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"Reverse primary thrust, Marvin." That's what they say to me. "Open airlock number 3, Marvin". "Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?" Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper."
Marvin, The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy (1981)
Quirky robots are no stranger to the prestigious realms of the Cult Spy Icon. They can already count Kryten, a toaster and a certain canine amongst their number. But how many of those have inspired a Radiohead song? Step forward a legendary figure from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, bearing an unfathomably huge genius and a misanthropic tendency that's even larger.
Marvin The Paranoid Android has appeared across various mediums since Douglas Adams first created him, but arguably the definitive rendering was in the BBC2 Hitch Hikers television series in 1981. Created by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, Marvin was infused with 'Genuine People Personalities' technology. This was a noble bid to give a bit of life to artificial intelligence, but sadly backfired by not taking into account that a lot of genuine people are moody sods.
Marvin looked a sorry sight when he lumbered onto the screen, his melancholy heightened by the exuberance of his travelling companions Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian on board the Heart of Gold starship. The costume emphasised his pitiful state, with sad looking 'eyes' and ungainly limbs. But the voice really encapsulated the depressive robot, brilliantly delivered by Stephen Moore.
The android was always keen to drop into conversation the fact that he could solve the most complex mathematical, scientific or social problems in nanoseconds - yet he ended up parking cars at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe for almost an eternity. As he put it himself, in his distinctive droning voice: "The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million: they were the worst, too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that, I went into a bit of a decline."
Marvin's awareness of his own wasted genius, and the knowledge that his brain would continue to gather dust, propelled him into abject depression. But for viewers of the show, his rants were a joy to behold.
