Zaphod is up among the gods while Arthur widens his vocabulary.

There are nice individual moments for all of the core cast in this episode, with Zaphod’s interactions with Tom Alexander’s Heimdall one of the best. John Lloyd seems to have settled down into his role as the Book and applies just the right amount of world-weariness to his interpolations during Zaphod’s “last thoughts”, with Mark Wing-Davey bouncing or burning as appropriate. Arthur’s chats with the Fenchurch AI lead to a surprising discovery about the human race and his place in it (last being what he expects, but for once not actually being the case) and I’d love to see a video of Simon Jones performing Arthur’s request to Wowbagger for an alteration of destination!

There’s a needed change of pace for Geoff McGivern’s Ford and Samantha Beart’s Random towards the end of the episode, with the closing Book lines giving a very different take on what we’ve just heard. That change of pace also applies to the young Vogon Constant Mown, whose scene counterpoints neatly with the revelations regarding Hillman Hunter’s business partner…

Verdict: Movement on all fronts of the plot still allows for the character beats and jokes that make Hitchhiker’s work best. 8/10

Paul Simpson