Space Cadets
Here’s the pitch: UK Channel 4 picks a bunch of thrill seekers for Space Cadets, a reality show in which they get blasted into space for a week!
Or not. Actually, they get flown to Suffolk (decked out like a Russian cosmodrome) and then put in a fake spaceship. Now we get to watch the suckers bounce around believing they’re in space (with “gravity generators” to explain the lack of weightlessness). Oh, the schadenfreude, right? Truly a horrible idea for a TV show—clearly Endemol UK (the creators of “Big Brother”, among other things) believe it’s reality TV gold.
Except that the joke’s on us: All of the cadets are actors. Who are the suckers now? It’s like someone reversed the polarity on reality TV. [from /.]
Update: As always, Rod (Royal Defender of All Things British, Or, At Least, Those Things Worth Defending) sets me straight (see the comments).
2 Responses to “Space Cadets”
I know one of the actors on Space Cadets (Drew Leahy, who’s playing the American astronaut “piloting” the “shuttle”, posts on an improv message board I frequent), and I can assure you that the contestants aren’t actors — Or at least they’re not acting in this show.
The fact that they appear as extras in TV commercials or in “performer’s directories” just shows them to be the kinds of famewhores who’ll apply to be on reality TV shows, just to be on TV.
This kind of “Even the stooges are actors, and it’s all a joke on the viewers” conspiracy theories went around when Spike TV were doing The Joe Schmo Show, and were equally untrue then.
Rod.
comment posted at 3:37 pm on 13 Dec 2005
Well, it seemed like a compelling story.
I guess I’m a space cadet too: just as gullible.
comment posted at 3:40 pm on 13 Dec 2005