Douglas Adams Continuum (DAC)

So, in the Episode 3 thread James mentioned that a 'slight' problem with the narrator is that he lacks a personality. He saw the solution in somehow turning the narrator into a character as well, just as it is in the case of H2G2, where it is the Guide and You know that it is the Guide doing the narration. I agreed that that'd be a neat solution.
I thought of two, as of yet crudely outlined ideas: a) the narrator could be an unseen porter, because porters seem to know everything that's going on in the DG universe and b) it could be a tale-teller machine - 'a labour-saving device which tells tedious tales for you, thus saving you the bother of telling them yourself'. Naturally, we need to 'retrospectively' add that line to the bit where the narrator is talking about other labour-saving devices, eg. The Electric Monk.
Do You guys have any other suggestions? If not, which one should we go with or should we simply (we'll call this option Option c)) remain in status quo and do nothing about the narrator?
I'm also awaiting suggestions as to how we could embed this into the story arc.

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Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
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You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing. - Bertram Wooster, The Code of the Woosters

I dont feel that any changes so drastic as options A or B are necessary, however changes can be made. The narrator, to me, seemed to have his own personality but it is true that he really doesnt seem to be a part of the story in anyway. The narrator seems to just be reading a book, or in other words telling about what has already happened. I think that it should feel like everything that is going on in the story is happening just as the person is listening to it.

Now if something like option A was taken I think that it would need to be done very gingerly. And by this I mean that the unseen porter should be invisible and insubstantial. He may have his own opinions but not able to affect the story at all.

The best way to say what I'm trying to say, I suppose, would be:
The narrator may have character but shouldnt be one.

My $0.02
I hope everything came out clearly.

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Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

I think Option B (the tale-telling device) sounds distinctly better, and easier to fit in with the storyline. The Porter idea would make sense from a knowing things that are going on in the college perspective, but much of the story takes place outside the college (in fact almost everything from now on unless I'm mistaken.)

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I agree with Will in a sense. I dont think the narrator should be a fully fledged character in the story. I wish we could make him something equivelant to The Guide in H2G2 but its difficult to see an equivelant in this story.

Our narrator needs to have an 'attitidue' but as Will says of course not affect the story. It needs to be subtle, but i think it needs to be there. Mainly because the narrator is one of the leading characters, if not THE lead character. I noticed we are intorducing him at the start of each episode as the star a la the H2G2 radio series, I feel we are being inconsistent by not giving him any sort of substance as The Guide has.

So far, I think the 'tale-telling machine' is along the right lines. The only kind of worry I have with it is that I dont want him to 'clash' with the monk.

I think this is interesting! I didnt quite get it first time round but I think i know what he's saying here! I havent checked but just from memory I also dont get the impression that the narrator is telling the story in the present despite most of his lines being in the present tense.

I have to say, I think this is exactly because he is so detatched from the story. Whichever idea we chose I really think we need to make the narrator an identifiable personality who the audience relates to and who in turn relates to the story. He should be the character that carrys the audience's perspective.

EDIT: Emailed John Collin so he could have some input if he wanted.

I favour the tale-telling machine idea myself as well, but if we really decide to use it then I think I'll write some basic narrations and then it'll be 'community work' to re-write them, because I really don't want to be the one who screws the whole thing up with redundant/incomprehensible/boring lines.

As for the unseen porter idea: it'd of course mean that we should absurdly stretch the scope of activities of a college porter so that it'd involve knowing about everything that is going on around the college and even on planets far far away from the college as well. Naturally, he wouldn't have any direct influence on the story whatsoever. He'd simply be a humble servant in the background who knows about everything but does not bother to interfere.

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Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
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You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing. - Bertram Wooster, The Code of the Woosters

Just a roaming idea, how about using the Electric Monk's Horse, genetically mdodified perhaps.

He's already a character, so I'm not sure that's managable. Not even with modified genes.

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Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of Eastern Europe.
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You can't be a successful dictator and design women's underclothing. - Bertram Wooster, The Code of the Woosters

I like your ingenuity tho

Could've worked for some parts of the story but not overall

in the Dirk play I recently saw, they had Dirk in at the very beginning, pausing the action and doing alot of the explaining, which I think worked very well, and helped get Dirk some time in at the begining, since he really doesn't have anything to do until the middle.

I don't know if that would work in this case, but it worked well in that case.

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Jameslaprendi has it. He understands what I'm talking about. The narrator doesn't need to be a character he just needs to feel more a part of the story.

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Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

Well to be honest i still believe the best way to achieve it is to make him a (minor & invented) character of his own. Ill do some research to see what other radio plays do with their narrators.

I agree. In fact, I think it'd be better if he wasn't a character in his own right, but I can't think of a better way of making him more part of the story than the story-telling-device.

The Narrator is a very key part in episode III. So much that, in fact it seems like it's going to be difficult to begin producing it without the narration to glue it together (see the script to see this.) As such, it seems we're quite depending on JC in getting his narrator stuff fairly soon.

Perhaps we should email him regarding this to honestly explain the situation and ask him how busy he is / how much he can do at the moment so we know what's likely to be happening?

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See a pin; pick it up; and all that day, you'll have a pin.

Crazy idea, but how about it's the ghost of someone. Since ghosts exist in Dirk Gently (AKA Gordon Way) it could be the ghost which appears later (Don't want to reveal a spoiler) which is key to the story. The possession-iy one. Hint hint.

About the likeness to the guide in the HG2G, the thing about the guide was that it was everywhere. In about 90-95 percent of the book, there is a guide present. Xaphod had one, probably, Arthur and Ford had one. I'm not sure about Trillian but then we didn't really follow her after she left Arthur.

So back to the ghost thing, it would be probably the only way for the narrarator to be everywhere.

I do like the idea of the porters though. Fits in with Douglas Adam's style.

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Philippe M, Official psychologist for the SIP (Society for Intergalactic Psychology).

'Well Zaphod's just zis guy you know'.

I think the Narrator being the ghost at the end is a truly marvelous idea!

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Me too :-) Hmm we should really continue this, after Young Zaphod and such. The main thing we need to do now is adapt Episode 4... Waux are you still up for doing this? If not / if you don't have time, then at some point skutterz and I could have a go at doing it, but I don't think we'd do as good a job as you have on the previous episodes! (It would be fantastic if you could indeed continue doing it.) It seems that we have all of the people around still and what we have so far really has atmosphere and it would be a shame to stop (even under presence of the official one... I think ours will be sufficiently different - different cast, music, we have a narrator and they don't - and I think it would be a shame to stop after what we've acheived so far.)

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See a pin; pick it up; and all that day, you'll have a pin.

I personally thank God, on his running machine up there, that I found a recorded production of Dirk Gently, because I skipped almost all the parts to do with Michael.

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Shooty:I don't go around shooting people then boast about it in seedy space ranger bars. I go around shooting people then agonize over it to my girlfriend.

Philippe M, Official psychologist for the SIP (Society for Intergalactic Psychology).

'Well Zaphod's just zis guy you know'.

Plus, we've got one cool Horse.

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Well what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today!

Very true :-)

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See a pin; pick it up; and all that day, you'll have a pin.