The Whale

The Whale appeared in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in one of the few scenes which had previously been done on radio, in Douglas Adams' book, and on television. This large sperm whale comes into existence when the Improbability Drive transforms a nuclear missile. The aquatic mammal ponders the questions of his existence and his physicality for a very brief period. He plummets to his death, with cheerful optimism that the ground will be friends with him as his final thought.

A highly detailed model sperm whale was created and filmed in free fall. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop built an 11-foot-long model of the typically 50-foot-long marine mammal. According to director Alex Jennings in the official presskit, "The whale that the Creature Shop created was truly beautiful... We shot it with an in-camera effect so it looks like it’s falling through the sky, and later we added just a couple of effects shots. But essentially the whole whale sequence was shot in camera. It looks so realistic—to me it’s as if we had a skydiver trying to film the whale as he was plummeting with it!"