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

Glad someone else spotted the resemblance twixt Gordon Ramsay's saviour and big haired Ryan.
It isn't just the hair, the faces look very similar. It helps that they have shown this ad in close proximity to Space Cadets.
Now, Ryan is Scottish. On the ad he is shown watching some sort of sporting event with a load of Scottish flags and stuff behind him. Ah!

The big problem for Endemol (sounds like suppositories) is the second series, unless they do it for real next year, like a "NASA - Are You Tough Enough?" sort of thing.

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I absolutely agree. And I'm so glad I'm not alone!
Although, I'm jealous.
They *think* they're getting the experience, so will that spoil the memory? I mean, they'll remember that view until they're on their deathbed (sorry) because it'll be imprinted on their brains.

It'll be something to tell their grandchildren, *I was a space tourist* and they will be able to describe it - and their audience (whether fellow-bar-flies or children) will be in awe. It'll keep them in for years.

I am so glad that's NOT me - but I envy them the experience. How crazy is that?

The experience of being made to look morons on TV? The only true 'experience' that they will take from this is what an astronaut feels when they see the earth from space. The rest of the experience will simply be what it feels like to walk around a mock up of a space shuttle on the Earths surface.

They of course might feel incredibly bitter, annoyed and depressed everytime they see a true shot of Earth from space.

I doubt whether it will keep them in beer for years unless they have *really* stupid friends.

I would be in awe at how stupid someone can be. It also shows how ill-educated some people are. Maybe being fairly well-educated and a proud means I am too far away from what a lot of people actually learn at school and in their spare-time. If so, that worries me - I would certainly want the names of these people and I would never want them to be in any job that requires any decision making past whether they pour the coke or get the buger and extra Macfries.

People with that lack of intelligence should not make any decisions that could affect the lives of anyone else.

I do not feel sorry for them - just sad. Would a better education system in the UK have given them some common sense and knowledge or are they just the type of people who could not learn anything useful even if the jacked into the Matrix.

They were picked on the basis of their suggestibility (posh word for gullibility!), similar to the way stage hypnotists pick their 'victims'.
The fact that their eagerness to get on telly has over-ridden any realistic thought about what the process really should entail does kinda evaporates the sympathy.

...oh well, I still think it's sad to shatter someone's dreams, however foolish they are, without dreams or things to aim for, it would be a sorry world.
....maybe the trick is that they really are up in a shuttle and the joke is on us, or something really sneaky like the actors are the victims and again, they really are in space, would that be legal, who knows, who cares?

I don't think they're going to be the laughing stocks everyone seems to be expecting them to be.

Personally I hate practical jokes - I'm only watching this from a personal interest angle, that's my excuse anyway.

This series (which I pegged from the very beginning as being a waste of airtime) is undoubtedly the nastiest, most unpleasant, most expensive practical joke ever played on British TV.

Given that the selection process was deliberately doctored to choose the 'gullible' (and I'm afraid in the minds of the majority of the British Public gullible is a synonym for stupid) renders this as being little more than a Victorian freak show, where the public are encouraged to laugh at freaks 'gullibl/stupid' enough to believe this.

Added to that the gurnings of the really unbelievably irritating and smug Johnny Vaughan (a man with a face you feel the need to fill with a brick), who, let's face it it hardly the Brain of Britain himself and you have a show which i frankly results in all the contestants taking class action against Channel 4 for the emotional stress that will undoubtedly be caused by their lives being ruined as they spend the rest of it defending themselves against the cat-call of 'space cadet' every time they walk in the pub.

I do not think anyone has mentioned this but 'Space Cadet' is a term sometimes used to describe someone who is not totally in touch with reality and a little scatterbrained.

Anyone notice how they've now started assuring people that all the contestants *will* go to Russia, have some cosmonaut training and go up in a zero-gee aircraft. They said nothing about this in the first few programmes. Do you think this was a hastily arranged thing to offset exactly the criticism we're seeing here?

And what aspect of the show is 'live'? Johnny Vaughn's links might be live, but they don't need to be, and all of the other stuff is recorded. It's all a bit rubbish, really.

Couldn't we just all cdlub together and send Vaughn up on a one way ticket? He is rapidly becoming even more irritating than the ex-Mr Billie Piper.

You're not the only one to have that idea, SoRB.

"The space cadets have been systematically manipulated and lied to, and have effectively been abducted from their real world and help captive. Civil libertarians are furiously bashing their keyboards as the protests against this hideous experiment grow by the hour.

But hang on a minute: this show is all about massaging reality, about presenting untruth as fact, and about defining the limits of human suggestibility. We, the viewing public, are expected to believe that this group of people have actually been sold the lie that they are in space. I have an alternative theory.

It is just as likely that it is us, not them, who are the subjects of this experiment. We are the ones who have swallowed the lie - everybody on that programme is really an actor, and the whole event is simply a work of fiction. Shades of Orson Welles and the War of the Worlds. You heard it here first."

Russ Swan, Editor, LABORATORYTALK, ISSN 1475-2905.

Issue 219: 14 December 2005.

"You heard it here first..." as long as you didn't read h2g2 six days ago...

SoRB

I was just going to say that.



We are probably the sample of the population they're polling.

Well, the 'zero-gee aircraft' would be cool. But to call it a zero-gee aircraft is pushing it. Any old aircraft stuck in the correct parabolic curved flight path will give you zero-gee. You just need a biggun to bounce around in.

Also, Channel 4 have said it is costing them £5million to do this show. It looks tacky enough to cost less than that.

I really do not buy the 'they are all actors and the joke is on the public' the whole concept is too lame on the surface to even have a subtext.

Aye!

5 million squid? Why does your pound sign £ work and mine doesn't?

How many unmanned space probes would that send up?

Does anyone remember the BBC documentary 'The Blue Planet'? In my opinion just about the best nature documentary I've seen, as well as being a fantastic demonstration of camera work. Here's a quote about it:
http://www.divernet.com/photog/0901planet.htm
"That £7 million budget might represent a big chunk of licence-payer's money, but the series has already been sold in 40 countries and will become course material for marine biology students".

Is there a source for Channel 4 saying Space Cadets cost 5 million? If its true, what a waste.

I recall reading that in my TV mag, a few weeks ago.

Yes, I saw "Blue Planet". I own the DVD's as well. Documentaries like that make the licence fee worthwhile, IMHO.

Next time I go shopping I'm gonna treat myself to Attenborough's latest, the insect world, because I've missed 2 episodes while I've been watching this. I'm just waiting for one of them to see Elvis float past the port hole, or a shoot by - honest.

Although Blue Planet, etc are fantastic programmes, if TV only consisted of such programmes the viewing figures would fall eventually, as would it if it only consisted of Space Cadets type programmes.
I think Space Cadets can be viewed on 2 levels, as just entertaining in Big Brother way (and hopefully Space Cadets won't be bled dry like Big Bore has been, due to its once only nature) or on a deeper depth as to the rights or wrongs of deception, comparing it with real life deceptions like fraud, etc.
It is not inconceivable that in the future it will be talked about like the electric shock experiment I talked about in a previouse post, I certainly think there is a possibility of contestants being ridiculed for a long time in future as being guilable, and who would give an important job to someone so publically ridiculed? The one from Big Bore who was kicked out for cheating said it made it very difficult to get a job, and he is still dragged out as the cheat for interviews on other types of reality shows.
.....it's a shame as the girl seems to be a genuinely nice person, and the little romance starting quite sweet.

nice to see other people think that everyone on the show does know what's going on.
it's bleeding obvious they know and the only hoax that will be revealed is it was at our expense.
last night actor charlie (supposed space tourist) was talking to someone and all the spacesuits were being moved be someone behind them even though they had a half view of those suits.
Like they WANTED to be caught.
Clearly the object if the show is "Let's get caught so we can start showing the tapes of jamies school dinners"
johhny vaughn actually went aboard the ship and did an interview last night. until that point we didn't know if the actors playing the pilots and the actor playing the tourist knew about each other.

now we know that it clearly is obvious that everyone knows the show is fake.