Space Cadets the first episode

I watched the first episode of Space Cadets last night. It's is being tauted as "the biggest prank in television history" and edges reality closer to The Truman show than ever before. Initially I felt guilt about watching it. But then I got over it.

The first thing to understand is that the people applying for the show were in fact, as far as they knew, applying for some other show called Thrill Seekers, with minimal details revealed. Of all the recruits were tested for suggestibility and claustrophobia, then taken on an adventure weekend in the hills. The suggestibility tests were very amusing, with many people seeing outrageous things in random dot patterns. It was amazing what people would put themselves through when they didn't now any details about what the show involved. A sad statement on the UK's obsession for getting on TV I think.

According to the show's host Johnny Vaughn (who's a sort of comedy presenter) additional screening filtered out anyone who knew any astrophysics or could name more than four characters in Star Trek The Next Generation!

What's going to be interesting is whether the show can really fool these people. Can they make a disused airfield seem like a Russian space training camp? Can they make a shuttle simulator in a big hangar seem like outer space? Surely not? For a start the training camp has the acronymn STAR (space traning something blah) which doesn't sound very Russian. All in all though they've spent a fortune on making the transformation including grocery shopping in Moscow for everything on the base.

Suddenly all those conspiracy novels about the moon landings are looking entirely possible!