TOTAL RECALL
Life? Don’t talk to us about life. Our Ian celebrates Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Tigger or Eeyore? Being one of life’s “That glass is actually half full of piss” types, I’m firmly in the latter camp. The endless exuberance of Tiggers is exhausting – who wants to be bounced on? Whereas with Eeyore, you just want to give him a hug. So naturally I love SF’s version of Eeyore: depressive robot Marvin. I first encountered him aged 10 or 11, when an older brother’s girlfriend gave me some D90 cassettes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, instantly putting herself in my good books.
Like so much of what’s funny about Hitchhiker’s, he stems from a well-thought-out SF premise. The ghastly idea of “genuine people personalities” is a little bit of genius from Douglas Adams. And the realisation is immaculate, from voice artist Stephen Moore’s droning monotone to the Radiophonic Workshop’s sound effects, which convey his world-weariness through piston hiss. Some aren’t keen on how Marvin looks in the TV series, but I’m a sucker for ’50s-style man-in-a-suit robots! Besides, it’s fitting that Marvin’s vast intellect is trapped in this cumbersome, waddling shell; no wonder he’s so fed up. Adams famously claimed Marvin was based on fellow comedy writer Andrew Marshall (who later created the sitcom 2point4 Children). But there was more to it than that. As collaborator John Lloyd has said, Adams was tremendously bi-polar, and could often be found sunk in gloom, complaining about his back pain: “Marvin’s ‘diodes all down my left side’ – that’s Douglas”. Marvin represents a side of his creator, and though he’s a comic exaggeration, he remains rooted in emotional truth. That’s surely why, despite his constant moaning, Marvin remains strangely loveable to the very end – the moment in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish where the lights in his eyes go out for the final time. The saddest thing Adams ever wrote, it still puts a lump in my throat. Rust in peace, you old misery-guts.
Ian is listening to Marvin all night long.