[21x03] February 16th, 2014

[21x03] February 16th, 2014


  • Total voters
    236
Here's how interesting I found the first film: the car was orange, and from Denmark. Couldn't tell you the name. I usually love the News, but the scripting in this ep was so painfully obvious I almost skipped over it. I know it's an entertainment show and they rarely take things seriously, but I think the Crimean feature would've been better without the idiocy. Shake things up a bit, eh? They were serious about the history, and that made it rare and interesting. Wish they'd do it more often.

I do like the Fiesta and was considering trading my car in for one. Didn't, because even one or two-year old models are too expensive. (And the 3-door ones are hard to find around here.)

7-7.5 from me.

Also, would like more James, please.
 
Decent episode. Chernobyl is always interesting to see no matter how many documentaries you see on it. But I wish that they would mention just how many people (farmers primarily) live in the exclusion zone, and are just fine.

Also always like the confirmation in owning a good car, in having bought a Fiesta myself.


So Wesley Clark same near started world war 3 just over an airport?! What a blithering insane fool.

Like most things, it is a bit more complex than that.

The Russians by that point, were a belligerent. Their ultimate goal was to split the country like they split Germany. Obviously NATO was against that. So after refusing to join the NATO mission, Russia went their own way and proved to be a significant problem for NATO the whole time. Moving into areas that NATO planned to bomb, etc.

In taking over that airfield they wanted to force NATO into negotiations after they reinforced, significantly. The only reason that didn't happen is because the US used its political muscle to force countries like Romania to block their airspace from Russian reinforcements. But none of that was guaranteed. And Clark knew that. Generals have orders, and his were to prevent the Russian's from reinforcing.

The order was purposely vague because of who was dealing with. This British general had a history of not following orders coming from Americans. And they were not nearly as justifiable as in this case. Clark had British staff officers under him and they all believed that at best, the 500-strong force would roll onto the airfield and brew up some tea while ignoring the Russians yelling at them to leave, guns drawn or not. And at worse you'd have two forces in offensive/defensive postures while the politics sorted itself out. Nobody really believed that there would be shooting. And certainly nobody believed that Yeltsin of all people, would go nuclear over this.

This was all politicized during an election period in the US, with Clark running for president. So the WW3 stuff sounds great, but it's all hyperbole. Sounds good on British TV, but they do a disservice by not providing any historical context. And then you no longer need to wonder why people think of the US military like they do...
 
Last edited:
10

Mind blown. that was amazing to see them do that. I'm so jealous of the things they get to do.
 
Pretty good episode. The Danish supercar was okay, I suppose.
News was amusing.
I actually sat through SIARPC, rather than skipping it.
The reasonable car challenge was very good as well.

Regardless of how safe Chernobyl is or is not, that place is creepy as hell. I'd still go there to look around though...
 
loved reasonable car challenge.
felt sorry for danish super car segment... sort that really it for that car.
i mean everyone will call it - the car that caught fire in Top gear.
 
A SHORT track-based review (when's the last time we had one that didn't bloat its way to 10 minutes?) that was jammed with actual content (again, that's been a while), and a cheap(ish) car challenge with three interesting currently-on-sale hatchbacks, wrapped in an interesting film about Ukraine with some genuinely moving moments marred only by minimal scripted comedy (which wasn't as obvious as it has been previously), and a repeat guest who's genuinely engaging.

Just like last week. We can tell you guys are enjoying putting these episodes together. Jeremy's laughter at May's attempt to "light" the nuclear missile and at Hammond's "James-May-will-kill-the-family-parrot" joke sure appeared genuine to me.

Oh, and "like a determined sperm" had me LOLing.

8? 9? Just call it an "A" for effort AND execution. This one I'll proudly re-watch in rotation.
 
I'm sorry, but my favorite part was Hammond taking a bite out of the visor.
 
That had to be the most booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooring episode of Top Gear in history.
OK fine, but some of us thought it was an thoughtful, informative and often amusing show.

May I suggest you avoid any more weekly disappointments by sitting down by yourself and replaying Episode 1 of this series once a week? <_<
 
Last edited:
Man you guys are generous!

That had to be the most booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooring episode of Top Gear in history.

Literally nothing happened after the debacle of the, what was it called? .... oh who cares anyway....

Ukraine trip was 40 minutes of nothingness, all to allow Jezza and May to sneak a peak into some abandoned submarine base and nuclear missile base.

I actually had the thought that all they wanted to prove was that if they are asked to review boring cars it will make a boring show. If so, mission accomplished.
You've had your episode (one). Let us have ours.
 
It was a good episode made better without stupid things blowing up and dumb stunts. The Ukraine bit was their best "challenge" segment in a while.
 
Pretty boring episode overall. The review was short (sounds like it was the car's fault) and the laptime was pointless. News was ok, guest was forgettable, and the road trip was as boring as they intended it to be. The only good part lasted all of 3 minutes at the end. Chernobyl is a fascinating place, let's just show a couple drive by shots and leave it at that.

6 and I'm being generous.

I sure hope the weather clears up for you Brits. I want to see that P1 vs 918 powerlap!
 
I was entertained for 90% of it, so 9/10 from me.

Loved the premise of the small cars, and the windy twisty bit. I liked the feel of it; it "felt" organic, even if it wasn't completely so. A big difference from the scripted shenanigans from ep 1.

I laughed way too hard at the out the window cabbage. It's just one of those things, so silly yet didn't feel contrived.

I wish they could have done a little more with Pripyat/Chernobyl. Sub pen was very, very cool. I like how they seemed to genuinely get into doing the little challenge they had here instead of some silly caricature thing with their "personas".

This is the style episode that got me hooked on TG to begin with. More please! :D
 
Episode was really good. I didn't expect much from the Zenvo but the lap time was really dreadful, altought I believe that with a dry track it would have been at least 6 seconds faster. It was really wet and with that amount of horsepower it's really difficult to transfer that power on the road.

The trip was enjoyable but I would have loved to see more of Prypiat instead of them driving in the flat ukrainian landscapes and cooking about the fuel.
 
The Fiesta costs that much over in UKania? I'm quite shocked at that actually; here it costs the equivalent of ~?11,000. How much is the Up!, I kinda missed that if Jeremy did mention the price of it within.

Anyway, 7/10. The Zenvo is a mean looking mother-****er such a shame it wasn't all that brilliant. The ending was incredibly intense and spooky, with the middle being somewhat "meh".

James Blunt as with his previous visit was good for a couple of laughs.
 
Last edited:
That one-liter-three-cylinder challenge had so much potential and started off so well.

Such a shame the last half was a wasted opportunity with a stupid challenge, stupid solutions and too much pathetic whimpering.

Couldn't be arsed watching the whole segment about the orange thing; skipped the news when they started talking about some Porsche that I'll never see and thought I was in some worm hole while watching SIARPC ... it seemed to go on for hours and hours (even though it was only about 12 minutes). It was like some weird HDTV opium with that time dilation effect you get in the recovery room after an anaesthetic. I'm pretty sure that Einstein would've nutted out all his theories a lot quicker if he could've performed a thought experiment where he receded from James Blunt at a speed approaching that of light.

I don't think I will ever recover from episode one of this series though ..... and kind of wish they would just kill off the show now, before all I can remember about it is it's mailed-in irrelevance and wasted opportunities.
 
I don't think I will ever recover from episode one of this series though ..... and kind of wish they would just kill off the show now, before all I can remember about it is it's mailed-in irrelevance and wasted opportunities.

Nobody is forcing you to watch it.Stick to watching crap like The Block,MKR and Big Fat Losers,which probably will be more to your liking.
 
The price of the Fester surprised me too. OK, it was quite a long time ago now (2000) but a 1.8T Golf GTI I bought brand new was the same price, and that was for a top-spec, not base!
 
Another 9.
Solid episode, even the news sequence was decent.

I do wonder about the price of that Fiesta though. My sister in law drives that very same car, and it cost nowhere near the equivalent of 17000?.
What was that eating the visor bit about? An inside joke I'm missing?
 
Top