Marvin

“Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With!"”

—Marvin's description by his makers

Marvin, also known as Marvin the Paranoid Android, is a robot manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. He is equipped with "Genuine People Personalities" (GPP)  technology which is designed to make him more like a person.

Character

Marvin is a severely depressed robot. He's regularly so depressed that, when he gets bored and talks to other computers, they commit suicide and die, as was the case for a robotically controlled police ship (which resulted in the asphyxiation of two policemen) and a bridge which killed everyone on it. This is due to the "Genuine People Personality" he received while he was being manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (Marvin's is a personality prototype). Marvin also dislikes the cheerful GPP doors that were built into the spaceship Heart of Gold.

Marvin continually says that his brain is the size of a planet (in fact because of this, he is eternally bored because nothing takes up his entire mind), enabling him to calculate the probability of just about anything. However, when he bothers to share the fruit of his mental labours with those around him, they tend to ignore him because he usually just ends up depressing them.

In his spare time, which has been legendary because any time that he commits to thought processes necessary to perform any assigned duties takes up such a small percentage of his brain, and with all of the travelling through space and time performing assigned duties have rendered him many times over the span of the universe, he has been known to write and sing songs; just not very good ones and not very well.

When he dies in "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish," at 37 times older than the Universe itself, his last words are "I think I feel good about it".

Physical Appearance

In the TV series, Marvin's physical appearance was approximately that of a tall humanoid from Earth, with angular features. In the movie, Marvin is shorter with a spherical head.

Quotes by Marvin

• "Life? Don't talk to me about life."
• "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they tell me to take you up to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
• "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."
• Arthur: [Earth] was a beautiful place.
  Marvin: Did it have oceans?
  Arthur: Oh yes; great, wide rolling blue oceans.
  Marvin: Can't bear oceans.
• "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, Oh God, I'm so depressed."
• "I won't enjoy it."
• Marvin: I've been communicating with the ship.
  Ford:What did it say?
  Marvin: It hates me.
• "You think you've got problems? What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don't try to answer that. I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.
• "There's only one life-form as intelligent as me within thirty parsecs of here and that's me."
  
• "I wish you'd just tell me rather trying to engage my enthusiasm, because I haven't got one."
• "And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side."

Marvin's Lullaby

How I Hate the Night, also known as Marvin's Lullaby, is "a short dolorous ditty of no tone, or indeed tune."

Now the world has gone to bed,

Darkness won't engulf my head,

I can see by infra-red,

How I hate the night,

Now I lay me down to sleep,

Try to count electric sheep,

Sweet dream wishes you can keep,

How I hate the night.

Behind the scenes

• In the radio version and the TV series, Marvin was voiced by Stephen Moore, and in the TV version, the actor inside the Marvin costume was David Learner. Also, in the film, the original Marvin robot can be seen in line at the Vogon offices, thrown in as an inside joke for fans who have seen the TV series.
• Stephen Moore also recorded four single songs as the Marvin character, release on two 45 rpm records. These were "Marvin" and "Metal Man," followed by "Marvin, I Love You" and "Reasons To Be Miserable." The female vocals for "Marvin, I Love You" were provided by Kimi Wong.
• In the 2005 film adaptation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Marvin is voiced by Alan Rickman, but the costume is worn by Warwick Davis.
• Douglas Adams told that Marvin was intended to be a minor joke, but after the robot's voice actor was hired he eventually had to write some script for him time to time.

Notes and references

Marvin continually states that his brain is the size of a planet

The cast are trying to discover the question to life the universe and everything, that was being calculated by a computer the size of a planet.

Marvin is trying to hint , that he is able to tell the the question, or at least calculate the question, but they never ask.