Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route.
Vogons are described as "one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having "as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe".
He enjoys shouting at or executing members of his own crew for insubordination, and takes professional pride in his job of demolishing planets.
It is revealed in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that Jeltz had been hired by Gag Halfrunt to destroy the Earth (though in the film it was Zaphod who gave the order by mistake).
Halfrunt had been acting on behalf of a consortium of psychiatrists and the Imperial Galactic Government in order to prevent the discovery of the Ultimate Question.
In Mostly Harmless, Jeltz is once again responsible for the destruction of the Earth, after the Vogons infiltrate the Hitchhikers' Guide company offices to turn the Guide into a device capable of destroying all Earths in every dimension, this time presumably killing Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Arthur's daughter, Random—a fate dodged by the characters in the Quintessential Phase.
Two other Prostetnic Vogons in the Constructor Fleet, Kutz and Yant, appear in the second episode of the Tertiary Phase alongside Jeltz announcing the demolition of their respective planets.
Ronald E. Rice and Stephen D. Cooper considered Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz as a literary example of dysfunctional behaviour that may be facilitated by bureaucracies, comparable to the servants in Franz Kafka's novel The Castle and the bureaucrats in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil: they "all fulfill their job descriptions and use resources so efficiently that there is no recourse for the innocent, efficient, altruistic, or reasonable".
[5] The ships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet were described as "impossibly huge yellow somethings" (the colour being a parallel to bulldozers that demolish Arthur's house) that "looked more like they had been congealed than constructed" and "hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't"; they are said to be undetectable to radar and capable of travel through hyperspace.
[8] The Vogons' behaviour in contrast turns out to be "full of very human—and specifically English—flaws and tendencies", to the point that Amanda Dillon considered them "probably the least othered alien in Adams's work".
[9] The "silliness of Vogon bureaucracy" in its exaggeration is represented by "Adams's clever use of bathos" when he first uses very technical terms to describe their organizational processes but concludes with incongruously mundane words.
[10] For Vogons bureaucracy is an end-in-itself, "at which human and logic fail"[12] and which intends to thwart real progress,[11] making the scenes of interaction with these aliens "absurd".
[10] Marcus O'Dair praised the realization in the movie: "In this format, the Vogons really come into their own, their flattened faces, hunched backs and hopelessly overhanging bellies partly inspired by the work of eighteenth-century satirical cartoonist James Gillray.
"[2] Author Martin Thomas Pesl included the Vogons in his list of the 100 most brilliant villains in world literature, under the category of despots.
[13] In his analysis of the depiction of extraterrestrials, Stephen Webb considered the Vogons "engaging aliens" despite their unpleasant traits, as they parodied middle-management behaviour so well that "I can't help but like them".
