The Marvin sound effect with the clanking etc comes from the radio series, where HHG began. In fact a lot of the cast and sounds are the same. Arthur, Zaphod, Marvin, Eddie, the title music, the sound of the Guide activating, etc.

This TV Marvin can be seen in the movie version. He’s in line at the Vogon civil service centre (or whatever it was – it’s been aged since I saw the movie). Simon Jones (Arthur) also makes a guest appearance as the Magrathean warning system hologram.

Trillian’s voice: “No one – absolutely no one – sounds anything like that in real life.” Well, actually, that’s her real voice. Apparently she could do a proper “English Rose” type voice, but Douglas was so thrilled they’d found someone who could do justice to the lines that he generously said “No, don’t worry about it! Your own voice is fine!” – then regretted it ever after. Sandra Dickinson was married to Peter Davison at the time (he appears in disguise in episode 5). Their daughter played the Doctor’s daughter, in the episode of the same name, and is in real life married to David Tennant, who also had some connection with Doctor Who. To bring us back onto topic, Douglas Adams was script editor on Doctor Who for a time and wrote some rather good episodes.

“The machines we’ve ended up with generally lack personalities – no one expects a conversation with the touch screen check-in at the doctor’s surgery or the train station ticket dispenser. More importantly, I don’t think anyone wants one either as, intuitively, we know it wouldn’t be real and we distrust faux or enforced jovialness”

If you ever get the chance to listen to the radio series, please do. The TV series pretty much follows the first radio series, but the second series is all new material you won’t have seen/heard. It includes Arthur’s conversation with the Nutrimat drinks dispenser, trying to get a cup of tea. He certainly would’ve preferred the no conversation option.

This serves me right for hasty reading of Genome – I had looked at the repeats later in the year!

Mind you, it would be interesting to know whether the rules on depicting torture were in any way aligned to the type of torture being used. Poetry might not be too high on the list.