyard of spacecraft – including one which still seems to be in good working condition.

written by Douglas Adams
directed by Alick Hale-Munro
music by Paddy Kingsland

Cast: Peter Jones (The Voice of the Book), Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect), Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Stephen Moore (Marvin / Pupil), David Tate (Eddie / Compu-Teach / Commentator), John Baddeley (Bird Two / Foot Warrior), Rula Lenska (Lintilla), Mark Smith (Hig Hurtenflurst)

Originally broadcast: January 24, 1980

The Heart of Gold escapes the Vogons by using the Infinite Improbability Drive, materializing in what looks like a cave on the planet Brontitall. Technically, though, it’s not on the planet – it’s 13 miles above the planet, as Arthur discovers when he falls out of the opening. Luckily for him, he lands on the back of a large and apparently sentient bird, who informs him that he’s actually just fallen out of a statue. When Arthur sees the statue in full, he’s aghast to see it’s a representation of himself, throwing a cup of badly made synthetic tea from the Heart of Gold’s nutrimat. Every oriface of the anatomically correct statue has become home to this race of intelligent birds. Much to his alarm, Arthur finds that he may have changed the very course of evolution on Brontitall, and he also finds that an archaeologist named Lintilla is currently attempting to work out quite how he did it.

written by Douglas Adams
directed by Alick Hale-Munro
music by Paddy Kingsland

Cast: Peter Jones (The Voice of the Book), Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect), Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Stephen Moore (Marvin), David Tate (Eddie), Ronald Baddiley (Bird One), John Baddeley (Bird Two / Foot Warrior), Rula Lenska (Lintilla), John Le Mesurier (Wise Old Bird)

Notes: It may surprise Hitchhiker’s fans to learn that it wasn’t until this episode of the radio series that the now-legendary tirade on uses for the towel was introduced to the Hitchhiker mythos, along with the words “hoopy” and “frood.”

Originally broadcast: January 23, 1980