This page is a list of characters in ''
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
'', by
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...
. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
Arthur Dent
Along with Ford Prefect,
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
barely escapes the Earth's destruction as it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur spends the next several years, still wearing his dressing gown, helplessly launched from crisis to crisis while trying to straighten out his lifestyle. He rather enjoys tea, but seems to have trouble obtaining it in the far reaches of the galaxy. In time, he learns how to fly and carves a niche for himself as a sandwich-maker. He is also worried about "everything."
Ford Prefect
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
is Arthur Dent's friend–and rescuer, when the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass at the start of the story. Although his heart is in the right place and he is shown to be highly intelligent, resourceful, and even brave, Ford is essentially a dilettante when it comes to causes such as the search for the question to the ultimate answer of "life, the universe, and everything." Ford takes a more existential view of the universe, sometimes bordering on joyful
nihilism
Nihilism (; ) is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. The term was popularized by Ivan ...
. He is eccentric and broad-minded–no doubt due to his vast experience of roughing it around the galaxy – and has an off-key and often very dark sense of humour.
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
is a "semi-half-cousin" of Ford Prefect. He is hedonistic and irresponsible, narcissistic, and often extremely insensitive to the feelings of those around him. Zaphod invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Zaphod wears unique clothing that contains a mixture of bright and contrasting colours to make him stand out and be the centre of attention wherever he goes. He was voted "Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe" seven consecutive times. He's been described as "the best Bang since the Big One" by Eccentrica Gallumbits, and as "one hoopy frood" by others. He was briefly the President of the Galaxy and is the only man to have survived the Total Perspective Vortex (In the artificial galaxy created by Zarniwoop).
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android is a fictional character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship ''Heart of Gold''. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sir ...
is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. Built as one of many failed prototypes of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP (Genuine People Personalities) technology, Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet" which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use. Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human.
Trillian
Trillian (Tricia McMillan) is a mathematician and astrophysicist whom Arthur Dent attempted to talk to at a party in Islington. She and Arthur next meet six months later on the spaceship Heart of Gold, shortly after the Earth has been destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast is a character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', a comedy/science fiction series created by Douglas Adams. The character appears in the first and third novels, the first and third radio series (and the LP adaptation ...
is a Magrathean, and a designer of planets. His favourite part of the job is creating coastlines, the most notable of which are the fjords found on the coast of Norway on planet Earth, for which he won an award. When Earth Mk. II is being made, Slartibartfast is assigned to the continent of Africa. He is unhappy about this because he has begun "doing it with fjords again" (arguing that they give a continent a lovely baroque feel), but has been told by his superiors that they are "not equatorial enough". In relation to this, he expresses the view that he would "far rather be happy than right any day."
Minor characters
Agrajag
Agrajag is a piteous creature that is continually
reincarnated and subsequently killed, each time unknowingly, by
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
. Agrajag is first identified in , but it is revealed that several of Arthur's encounters in the first and second novels (and in previous chapters of the third) were with previous incarnations of Agrajag. The first occurs in , when a bowl of
petunia
''Petunia'' is genus of 20 species of flowering plants of South American origin. The popular flower of the same name derived its epithet from the French, which took the word ''petun'', meaning "tobacco," from a Tupi–Guarani language. A tende ...
s is yanked into existence miles above the planet
Magrathea
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
in place of one of the missiles targeting the Heart of Gold after its Improbability Drive is used, and begins falling, having only time to think "Oh, no, not again" before crashing to the ground. The ''Guide'' states that "many had speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we should know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now". The reason behind the bowl's lament is revealed in , when Agrajag identifies the bowl of petunias as one of his prior incarnations, and tells Arthur that he had seen his face in a spaceship window as he fell to his doom. In another incarnation, Agrajag was a rabbit on prehistoric Earth (during the time period recounted in ) who was killed by Arthur for breakfast and whose skin was fashioned into a pouch, which is then used to swat a fly who also happened to be Agrajag. In yet another, near the beginning of , Agrajag is an old man who dies of a heart attack after seeing Arthur and Ford materialise, seated on a
Chesterfield sofa
A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield, is a cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people (although it is not uncommon for a single person to use a couch alone). It is commonly found in the form of a bench with up ...
, in the midst of a match at
Lord's
Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...
Cricket Ground.
Eventually, Agrajag wishes to take revenge on Arthur Dent, diverting his teleportation to a Cathedral of Hate. However, in the process of explaining his reasons for hating Arthur he mentions "Stavromula Beta", where Arthur had ducked to avoid a shot fired by an assassin, which then had killed Agrajag instead. Arthur, having never been to Stavromula Beta, has no idea what Agrajag is talking about, and Agrajag realises that he's brought Arthur to the cathedral too early. He tries to kill Arthur anyway, and once again dies at Arthur's hands while Arthur is defending himself, but not before setting off the explosives intended to kill Arthur by triggering a massive rockfall. Arthur escapes the rockfall unharmed.
For the next few years Arthur travels the universe, secure in his knowledge that, no matter what happens, he cannot die at least until after he survives his assassination attempt at Stavromula Beta. In Arthur's daughter Random Frequent Flyer Dent holds him hostage in a London club. When she fires her weapon Arthur dodges, causing the bolt to pass over his head and hit the man standing behind him. Earlier the victim (Agrajag) had dropped a book of matches which revealed the owner of the nightclub to be Stavro Mueller, and the name of the club to be Beta. Thus, what Arthur believed to be the name of a planet was the name of the nightclub, and Agrajag has died once again. Because of this, Arthur is now able to die as well, which, thanks to the
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
s, he supposedly does a few seconds later.
In , Douglas Adams plays Agrajag, having recorded the part for an audiobook version of . Producer
Dirk Maggs
David George Dirk Maggs (born St. Helier, Jersey, February 1955) is a British freelance writer and director. During his career as a Senior Producer in BBC Radio he made radio drama adopting a cinematic-sounding approach, combining filmic story c ...
added a suitable voice treatment, and
Simon Jones as Arthur Dent recorded his lines opposite the pre-recorded Adams. Adams was thus able to "reincarnate" to participate in the new series.
At the end of , Arthur Dent's extreme bad luck in life coupled with cosmic balance mean that as he materialises on a planet shortly before Vogons are due to destroy it, Agrajag wakes up from a coma after six months having won the lottery and been recognised by a long lost love whilst on "Celebrity Coma". This event presumably leads to cosmic balance ruining his other lives for the benefit of Arthur Dent.
Agrajag makes a brief appearance in his bowl of petunias form in the 2005 film, the moment he and the sperm whale were called into existence being portrayed exactly as it was in the first book.
In the 2017 second season of the television adaptation of ''Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'' a dog is named Agrajag with expected consequences.
Mrs Alice Beeblebrox
Alice Beeblebrox is Zaphod's favourite mother, lives at 10
8 Astral Crescent, Zoovroozlechester, Betelgeuse V, and guards the true story of Zaphod's visit to the Frogstar, waiting for "the right price." She is referenced in .
The Allitnils
As their names were written to suggest, every Allitnil is an anti-clone of a
Lintilla. They were created by the cloning company to eliminate the billions of cloned Lintillas flooding out of a malfunctioning cloning machine. Being anti-clones, when an Allitnil comes into physical contact with a Lintilla, they both wink out of existence in a puff of unsmoke.
Along with Poodoo and Varntvar the Priest, three Allitnils arrived on Brontitall to get the three Lintillas there to "agree to cease to be". Two of the clones eliminate their corresponding Lintillas, but Arthur shoots the third Allitnil, so that one Lintilla survives.
Appearing only in , every one of the Allitnils is voiced by
David Tate.
The Allitnils, like the Lintillas, do not appear in the novels or in the BBC television series.
Almighty Bob
The Almighty Bob is a
deity
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
worshipped by the people of
Lamuella.
Old Thrashbarg
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
is one of the priests who worships Almighty Bob; however, Thrashbarg is often ignored by the villagers of
Lamuella. The Almighty Bob appears in the fifth book, .
Anjie
Anjie was a woman, on the brink of retirement, on whose behalf a raffle was being held in order to buy her a kidney machine. An unnamed woman (played by
June Whitfield
Dame June Rosemary Whitfield (11 November 1925 – 29 December 2018) was an English radio, television, and film actress.
Her big break was a lead in the radio comedy ''Take It from Here'', which aired on the BBC Light Programme in 1953. ...
on the radio) convinces Arthur Dent to buy raffle tickets while he and Fenchurch are in a railway pub, attempting to have lunch. Arthur won an album of bagpipe music.
Referred to in:
Arcturan Megafreighter crew
The captain and first officer were the only crew of an Arcturan Megafreighter carrying a larger number of copies of ''Playbeing'' magazine than the mind can comfortably conceive. They brought Zaphod Beeblebrox to Ursa Minor Beta, after he had escaped from the Haggunenon flagship. Zaphod was let on board by the Number One, who was cynical about the Guide's editors becoming soft. He admired the fact that Zaphod was ''"hitching the hard way"''.
They only appear in , where the captain is played by
David Tate, and his number one by
Bill Paterson. However, some of their dialogue was given to other characters in .
Aseed
Leader of the cheese-worshipping Tyromancers on the planet
Nano. Appears in .
Barmen
Three different barmen appear during the series.
Barman of the Horse and Groom
In , in , and the film, Ford and Arthur quickly down three pints each – at lunchtime – to calm their muscles before using the teleport to escape on the Vogon ship. Being told the world is about to end he calls "last orders, please." The Red Lion Inn at
Chelwood Gate
Chelwood Gate is a small village within the civil parish of Danehill in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. Its nearest town is Uckfield, which lies approximately south-east from the village, just off the A22 road. The village is nea ...
, East Sussex, was used during the TV series, and referenced in the dialogue (Adams himself can be seen in the background of this scene); Steve Conway played the character on TV. This barman was played by
David Gooderson
David Gooderson (born 24 February 1941) is an English actor who has appeared in several television roles.
Career
As well as portraying Davros, creator of the Daleks in the ''Doctor Who'' serial ''Destiny of the Daleks'', he appeared in epis ...
in the original radio series and
Stephen Moore in the LP recording. In the 2005 motion picture,
Albie Woodington People
* Albert Axelrod (1921–2004), American Olympic medalist foil fencer
* Albie Booth (1908–1959), American Hall-of-Fame college football player
* Albie Grant (1943–2004), American basketball player
* Albie Hecht, American television pro ...
portrayed the barman.
Barman in Old Pink Dog Bar
Ford visits the Old Pink Dog Bar in Han Dold City, orders a round for everyone and then tries to use an American Express card to pay for it, fails, is threatened by a disembodied hand and so offers a Guide write-up instead. This happens in . In the radio adaptation of this novel, the barman was played by Arthur Smith.
Barman in the Domain of the King
Another barman takes a galactic sized tip for
Elvis
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
from Ford on his Hitchhiker's corporate Dine-O-Charge credit card in an attempt to bankrupt InfiniDim Enterprises in and the final radio series. This bartender was played by
Roger Gregg
Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ( ...
.
BBC department head
When Arthur returns to Earth in he calls his department head to explain why he was absent from work the last six months: "I've gone mad." His superior is very relaxed about it and asks when Arthur will return to work, and is quite satisfied by the reply "When do hedgehogs stop hibernating?" In the fourth radio series the part was played by
Geoffrey Perkins
Geoffrey Howard Perkins (22 February 1953 – 29 August 2008) was a British comedy producer, writer and performer. Best known as the BBC head of comedy (1995–2001), he produced the first two radio series of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galax ...
, who had produced the first two radio series and who had been the BBC TV head of comedy from 1995 to 2001.
Blart Versenwald III
In the epilogue of , Blart Versenwald III was a top genetic engineer, and a man who could never keep his mind on the job at hand. When his homeworld was under threat from an invading army, he was tasked with creating an army of super-soldiers to fight them. Instead, he created (among other things) a remarkable new breed of superfly that could distinguish between solid glass and an open window, and also an off-switch for children. Fortunately, because the invaders were only invading because they couldn't cope with things back home, they too were impressed with Blart's creations, and a flurry of economic treaties rapidly secured peace.
Bodyguard
The strong silent type, an unnamed bodyguard is seen guarding the late
Hotblack Desiato
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
in . His face, according to the book "had the texture of an orange and the colour of an apple, but there the resemblance to anything sweet ended." In he is portrayed by actor
David Prowse
David Charles Prowse (1 July 1935 – 28 November 2020) was an English actor, bodybuilder and weightlifter. He portrayed Darth Vader (voiced by American actor James Earl Jones) in the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy and a manservant in Stanle ...
, ''
Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...
''
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a fictional character in the ''Star Wars'' franchise. The character is the central antagonist of the original trilogy and, as Anakin Skywalker, is one of the main protagonists in the prequel trilogy. ''Star Wars'' creator George ...
, as a man of few words who can lift
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
clean off the floor. In the LP adaptation of the radio series, the character was voiced by
David Tate.
Caveman
Arthur attempts to play Scrabble with a caveman, who is not even able to spell "Grunt" and "Agh", and "he's probably spelt library with one R again". However, he does spell "
forty-two", giving Arthur the idea to pull out letters from the letters bag at random to attempt to find the ultimate question; this results in the unhelpful "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" which does not match the
answer
Answer commonly refers to response to a question.
Answer may also refer to:
* Answer (law), any reply to a question, counter-statement or defense in a legal procedure
Music
* Answer, an element of a fugue
Albums
* ''Answer'' (Angela Aki alb ...
(except in base-13).
Appears in played by
David Jason
Sir David John White (born 2 February 1940), known professionally by his stage name David Jason, is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Derek "Del Boy" Trotter in the BBC sitcom ''Only Fools and Horses'', Detective Inspector J ...
, , and .
Colin
Colin (a.k.a. part #223219B) is a small, round, melon-sized, flying security robot which
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized
Guide
A guide is a person who leads travelers, sportspeople, or tourists through unknown or unfamiliar locations. The term can also be applied to a person who leads others to more abstract goals such as knowledge or wisdom.
Travel and recreation
Expl ...
offices in . "Its motion sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage." Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his
towel
A towel is a piece of absorbent cloth or paper used for drying or wiping a surface. Towels draw moisture through direct contact.
In households, several types of towels are used, such as hand towels, bath towels, and kitchen towels.
Paper towels ...
and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits, inducing a cyber-ecstasy trip.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to plant a
Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...
module that will automatically pay anything billed to his InfiniDim Enterprises credit card. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, the
Vogons
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
, fire at him with a
rocket launcher
A rocket launcher is a weapon that launches an unguided, rocket-propelled projectile.
History
The earliest rocket launchers documented in imperial China consisted of arrows modified by the attachment of a rocket motor to the shaft a few in ...
after Ford feels the need to jump out of the window. Colin was last seen being sent (at the risk of possible incineration) to look after the delivery of the Guide Mark II to Arthur Dent in the Vogon postal system.
Colin was named after a dog which belonged to a girl, Emily Saunders, of whom Ford had fond memories. Colin appears in , and in the radio series he was played by
Andrew Secombe
Andrew James Secombe (born 26 April 1953), is a Welsh actor and author.
Early life, family and education
Born in Mumbles, in south Wales, Secombe is son of comedian/singer Harry Secombe (whom he later impersonated in a ''Goon Show'' special). ...
.
Constant Mown
Crew member on the
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
ship commanded by
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, and Jeltz's son. Notable for his very un-Vogon-like emotions, ethics and agility, all of which he attempts to keep hidden (with varying degrees of success) from his father and crewmates, lest he be demoted to more unpleasant (even for a Vogon) duties or killed outright for aberrant behavior. Appears in .
Dr. Dan Streetmentioner
Author of ''Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations'' which is handy for those travelling through time, and especially to
Milliways. His guide is more complete than ''The Guide'' itself, which ignores the time travel tense topic – other than pointing out that the term 'future perfect' has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. He is also mentioned in the third radio series, which gives many examples of his tense forms.
Deep Thought
Deep Thought is a computer that was created by a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent species of beings (whose three-dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the
. Deep Thought is the size of a small city. When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be
42, Deep Thought admonishes Loonquawl and Phouchg (the receivers of the Ultimate Answer) that "
hechecked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you is that you've never actually known what the question was."
Deep Thought does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer,
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
, to calculate it. After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
s five minutes before the computation is complete.
Appears in:
*
On radio, Deep Thought was voiced by
Geoffrey McGivern
Geoffrey M. McGivern is a British actor in film, radio, stage and television, as well as a comedian.
Career
He played Ford Prefect in the radio series (1978–80) and subsequent LP releases of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Dougla ...
. On television and in the LP re-recording of the radio series, it was voiced by
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall (7 May 1908 – 24 June 1985) was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series '' Appointment with Fear'' ...
. In the feature film Deep Thought's voice was provided by actress
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. The recipient of numerous accolades, she is the only performer to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom. ...
.
In the television series, Deep Thought was shaped like a massive black metal trapezoid with a yellow rectangular display that blinked on and off in time with the computer's speaking. The timing of the light's flashing was done on set by author
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...
. Valentine Dyall's voice was dubbed in later.
In the feature film, it appears as a large, vaguely humanoid computer, with a gigantic head supported, as if in bored repose, by two arms and has a female voice (provided by actress
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. The recipient of numerous accolades, she is the only performer to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom. ...
). This particular version of Deep Thought likes to watch television in her spare time and late in the film can also be seen to have the
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
logo above her eye. This is a reference to Adams being a fan and advocate of the
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
. It is also revealed that, in the intervening time, Deep Thought was commissioned by an intergalactic consortium of angry housewives to create the Point of View Gun, a weapon that causes any man it is used on to see things from the firer's point-of-view, regardless of the firer's gender (due to it being originally used by those housewives having got fed up with ending arguments with their husbands with the phrase "You just don't get it, do you?").
IBM's
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
-playing computer
Deep Thought was named in honour of this fictional computer.
Deep Thought can be seen inscribed on a computer in the NORAD VI area of the 1992 computer game
The Journeyman Project
''The Journeyman Project'' is a series of award-winning first-person science fiction adventure games, created by Presto Studios and released by various publishers, including Bandai, Sanctuary Woods, and Red Orb Entertainment.
Plot
The central ...
.
Dionah Carlinton Housney
Dionah appears in ''
And Another Thing...'' by
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer (; born 14 May 1965) is an Irish author of children's books. He worked as a primary school teacher before he became a full-time writer. He is best known for being the author of the Artemis Fowl (series), ''Artemis Fowl'' series. I ...
. Dionah is one of
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
's favorite singer/prostitutes. She appears out of nowhere in the 'Heart of Gold' starship and sings Zaphod a cryptic song about the entrance to the planet
Asgard
In Nordic mythology, Asgard (Old Norse: ''Ásgarðr'' ; "enclosure of the Æsir") is a location associated with the gods. It appears in a multitude of Old Norse sagas and mythological texts. It is described as the fortified home of the Æsir ...
. Zaphod does not understand the song. She vanishes after saying "oh for Zark's sake" and then turns into an ice sculpture of herself. The sculpture soon melts into water, the water droplets rise up into the ceiling and every drop disappears after making a 'oh' sound. Zaphod later comments "That girl always could sing".
Disaster Area's chief research accountant
As Disaster Area's earnings require hypermathematics, their chief research accountant was named Professor of Neomathematics at the
University of Maximegalon and in his ''Special Theories of
Tax Returns
A tax return is the completion of documentation that calculates an entity or individual's income earned and the amount of taxes to be paid to the government or government organizations or, potentially, back to the taxpayer.
Taxation is one of ...
'' he proves that
space-time
In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three-dimensional space, three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Minkowski diagram, Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize S ...
is "not merely curved, it is, in fact, totally bent." The Guide shows a graphic indicating that most of the earnings ends up with the accountant.
Referred to in:
*
*
Dish of the Day
The quadruped Dish of the Day is an Ameglian Major Cow, a
ruminant
Ruminants (suborder Ruminantia) are ungulate, hoofed herbivorous grazing or browsing mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by Enteric fermentation, fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally ...
specifically bred to not only have the desire to be eaten, but to be capable of saying so quite clearly. When asked if he would like to see the Dish of the Day, Zaphod replies, "We'll meet the meat." The Major Cow's quite vocal and emphatic desire to be consumed by
Milliways' patrons is the most revolting thing that Arthur Dent has ever heard, and the Dish is nonplussed by a queasy Arthur's subsequent order of a
green salad
A salad is a dish consisting of mixed, mostly natural ingredients with at least one raw ingredient. They are typically served at room temperature or chilled, though some can be served warm. Condiments and salad dressings, which exist in a va ...
, since it knows "many vegetables that are very clear" on the point of not wanting to be eaten – which was part of the reason for the creation of the Ameglian Major Cow in the first place. After Zaphod orders four rare steaks, the Dish announces that it is nipping off to the kitchen to shoot itself. Though it states, "I'll be very humane," this does not comfort Arthur at all.
Several years later, the principal characters encounter a herd of Ameglian Major Cows on the planet Nano, a colony planet established for exceedingly rich refugees from the destroyed Earth. Ford and Arthur (who is now far more open-minded after years spent traversing the galaxy) seriously consider the Cows' offering themselves as a meal, only to be interrupted by the arrival of the Norse thunder god
Thor
Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...
and his subsequent duel with
Bowerick Wowbagger. However, the lightning display accompanying Thor's arrival kills and chars several Major Cows (while their still-living herdmates curse their fellows' luck), and Ford and Arthur take the opportunity to sample the cooked meat. Later, a Major Cow is shown offering itself to Thor at the thunder god's victory party.
Appears in:
*
*
*
The character is not present in the original radio series, but does make a cameo appearance in the finale of the fifth radio series. The first appearance of it was in a
stage adaptation in 1980 at the
Rainbow Theatre
The Rainbow Theatre, originally known as the Finsbury Park Astoria, is a Grade II*-listed building in Finsbury Park, London. The theatre was built in 1930 as a cinema. It later became a music venue. Today, the building is used by the Universa ...
. Since then it appeared in , and . In the TV series, it was played by
Peter Davison
Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett (born 13 April 1951), known professionally as Peter Davison, is an English actor with many credits in television dramas and sitcoms. He made his television acting debut in 1975 and became famous in 1978 as Tristan ...
, who was at that time both
Sandra Dickinson
Sandra Dickinson (née Searles) is an American-British actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has often played characters who fell into the trope of a dumb blonde with a high-pitched voice.
Early life
Di ...
's husband and the newly announced
fifth Doctor
The Fifth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Peter Davison.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from t ...
. Dickinson played Trillian in the television series (and "Tricia McMillan" in the final radio series), and suggested casting Davison, who was a fan of the radio series.
East River Creature
As
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
travels through space in a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation spaceship, he has a dream in which he encounters a strange creature made of slime from the East River in New York who has just come into existence. After asking Ford a series of questions about life, and Ford's recommendation of finding love on 7th Avenue, the creature leaves Ford to talk to a nearby policeman on his status in life.
Appearances:
*
*
In , the East River character was played by American comedian
Jackie Mason
Jackie Mason (born Yacov Moshe Maza; yi, יעקב משה מזא; June 9, 1928 – July 24, 2021) was an American stand-up comedian and actor.
His 1986 one-man show ''The World According to Me!'' won a Special Tony Award, an Outer Critics Cir ...
.
Eccentrica Gallumbits
Known as "The Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon Six", Eccentrica Gallumbits, the author of ''The Big Bang Theory – A Personal View'', is mentioned in all six of the novels. She is first mentioned in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' when Arthur looks up ''Earth'' for the first time in the guide. The entry for Earth follows that for Eccentrica Gallumbits. She is heard about again during a newscast that
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
tunes into shortly after stealing the spaceship ''Heart of Gold''. The newsreader quotes Eccentrica describing Zaphod as "The best bang since the
Big One." It was also reported in that Zaphod had delivered a presidential address from her bedroom on at least one occasion. Commentary on Zaphod in intimates that one reason for his acquiring a third arm is the ability to fondle all of Eccentrica's breasts at the same time.
Pears Gallumbit, a dessert which has several things in common with her, is available at Milliways.
Some people say her
erogenous zone
An erogenous zone (from Greek , ''érōs'' "love"; and English ''-genous'' "producing", from Greek , ''-genḗs'' "born") is an area of the human body that has heightened sensitivity, the stimulation of which may generate a sexual response, su ...
s start some four miles from her actual body; Ford Prefect disagrees, saying five.
She is referenced in an issue of the ''
Legion of Super Heroes
The Legion of Super-Heroes is a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino, the Legion is a group of superpowered beings living in the 30th and 31st cent ...
''.
She is again mentioned in after a wheel of cheese appears above the Nanites: "This sudden and most unexpected apparition shifted the crowd's focus faster than the appearance of Eccentrica Gallumbits wearing a neon T-shirt flashing the slogan ''Freebie Friday'' would shift the focus of the crowd at a VirginNerd convention on a Friday."
Eddie
Eddie is the name of the shipboard computer on the starship ''Heart of Gold''. Like every other system on the spaceship, it has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personality. Thus, Eddie is over-excitable, quite talkative, over-enthused and ingratiating, or alternatively a coddling, school matron-type as a back-up personality. Shipboard networking interconnects Eddie with everything on the ''Heart of Gold''; at one point, the whole ship is effectively crippled by Arthur Dent's request for tea from the Nutrimatic drinks dispenser; the computation of which nearly crashed Eddie and everything connected to him.
On one occasion when certain destruction seems quite imminent, Eddie sings "
You'll Never Walk Alone
"You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''Carousel''. In the second act of the musical, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and enco ...
" in a cheesy and upbeat tone.
Appears in:
*
*
*
*
He is voiced in the first two radio series and on television by David Tate. In the television version, Eddie has lights on his case that flash when he speaks.
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...
read in Eddie's lines during filming to operate the lights.
In the 2004–2005 radio series, he is voiced by Roger Gregg and in the 2005 feature film by
Thomas Lennon
Thomas Patrick Lennon (born August 9, 1970) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, director, and novelist. He plays Lieutenant Jim Dangle on the series ''Reno 911!''
Lennon is an accomplished screenwriter of several major st ...
.
Effrafax of Wug
A sciento-
magician
Magician or The Magician may refer to:
Performers
* A practitioner of magic (supernatural)
* A practitioner of magic (illusion)
* Magician (fantasy), a character in a fictional fantasy context
Entertainment
Books
* ''The Magician'', an 18th-ce ...
who bet his life that he could make an entire mountain
invisible
Invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be ''invisible'' (literally, "not visible"). The phenomenon is studied by physics and perceptual psychology.
Since objects can be seen by light in ...
within a year. Having wasted most of the period of time failing to create a
cloaking device
A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Fictional cloaking devices have bee ...
, he hired a company to simply remove the mountain, though this course of action lost him the bet, and his life. This was all due in part to the sudden and rather suspicious presence of an extra
moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
, and in addition, the fact that you could never touch anything when you walked near the supposed invisible mountain. It is remarked that he should have established a simple
Somebody Else's Problem field
"Somebody else's problem" or "someone else's problem" is an issue which is dismissed by a person on the grounds that they consider somebody else to be responsible for it, or that it is "out of scope" in a particular context.
Examples
A 1976 edi ...
, which would make the mountain invisible even if it were to be painted bright pink.
Referenced in: .
Elders of Krikkit
The Elders of Krikkit were, in , under influence of the remains of the supercomputer Hactar, which æons previously had been blown to dust, but retained a measure of consciousness, and determined to destroy the entire universe using the supernova bomb they had built. Trillian used her feminine charm and smart rhetoric in an attempt to dissuade the elders, but failed to stop them deploying the ultimate weapon, which simply dented the council chamber badly.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
is a real-life singer, who died in 1977. It has been suggested that he has been
abducted by aliens, or that he is actually an alien who faked his own death so he could return to his home planet.
In , Elvis is discovered by
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
and
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
working as a bar singer on an alien planet, and owning a large pink spaceship. Ford, having become a huge fan of Elvis while he was stranded on Earth, watched the performance intently for its entire duration. Presley is not actually named, however his identity is easy to determine from the facts that the bar is called "The Domain of The King," the "EP" initials in the pink spaceship which Ford and Arthur buy from him, and the accent in which he sings. He tells Ford that, contrary to popular belief, he was not abducted by aliens; he went with them of his own free will.
Ford's irreplaceable blue suede shoes, one of which is destroyed during the events in the early part of , are a tribute to his Elvis fandom.
In the radio adaptation of , , it has been indicated that in the alternate Earth which is the focus of the story, Elvis never died, and there is mention of an album "Elvis sings
Oasis
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.”
The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
". He appears (but is not directly named) in , voiced by
Philip Pope
Philip R. J. Pope is a British composer and actor. He is best known for role as Tony Angelino in Only Fools And Horses. He was educated at Downside School and New College, Oxford.
Performer
Pope appeared in the Oxford Revue in Edinburgh Festiv ...
.
Emperor of the Galaxy
Many millennia prior to the events of the series, the final Emperor of the
Galactic Empire
Galactic empires are a common trope used in science fantasy and science fiction, particularly in works known as 'space operas'. Many authors have either used a galaxy-spanning empire as background or written about the growth and/or decline of s ...
(in the ''Hitchhiker's'' universe) was placed into a stasis field during his dying moments: thus leaving the Empire with a technically ruling, but actually near-dead Emperor, with all his heirs long since dead. And so today, an Imperial President, elected by the Galactic Assembly, has all the trappings of power, without actually wielding any. This was the office held by
Yooden Vranx
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
and
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
.
Mentioned in:
*
*
Mrs Enid Kapelsen
An old woman from Boston who rediscovers purpose in life by seeing Arthur and Fenchurch flying (and performing "other activities") outside the aeroplane within which she is flying to Heathrow. Witnessing this, she became enlightened, and realized that everything she had ever been taught was varyingly incorrect. She annoys the flight attendants by continually pressing her call button for reasons such as "the child in front was making milk come out of his nose." Later she ends up seated next to Arthur and Fenchurch on another aeroplane en route from Los Angeles to London (though in the original radio series, she flies with Arthur and Fenchurch on a flight from London to Los Angeles).
Appears in:
*
She was played by
Margaret Robertson in during the Quandary Phase.
Eric Bartlett
In , it is gardener Eric Bartlett who discovers that space-aliens have landed on Tricia's lawn and haven't cut her grass.
Fenchurch
Fenchurch is
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
's
soulmate
A soulmate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep or natural affinity. This may involve similarity, love, romance, platonic relationships, comfort, intimacy, sexuality, sexual activity, spirituality, compatibility and trust.
Defini ...
in the fourth book of the Hitchhiker "trilogy", . Fenchurch was named after the
Fenchurch Street railway station
Fenchurch Street railway station, also known as London Fenchurch Street, is a central London railway terminus in the southeastern corner of the City of London. It takes its name from its proximity to Fenchurch Street, a key thoroughfare in the ...
where she was conceived in the ticket queue. Adams revealed in an interview that it was really the ticket queues at Paddington Station that made him think of conceiving a character there, but chose Fenchurch to avoid complications with
Paddington Bear
Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 in the children's book ''A Bear Called Paddington'' and has been featured in more than twenty books written by British author Michael Bond, a ...
.
She first appears as the unnamed girl in the café on the first page of ; she is the girl referred to as "sitting on her own in a small café in
Rickmansworth
Rickmansworth () is a town in southwest Hertfordshire, England, about northwest of central London and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal (formerly the Grand Junction Canal) and t ...
." In , when the Earth and everyone including Fenchurch had mysteriously reappeared, a romantic relationship blooms between her and Arthur Dent. He teaches her to fly, before a first aerial sexual encounter, and a second with a
Sony Walkman
Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...
.
At the beginning of , Fenchurch is referred to as having vanished during a hyperspace jump on their first intergalactic holiday.
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...
later said that he wanted to get rid of the character as she was getting in the way of the story. Much of this is evident from the
self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philosop ...
prose surrounding Arthur and Fenchurch's relationship.
In , she is revealed to have been working as a waitress at Milliways since she vanished, and is reunited with
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
.
In to and Fenchurch is played by actress
Jane Horrocks
Barbara Jane Horrocks (born 18 January 1964) is a British actress. She portrayed the roles of Bubble and Katy Grin in the BBC sitcom ''Absolutely Fabulous''. She was nominated for the 1993 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the title role in th ...
.
She appears in the
television series
A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite television, satellite, or cable television, cable, excluding breaking news, television adverti ...
played by an uncredited actress for the "girl in a café in Rickmansworth" segment from the second episode. Her appearance corresponds to the one described in ''So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish''.
In the computer of the ''Tanngrisnir'' takes the form of Fenchurch in its programmed attempts to live out the sub-conscious desires of the ship's occupiers. While in this form she and Arthur talk and ponder together, exacerbated by the effects of the ship's dark matter travel on people's emotions. Later in the book Arthur encounters another form of Fenchurch during a travel in
hyperspace
In science fiction, hyperspace (also known as nulspace, subspace, overspace, jumpspace and similar terms) is a concept relating to dimension#Additional dimensions, higher dimensions as well as parallel universes in fiction, parallel universe ...
only to dematerialize, similar to his Fenchurch, across a plural zone into a different part of the universe.
Appears in:
* (unnamed cameo)
*
* (only mentioned in passing)
*
*Fenchurch Everris, mentioned in Destiny 1 and 2, was likely inspired by Fenchurch.
Frankie and Benjy Mouse
Frankie and Benjy are the mice that Arthur (et al.) encounter on
Magrathea
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
. Frankie and Benjy wish to extract the final readout data from Arthur's brain to get the
Ultimate Question
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognised and often used in ...
. Frankie and Benjy are, after all, part of the pan-dimensional race that created the Earth as a
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
successor to
Deep Thought in order to find out the question to which the answer was
42.
In the first version, the radio series, they offered Arthur and Trillian a large amount of money if they could tell them what the Question is. In later versions this was changed – unfortunately for Arthur, they claim the only way to do this is to remove his brain and prepare it, apparently by dicing it. They promise to replace it with a simple computer brain, which, suggested Zaphod, would only have to say things like "What?", "I don't understand" and "Where's the tea?". Arthur objects to this ("What?" he says. "See!" says Zaphod), and escapes with the help of his friends. Frankie says:
In , they are in fact the manifestations of Lunkwill and Fook, the pan-dimensional beings who designed and built Deep Thought, and were killed by Arthur Dent when they attempted to remove his brain.
Appear in:
*
On radio,
David Tate played Benjy Mouse and
Peter Hawkins
Peter John Hawkins (3 April 1924 – 8 July 2006) was a British actor. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, he was one of the most sought-after voice artists for radio and television, becoming a regular face and voice around the Soho-based cir ...
voiced Frankie Mouse. They appeared in . They also appeared in , where they were voiced by David Tate and Stephen Moore.
Frat Gadz
Frat Gadz wrote the handbook titled ''Heavily Modified Face Flannels'', which is described by The Guide as "an altogether terser work for masochists" in .
Frogstar Prisoner Relations Officer
In the Frogstar Prisoner Relations Officer (referred to in the scripts as the "FPRO") does his best to annoy Zaphod by hosing him down, letting him think that he escaped to an Ursa Minor robot disco by body debit card, asking him for an autograph and teleporting away whilst Zaphod helps him with his respiratory problem – that he is breathing.
Gag Halfrunt
Gag Halfrunt is the private brain care specialist of
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
and
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. Halfrunt describes Beeblebrox as "Just this guy, you know?"
In and , he is responsible for the order to destroy Earth, reasoning that if the ultimate question is revealed, everybody would be happy and psychiatrists would be put out of business. When he learns of two escaped Earth people (Arthur and Trillian), he orders the Vogons to attack the Heart of Gold, at around the same time that Arthur unwittingly sabotages the ship's computers by asking them to make a cup of tea.
Halfrunt was played by Gil Morris in the TV show and by
Jason Schwartzman
Jason Francesco Schwartzman (born June 26, 1980) is an American actor and musician.
Schwartzman made his film debut in Wes Anderson's 1998 film '' Rushmore'', and has gone on to appear in six other Anderson films: ''The Darjeeling Limited'' (20 ...
in . In both these versions he only appears briefly.
Gail Andrews
In , Gail Andrews is an
astrologer
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Dif ...
who is interviewed by
Tricia McMillan
Tricia Marie McMillan, also known as Trillian Astra, is a fictional character from Douglas Adams' series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. She is most commonly referred to simply as "Trillian", a modification of her birth name, which she ...
about the impact that the discovery of the planet
Persephone, or Rupert will have on astrology. She is an advisor to the President of the United States, President Hudson, but denies having recommended the bombing of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
.
In the radio series, she appears in , and is voiced by
Lorelei King
Lorelei King is an American actress, screenwriter and development executive who has been based in the United Kingdom since 1981. She has narrated audiobooks, acted in radio plays for BBC Radio 4 and appeared on television.
Early life
King spe ...
.
Gargravarr
Gargravarr, the disembodied mind and custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex on Frogstar World B ("the most totally evil place in the galaxy"), suffers from real-life
dualism and is therefore having trial separation with his body, which has taken his forename Pizpot. The dispute arose over whether sex is better than fishing or not, a disastrous attempt at combining the two activities, and his body going out partying too late.
Since he has no physical form that can be seen, he leads those condemned to the Total Perspective Vortex by humming various morose tunes so that the condemned can follow the sound of his voice.
Appears in:
*
Gargravarr was voiced on radio by
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall (7 May 1908 – 24 June 1985) was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series '' Appointment with Fear'' ...
. He appears in .
Garkbit
Garkbit is the Head Waiter at Milliways, the impossible "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe". He is unfazed by Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, and Trillian's unruly arrival. He has a fine sales patter and a dry sense of humour.
Appears in:
*
In the radio series Garkbit is played by
Anthony Sharp
Dennis Anthony John Sharp (16 June 1915 – 23 July 1984) was an English actor, writer and director.
Stage career
Anthony Sharp was a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and made his stage debut in February 1938 ...
, and appears in . In the television series, he is portrayed by
Jack May
Jack Wynne May (23 April 1922 – 19 September 1997) was an English actor.
Early life and education
May was born in 1922 in Henley-on-Thames, and was educated at Forest School in Walthamstow. After war service with the Royal Indian Navy in Bri ...
and appears in .
The book describes Garkbit as being a methane breather, with a life-support system strapped discreetly to his thigh.
Genghis Temüjin Khan
Son of
Yesügei
Yesugei Baghatur or Yesükhei ( Traditional Mongolian: ; Modern Mongolian: Есүхэй баатар, ''Yesukhei baatar'', ; ) (b. 1134 – d. 1171) was a major chief of the Khamag Mongol confederation and the father of Temüjin, later known as ...
,
Genghis Khan
''Chinggis Khaan'' ͡ʃʰiŋɡɪs xaːŋbr />Mongol script: ''Chinggis Qa(gh)an/ Chinggis Khagan''
, birth_name = Temüjin
, successor = Tolui (as regent)Ögedei Khan
, spouse =
, issue =
, house = Borjigin
, ...
is both a distant ancestor of
Mr Prosser
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
and was called "a wanker, a tosspot, a very tiny piece of turd" by
Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
in "The Private Life of Genghis Khan", originally based on a sketch written by Adams and
Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the surreal comedy group Monty Python. He portrayed authority figures such as The Colonel and the lead role in two P ...
. The short story also appears in some editions of ''
The Salmon of Doubt
''The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time'' is a wikt:posthumous, posthumous collection of previously published and unpublished material by Douglas Adams. It consists largely of essays, interviews, and newspaper/magazine colum ...
''.
Girl with a Master's degree
After leaving the Old Pink Dog Bar (in ) Ford Prefect discovers his life's work has been undeleted. He shares this discovery and some Ol' Janx Spirit with a working girl who has "a Master's degree in Social Economics and can be very convincing". Engrossed in his own writing, she leaves Ford and leaves with a client in a steel grey Han Dold limousine. Ford later overhears her saying "It's OK, honey, it's really OK, you got to learn to feel good about it. Look at the way the whole economy is structured...".
God
Aside from being the favourite subject of author
Oolon Colluphid
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
(''Where God Went Wrong'', ''Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes'', ''Who is this God Person Anyway?'' and ''Well That About Wraps it Up for God''), God also makes a disappearance in the Guide's entry for the Babel Fish ("I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing". "But," says man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't.
QED.").
Majikthise
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
worries about philosophers sitting up half the night arguing that there may (or may not) be a God if
Deep Thought can give His phone number the next morning. Arthur, Fenchurch and Marvin visit God's Final Message to His Creation in .
At least six other characters have the status of a god:
Almighty Bob
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
, the
Great Green Arkleseizure,
Thor
Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding æsir, god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology, sacred groves ...
,
Rob McKenna
Robert Marion McKenna (born October 1, 1962) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 17th attorney general of Washington from 2005 to 2013 after serving on the Metropolitan King County Council from 1996 to 2005. A member of the R ...
, who is unknowingly a rain god,
Gaia
In Greek mythology, Gaia (; from Ancient Greek , a poetical form of , 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea , is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenog ...
, the Greek goddess who personifies the Earth, and
Cthulhu
Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was first introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pan ...
, who is one of the Great Old Ones from the
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth
August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an ...
. Gaia, Thor, and Cthulhu are among the deities interviewed by Hillman Hunter for the job of God of the Earth-refugee planet of Nano, with Thor being selected.
Gogrilla Mincefriend
An enterprising chap who addressed the problem of elevators refusing to operate because they had been afforded a degree of
prescience
Foreknowledge is knowledge regarding future events. It may also refer to:
* Foresight (disambiguation)
* Precognition - prior viewing of some future event
* Knowledge of predestination
* Prediction
A prediction (Latin ''præ-'', "before, ...
(to facilitate their operation by allowing them to be waiting for you before you've even decided you want to go up or down a floor) but consequently became terrified of the future, and so taken to hiding in basements. Mincefriend became very wealthy when he patented and successfully marketed a device he had seen in a history book: the
staircase.
Golgafrinchans
The Golgafrinchans first appear in . In the novel series, their appearances are all in and they appear in . In all formats, the story is essentially the same. Following their adventures at Milliways, Arthur and Ford teleport onto an "Ark Ship" containing a number of Golgafrinchans. This particular group consists of the
Wodehousian
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeve ...
"middle class" who have common, middle-management types of occupations. They were sent away from their planet under false pretences by the (upper class) "thinkers" and (working class) "doers" of their society, who deemed them useless. They were told that the entire society had to move to a new planet, with a variety of thin excuses, and that it was necessary for them to go first to prepare the new planet for their occupation. However, it turns out that one of the middle-men was necessary for survival, and as a result, the rest of the Golgafrinchan society died off (see below). They arrive on Earth, where they become the ancestors of modern humans, except in the novel ''Life, The Universe, and Everything'', in which in the beginning it is mentioned that they ended up dying out instead of the cavemen.
Agda and Mella
Agda and Mella are Golgafrinchan girls that Arthur and Ford hit on. On
Golgafrincham, Agda used to be a junior
personnel officer and Mella an
art director
Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games.
It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...
. Agda is taller and slimmer and Mella shorter and round-faced. Mella and Arthur become a couple, as do Agda and Ford. In a way Mella is very relieved because she has been saved from a life of looking at moodily lit tubes of toothpaste. Agda dies a few weeks later from a chain of events that Ford unknowingly starts by throwing the Scrabble letter Q into a
privet
A privet is a flowering plant in the genus ''Ligustrum''. The genus contains about 50 species of erect, deciduous or evergreen shrubs, sometimes forming small or medium-sized trees, native species, native to Europe, north Africa, Asia, many in ...
bush: it startles a rabbit, which runs away and is eaten by a fox, who chokes on the rabbit and dies, contaminating a stream that Agda drinks from upon which she falls ill—it is said that the only moral that one could possibly learn from these occurrences is not to throw the letter Q into a privet bush. Agda and Mella only appear in the novel.
Captain
The Captain of the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B likes to bathe with his rubber duck (he spent practically the entire time he was captain of the B Ark and as much of his time on Earth, a total time of over three years, as has been documented in the bath) and has got a very relaxed attitude towards everything. The Captain also has a fondness for a drink called "jynnan tonnyx". His personality was based on Douglas Adams' habit of taking long
baths as a method of
procrastination
Procrastination is the action of unnecessarily and voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. The word has originated from the Latin word ''procrastinatus'', which itself evo ...
to avoid writing.
He was voiced by
David Jason
Sir David John White (born 2 February 1940), known professionally by his stage name David Jason, is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Derek "Del Boy" Trotter in the BBC sitcom ''Only Fools and Horses'', Detective Inspector J ...
in the radio series and by
Frank Middlemass
Francis George Middlemass (28 May 1919 – 8 September 2006) was an English actor, who even in his early career played older roles. He is best remembered for his television roles as Rocky Hardcastle in '' As Time Goes By'', Algy Herries in ''To S ...
in the LP album adaptation. On television, he was played by
Aubrey Morris
Aubrey Morris (born Aubrey Steinberg; 1 June 1926 – 15 July 2015) was a British actor known for his appearances in the films '' A Clockwork Orange'' and ''The Wicker Man''.
Early life and career
Morris was one of nine children born to Becky ...
.
Great Circling Poets of Arium
These rock throwing poets can be seen in the ''Guide'' graphics in , heard about in and read about in . They are original inhabitants of
Golgafrincham, one of whose descendants inspire the stories that caused the creation of the "'B' Ark" that Arthur and Ford find themselves on. The first part of their songs tell of how five princes with four horses from the City of Vassilian travel widely in distant lands, and the latter – and longer – part of the songs is about which of them is going to walk back.
Hairdresser
One of the Golgafrinchans on the prehistoric Earth, the hairdresser was put in charge of the fire development sub-committee. They gave him a couple of sticks to rub together, but he made them into a pair of scissors in the radio series, or curling tongs in the television and book series.
He was played by
Aubrey Woods
Aubrey Harold Woods (9 April 1928 – 7 May 2013) was an English actor.
Biography and career
Woods was born on 9 April 1928 in Edmonton, Middlesex and grew up in nearby Palmers Green. He was educated at the Latymer School. His first film ...
in the radio series, by
Stephen Greif
Stephen John Greif (; 26 August 1944 – 23 December 2022) was an English actor known for his roles as Travis in ''Blake's 7'', Harry Fenning in three series of ''Citizen Smith'', Signor Donato in ''Casanova'' and Commander John Shepherd in '' ...
in the LP album adaptation, and by
David Rowlands on television.
Management consultant
The Golgafrinchans' management consultant tried to arrange the meetings of the colonization committee along the lines of a traditional committee structure, complete with a chair and an agenda. He was also in charge of fiscal policy, and decided to adopt the leaf as legal tender, making everyone immensely rich. In order to solve the inflation problem this caused, he planned a major deforestation campaign to revalue the leaf by burning down all the forests.
He was played by
Jonathan Cecil
Jonathan Hugh Gascoyne-Cecil (22 February 1939 – 22 September 2011), known as Jonathan Cecil, was an English theatre, film, and television actor.
Early life
Cecil was born in London, England, the son of Lord David Cecil and the grandso ...
in the radio series, by
David Tate in the LP album adaptation, and by
Jon Glover
Jonathan Philip Glover (born 26 December 1952) is an English actor. He has appeared in various television programmes including '' Play School'', '' Survivors'', the Management consultant in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', ''Casualty' ...
on television.
Marketing girl
Another Golgafrinchan on prehistoric Earth, the marketing girl assisted the hairdresser's fire development sub-committee in researching what consumers want from fire and how they relate to it and if they want it fitted nasally. She also tried to invent the wheel, but had a little difficulty deciding what colour it should be.
She was played by
Beth Porter
Beth Jane Porter (born May 23, 1942) is an American stage, film and television actress and writer, who has worked in Britain for most of her career. She became a British citizen in 2014.
Early life
Beth Porter made her first professional appea ...
both in the radio series and on television and by Leueen Willoughby in the LP album adaptation.
Number One
Number One is the First officer in the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B. He is not very smart, having difficulty tying up his shoelaces, but is regarded by the captain as a nice chap. His only function to appear in the series is to offer Ford and Arthur drinks.
He was voiced by
Jonathan Cecil
Jonathan Hugh Gascoyne-Cecil (22 February 1939 – 22 September 2011), known as Jonathan Cecil, was an English theatre, film, and television actor.
Early life
Cecil was born in London, England, the son of Lord David Cecil and the grandso ...
in the radio series and by
David Tate in the LP album adaptation. On television, the character was renamed Number Three and played by
Geoffrey Beevers
Geoffrey Beevers (born 15 January 1941) is a British actor who has appeared in many different stage and screen roles.
Career Theatre
Beevers has worked extensively at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, both as an actor (including ...
.
Number Two
Number Two is a
militaristic
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
officer in the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B. He belongs to the Golgafrinchan 3rd Regiment. He captures Arthur and Ford and interrogates them. When they land on Earth, Number Two declares a war on another, uninhabited continent, leaving an "open-ended ultimatum", blows up some trees which he claims are "potential military installations," and 'interrogates' a gazelle. He likes shouting a lot, and thinks the Captain is an idiot.
He is played by
Aubrey Woods
Aubrey Harold Woods (9 April 1928 – 7 May 2013) was an English actor.
Biography and career
Woods was born on 9 April 1928 in Edmonton, Middlesex and grew up in nearby Palmers Green. He was educated at the Latymer School. His first film ...
in the radio series and by
Stephen Greif
Stephen John Greif (; 26 August 1944 – 23 December 2022) was an English actor known for his roles as Travis in ''Blake's 7'', Harry Fenning in three series of ''Citizen Smith'', Signor Donato in ''Casanova'' and Commander John Shepherd in '' ...
in the LP album adaptation. On television, the character was divided into two different characters: Number Two played by
David Neville on the planet Earth, and Number One played by
Matthew Scurfield
Matthew Scurfield (born 2 February 1948, in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) is an English actor and the eldest child of author George Scurfield and his wife Cecilia (née Hopkinson).
His autobiography, ''I Could Be Anyone'', was published in 2008 ( ...
on the B Ark.
Telephone Sanitizer
The Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizer is in . By tragic coincidence, after all the telephone sanitizers were sent away with the rest of the "useless" Golgafrinchans, the rest of the society died off from an infectious disease contracted from an "unexpectedly dirty" telephone.
Googleplex Starthinker
In the scripts for , the first programmer asks
Deep Thought if it is not "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Starthinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week
Aldebaran
Aldebaran (Arabic: “The Follower”, "الدبران") is the brightest star in the zodiac constellation of Taurus. It has the Bayer designation α Tauri, which is Latinized to Alpha Tauri and abbreviated Alpha Tau or α Tau. Aldebar ...
sand blizzard?", which the great computer dismisses because he has already "contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the
Big Bang
The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...
itself". The Googleplex Starthinker also appears in and .
Note the much later use (but same spelling) of
Googleplex
The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. It is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.
The original complex, with of office space, is the company's second la ...
for the Google corporate headquarters, another homage to the number
googolplex
A googolplex is the number 10, or equivalently, 10 or 1010,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 . Written out in ordinary decimal notation, it is 1 fol ...
.
Great Green Arkleseizure
The creator of the universe, according to the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI. Their legend has it that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure, and they thus "live in perpetual fear of the time they call 'The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief'" (their cosmology's own version of the end of the Universe).
In the movie, Humma Kavula, played by
John Malkovich
John Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Screen Actors Guild Aw ...
, is a missionary of the Great Green Arkleseizure religion on Viltvodle VI, ending his sermons with a simple "Bless you".
The Jatravartid's God appears (conceptually) in , , and .
Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron Wrangler
A great computer, which according to Deep Thought, can "talk all four legs off an Arcturian Megadonkey" (although Deep Thought could allegedly persuade said Megadonkey to go for a walk ''afterwards''), from .
Grunthos the Flatulent
Grunthos the Flatulent was the poetmaster of the Azgoths of Kria, writers of the second worst poetry in the universe, just between
Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
and the
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
s.
During Arthur and Ford's torture by Vogon poetry, the Guide recites a tale of how, during a reading by Grunthos of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", "four of the audience died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off."
Reportedly "disappointed" by the reception of his poem, Grunthos then prepared to read his 12-book epic, ''My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles'' (or ''Zen and the Art of Going to the Lavatory'' in ). He was prevented from doing so when his small intestine leapt up his neck and throttled his brain in a desperate bid to save civilization, killing him.
Excerpt from "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", taken from the TV series graphics:
:''Putty. Putty. Putty.''
:''Green Putty – Grutty Peen.''
:''Grarmpitutty – Morning!''
:''Pridsummer – Grorning Utty!''
:''Discovery..... Oh.''
:''Putty?..... Armpit?''
:''Armpit..... Putty.''
:''Not even a particularly''
:''Nice shade of green.''
Excerpt from "''Zen And The Art Of Going To The Lavatory''", also taken from the TV series
:''Relax mind''
:''Relax body''
:''Relax bowels''
:''Relax.''
:''Do not fall over.''
:''You are a cloud.''
:''You are raining.''
:''Do not rain''
:''While train''
:''Is standing at a station.''
:''Move with the wind.''
:''Apologise where necessary.''
Appears in:
*''
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
''
Guide Mark II
In the fifth novel, the Guide Mark II is used by the Vogons to help them destroy all the many Earths that appear in the novels. By using ''reverse temporal engineering'' throughout the book, the Guide Mark II – which takes on the appearance of a bird with ''
Unfiltered perception
''Mostly Harmless'' is a 1992 novel by Douglas Adams and the fifth book in the ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series. It is described on the cover of the first edition as "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers ...
'' – cajoles the cast to their final destination at Club Beta on Earth to first re-meet
Agrajag
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
and then be destroyed by the Vogons.
Hactar
Flexible and imaginative, Hactar was the first computer whose individual components reflected the pattern of the whole. Hactar is assembled and programmed by the Silastic Armourfiends, who then order him to assemble an "Ultimate Weapon." Hactar, receiving no other guidance from the Armourfiends, takes the request literally and builds a supernova bomb which would connect every major
sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
in the
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...
through hyperspace, thus causing every
star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
to go
supernova
A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...
. Deciding that he could find no circumstance where such a bomb would be justified, Hactar builds a small defect into it. After discovering the defect, the Armourfiends pulverize Hactar.
Rather than being destroyed, Hactar is merely crippled. He can still manipulate matter, but even a simple item takes millennia to manufacture. Over æons Hactar moves and recombines to become a dark cloud surrounding
Krikkit, isolating the inhabitants. Deciding that the decision not to destroy the universe was not his to make, he uses his influence to make them build their first space ship and discover the universe; he then manipulates them into the same rage which the Armourfiends possessed, urging that they destroy all other life; Hactar has reassembled the supernova bomb, this time in working condition.
After an incredibly long and bloody galactic war,
Judiciary Pag
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
banishes Krikkit to an envelope of "Slo-Time" to be released after the rest of the universe ends. At the end of , after his scheme fails, Hactar slips the cricket-ball-shaped supernova bomb to Arthur Dent, who trips while trying to bowl it at
Lord's Cricket Ground
Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...
; he ends up flying over the pitch and is able to throw the bomb aside without setting it off, thus saving the universe.
Appears in:
*
He is played on radio first by
Geoffrey McGivern
Geoffrey M. McGivern is a British actor in film, radio, stage and television, as well as a comedian.
Career
He played Ford Prefect in the radio series (1978–80) and subsequent LP releases of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Dougla ...
, in a flashback for which McGivern is not credited during . He is then voiced by
Leslie Phillips
Leslie Samuel Phillips (20 April 1924 – 7 November 2022) was an English actor, director, producer and author. He achieved prominence in the 1950s, playing smooth, upper-class comic roles utilising his "Ding dong" and "Hello" catchphrases. ...
, appearing again in .
Haggunenon Underfleet Commander
The Underfleet Commander reports directly to the Haggunenon Admiral. The admiral had gone off for a quick meal at Milliways, where Ford and Zaphod attempted to steal his/her/its/their flagship. But as it had a pre-set return course, it resumed its place at the front of about a hundred thousand horribly be-weaponed black battle cruisers. But because the Haggunenons have very unstable DNA and change their shape/appearance at random and often inconvenient times, the Underfleet Commander mistakenly assumes that Zaphod and Trillian are actually the admiral.
The Underfleet Commander only appears in , voiced by
Aubrey Woods
Aubrey Harold Woods (9 April 1928 – 7 May 2013) was an English actor.
Biography and career
Woods was born on 9 April 1928 in Edmonton, Middlesex and grew up in nearby Palmers Green. He was educated at the Latymer School. His first film ...
. The Haggunenons were written out of subsequent versions, as they were originally co-written with
John Lloyd, although they did appear in some stage adaptations.
Haggunenons are greatly inconvenienced by their genetic instability and so have vowed to wage terrible war against all "filthy, rotten, stinking, same-lings."
A similar creature appears on the BBC TV series
Red Dwarf
''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. T ...
.
There is a shapeshifting Dungeons & Dragons monster called a "hagunemnon."
Heimdall
Keeper of the gate into
Asgard
In Nordic mythology, Asgard (Old Norse: ''Ásgarðr'' ; "enclosure of the Æsir") is a location associated with the gods. It appears in a multitude of Old Norse sagas and mythological texts. It is described as the fortified home of the Æsir ...
. Appears in .
Hig Hurtenflurst
Hig Hurtenflurst "only happens to be" the risingest young executive in the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation. During , he is on Brontitall. What he is doing there is something of a mystery, as the Shoe Event Horizon was reached long ago and the survivors of the famine have long since evolved into bird people and set up home inside a fifteen-mile high statue of Arthur Dent. His foot-warriors capture Arthur Dent and three Lintilla clones, who are threatened by Hurtenflurst to be "revoked. K-I-L-L-E-D, revoked". He then proceeds to show them a film about the activities of the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation, which is interrupted by Marvin, who has cut the power in order to rescue Arthur and the Lintillas.
He appeared in played by Marc Smith. He has not appeared in any versions after this.
Hillman Hunter
Hillman Hunter is an Irish property developer from Earth who has been tricked by Zaphod into moving to a planet created by Magrathea. He interviews various gods, as he is keen to employ Thor to keep the society he has created on the planet devoutly controlled. He acts as a "stereotype Paddy from a bygone era" using phrases such as ''Bejaysus'' and invoking leprechauns. He is a major character in . He has considerable problems with the Tyromancers from an alternative reality who have also settled on the planet. Like
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
, whose name derived from the Ford Prefect automobile, Hillman Hunter's name derives from an Rootes Arrow#Hillman, automobile sold in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. In the radio series ''Hexagonal Phase'', Hunter was played by Ed Byrne (comedian), Ed Byrne.
Hotblack Desiato
Hotblack Desiato is the guitar keyboard player of the plutonium rock group ''Disaster Area'', claimed to be the loudest band in the universe, and in fact the loudest noise of any kind, anywhere. So loud is this band that the audience usually listens from the safe distance of away in a well-built concrete bunker. ''Disaster Area's'' lavish performances went so far as to crash a space ship into the sun to create a solar flare. Pink Floyd's Pink Floyd live performances, lavish stage shows were the inspiration for ''Disaster Area''. In the book he is described as being connected to a "death support system" and communicates only by supernatural means. At the time when the main characters meet him, in , Hotblack is spending a year dead "Tax exile, for tax reasons". This is likely a spoof of the prominent UK performers who lived outside the country as tax exiles during the 1970s due to the laws that could result in a marginal tax rate over 90% for high income earners. Such tax exiles included singers Cat Stevens,
David Bowie and Shirley Bassey;
members of the rock groups Pink Floyd and Bad Company; and actor Michael Caine.
The character is named after an estate agency based in Islington, with branches throughout North London. Adams said he was struggling to find a name for the character and, spotting a Hotblack Desiato sign while driving, liked the name so much he "nearly crashed the car" and eventually telephoned to ask permission to use the firm's name for a character. Apparently, the firm later received phone calls telling them they had a nerve naming their company after Adams's character.
The Disaster Area sub-plot was first heard in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy#LP album adaptations, LP album adaptations and later in . It replaces the Haggunenon material from . The character appears in , and his ship in . He does not have any lines (due to being technically dead), and is played by Barry Frank Warren.
The B-side of the 7-inch Single record, single of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series), ''Hitchhiker's Guide'' TV Series theme music featured a performance of a song entitled "Only The End of the World Again", credited to 'Disaster Area'.
Humma Kavula
Humma Kavula is a semi-insane missionary living amongst the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI, and a former List of space pirates, space pirate. (It was presumably during his time as a pirate that he lost his lower half and had it replaced with telescoping mechanical spider appendages). He wears thick glasses, which make his eyes appear normal when worn; however, when he removes the glasses, he appears to have shrunken black pits where his eyes should be. He seems to be a religious leader on that planet, preaching about the ''Coming of the Great White Handkerchief'' (The Jatravartids' interpretation of the end of the universe, as they believe the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure). Hence, his sermons end with the words "Bless You" rather than "Amen" as all the Jatravartids sneeze stimultaneously at the end of a 'prayer'.
He also ran against
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
in the campaign for President of the Galaxy with the "anti-Zaphod" campaign slogan "Don't Vote For Stupid," but lost, and has remained bitter about it ever since. In the film he is seeking the Point-of-View Gun to further his religion's acceptance (presumably), and he takes one of Zaphod's two heads and one of his three arms (though its removal is not shown, Zaphod says while attempting to avoid the thermonuclear missiles above Magrathea "I can't do this without my third arm") hostage to ensure his help.
While the Jatravartids were mentioned in the books, the character of Humma Kavula was created by Adams for . Quoting Robbie Stamp: "All the substantive new ideas in the movie, Humma, the Point of View Gun and the "paddle slapping sequence" on Vogsphere are brand new Douglas ideas written especially for the movie by him."
Appears in:
*the 2005 film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film), ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', played by
John Malkovich
John Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Screen Actors Guild Aw ...
.
Hurling Frootmig
Hurling Frootmig is said to be the founding editor of the Hitchhiker's Guide, who "established its fundamental principles of honesty and idealism, and went bust." Later, after much soul-searching, he re-established the Guide with its "principles of honesty and idealism and where you could stuff them both, and went on to lead the Guide to its first major commercial success."
He is mentioned in . He did not make , but was mentioned in .
Judiciary Pag
His High Judgmental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, L.I.V.R. (the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed) was the chairman of the board of Judges at the Krikkit Wars, Krikkit War Crimes Trial. He privately called himself Zipo Bibrok 5 × 10
8 (which is five hundred million or half a billion in long and short scales, short-scale terminology).
It was Judiciary Pag's idea that the people of Krikkit be permanently sealed in a Slo-Time envelope, and the seal could only be broken by bringing a special Key to the Lock. When the rest of the universe had ended, the seal would be broken and Krikkit could continue a solitary existence in the universe. This judgement seemed to please everybody except the people of Krikkit themselves, but the only alternative was to face annihilation.
Pag appears to be related to
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
; they share the same carefree and charming attitude, and Pag's real name (Zipo Bibrok 5 × 10
8) appears to be a mutation of Zaphod's name. (They also share the initials Z.B.) Since the Beeblebrox family lives backwards in time, Pag (despite living in the distant past) is therefore one of Zaphod's descendants.
Appears in:
*
He is played on radio by Rupert Degas, and appears in .
Karl Mueller
Karl Mueller operates a nightclub, Club Alpha, in New York City. He is German with a Greek mother, and was handed the running of the club by his brother Stavro Mueller, who renamed Club Alpha with his own name. He appears in , in the storyline regarding the final death of #Agrajag, Agrajag.
Know-Nothing Bozo the Non-Wonder Dog
A dog belonging to advertiser Will Smithers which was so stupid that it was incapable of eating the right dog food on camera, even when engine oil was poured on the wrong food. It was so named because its hair stuck upright on its head in a way that resembled Ronald Reagan. It also had an adverse reaction whenever someone said the word "commies". Bozo barked at Arthur when he considered entering the Horse and Groom pub on his return to Earth in ''So Long and Thanks for all the Fish''.
Krikkiters
Ford, Arthur, Trillian and Slartibartfast meet a group of murderous Krikkiters on the surface of their planet. Away from the influence of Hactar, they are troubled by their Elders wanting to destroy the Universe as they are keen to have sporting links with the rest of the Galaxy. They appear in and the Tertiary Phase of the radio series. They're described as being white, but that's nearly all the indication of their appearance in the book series, but the cover of the CD version of the Tertiary Phase features a drawing of the robots, one of them batting a Cricket ball. On the image, they look rather like Marvin from the 2005 movie, only with longer legs, and smaller heads, including sunglasses-like eyes and antennae, like a play on their name.
Kwaltz
Kwaltz is one of the
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
s on Vogsphere, directing Jeltz's Vogon Constructor Fleet during the demolition of Earth and enforcing the galaxy's bureaucracy. He is the partner and advisor of vice-president Questular Rontok, who seems to care more about winning Zaphod Beeblebrox, Zaphod's affections than retrieving the ''Heart of Gold.'' Kwaltz also leads a team of a few hundred
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
s to capture the president's kidnapper in the penultimate scene of the movie, a chase which takes them to
Magrathea
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comic science fiction, comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally The Hitchhiker's Guide to th ...
, where they discover and capture
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android is a fictional character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship ''Heart of Gold''. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sir ...
(not shown), then to Earth Mark II, where they shoot up
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
's house, and are finally defeated by Marvin the Paranoid Android, Marvin who gives them all a lethargic and depressed nature, at least for the moment, by use of the Point-of-view gun which works on non-organic life forms.
Appears in:
*, voiced by Ian McNeice.
Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton
Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton is described in the original radio script as "a sort of Margaret Thatcher, Penelope Keith character." She is responsible for christening the "very splendid and worthwhile yellow bulldozer" which knocks down Arthur Dent's house in "cruddy Cottington", and it gives her "great pleasure" to make a "very splendid and worthwhile" speech beforehand.
She only appears in , where she was voiced by Jo Kendall. Her "very splendid and worthwhile" lines were entirely dropped from later versions.
The Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob
The Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob is a small man with a strange hat who guards God's Final Message to His Creation, and who sells Arthur and Fenchurch a ticket to it before passing them on a scooter and imploring them to "keep to the left". Introduced by Prak in the epilogue to , he finally appears towards the end of when we also realize that he has been a regular visitor to Wonko The Sane, who describes angels with golden beards and green wings, Dr Scholl sandals, who eat nachos and do a lot of cocaine, coke. He says that he runs a concession stand by the message and when Wonko says "I don't know what that means" he says "no, you don't".
Lallafa
Lallafa was an ancient poet who lived in the forests of the Long Lands of Effa. His home inspired him to write a poetic opus known as ''The Songs of the Long Land'' on pages made of dried habra leaf, leaves. His poems were discovered years after Lallafa's death, and news of them quickly spread. For centuries, the poems gave inspiration and illumination to many who would otherwise be much more unhappy, and for this they are usually considered around the Galaxy to be the greatest poetic works in existence. This is remarkable because Lallafa wrote his poems without the aid of education or correction fluid.
The latter fact attracted the attention of some correction fluid manufacturers from the Manchester, Mancunian nebula. The manufacturers worked out that if they could get Lallafa to use their fluids in a variety of Chlorophyll, leafy colours in the course of his work, their companies would be as successful as the poems themselves. They therefore traveled back in time and persuaded him—in the book, by explaining the situation, with difficulty; in the radio adaptation, by beating him—to go along with their plan. The plan succeeded and Lallafa became extremely rich, but spent so much time on talk show, chat shows that he never got around to actually writing ''The Songs''. This was solved by each week, in the past, giving Lallafa a copy of his poems, from the present, and having him write his poems again for the first time, but on the condition that he make the odd mistake and use the correction fluid.
Some argued the poems were now worthless, and set out to stop this sort of thing with the Campaign for Real Time (a play on Campaign for Real Ale), or CamTim, to keep the flow of history untampered by time travel.
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast is a character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', a comedy/science fiction series created by Douglas Adams. The character appears in the first and third novels, the first and third radio series (and the LP adaptation ...
is a member of CamTim. (The necessity for this campaign is contradicted by other events in the novels. For example, when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect landed on primitive Earth, they decided that nothing they could do would change history. And when Agrajag diverted him to a Cathedral of Doom to try to kill him, Arthur Dent's perpetual victim said that he'd try to kill Dent even if it were a logical impossibility, Dent not having ducked a bullet yet.)
Lallafa appears in and .
Lazlar Lyricon
A customizer of starships to the rich and famous time travellers, who first appeared in , and later in and . Ford Prefect apparently believes that "the man has no shame." His trademark is an infra-pink lizard emblem.
Lig Lury, Jr
The fourth editor of the Guide, who never actually resigned from his job. He simply left one morning for lunch and never returned to his office, making all later holders of the position "Acting Editors." His old office is still preserved by the Guide employees in the hope that he will return. His desk sports a sign that reads "Missing, presumed fed."
Lintilla
Lintilla is a rather unfortunate woman who has (as of ) been Cloning, cloned 578,000,000,000 times due to an accident at a Brantisvogan escort agency. While creating six clones of a wonderfully talented and attractive woman named Lintilla (at the same time another machine was creating five hundred lonely business executives, in order to keep the laws of supply and demand operating profitably), the machine got stuck in a loop and malfunctioned in such a way that it got halfway through completing each new Lintilla before it had finished the previous one. This meant that it was for a very long while impossible to turn the machine off without committing murder, despite lawyers' best efforts to argue about what murder actually was, including trying to redefine it, repronounce it, and respell it in the hope that no one would notice.
Arthur Dent encounters three of her on the planet of Brontitall, and takes a liking to (at least) one of them. He kills one of three male anti-clones, all called Allitnil (Lintilla backwards), sent by the cloning company to get her to "agree to cease to be" (although the other two of her "consummate" this legal agreement with their respective anti-clones). When Arthur leaves Zaphod, Ford, and Zarniwoop stranded with the The Ruler of the Universe, Ruler of the Universe and his cat (at the conclusion of ), he takes one of the Lintillas with him aboard the ''Heart of Gold''.
All Lintillas were played by the same actress: Rula Lenska. Lintilla (and her clones) appeared only in the final three episodes of the second radio series. Rula Lenska did return to the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases, fourth and fifth radio series – she was first an uncredited "Update Voice" for the Hitchhiker's Guide itself and then played the Voice of the Bird (the new version of the Guide introduced in ). Zaphod noted in the new series that the new Guide has the same voice as "those Lintilla chicks." The footnotes of the published scripts make the connection, confirming that the bird is actually an amalgam of the Lintilla clones, the solution alluded to in the second series. Lintilla and her clones (of which at the end there are now more than 800,000,000,000 – "800 thousand million") do make a re-appearance of sorts on the ''Heart of Gold'' in an alternate ending to (which can only be heard on CD).
The Lintillas do not appear in the novels nor in the BBC television series.
The name Lintilla was reused for an adult-oriented multiple-worlds talker that opened in 1994.
The scripts for the radio series make it clear that The Three Lintillas are "NOT an Italian High Wire Act, though I'm sure we don't actually need to mention this fact, only perhaps, well I don't know put it in anyway" (script for ).
Loonquawl and Phouchg
:''See #Phouchg and Loonquawl, Phouchg and Loonquawl''
The Lord
The Lord is a cat, owned by The Ruler of the Universe. He might like fish and might like people singing songs to him, as the Ruler of the Universe isn't certain if people come to talk to him, or sing songs to his cat or even if the cat exists at all.
Appears in:
*
*
Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop
A man who never married. Had he done so, and forgotten his wife's birthday for the second year, he would have globbered. This definition of globber casts doubt on the usefulness of ''Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever''. (''Life, the Universe and Everything'')
Lunkwill and Fook
Lunkwill and Fook are the two programmers chosen to receive Deep Thought's answer to the great question of Life, The Universe, and Everything! 7-1/2 million years after the day of the Great On-Turning.
Appear in:
*
On TV, Antony Carrick plays Lunkwill and Timothy Davies (actor), Timothy Davies plays Fook, and they appear in .
On radio, the characters are just called ''First computer programmer'' and ''Second computer programmer'', and appear in , and are played by Ray Hassett and Jeremy Browne (actor), Jeremy Browne respectively.
In they are merged with the characters of List of minor The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters#Frankie and Benjy Mouse, Frankie and Benjy Mouse. Jack Stanley plays Lunkwill and Dominique Jackson (British actress), Dominique Jackson plays Fook.
Magician
Appears wandering along a beach in , but no one needs him.
Majikthise and Vroomfondel
Majikthise and Vroomfondel may (or may not) be philosophy, philosophers. They quite definitely appear as representatives of the ''Amalgamated trade union, Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and other Professional Thinking Persons''. When the supercomputer
Deep Thought is being programmed to determine the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, they declare a demarcation dispute since the search for ultimate truth is the "inalienable prerogative of your professional working thinkers". They insist on rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty, and demand Deep Thought be switched off immediately. They are disarmed when Deep Thought, already committed to its seven and a half million years' calculation, suggests that a great deal of money can be made by philosophers willing to exploit the expected media interest. It is later apparent that their distant descendants revere them as "the greatest and most truly interesting pundits the universe has ever known."
Appear in:
*
On radio, Majikthise was played by Jonathan Adams (British actor), Jonathan Adams, and Vroomfondel was played by Jim Broadbent. In the television series (but not on The Big Read), David Leland played Majikthise and Charles McKeown played Vroomfondel.
The characters were omitted from .
The frog Litoria majikthise was named after the character Majikthise to reference this species' "vividly coloured thighs and groin."
Max Quordlepleen
Max Quordlepleen is an entertainer who hosts at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe and the Big Bang Burger Bar (or "Big Bang Burger Chef" in the original radio version). His feelings about the Universe outside of his onstage persona are unclear, but he has witnessed its end over five hundred times.
His name is derived from a Max Q, phenomenon during a rocket's ascent.
Appears in:
*
On radio, Roy Hudd played him. On television, it was Colin Jeavons.
He re-appears in the final episode of , played by Roy Hudd again.
Mo Minetti
In , it is Mo Minetti who had left, due to pregnant, pregnancy, being the anchor the USAM TV breakfast show which Tricia McMillan is in New York to try out for. Apparently, she declined, surprisingly for reasons of taste, to deliver her child on the air.
Murray Bost Henson
Murray Bost Henson is "a journalist from one of those papers with small pages and big print" as Arthur Dent puts it. He is a friend of Arthur's whom Arthur phones one day to find out how he can get in touch with Wonko the Sane, and uses odd idioms in conversation, including such phrases as "my old silver tureen", "my old elephant tusk" and "my old prosthetic limb" (as terms of endearment) and "the Great Golden Spike in the sky" (referring to the death-place of old newspaper stories).
He is played in by Stephen Fry.
Old Man on the Poles
Played by Saeed Jaffrey in the old man on the poles on Hawalius, tells Arthur some old information wrapped up as news, and that everyone should have a beach house. The character appears in .
Old Thrashbarg
Old Thrashbarg first appears in , as a sort of priest on
Lamuella, the planet on which Arthur becomes the Sandwich-Maker. He worships Almighty Bob, "Bob" and is often ignored by his villagers. Whenever he is questioned about Almighty Bob he merely describes him as "ineffable." No one on Lamuella knows what this means, because Thrashbarg owns the only dictionary, and it is "the ineffable will of Almighty Bob" that he keeps it to himself. Someone who sneaked into his house while he was out having a swim found that "wikt:ineffable, ineffable" was defined in the dictionary as "unknowable, indescribable, unutterable, not to be known or spoken about".
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases#Fit the Twenty-Fifth, Fit the Twenty-Fifth and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases#Fit the Twenty-Sixth, Fit the Twenty-Sixth of the radio series
Old Thrashbarg is voiced by Griff Rhys Jones.
Old Woman in the Cave
Played by Miriam Margolyes in , the smelly Old Woman in the Cave in the village of oracles on Hawalius provides Arthur Dent with bad olfactory stimulation and a photocopied story of her life, suggesting he live his life the opposite way so he won't end up living in a rancid cave. This occurs in .
The original, real "smelly goat" event happened during the ''Last Chance to See'' radio series, found on the ''Douglas Adams at the BBC'' CD as a "Pick of the Week".
Oolon Colluphid
Oolon Colluphid is the author of several books on religious and other philosophical topics. Colluphid's works include:
*''Where God Went Wrong''
*''Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes''
*''Who Is This God Person Anyway?''
*''Well That About Wraps It Up for God''
*''Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Guilt But Were Too Ashamed To Ask'' (A play on the title of a Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (book), sex manual written by Dr. David Reuben (sex author), David Reuben which inspired a Woody Allen Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (film), film)
*''Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out'' (Another play on that same title)
Colluphid is also shown as the author of the book ''The Origins of the Universe'' in the first part of the ''Destiny of the Daleks'' serial of ''Doctor Who''. Fourth Doctor, The Doctor scoffs that he "got it wrong on the first line". The reference was inserted by Douglas Adams, who was at the time working as the show's script editor.
An early version of Colluphid was the character ''Professor Eric Von Contrick'' appearing in a December 1979 episode of the BBC radio series ''The Burkiss Way'', which was based on author Erich von Däniken. "Spaceships of the Gods", "Some more of the Spaceships of the Gods", "It Shouldn't Happen to Spaceships of the Gods", were books by the fictional author who had a #Gag Halfrunt, Gag Halfrunt-style accent and who is visited in the Adams-written sketch by the aliens to demand a cut of Von Contrick's profits.
Paul Neil Milne Johnstone
Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of London Borough of Redbridge, Redbridge, Essex, was the writer, according to Adams, of the worst poetry in the universe. He appeared under that name in the original radio series and the first printings of the 1979 novelization (Pan Books, paperback, page 53).
The real Paul Neil Milne Johnstone (1952–2004) attended Brentwood School (Brentwood, England), Brentwood School with Adams, and they jointly received a prize for English. At the school, Johnstone edited ''Broadsheet'', "the Artsphere Magazine" that included mock reviews by Adams as well as Johnstone's own poetry. Johnstone won an Exhibition (scholarship), exhibition to study at Emmanuel College, Cambridge while Adams won an exhibition to St John's College.
Johnstone achieved moderate prominence in the poetry world as an editor and festival organiser, including the 1977 Cambridge Poetry Festival. He died a few years after Adams of pancreatic failure.
After he requested the removal of his name and address, Johnstone was replaced with "Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex" (a garbled form of his name). On the 1979 ORA042 vinyl record release, his name has been made indecipherable by cutting up that part of the mastertape and reassembling it in the wrong order.
In the film version Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings has moved from Essex to Sussex. In the TV adaptation of the series, a portrait of Jennings was Adams with pigtails.
A sample of Jennings's poetry, taken from the animated readout in the TV series, is:
:''The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.''
:''They lay. They rotted. They turned''
:''Around occasionally.''
:''Bits of flesh dropped off them from''
:''Time to time.''
:''And sank into the pool's mire.''
:''They also smelt a great deal. ''
In the TV series, Jennings is reported as living at 37 Wasp Villas, Greenbridge, Essex, GB10 1LL which is neither an actual town nor a valid postcode. The real Johnstone lived at Beehive Court in Redbridge.
Phouchg and Loonquawl
In the first novel, Phouchg and Loonquawl received Deep Thought's answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything on the day of the answer, seven and a half million years (75,000 generations) after Deep Thought had been asked the question. They were chosen at birth for this task. The name "Phouchg" may be a bastardization of the word Fuck, as his predecessor's name is Fook.
Poodoo
Poodoo is a representative of the cloning company responsible for all the
Lintilla clones. He arrives on Brontitall with Varntvar The Priest on a mission to 'revoke' the three Lintillas there by marrying them to their anti-clones, each of which is named Allitnils, The, Allitnil. The marriage certificates are actually legally binding forms that make the signers agree to terminate their existence, and the unctuous Poodoo may therefore be a lawyer of some sort.
After two of the newly married couples disappear in unsmoke, Arthur shoots the third Allitnil dead and, after tying up Poodoo and Varntvar, forces them to listen to a recording of Marvin's autobiography, so as he says, "It's all over for them."
Poodoo only appears in , in which he is played by Ken Campbell (actor), Ken Campbell.
Prak
In the epilogue of , a journalist with the ''Sidereal Daily Mentioner'' tells of Prak and then collapses into a coma.
Prak was a witness in a trial on Argabuthon where the Dwellers in the Forest were suing the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides. Prak was a messenger for Dwellers in the Forest sent to the other two parties to ask "the reason for this intolerable behaviour." He would always walk away thinking about how well-thought out the reason was, but he would always forget what it was by the time he got back. The white robots of
Krikkit broke into the court room to steal the Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice, as it was part of the Wikkit Gate Key. In so doing they may have jogged a surgeon's arm, while the surgeon was injecting Prak with Sodium thiopental, truth serum, resulting in too high a dose.
When the trial resumed, Prak was instructed to tell "the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth," which he did, in its entirety. People at the scene had to flee or risk insanity as Prak told every single bit of the entire truth of the entire universe and all of its history, much of which they found ghastly. Prak recalled that many of the weird bits involved frogs or Arthur Dent.
As a result, when Arthur Dent came to visit him in search of the truth, he nearly died laughing. He never did write down anything he discovered while telling the truth, first because he could not find a pencil and then because he could not be bothered. He has therefore forgotten almost all of it, but did recall the address of God's Last Message to His Creation, which he gave to Arthur when the laughter subsided. He died afterwards, not having recovered from his laughing fit.
On radio he appears in and is voiced by Chris Langham, who had played Arthur Dent in the very first
stage adaptation of the scripts of the first radio series, in 1979.
Pralite monks
Pralite monks are an order that undergo extreme mental training before taking their final vows to be locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives; consequently, the galaxy is full of ex-Pralite monks who leave the order just before taking their final vows. Ford visited the ex-Pralite monks to Mind Surf and learned the techniques he used to charm animals on prehistoric Earth long enough for him to kill them for food and clothing.
President Hudson
Fictional former president of the US who was known to have had an affair with astrologer Gail Andrews in . One of his presidential orders was the bombing of
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
or "Damascectomy" (the taking out of Damascus), an issue Andrews denied that she counselled him on. At the time of , Hudson had died for unknown reasons.
Princess Hooli
On the tri-d TV, Trillian Astra reports on the future wedding of Princess Hooli of Raui Alpha to Prince Gid of the Soofling Dynasty whilst Arthur is visiting Hawalius in . The seer who is showing Arthur the future news in order to demonstrate the sudden lack of need for future tellings quickly changes the channel. Arthur says that he knows her (referring to Trillian) and tells the seer to turn the channel back. The seer, thinking that Arthur was referring to the princess, replies "Look mate, if I had to stand here saying hello to everyone who came by who knew Princess Hooli, I'd need a new set of lungs!"
Mr Prosser
Mr L. Prosser is a nervous fat and shabby married 40-year-old road builder who would like to build a Bypass route, bypass right through Arthur Dent's house. He is unaware that he is a direct but very distant kinship and descent, descendant of Genghis Temüjin Khan, Genghis Khan which causes him to have occasional visions of Mongol hordes and a preference for fur hats and axes above the door. He unfailingly addresses Arthur as "Mr Dent."
After some negotiation with Ford Prefect (or with Arthur Dent in the radio series), he is temporarily persuaded to halt the demolition. This respite does not last because the Vogons demolish Earth.
Prosser holds the distinction of having the very first line of dialogue ever in the Hitchhiker's Guide canon, as he is the first character (not counting The Guide itself) to speak in .
Appears in:
*
*
On radio, he was played by Bill Wallis and appears in . On television, he appears in , played by Joe Melia. He is played by Steve Pemberton in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (movie), movie version. He appears in , despite not appearing in , voiced by Bruce Hyman; this Prosser exists on a parallel Earth where the cottage he wishes to demolish is the home of both Arthur Dent and Fenchurch (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Fenchurch.
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
The
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
Captain in charge of overseeing the destruction of the Earth, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz is sadistic, even by Vogon standards. When not shouting at or executing members of his own crew for insubordination, Jeltz enjoys torturing hitchhikers on board his ship by reading his Vogon poetry, poetry at them, then having them thrown out of an airlock into open space.
Jeltz is described as being unpleasant to look at, even for other Vogons. Given that
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
describes Vogons as having "as much sex appeal as a road accident", one can only imagine how much worse Jeltz must appear. This may explain his disposition.
It is revealed in that Jeltz had been hired by Gag Halfrunt to destroy the Earth. Halfrunt had been acting on behalf of a consortium of psychiatrists and the Imperial Galactic Government in order to prevent the discovery of the Ultimate Question. When Halfrunt learns that Arthur Dent escaped the planet's destruction, Jeltz is dispatched to track him down and destroy him. Jeltz is unable to complete this task, due to the intervention of Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth, Zaphod's great-grandfather.
In , Jeltz is once again responsible for the destruction of the Earth, this time presumably killing Arthur, Ford, Trillian (character), Trillian, and Arthur's daughter, Random Dent, Random.
In , it is revealed that Jeltz did not kill Arthur, Ford, Trillian and Random. It is also revealed that he has a son called Constant Mown and that his space ship is called the ''Business End''.
"Prostetnic Vogon" may be a title, rather than part of his name, during (), two other Prostetnic Vogons are heard from. Also, in , Gag Halfrunt refers to Jeltz as "Captain of Vogons Prostetnic" (although this may have been a play on Halfrunt's accent).
Appears in:
*
*
*
*
*
In the first radio series, he was played by Bill Wallis. On television, it was Martin Benson (actor), Martin Benson. In the third, fourth and fifth radio series, he was played by Toby Longworth, although Longworth did not receive a credit for the role during the third series. In the film, he is voiced by Richard Griffiths.
Prostetnic is a play on the word prosthetic in regard to special effects make-up. Adams was known to have a very low opinion of monsters (describing them as "cod" meaning fake looking) during his tenure as a Dr Who writer.
Questular Rontok
Questular Rontok is the Vice President of the Galaxy. This character did not appear in the radio or television series or any of the novels, being introduced in the 2005 film.
Rontok is desperately in love with
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
, the fugitive President of the Galaxy, and he knows it, as she unsuccessfully tries to hide it. Throughout , Questular alternately tries to arrest Zaphod for stealing the ''Heart of Gold'' (even enlisting the help of the
Vogons
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an interga ...
), protects his life (when endangered by Vogon blaster fire), and at one point beseeches him to just give the stolen spaceship up. Questular appears to be the "doer", performing all the real functions of the Presidency, whilst Zaphod enjoys his status as the figurehead President. After Trillian (character), Trillian interrogates Zaphod by repeatedly zapping him with the Point-of-view gun and he learns that she is truly in love with Arthur Dent and not him, he and Questular end up together at the end of the film, Zaphod telling her "Let's trip the light fantastic (phrase), trip the light fantastic, babe." Questular is also jealous of Trillian for obvious reasons ("She's lying. She's skinny, and she's pretty, and she's lying!"), until Trillian and Zaphod part as lovers. In the early drafts of the film the character was male. In a deleted scene on the DVD, Questular expresses her love for Zaphod shortly after all the Vogons become depressed.
In the 2005 movie, she is played by Anna Chancellor.
Raffle ticket woman
In , Arthur Dent and Fenchurch attempt to get to know each other in a grim public house near Taunton railway station, their conversation is somewhat thwarted by a woman selling raffle tickets "for Anjie who's retiring". The numbers on both the front and back of the cloakroom ticket prove highly relevant to the protagonist. She is played in the Fit the Twentieth episode of the radio series by British comedy stalwart
June Whitfield
Dame June Rosemary Whitfield (11 November 1925 – 29 December 2018) was an English radio, television, and film actress.
Her big break was a lead in the radio comedy ''Take It from Here'', which aired on the BBC Light Programme in 1953. ...
.
Random Dent
Originally prophesied by her father, Arthur Dent, after he hears a Vogon for the first time (''"I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one."''), a disillusioned, teenaged Random Frequent Flyer Dent (the in-vitro progeny with Trillian Astra) is found in . The line is followed up in and , the 2005 radio series adaptation of this book. The new Edgar Allan Poe, Poe-reminiscent black bird version of the Guide manipulates her (as it has the Grebulons and Ford Prefect), so she is indirectly responsible for the destruction of all possible Earths.
Early in , Arthur travels from planet to planet by donating to "DNA banks", finding that when he makes these deposits, he can travel first class. Trillian, wishing to have a child, finds some of his sperm in a DNA bank (which was very easy, since he was the only donor of the same species) and uses it to conceive Random.
Shortly before the events of , Random is kept in a dream sequence and frozen along with all the other main characters thanks to her telling the ''Guide Mark II'' to safeguard their lives. In her dream she is Galactic President and highly successful (having been rescued from Earth by a suspiciously girlish troop of unicorns) and marries a flaybooz (a large, guinea-pig-like creature named Fertle) to annoy her mother. When the ''Guides batteries run out, she is released from her dream with all the other main characters. The events of the book then occur. Strangely, she seems affected by her dream sequence and often laments the loss of her position and her 'husband'. By the end of the book, Arthur proposes to go with her to find a good university for her to attend.
Appears in:
*
*
*Quintessential Phase
In , adapted from , she is played by Samantha Béart.
Receptionists
New York Hotel receptionist
In Tricia gets garbled messages via the receptionist from Gail Andrews. Tricia interprets the message "Not happy," as meaning Gail Andrews wasn't happy with their interview.
Megadodo receptionist
Appearing in and the large, pink-winged, insectoid receptionist in the Megadodo offices points Zaphod using a petulant tentacle towards Zarniwoop's office, the one with a whole electronic universe in it, and is also bugged by Marvin who just wants someone to talk to. In , he directs Zaphod towards Zarniwoop's new office, having put on the old hippy act.
Reg Nullify
Reg Nullify leads the "Cataclysmic Combo" band at Milliways. His band—from —performed on the LP album/cassette re-recording of and , released as ''The Restaurant at the End of the Universe''. The role was played by Graham de Wilde. In 1980 the song was also released as a track on an Extended play, EP (Original Records ABO 5).
Rob McKenna
Described by the scientific community in as a "Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer," Rob McKenna is an ordinary lorry driver who can never get away from rain and he has a log-book showing that it has rained on him every day, anywhere that he has ever been, to prove it. Arthur suggests that he could show the diary to someone, which Rob does, making the media deem him a 'Rain God' (something which he actually is) for the clouds want "to be near him, to love him, to cherish him and to water him". This windfall gives him a lucrative career, taking money from resorts and similar places in exchange for not going there. Rob McKenna is, in ''So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish,'' a "miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him...he disliked...everyone." In the book, he is shown only twice, first when he splashes
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by ...
, who is hitchhiking in a normal environment, on the side of a desolate road in England, for the first time on record. Second when Arthur meets him in a café, in "Thundercloud Corner," Rob McKenna's personal spot, which most people wouldn't venture near. But McKenna is mentioned throughout the book, especially when he is hailed by the media as a "Rain God," though not in those terms. In the radio show, however, he picks Arthur up instead of ignoring him, and meets him again later, after he acquired his fame. He then has a much more positive attitude towards Life, the Universe, and Everything, and is thrilled to meet Arthur again. He explains, as the narrator does in the book, that "Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer" means, in layman's terms, a Rain God, but the media couldn't call him simply that, because it would suggest that the ordinary people knew something they didn't.
He appears in , and and is played by
Bill Paterson, who also played one of the #Arcturan Megafreighter crew, Arcturan Megafreighter crew in .
Rob McKenna is assumed to be English because that is where he is always driving round, trying to escape the elements, and where, thanks to the summer resorts who've heard of him, he will be confined until his death in the Quintissential Phase; but in the Quandary Phase, he has a Scottish-sounding voice.
Roosta
Roosta is a hitchhiker and researcher for the ''Guide'', whom Ford Prefect knows at least in passing and holds in some regard (Ford describes him as "a frood who really knows where his towel is"). He carries a special towel infused with nutrients, wheat germ, barbecue sauce, and antidepressants, which can be obtained by sucking on different areas. The last two of these, he explains, are for use when the taste of the first two sickens or depresses him. He saves Zaphod Beeblebrox from a horrible death in the offices of the ''Guide'' (by taking him into the artificial universe in Zarniwoop's office), and is then kidnapped along with Zaphod and the left-hand tower of the ''Guide'' building by a squadron of Frogstar Fighters. In the radio series, he serves no other purpose than to provide conversation (and deliver the line "here Zaphod, suck this!") while the pair are travelling to the Frogstar. However, in the books, he instructs Zaphod to leave the office through the window instead of the door after the building lands. This allows Zaphod to remain in Zarniwoop's universe and survive the Total Perspective Vortex.
In , Roosta is a much more officious, standoffish and antagonistic character than he appears in the radio series.
Appears in:
* and .
*
On radio, he was voiced by Alan Ford (actor), Alan Ford.
The Ruler of the Universe
The Ruler of the Universe is a man living in a small shack on a world that can only be reached with a key to an improbability field or use of an Infinite Improbability Drive. He does not want to rule the universe and tries not to whenever possible, and therefore is the ideal candidate for the job. He has an odd, Solipsism, solipsistic view of reality: he lives alone with his cat, which he has named #The Lord, 'The Lord' even though he is not certain of its existence. He has a very dim view of the past, and he only believes in what he senses with his eyes and ears (and doesn't seem too certain of that, either): anything else is hearsay, so when executive-types visit to ask him what he thinks about certain matters, such as wars and the like, he tells them how he feels without considering consequences. As part of his refusal to accept that anything is true, or simply as another oddity, "He talked to his table for a week to see how it would react." He does sometimes admit that some things may be more likely than others – e.g., that he might like a glass of whisky, which the visitors leave for him.
In the radio adaptation of , Ford also meets Zaphod in the accounting department of the new Guide offices. Zaphod describes being bored by a man in a shack and his cat for over a year.
Appears in:
*
*
Referenced in:
*
He was voiced on radio by
Stephen Moore (in the original ''Radio Times'' listing he was announced as being played by Ron Hate – an anagram of "A.N. Other" or possibly "No Earth" – because the show was so far behind schedule that the role had not been cast when the magazine went to print).
Russell
Russell is Fenchurch's burly, blonde-moustached, blow-dried brother. He picks up Arthur Dent in his car after Arthur arrives on Earth at the beginning of . Arthur and Russell take an instant dislike to each other. This is also the first time Arthur meets Fenchurch (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), Fenchurch, his lover and co-flyer to be – albeit she is asleep or in a comatose/fugue state and only utters one word – "This" – then lapses back into wherever she is. Fenchurch also doesn't like Russell – he calls her "Fenny" which she dislikes intensely. He also tries to simplify her problems so he can explain and understand them better (for example, he tells Arthur that Fenchurch believes herself to be a hedgehog).
He first appeared in , and when this was adapted to radio appears in , where he is played by Rupert Degas.
Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration Officials
In the story "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe", a young Zaphod visits the wreck of the Starship Billion Year Bunker that has crashed on the planet with the best lobsters in the Western Galaxy. He is accompanied by two Officials from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration and an empty spacesuit, as they search for aorist rods and a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Designer Person (babbling gently about a shining city on a hill) who it turns out has escaped to Earth. The Officials declare the planet ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha (Earth) must be made "perfectly safe".
Sheila Steafel
Whilst asleep in a cave on prehistoric Earth, Arthur Dent dreams of visiting comedian Sheila Steafel on the radio show ''Steafel Plus'' on 4 August 1982. Arthur, in his dressing gown, talks of missing Mars Bars, various types of tea, Radio 4's ''News Quiz'', chat shows, ''The Archers'' and ''Just a Minute''. "There is nothing quite like Kenneth Williams in the entire galaxy, I've looked!" Space, he says, is "staggering, bewilderingly dull": there is so much of it and so little in it, "it sometimes reminds me of ''The Observer''".
Adams wrote this segment specifically for Steafel's show, and Simon Jones appeared in character as Arthur Dent. Steafel can be regarded as a canonical ''Hitchhiker's'' character.
Shooty and Bang Bang
Shooty and Bang Bang are Blagulon galactic policeman, policemen. They pursue Zaphod Beeblebrox to the planet of Magrathea, whereupon they proceed to shoot at him. In the radio and television series this results in a hyperspatial field generator exploding and throwing Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod forwards in time to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. In the books, Arthur, Ford and Zaphod are saved from certain death when Marvin talks to the cops' spaceship, which becomes so depressed it commits suicide, disabling the cops' life support units and rendering them unable to breathe as they were described as being "methane breathers." They claim to be well balanced and caring, while gratuitously shooting everything in sight. Shooty writes novels (in crayon), and Bang Bang agonizes for hours to his girlfriend about gratuitously shooting everything in sight.
Bang Bang was played on radio by Ray Hassett and on television by Marc Smith. Shooty was played on radio by Jim Broadbent and on television by Matt Zimmerman (actor), Matt Zimmerman.
In the ''Illustrated Guide to the Galaxy'', the pair are played by Douglas Adams and Ed Victor (his literary agent).
The characters are never named in dialogue or in the novels, but are named in the original radio series scripts. The script notes describe how the pair were written as a parody of American List of police shows, cop show characters, particularly ''Starsky and Hutch''.
Six Men
In their six starships, the Six Men are the only people who have, as far as anyone is aware, the key to the improbability field that locks away The Ruler of the Universe. This occurs in and .
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast is a Places in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy#Magrathea, Magrathean, and a designer of planets. By the third novel, he has joined the Campaign for Real Time and convinces the main characters to join him to attempting to save the Galaxy from murderous robots.
Sperm Whale
A sperm whale called into existence by the ''Heart of Gold''s improbability drive, above the planet Places in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy#Magrathea, Magrathea alongside #Agrajag, Agrajag (as a bowl of petunias), in place of two thermonuclear missiles that were targeting the ship prior. The whale has an existential life of discovery which lasts a minute before it hits the ground, leaving a large crater and whale remains. It appears in , , the movie, and . Voiced by
Stephen Moore in the radio and TV series, and by Bill Bailey in the feature film.
Stavro Mueller
Ran Club Alpha in New York, visited by Tricia McMillan in . Stavro opens a second club in called Club Beta, which is where Arthur Dent narrowly escapes death from a blaster shot by his daughter Random Dent and the shot hits
Agrajag
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
who proclaims that Arthur keeps killing him in ''Life, the Universe and Everything''. We are told that he was a Greek with a German father and has handed Club Alpha over to his brother Karl Mueller so Stavro can open a new club in London. In Stavro is an only child.
Strinder the Tool Maker
As Arthur is regarded as The Sandwichmaker from Bob on the remote iron-age planet of Lamuella, Strinder makes knives to cut the Perfectly Normal Beast for his sarnies. From and .
Sulijoo
Another friend of Disaster Area's Hotblack Desiato, who Ford says agreed with him that Disaster Area was going to make Hotblack a star. Appears in .
Thor
Thor, a figure from Norse mythology, appears at Milliways, and is mentioned in , , and .
He next appears in , at a party, where he is chatting up Trillian (character), Trillian. Arthur tricks him into stepping out of the (flying) building by challenging him to a fight. In the radio adaptation of this he appears in , where he is played by Dominic Hawksley. Hawksley reprises the role in the radio adaptation of , , despite not appearing in that book. Two other characters from the Restaurant – Max Quordlepleen and Zarquon – also appear.
Thor is a major character in , where he fights Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, Wowbagger and protects the humans from Zaphod's dodgy weapons.
Thor also appears in the Dirk Gently novel and radio series ''The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul''.
Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides
These tribesmen fought with (in the epilogue of ) the Princes of the Plains in the land of the Dwellers in the Forest, to the detriment of the latter, for a really good reason, but Prak cannot remember why.
Trin Tragula
Trin Tragula was a speculative philosopher who invented the Total Perspective Vortex basically in order to annoy his wife. His wife thought he was an idiot who needed to "have some sense of proportion", exhorting her view frequently. When he attached his wife to the Total Perspective Vortex, the shock of seeing herself in relation to the rest of the universe instantly annihilated her brain. Although he was horrified by this, Trin Tragula found some satisfaction in discovering that the one thing that a person cannot afford to have in a universe this size is a sense of proportion.
Varntvar The Priest
He has only four lines in the programme, accompanying Poodoo and Allitnils, The, the Allitnils in the conspiracy to destroy
Lintilla's clones. Varntvar is eventually forced to listen to a tape of Marvin's autobiography.
He appears only in , in which he is played by
Geoffrey McGivern
Geoffrey M. McGivern is a British actor in film, radio, stage and television, as well as a comedian.
Career
He played Ford Prefect in the radio series (1978–80) and subsequent LP releases of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Dougla ...
.
Veet Voojagig
Veet Voojagig is described as "a quiet, young student at the University of Maximegalon", who initially studied ancient philology, transformational ethics and the Wave Harmonic Theory of Historical Perception. Then, after drinking some Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
, he became obsessed with the problem of what happens to all the Ballpoint pen, biros he'd bought over the years which had somehow disappeared. Voojagig claimed to have discovered the solution that they disappear to a world of their own, and claimed further to have worked on that world, working for a family of cheap green retractables. The character was described as ending up in "tax exile" – and may have had a hand in "Zaphod Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand [pen] business." Also of note that when others visited the planet where Veet Voojagig claimed to have lived, all they found was a small asteroid inhabited by "The Ruler of the Universe, a strange old man who Liar's paradox, repeatedly claimed that nothing was true, though he was later found to be lying."
Veet Voojagig appears in and is mentioned in .
Vroomfondel and Majikthise
:''See #Majikthise and Vroomfondel, Majikthise and Vroomfondel''
War Command Krikkiters
Zaphod overheard the two War Command Krikkiters in the Robot War Zones, discussing the lassitude of the Krikkit War Robots, saying ''The war, sir, it seems to be getting them down. They just seem to get a little tired and a little grim ... and then they sulk''. In ().
Will Smithers
Owner of a grey Porsche 928S (which
Rob McKenna
Robert Marion McKenna (born October 1, 1962) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 17th attorney general of Washington from 2005 to 2013 after serving on the Metropolitan King County Council from 1996 to 2005. A member of the R ...
has been blocking for 20 miles) with a sticker that reads "My other car is also a Porsche", Will soaks Arthur Dent (and fails to give him a lift) when he is hitchhiking back on Earth at the beginning of . Will works in advertising and drinks in Arthur's local pub, the Horse and Groom and is owner of #Know-Nothing Bozo the Non-Wonder Dog, Know-Nothing Bozo the Non-Wonder Dog.
The Wise Old Bird
The Wise Old Bird is the leader of the List of avian humanoids, Bird People of Brontitall. He does not like saying the word "shoe", as he and the bird people consider it unspeakable. The Bird People live in the right ear of a fifteen-mile-high statue of Arthur Dent, constructed by their ancestors.
The "wise old bird" is a phrase which features in the nursery rhyme ''A Wise Old Owl''
:A wise old owl lived in an oak;
:The more he saw the less he spoke;
:The less he spoke the more he heard.
:Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?
The Wise Old Bird appeared in . He was voiced by John Le Mesurier who was originally intended to play the character of Slartibartfast.
Werdle Sneng
Werdle Sneng, in , has a book out, ''Bath Sheets in Space'' which is found adorning contemporary hot beverage tables, as it is far too large for anyone's pocket, fashionable or otherwise.
Wonko the Sane
John Watson aka Wonko the Sane lives in coastal California with his wife, Arcane Jill Watson, in a house called ''The Outside of the Asylum'' (which features interior features on its outside and exterior on its inside). When Wonko saw instructions on how to use a toothpick on a packet of toothpicks, he became convinced that the world had gone crazy and so built the house as an asylum for it, hence the reversal of the interior and exterior. Arthur and #Fenchurch, Fenchurch pay Wonko a visit and learn that like both of them, he had also received a fishbowl from the dolphins (having been a Marine biology, marine biologist and close to them). He also claims to have seen angels with golden beards, green wings and Dr. Scholl's, Dr Scholl sandals, who drive little scooters, do a lot of Cocaine, coke and are very wonderful about a whole range of things. Arthur and Fenchurch discover the truth behind this after they have seen #God, God's Last Message to His Creation.
John Watson appears in . In the radio series, he is played by Christian Slater.
Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged
In contrast to most other immortals, Bowerick Wowbagger was not born one, but became immortality, immortal due to an accident with "an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands", an event which no-one has been able to replicate without ending up looking rather silly or dead (or both). Unlike other immortals, whom he calls "a load of serene bastards", he doesn't cope very well with his infinite life, having not been born into it and thus lacking the innate ability to handle it. Finding something to do on Sunday afternoons causes him particular difficulties. Eventually he comes up with a plan to keep himself busy: he will insult every single living being in the universe – in alphabetical order. He appears in , while insulting Arthur Dent with the phrase, "You're a jerk, a complete arsehole" (in the US changed to "...complete kneebiter"). Later, after Arthur escapes prehistoric Earth, Wowbagger shows up again in the present, but when he sees Arthur he says, "I've done you before, haven't I?" After Arthur, his next planned victim is A-Rth-Urp-Hil-Ipdenu, a slug he intends to call "a brainless prat." In , one Arthur Philip Deodat is also a victim of Wowbagger, during the
Krikkit Robot attack on
Lord's
Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...
Cricket Ground.
Wowbagger makes a return in in his ship, the ''Tanngrisnir'' where he falls in love with Trillian, fights with Thor (during which he loses his immortality, but survives) and calls Zaphod "a fat arse".
Wowbagger is also present in "The Private Life of Genghis Khan", where he insults Genghis Temüjin Khan, Genghis Khan, so that he "stormed into Europe in such a rage that he almost forgot to burn down Asia before he left."
In the new radio series, he is voiced by Toby Longworth. In , he finally reaches the end of his quest by insulting the Great Prophet Zarquon, who revokes Wowbagger's immortality.
Appears in:
*
*
*the short story "The Private Life of Genghis Khan", published in ''The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book''
Cultural reference:
*Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was the inspiration for an insult generation program of the same name, originally available on Atari ST computers and later rewritten for Windows-based systems. Since early 2013 its support site has also incorporated the insult functionality, at which moment the software got a "no longer supported" status.
Yooden Vranx
Yooden Vranx is the late former President of the Galaxy, the direct predecessor to
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
. Just before his death, Yooden came to see Zaphod and presented his idea to steal the ''Heart of Gold''. Following Yooden's suggestion, Zaphod locked out a section in each of his own brains so that no one could figure out why he ran for the presidency.
Zaphod and
Ford Prefect
The Ford Prefect is a line of British cars which was produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961 as an upmarket version of the Ford Popular and Ford Anglia small family cars. It was introduced in October 1938 and remained in production until 19 ...
's first encounter with Yooden occurred when they were children on Betelgeuse and Yooden was a ship's captain. Zaphod had bet Ford that he could raid a heavily fortified Arcturan megafreighter and took Ford along for the attempt, using a souped-up trijet scooter. They boarded the ship (captained by Yooden), stormed the bridge with toy pistols, and demanded Aesculus hippocastanum, conkers. Yooden gave them conkers, food, booze, and various other items before teleporting them to the maximum-security wing of the Betelgeuse state prison.
Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth
Zaphod Beeblebrox's father's name was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, and Zaphod's grandfather was called Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third. This was due to an "accident with a contraceptive and a time machine".
The great-grandfather of
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams.
He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" ...
, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth is one of two active characters in books who are ''dead'' (see also:
Hotblack Desiato
This page is a list of characters in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', by Douglas Adams. The descriptions of the characters are accompanied by information on details about appearances and references to the characters.
Main characters
...
). When Arthur Dent inadvertently freezes the systems on board ''Heart of Gold'' at the same moment
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz attacks, the younger Zaphod holds a séance to contact Zaphod the Fourth.
Zaphod the Fourth berates his great-grandchild for being self-absorbed and learns of the ship's imminent destruction. He stops time so he can continue deriding Zaphod, who tries (rather weakly) to defend his life. Zaphod the Fourth saves the ship and crew to keep his great-grandchild and his "modern friends" from joining him in the afterlife and thereby ruining the experience.
When he learns that the ship had seized up to solve the dilemma of either making tea (in ) or figuring out why Arthur would want dried leaves in water (), he solves these problems before leaving by either leaving a pot of tea in the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer or by explaining to Eddie (shipboard computer), Eddie that "he's an ignorant monkey who doesn't know better", respectively. In the book Z.B. the Fourth approves of the tying up of all computer resources to make tea – unlike everyone else present on the ''Heart of Gold'' at the time, including Arthur who originally made the request of Eddie.
As a final note, Zaphod explains that his great-grandfather is "the Fourth" due to an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Zaphod the Fourth, therefore, refers to his great-grandson as "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth" (Zaphod tries to counter this by referring to himself as "the First").
Appears in:
*
*
He was voiced on radio by Richard Goolden.
Zarniwoop (Vann Harl)
Zarniwoop Vann Harl works in the offices of the ''Guide'', on Beta Ursae Minoris, Ursa Minor Beta.
He appears in , , , and .
When Zaphod travels to Ursa Minor Beta to meet him, he is informed that Zarniwoop is unavailable, and too cool, to see him right now. He ''is'' in his office, but he's on an intergalactic cruising (maritime), cruise.
Zaphod subsequently discovers that Zarniwoop's intergalactic cruise ship has spent 900 years on Brontitall (in ), or Frogstar B (in ), waiting for delivery of a complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins, and every single passenger has aged considerably despite enforced hibernation. Only one person has not aged: Zarniwoop, who was not a passenger, but who hid himself on the spaceship. Zaphod subsequently learns that before he sealed part of his own brain, he was collaborating with Zarniwoop to find out who rules the universe – this being Zarniwoop's obsession. In the books, Zarniwoop is marooned on The Ruler of the Universe's planet by Zaphod et al. and is stuck outside the only shelter for weeks in driving rain, because The Ruler is unsure as to whether Zarniwoop's desperate thumping on the door is real or not. At the end of the second radio series, he is similarly marooned, but this time by Arthur, with Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox for company.
In the Quintessential Phase radio series, Zarniwoop is revealed to be the same person as character ''Vann Harl'' (Zarniwoop is his first name), and a Vogon in disguise. He has escaped being left on the desolate planet and is masterminding the Guide's new all-powerful format.
On the radio, Zarniwoop Vann Harl is voiced by Jonathan Pryce. His casting was accidental – he had been hired to play a different role (The Ruler of the Universe) whose lines had apparently not been written in time. However, he was happy to return for the final series, at which point a lot more was revealed about his character – much of it appropriately sinister, since Pryce had then become well known for playing villains.
Zarquon
Zarquon is a legendary prophet. He is worshipped by a small group visiting The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and is old, bearded, robed, wreathed in light, has starry eyes and a crown of gold. His name is frequently invoked as a curse, such as "Holy Zarquon's singing fish" and "for Zark's sake".
It is only on the visit to Milliways that Zarquon does indeed appear – his overdue second coming – moments before the Universe ends (His last words are "How are we doing for time?"). The host Max claims that he had done the show "over five hundred times" and "nothing like this had ever happened before".
He appears in , voiced by
Anthony Sharp
Dennis Anthony John Sharp (16 June 1915 – 23 July 1984) was an English actor, writer and director.
Stage career
Anthony Sharp was a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and made his stage debut in February 1938 ...
, in the book and in is played by Colin Bennett (UK TV), Colin Bennett.
He has a final brief cameo in played by William Franklyn.
Zem
Zem is an affable, yet stupid, swamp-dwelling mattress. The pocket-sprung lifeform flollops, willomies and glurries around Sqornshellous Zeta and tries his best to cheer up
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android is a fictional character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship ''Heart of Gold''. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sir ...
, who became stranded on the planet after having one arm welded to his side and one leg replaced by a steel pillar. Because of his limited intellect he has the same conversation with Marvin every day until the android leaves. After attempting to make conversation about the weather (Marvin: "The dew has fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning... if I had teeth I would grit them at this point"), Marvin's life story, and the (formerly thriving) economy of Sqornshellous itself, Zem offers that Marvin should be more mattresslike in his outlook. Zem is the sole witness to Marvin's Abduction Phenomenon, abduction by the Krikkit war robots.
Note: "Zem" is the name of ''all'' Sqornshellous Zeta mattresses; as Zem himself puts it, "Some of us are killed, [i.e. taken away to be dried and slept on] but all of us are called Zem, so we never know which and globbering is thus kept to a minimum."
He appears in
On radio, he is voiced by Andy Taylor (actor), Andy Taylor.
See also
* Phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cast lists
References
;Bibliography
*
External links
Wowbagger.com– a tribute page to Douglas Adams and his character that includes a random insult generator applet and software.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, The
Lists of literary characters
Lists of minor fictional characters
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy lists, Character
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters
sv:Liftarens guide till galaxen#Karaktärer