h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, but we have ..... urm.... Patrick Stewart and... um..... Gabriel Byrne, Tom Berenger. But they're not in much, and when they are they are always fully clothed. Not a chain mail bikini in sight. Pah!

Gabriel Byrne not in much? Where were you last year?

Patrick 'The Vest' Stewart fully clothed? Haven't you seen First Contact?

Tom Berenger in a chain mail bikini? Haven't you seen... um... a psychiatrist?

If you really want to get your Patrick Stewart fix though, he's in plenty of DTV movies (most of them doubtless dire works, propped up solely by his performance), some of them with a dubious accent.

The Prophet.

Yes! Glad to se ethe back of that decaprio git. Sorry, I hate that guy and I don't know why. I actually feel that the mass media does the same for blokes, only we usually follow. Look at the spice girls, one day, its ginger who's best looking, then posh, then sporty and I think now its scary. And really attractive Icons for men come and go as fast as FHM creates them. Look at Kelly Brook or whatever her name was, no talent whatsoever (As her stint on teh big breakfast proved) but yet people still hire her as a presenter because she's guarenteed to pull in viewers. Next year, it will be someone else. Can anyone remember the name of that girl who had her bum projected on to big ben now?

Ah. I don't get out much (who would have guessed!!?)
DTV?? I live in a country where Big Brother is the best you can hope for on TV. That's how bad it is.
Tom Berenger is very lovely in that film about the baseball no-hopers. With Charlie Sheen. Flaming well forgotten the name now, though. Erm.... nope, it's gone.

So, did anyone see Andromeda? Was I dreaming or did one of the characters really say that he is "built like a Greek god"?

That sounds like pretty poor TV, but surely you have a video shop? I though Blockbuster were expanding their empire as fast as MacD's these days. (DTV = Direct to Video, if you didn't know).

And that Greek God thing was what passed for subtle in-jokes these days I guess

The Prophet.

Ah. DTV. thanks

Well, we only get films in German here. Which isn't the same. So we just have to put up with Sky (until it all goes digital) then watch Big Brother in German for the rest of our lives. Bo-ring.

Believe me; Big Brother is just as boring in English.

The Prophet

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OK; the Nasty Nick thing was interesting viewed from a distance (I particularly liked the way the Sun called for him to be lynched, then gave him a fat cheque to write for them), but the show itself was just dull. I could never manage more than a few minutes before I felt a pressing need to fracture one of my long bones to break the monotony.

On the Nasty Nick issue, apparently he's been offered the host spot on a new reality TV show based around the principal of Stockholm Syndrome. Presumably a sort of cross between Big Brother and Jailbreak (the only programme in the world that's more boring than Big Brother), but with armed guards. I haven't been this excited about a TV show since the last S Club 7 special.

The Prophet.

I agree. That sounds dull, and slightly unethical, as someone with a psychology degree I always felt stokholm syndrome was fairly serious. In fact, its precicely things like that that tick off teh psychological community. Because to do stuff like that we have to go through an ethics commitee and be refused. Worse still, the shows are a bad environment and so provide poor data to any psychologists happening to be watching.

Jailbreak, that show taught me something. Every jail has a subtle set of clues that tells you how to escape. Obviously a clever way to only restrain teh really stupid criminals.

Oh, and I agree, I couldn't watch big brother. I just listened to summaries of interesting bits.

You're a psychologist? Now I'm really glad I decided against posting my pitch for S Club Se7en.

Actually, a friend of mine once suggested that the whole spate of Reality TV game shows was created by rogue psychologists looking for a way to get round those troublesome ethical restrictions.

The Prophet.

It depends, where would you be pitching s club se7ven or whatever.

As for teh rouge psychologist theory, very possably. If I ever got a PHD or something I might be indoctrinated into teh secret society where they find ways to make the media conduct unethical experiments. And to show my training. Here's a few of reasons why Big Brother was a bad experiment.

1. The people in teh house were chosen from a group that woudl include a disproportionate amount of exhibitionists.
2. The group had too much contamination from outside. (Big Brottehr himself)
3. The group dynamic was wreched by the introduction of that new girl near the end.

Oh, and Jailbreak, pah. there was a cooler experiment. A group of psychologists hired a bit of an old prison. Then split a group of voulenteers into prisoners and wardens. Various rules were enforced such as teh wardens were to refer to prisoners only by number, the prisoners were to claa teh wardens sir, wardens got uniforms, prisoners got overalls with stenciled numebrs etc. It had to be stopped half way because all teh wardens got incredibly sadistic. Cool huh. Now thats entertainment.

OK; the S Club Se7en pitch (with a warning that this may be upsetting to the sensetive):

What we do is film S Club 7, 24/7 - we can show it on a live webcam - and get Kevin Spacey to stalk and slaughter those hyperactive little pop-pixies in various savage and imaginative ways. I feel it has multiple vectors of appeal: pretty people on film, audience participaton (they could ring up and give Kevin hints and suggestions), and that edge of extreme unpleasantness that people seem to like from their reality TV.

Not that I'm i anyway sggesting that Kevin Spacey is a deranged slasher, or anything other than a very nice man.

My issue Big Brother incidentally is less that it's a bad experiment and more that it's a
very dull TV programme.

As for the Stanford Prison Experiment, I'm not sure if I'd call it 'cool', and I'm the one advocating the televised murder of pop singers whose only real crime is making more money than I can dream of out of their minimal talent. There's a bit about it in the torture entry; it verges on the terrifying really. I find it almost as frightening as Jack Chick.

The Prophet.

I like it. If I were an exectutive, I'd commisiion it.

As for the prison experiment, Cool is possably a wrong word. But I feel that tehy learent some inetresting things before ethics committees became involved, but that tehy are also now essential. Milgrams experiments were interesting too.

I think the most important thing to be learned form the Stanford Prison Experiment was not so much how easily ordinary, fairly pleasant young men can lapse into brutal sadism, but how easily psychologists can over-distance themselves. As I understand it the project was not shut down by an ethics commission, but by the psychs themselves when a new member of the team asked them what the hell they thought they were doing and couldn't they see that the whole thing had gone way beyond reasonable.

Was Milgram the electric shock thing, about how people respond to oversight by authority figures?

The Prophet.

Yup, and very clever he was too. He actually did many experiments showing different aspects of the effect of authaurity figures but only released the paper on teh more known experiment. What this meant was, when the paper was criticised, he had a huge amount of extra data to draw on.

And I've always felt that distance was important to psychologists, but I agree that wen peopel are getting hurt, then it is a little worrying.

Oh, for human testing, I actually particiated in a pain experiment during my course. M had my left arm squeezed by a blood pressure thing and had to do mental arithmatic. It was evry well done and I was well treated. I was only surprised because I hadn't read teh experimental brief before volunteering and was a little dismayed to read "Pain Experiment" on teh door of the room.

Didn't that experiment get drawn for ethical reasons as well?

I don't think objectivity can ever be an excuse for inhumanity, whatever the analytical benefits. I guess that's why you have ethics committees.

You know, this is what I love about h2g2. We started off on Blakes' 7 and curling-tong lasers, then moved on to psychological experiments and inhumanity.

The Prophet

So now we have come full circle. Because, surely, Blake's 7 was some kind of psychological experiment being carried out on us unwitting human guinea-pigs in the 70s? It can't have seriously been meant as entertainment, can it?
But, my husband (who took over the Sunday morning babysitting duties when he found out Dr. Who and Blake's 7 were on then) thinks it's brilliant, and can't stop watching. Even though he hates it. So, you psych people out there, what does that mean? Shall I have him committed? (because then I can do the Sunday morning babysitting, and watch Blake's 7 again, instead of vegging in bed)

While I think that blakes seven and Dr Who are great, I wouldn't worry about your husband, it is very easy to get hooked on series you initially don't like usually because of the fun you can halev with them. I have become hooked on sailor moon for example and can now talk like a fanboy about the series. When I first watched it I was amasesd about teh poor plots, the seeming ineffectualness of teh heroines and teh fact that it was wierd watching animated 15 year oldas run around in sailor suits.

OK; now the whole sailor-suited fifteen-year-old girl obsessive thing is worrying. Not that I'm necessarily saying _you_ have a worrying obsession, but some people do. In comparative terms, Blakes' 7 is a pretty cosy alternative.

And I wouldn't worry about your husband. in fact, what you should do is get up and watch Blakes' 7 and Dr Who with him; make it a family thing. It's quite amazing how much of Sunday you can reclaim that way, even if you have spent three hours watching Dr Who.

The Prophet.