The Loneliest Robot Trivia Quiz

Answer: "I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."

Marvin first appears when Zaphod and Trillian have just picked up a couple of hitch-hikers - Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect - thanks to the power of the Improbability Drive. He is tasked with bringing them up to the deck. It takes a lot of persuasion from Trillian to get him to do it.

Answer: Genuine People Personality

He also has a terrible pain in the diodes on his left-hand side, but no-one has bothered to replace them.

According to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation marketing division, a robot is 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'. Both Marvin and the doors are part of a generation equipped with GPP features, making them sentient, though their personalities greatly vary.

Answer: It committed suicide

A couple of policemen from Blagulon Kappa - a pair of self-confessed 'intelligent guys who you'd quite like if you met us socially' - pursue the crew of the Heart of Gold and and fire at them. However, they are asphyxiated to death when their ship commits suicide after a conversation with Marvin. (As the policemen's spacesuits are connected to the ship's computer, they cannot survive without the ship.) Marvin notes that he tends to have this effect on other machines; even other robots hate him.

Answer: I told it that the humans had given me nothing to protect myself with.

Marvin saves the day again. When he tells the tank he's been sent to stop it, the tank asks Marvin what he's armed with, and Marvin replies, "Guess." The tank tries to guess, with various types of dangerous weaponry...and Marvin eventually answers, "Nothing." The tank is so angry it smashes up a wall, the ceiling, and then the floor.

Unfortunately, this also causes it to fall through the floor and be smashed to bits.

Answer: Parking cars

For Marvin, the first ten million years were tedious, and they just got worse from there. When he is reunited with the crew, he recalls that the best conversation he had was over forty million years ago...with a coffee machine.

Answer: Hotblack Desiato

Hotblack Desiato is an old friend of Ford, and a member of the band Disaster Area, along with a bassist, a drummer who is often replaced by a robot, and a singer who thinks he's a fish. He is spending a year dead for tax reasons. As part of their shows, Disaster Area crash a small black spaceship into the sun of Kakrafoon. Zaphod and co. do not realise what ship they are on until Marvin casually mentions it. Luckily, Arthur spots an emergency teleport system and everyone except Marvin teleports out of the ship before it crashes into the sun.

Answer: A bridge

Marvin tells this story upon meeting a mattress called Zem in the marshes of Squornshellous Zeta. He gives a speech at the opening of the bridge, which is as follows: "I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinking abuse of all that wantonly cross her." The poor bridge responds by collapsing in tears and sinking into the swamp, taking everyone with it.

Answer: The Steel Pillar of Strength and Power

A little background: the killer robots work for the people of the planet Krikkit, who sing songs that Paul McCartney wishes he could have written, and who cannot cope with the idea of the universe existing, to the point where their first thought on discovering it is 'it'll have to go'.

They were punished for the invasion and destruction of various worlds by being sealed away in the Envelope of Slo-Time many years before the story takes place. A Krikkit warship tried and failed to steal the Key, scattering its pieces across the universe.

The other parts of the Key are the Perspex Pillar of Science and Reason (aka the Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice), the Wooden Pillar of Nature and Spirituality (aka the Ashes), the Gold Bail of Prosperity (aka the heart of the Infinite Improbability Drive) and the Silver Bail (aka the Rory Award for the Most Gratuitous Use of the Word [Censored] in a Serious Screenplay).

Answer: How I hate the night

Another verse goes: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, try to count electric sheep, sweet dream wishes you can keep, how I hate the night.'

Being connected to the ship's computer also means that Marvin is controlling the robots, and they all become as depressed as he is. Fortunately for Zaphod, who is also their prisoner, it means they're too depressed to kill anyone and would rather sulk or do quadratic equations.

Answer: "I think I feel good about it."

When Arthur and Fenchurch find Marvin making his way to God's Final Message in the land of Sevorbeupstry, he is thirty-seven times older than the universe itself, thanks to time travel shenanigans. All of his body parts except the diodes have been replaced. Marvin's vision circuits are so badly damaged that Arthur and Fenchurch have to get him to a telescope so that he can read the final message.

He does not appear in 'Mostly Harmless', but in the radio adaptation, he is still alive and returns to parking cars at Milliways.