List of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters
There are many minor characters in the 5-part fictional "trilogy" The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. In fact, defining a major character is rather difficult. If the major characters are those the plot focuses on, they are Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin and Trillian, with Random Dent and Fenchurch possibly. If they are defined as characters appearing in all the books, they are only Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. In any case, a relatively good definition of major characters are those in the series with major plot significance not appearing on this list.
Agrajag
Agrajag is a piteous creature that is continuously reincarnated and subsequently killed unknowingly by Arthur Dent each time. Agrajag first appears in the series as a falling bowl of petunias. In another incarnation, he was a prehistoric rabbit who was killed by Arthur for breakfast.
Eventually, Agrajag becomes aware of his many past incarnations and wishes to take revenge on Arthur Dent. He diverts Arthur to the Cathedral of Hate for revenge, but mistakenly does so before the death of one of his incarnations has actually happened. Agrajag tries to kill Arthur anyway, and again dies.
Some readers believe Agrajag's character represents the futility of life or the mess that the Universe is in. Series author Douglas Adams had his own ideas about what the character represents, which he may share with us in a way. In the upcoming BBC Radio series for the last three books of Adams' series, Douglas Adams will play Agrajag, having recorded the part before his death. Adams will thus be able to "come back from the dead" to participate in the new series—an irony which his books and the existence of Agrajag himself certainly show Adams would enjoy.
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Colin
Colin is a small melon-sized flying security robot which Ford Prefect enslaves to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Guide offices in Mostly Harmless. Ford captures Colin by trapping the robot with his towel and re-wiring the robot's pleasure circuits.
Ford uses Colin's cheerfulness to break into the Guide's corporate accounting software in order to write a piece of software that will automatically pay his expense account. Colin also saves Ford's life when the Guide's new security force, Vogons, blow up one of Ford's irreplaceable shoes with a rocket launcher.
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Deep Thought
Deep Thought is a computer that was created to come up with the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be 42, Deep Thought's creators sheepishly realize that they don't know the question. Deep Thought itself does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer (the Earth, note the Earth in fiction) to calculate it. After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons five minutes before the computation is complete.
IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Thought was named in honour of this fictional computer.
Appears in:
(Shown only in a film watched by Arthur Dent and Slartibartfast)
On radio, Deep Thought was voiced by Geoffrey McGivern. On television and in the LP re-recording of the radio series, he was voiced by Valentine Dyall.
Eddie
Eddie is the shipboard computer on the Heart of Gold, with an over-excitable, over-enthused, extremely irritating personality. At one point his personality is changed, but the new one (a coddling, motherly sort) is apparently even worse.
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He is voiced both on radio and television by David Tate.
Fenchurch
Fenchurch is Arthur Dent's soulmate and a character found in the fourth book of the Hitchhiker "trilogy", So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish. Although the reader does not realise it if the books are read in order, we are introduced to the character of Fenchurch at the very beginning of the first book as the girl in the café who realises how to change the world for the better.
She is then obliterated along with the rest of Earth before she has the chance to tell anyone.
By the time of the fourth book, the dolphins have intervened and restored the Earth and everyone on it – including Fenchurch – allowing a relationship to bloom between her and Arthur Dent. She then vanishes during a hyperspace jump on their first intergalactic holiday. Douglas Adams later claimed that he wanted rid of the character as she was getting in the way of the story. Much of this is evident from the self-referential prose surrounding Arthur and Fenchurch's relationship.
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Frankie and Benjy mouse
Frankie and Benjy are the mice that Arthur (et al.) encounter on Magrathea. Frankie and Benjy wish to extract the final readout data from Arthur's brain to get the ultimate question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Frankie and Benjy are, after all, part of the pan-dimensional race that created the Earth as a supercomputer successor to Deep Thought in order to find out the question to which the answer was 42)
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On radio, David Tate played Benjy Mouse and Peter Hawkins Frankie Mouse.
Gargravarr
Gargravarr is a disembodied mind who is the Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex. Gargravarr is currently undergoing a period of legal trial separation with his body, who will probably get granted the custody of Gargravarr's forename, Pizpot.
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Gargravarr was voiced on radio by Valentine Dyall, on a slightly ironic note, as Dyall was mainly famous for his radio voice work.
Golgafrinchams
Agda and Mella
- Agda and Mella are Golgafrincham girls that Arthur and Ford hit on. In Golgafrincham, Agda used to be a junior personnel officer and Mella an art director. Agda is taller and slimmer and Mella shorter and round-faced. Mella and Arthur became a couple, as did Agda and Ford. Unfortunately Agda died after drinking from a stream contaminated by a dead fox (which Ford accidentally caused after starting a chain of events beginning with flicking a Scrabble letter Q into a privet bush).
Captain
- The Captain is the captain of the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B. He 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 as has been documented in the bath) and has got a very relaxed attitude towards everything. His personality was based on Douglas Adams' habit of taking extraordinarily long baths as a displacement activity to avoid writing.
On radio, he was voiced by David Jason. On television, it was Aubrey Morris.
Number One
- Number One is an officer in the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B. Not the brightest person around but all in all nice and good officer material.
On television, he was played by Matthew Scurfield.
Number Two
- Number Two is a militaristic officer in the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B. He captures Arthur and Ford and interrogates them. When they land to Earth, Number Two declares a war on another, uninhabited continent.
On radio, he is played by Bill Paterson. On television, he is David Neville.
Telephone Sanitizer
- The telephone sanitizer is a profession involved in the Golgafrincham plot thread in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
- Interestingly the remaining Golgafrincham population was then wiped out by a disease, contracted via dirty telephones, after they sent their Telephone Sanitiser population away, along with then rest of the useless third of their population to form a colony on another planet (Earth as it happens).
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Eccentrica Gallumbits
Known as "The Triple-Breasted Whore Of Eroticon Six", Eccentrica Gallumbits is mentioned in the first Hitchhiker's book during a newscast that Zaphod Beeblebrox tunes into shortly after stealing the spaceship Heart of Gold. The newsreader quotes Eccentrica describing Zaphod as "The best bang since the Big one".
Pears Gallumbits, a dessert which has several things in common with her, is available at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Some people say her erogenous zones start some four miles from her actual body. Ford Prefect disagrees, saying five.
Never actually appears in the series, but is mentioned in:
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- Life, the Universe, and Everything
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
- Mostly Harmless
Gag Halfrunt
In the series, Gag Halfrunt is the private brain care specialist of Zaphod Beeblebrox, and is not a major character in terms of the amount of dialogue or prominence he gets. However, he is major in the sense that the entire plot loosely revolves around him (at least in the radio series version of HHGG); this may be in part due to the fact that large parts of the series were made up by Adams as he went along, and some of the plot developments and explanations were more a way to tie up some of the glaring loose ends than part of a predetermined master plan.
In the story, Zaphod and Gag Halfrunt (as leader of a group of psychiatrists) are in cahoots to discover who or what is really running the universe. Because the Earth is really a giant computer built to determine the very same thing, the psychiatrists cannot afford to have the answer revealed, because this would put them out of a job (on the rather weak premise that if the answer becomes known, everyone would suddenly start leading happy and productive lives, rendering shrinks unnecessary). Therefore they hire the Vogons to destroy the Earth to prevent the answer being discovered. Later the Vogons also try (under Gag's direction) to destroy the starship Heart of Gold because it is carrying Arthur Dent, who may have the answer buried in his brain somewhere. All of this is unknown to Zaphod because he has brainwashed himself to forget about the collusion (though again this seems to be more of a device to explain why it only becomes clear towards the end of the second series and hasn't been mentioned before). In the end Zaphod "remembers" and does, in fact, discover who is really running things – some guy in a shed.
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On radio, he was voiced by Stephen Moore. On television, he was played by Gil Morris.
Hactar
Hactar was the first computer in which the individual parts could serve the same purpose as the whole. It was therefore brainlike in this respect. Hactar is first mentioned in connection with the Silastic Armorfiends, a race in the books. At one point, the Silastic Armorfiends ask Hactar to design the "Ultimate weapon", which resulted in a bomb that would connect every major sun in the universe through a hyperspace junction, causing every star to go supernova. Hactar is shocked – thereby becoming the first computer ever to be shocked. Hactar builds the supernova bomb, but deliberately includes a small defect in it. When the Armorfiends find out, they are so incensed that they pulverize Hactar.
However, because Hactar has the property that the individual parts act like the whole, each individual part thinks about it for a long time, and Hactar eventually decides to use what little influence he has, over æons, to make up for his insubordination. He first creates a new client by nurturing in the inhabitants of Krikkit such a world view that upon discovering the rest of the Universe they set out to destroy it. Hactar slips them the design for his ultimate weapon, but they build it wrong; and cut off from Hactar's influence by the Galaxy's defensive/punitive measures, they lose interest in their/his xenophobic (and suicidal) project. But Hactar has himself managed to build a presumably functional bomb, and slips it to Arthur before being dissipated. Arthur accidentally saves the Universe again by being a poor cricket bowler.
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Hig Hurtenflurst
Hig Hurtenflurst only happens to be the risingest young executive in the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation. During Fit the Eleventh, he only happens to be on Brontitall. What he only happens to be 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 only happen to capture Arthur Dent and three Lintilla clones. He then proceeds to show them a film about the activities of the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation, which is rudely interrupted by Marvin, who has cut the power in order to rescue Arthur and the Lintillas.
He only happened to appear in one episode of the original radio series, where Mark Smith only happened to voice him.
Hotblack Desiato
Hotblack Desiato is the lead singer of the rock group Disaster Area, claimed to be the loudest band in the universe, and in fact the loudest sound of any kind, anywhere. So loud is this band that the audience usually listens from the safe distance of a hundred miles away in a well built bunker. Disaster Area's performances usually include a stunt involving crashing a space ship into the sun. At the time when the main characters meet him, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Hotblack is spending a year dead "for tax reasons". The character is named after an estate agency in Islington, North London.
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Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton
Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton is a very splendid and worthwhile member of the aristocracy. She is responsible for christening the bulldozer which knocks Arthur Dent's house down, and for giving an exceptionally patronising speech immediately beforehand.
She only appears in Fit the First of the radio series, where she was voiced by Jo Kendall.
Lintilla
Lintilla is a rather unfortunate woman who has (as of Fit the Eleventh) been cloned five hundred seventy-eight thousand million 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 re-define it, re-spell it and re-pronounce it, the net result of which was to end up with the word "killed" being spelled "killed" but pronounced "revoked" (by Hig Hurtenflurst, at least).
Arthur Dent encounters three of her on the planet of Brontitall.
Lintilla was played by Rula Lenska. She appeared only in the final two episodes of the original radio series.
Lord, The
The Lord is a cat, owned by the man who rules the universe.
Majikthise and Vroomfondel
Majikthise and Vroomfondel are philosophers (though, since they insist on rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty, they may not be). They make their appearance as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and other Professional Thinking Persons (AUPSLPTP) in order to protest against a computer, Deep Thought, being invoked to determine the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. In a contemporary, satirical, reference to the industrial relations problems that culminated in the Winter of Discontent, they maintain that the search for ultimate truth is the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Since that time, chess players objecting to competition with computers have been compared with AUPLSPTP activists, for example by Raymond Keene.
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On radio, Majikthise was played by Jo Nathan Adams and Vroomfondel was played by Jim Broadbent. On television, David Leland played Majikthise and Charles McKeown played Vroomfondel.
Max Quordlepleen
Max Quordlepleen is an entertainer. He hosts the entertainment at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe and the Big Bang Burger Chef.
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On radio, Roy Hudd played him. On television, it was Colin Jeavons.
Mr. Prosser
Mr. Prosser is a perfectly reasonable motorways contractor who perfectly reasonably would like to build a bypass right through Arthur Dent's house. Very little is known about the man except for his predilection for little fur hats, a direct descendency from Genghis Khan and occasional visions of Mongol hordes. He would like to be at point D.
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 Book) to speak in the first episode of the original series.
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On radio, he was played by Bill Wallis. On television, it was Joe Melia.
Random Dent
A disillusioned teenager and the in-vitro progeny of Arthur Dent and Tricia McMillan, Random Dent is left in her father's care by her mother during the narrative of Mostly Harmless. She befriends the new, extremely sinister version of the Hitchhiker's Guide, in its guise as a Poe-reminiscent black bird. Apparently inheriting her father's chaotic influence on the universe, she becomes indirectly responsible for the destruction of all possible Earths.
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Rob McKenna
Rob McKenna is a man who can never get away from rain and he has a diary to prove it. In fact he gets rained on so much that he has 231 types of rain written down on a little book. Rob McKenna is, despite not knowing it, a Rain God who is cherished by the clouds. Arthur suggests that he could show the diary to someone, which Rob does, making him a media sensation. After the publicity McKenna assumes a lucrative job of not traveling to cities for money.
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Roosta
Roosta is a hitch-hiker and researcher for the Guide, whom Ford Prefect knows, at least in passing. He carries a special towel with nutrients in one end and anti-depressants in the other, which can be obtained by sucking the towel (the anti-depressants are to counter the horrible effects of having to suck the other end of the towel in the first place, which tastes disgusting). He saves Zaphod Beeblebrox from a horrible death in the offices of the Hitchhiker's Guide (by taking him into the artificial universe in Zarniwoop's office), and is then kidnapped along with Zaphod and the entire guide building by a squadron of Frogstar Fighters. In the radio series, he serves no other purpose than to provide conversation while the pair are travelling to the Frogstar: however, in the books, he tells Zaphod Beeblebrox to climb out of the window onto the surface of Frogstar World B: this ensures Zaphod remains in Zarniwoop's universe and can survive the Total Perspective Vortex.
Appears in:
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
On radio, he was voiced by Alan Ford.
Ruler of the Universe, The
The Ruler of the Universe is a very interesting person indeed. He lives in a small shack on a world that can only be reached with the use of an Infinite Improbability Drive. He does not want to rule the universe and tries not to whenever possible, and therefore is by far the ideal candidate for the job. He has an odd view of reality: he lives alone with his cat, which he has named "The Lord", he has a very dim view of the past, and he only believes in what he sees with his eyes and ears: anything else is hearsay. He has been known to talk to his table for a week to see how it reacts.
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He was voiced on radio by Stephen Moore.
Shooty and Bang Bang
Shooty and Bang Bang are Galactic 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 large computer exploding and throwing Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod forwards in time to the Restauraunt 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 subsequently becomes so depressed it commits suicide, disabling the cops' life support units and rendering them unable to breathe.
Bang Bang and Shooty appear in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 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.
Slartibartfast
Slartibartfast is a Magrathean, and a designer of planets, most notably the fjords found on the coast of Norway on planet Earth. Slartibartfast won an award for his coastal design. When Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect were on ancient Earth, they saw this award (and Slartibartfast's signature) deep inside a glacier in ancient Norway.
When Earth II was being made, Slartibartfast was assigned to the continent of Africa. He was unhappy about this, because he wanted to make more fjords, and fjords in Africa would be hard for him to explain without natural glacial movement.
In the event, the new Earth was not required and, much to Slartibartfast's disgust, its owners suggested that he take a quick skiing holiday on his glaciers before dismantling them.
Douglas Adams writes in the notes accompanying the published volume of original radio scripts that he wanted Slartibartfast's name to sound very rude, but still actually broadcastable. He therefore started with the name "Phartiphukborlz", and changed bits of it until had something that would be acceptable to the BBC. He came closer to achieving this aim the following episode, with the double-act Vroomfondel and Majikthise. He adds to this statement in "Don't Panic", an analysis by Neil Gaiman.
- "...One thing I don't think I explained in the script book was that I was also teasing the typist, Geoffrey's (Perkins) secretary, because ... she'd be typing out this long and extraordinary name which would be quite an effort to type and right at the beginning he says 'My name is not important, and I'm not going to tell you what it is'. I was just being mean to Geoffrey's secretary."
Douglas Adams
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On both radio and television, he was played by Richard Vernon.
Trillian
Tricia McMillan aka Trillian is a young lady and brilliant astrophysicist whom Arthur Dent completely failed to chat up at a party at a flat (possibly above an Estate Agent's) in Islington. Arthur was fairly certain she was a young lady, but at the time was totally unaware of her academic qualifications. The trilogy later reveals that Trillian eventually left the party with an alien by the name of Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is directly responsible for her nickname. The next time she and Arthur meet is on a spaceship in deep space, a few months after the aforementioned party and shortly after the Earth has been destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass... which is of course highly improbable. She is finally carried off and forcibly married to the President of the Algolian Chapter of the Galactic Rotary Club.
The real Trillian instant messaging software was named after this character.
Appears in:
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- Life, the Universe, and Everything
- Mostly Harmless
Trillian was played on radio by Susan Sheridan and on television by Sandra Dickinson.
Wise Old Bird, The
The Wise Old Bird is the leader of the Bird People of Brontitall. He does not like saying the word "shoe", as he and the bird people consider it unspeakable.
The Wise Old Bird appeared in one episode of the original radio series. He was voiced by John Le Mesurier.
Wonko the Sane
John Watson aka Wonko the Sane lives in California with his wife Arcane Jill Watson in a house called The Outside of the Asylum. When Wonko saw the instructions on a packet of toothpicks he became convinced that the world had gone crazy and built an asylum for it. Arthur and Fenchurch pay a visit to him and learn that like both of them, Wonko had also received a fishbowl from the dolphins. He also claims to have seen angels with golden beards, green wings and Dr Scholl sandals and who drive little scooters.
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Veet Voojagig
A quiet young talented student at the University of Maximegalon who, after drinking some Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox became obsessed with the problem of what happens to all used biros.
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Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged
Wowbagger is an alien who became immortal due to a strange accident involving an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. After becoming immortal, he did everything one can do in life, several times, being terribly bored of everything. Due to his unnatural immortality, he was unable to handle his condition, and so he became extremely revolted with everything in the universe, especially all the living beings on it. He then made a plan that, even being rather impossible and foolish (and he'd be the first to admit it) at least would keep him busy. The plan was: he was going to insult, personally, all the living beings in the universe, in alphabetical order. To this end, he builds a special space ship and computer capable of tracking exactly what life-forms exist in the universe (including all births and deaths) in real time. He appears in the third book, Life, the Universe and Everything, while insulting Arthur Dent with the phrase: "Dent, you're a jerk... A complete asshole." (In the US-edition of the book, the insult is changed to "...complete kneebiter".) (Unfortunately, he almost does it again at the end.)
Besides appearing in the Hitchhiker-series, Wowbagger is present in The Private Life of Genghis Khan[1], an independent short story by Douglas Adams. Wowbagger insults Genghis Khan, provoking him to burn down large segments of Asia.
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Yooden Vranx
The former president of the galaxy, one before Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Zarniwoop
Zarniwoop works in the offices of the Guide, on Ursa Minor Beta. When Zaphod travels to Ursa Minor Beta to meet with Zarniwoop, he is informed that Zarniwoop is unavailable. He is in his office, but he's on an intergalactic cruise. Zaphod subsequently discovers that Zarniwoop's intergalactic cruise has been spending 900 years on Frogstar B, waiting for its complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins, and every single passenger has aged considerably. Only one person, who was not a passenger, but who hid himself on the spaceship, has not aged – Zarniwoop. Zaphod subsequently learns that, before he sealed part of his brain, he was collaborating with Zarniwoop to find out who rules the universe. In the books, he is marooned on the ruler of the universe's planet and is stuck outside the only shelter from driving rain because the ruler of the universe is unsure as to whether Zarniwoop's desperate thumping is real or not. At the end of the second radio series, he is again marooned, but this time with Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox for company.
Appears in:
On radio, Zarniwoop is voiced by Jonathan Pryce.
Zarquon
Zarquon is a legendary prophet. He is apparently worshipped or held in some religious significance by one or more of the Galaxy's major religions. His name, like that of Jesus on Earth, is frequently invoked as an expletive of surprise, anger, or awe. An apparently short form, Zark, and various compounds (What in the name of zarking fardwarks...) is also frequently used in the books.
Exactly what Zarquon taught is unclear; most of the Zarquon mythos centres around a prophesied Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon, although this is often invoked in the sense of "never" (like, "when hell freezes over"). Zarquon's second coming does actually occur—at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Since the said restaurant occurs an infinite number of times at the end of the universe, due to a specially created time-loop, Zarquon's impossible appearance at the restaurant became finitely improbable, and therefore happens just before the universe ends.
The second coming is not particularly spectacular, and Zarquon turns out to be a bit distracted and hurried when he arrives. He had a lot of things to do, and apologizes for being late, but disappears before he can say much because the Universe ends.
"Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish" is an expletive phrase used, but not explained, by Zaphod Beeblebrox when he faces extreme danger.
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On radio, he was voiced by Anthony Sharp: on television, he was played by Colin Bennett.
Zem
Zem is a swampdwelling mattress from Squornshellous Zeta who tries his best to cheer up Marvin.
Appears in:
See also
External links
- Hotblack Desiato Estate Agents – the real estate agent so named above.
- Trillian – the Instant Messaging software
- Wowbagger.com – a tribute page to Douglas Adams and his character that includes a random insult generator applet and software.