Minor characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

There are many minor characters in the various versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. In fact, defining a major character is rather difficult. If the major characters are those the plot focuses on, they are Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin and Trillian, with the possible inclusion of Slartibartfast, Prostentic Vogon Jeltz, Random Dent and Fenchurch. If they are defined as characters appearing in all the books, they are only Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. In this case, the definition of major characters will be those in the series with major plot significance not appearing on this list.

Lintilla

Lintilla is a rather unfortunate woman who has (as of Fit the Eleventh) been cloned 578,000,000,000 times due to an accident at a Brantisvogan escort agency. While creating six clones of a wonderfully talented and attractive woman named Lintilla (at the same time another machine was creating five hundred lonely business executives, in order to keep the laws of supply and demand operating profitably), the machine got stuck in a loop and malfunctioned in such a way that it got halfway through completing each new Lintilla before it had finished the previous one. This meant that it was for a very long while impossible to turn the machine off without committing murder, despite lawyers' best efforts to argue about what murder actually was, including trying to re-define it, re-spell it and re-pronounce it.

Related Topics:
Clone - Brantisvogan - Escort agency - Supply and demand - Murder

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Arthur Dent encounters three of her on the planet of Brontitall, and takes a liking to (at least) one of them. He kills the male anti-clone, Allitnil, sent by the cloning company to get her to "agree to cease to be" (although the other two of her aren't so lucky). When Arthur leaves Zaphod, Ford, and Zarniwoop stranded with the Ruler of the Universe and his cat, he takes Lintilla with him aboard the Heart of Gold.

Related Topics:
Brontitall - Heart of Gold

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All Lintillas were played by the same (non-cloned) actress: Rula Lenska. Lintilla (and her clones) appeared only in the final three episodes of the original radio series. Rula Lenska did return to the fourth and fifth radio series - she was first an uncredited "Update Voice" for the Hitchhiker's Guide itself and then played the Voice of the Bird (the new version of the Guide introduced in Mostly Harmless). Zaphod has noted the new book has the same voice as Lintilla. Lintilla and her clones do make a re-appearance of sorts on the Heart of Gold in an alternate ending to the final episode (which can only be heard on CD).

Related Topics:
Rula Lenska - Fourth and fifth radio series - Mostly Harmless - The final episode

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