Some serious thoughts about Top Gear's 13th season

the Interceptor

the Interceptor

I LUV MY PRIUS!!!
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Now that the 13th season ended with yesterdays episode, I think it's safe for me to look back on it and let out a thought that came up in the first episode and has been following me since: Top Gear has lost its soul.

I am not sure what has happened, and I still am unsure whether it really is Top Gear or just me. Either way, the way the last leason felt strange to me. It felt like the boys have advanced their behaviour from 'testing cars and cocking about in the process' to 'cocking about and testing cars in the process'. Also, I found the scripting to show through stronger than ever before.

And I found a lot of the segments to be technically correct, but somehow odd. It was like someone put everything that makes Top Gear into a computer, then added a subject and let the machine cobble together a segment. The result are films that contain all the bits necessary to make a piece of Top Gear, but without the soul and the passion.

About most of the stuff in this season, I found myself thinking that the segments should have been different. Not much for the most part, but little touches that distinguish a good piece of television from a brilliant one. Disturbingly, I had a very good idea of what should be different, and even worse, the pieces with the changes I would have done looked exactly like the older Top Gear to me.

For sure, the show still is good, but in the past, they have shown that they can do better. I have the feeling that growing popularity made them cross a point that rendered an essential part of a car show - testing cars - a necessary evil. I love the guys cocking about, I love explosions, races and just being stupid. In the past, they got away with all that because it was carefully wrapped into the blanket of a brilliant car show. Meanwhile, that blanket has taken so much beating that it has huge holes and thus doesn cover all the crazy stuff anymore, which makes a formerly perfect Top Gear slowly fall apart.

Am I alone on this?
 
So you are expecting every next season to get better and better?
That's simply not possible. Like Mr. Wilman said in one of his blogs - it's like AC/DC - why change something if it's already working fine?
They haven't changed anything, it's just that we've got too much Top Gear in the past couple of years.
Maybe they need to stop for a year, get some new ideas, starve the audiences and then come back.

Imagine your favorite music band releasing a new album every 6 months - great at first, but then it's all starting to get a bit boring and repetitive.
 
No, I don't expect the show to get better with every season. I understand what you mean - that one gets used to everything and thus demands more and more over time - but that's not the problem.

The thing is that the parts I criticised are not blatantly obvious, therefore it's kind of hard to explain what I mean. It's just little things here and there, little missing or misplaced bits and pieces. They don't ruin the show, but they take away the magic that made the show stand out in the past. In one of the episode threads, somebody said something along the lines of:"They found their recipe, now they're simply 'executing' it without putting too much thought into it". That pretty much nails it for me.

It feels like they have stopped making brilliant television and have started to make "just some Top Gear" instead. Like walking into a BMW dealership and saying:"I'd like to buy 15 feet of car" - remember?

"Hello! I'd like to make 60 minutes of Top Gear." - "Certainly Sir, take these cars, make that race, have a few challenges, put in some effects and jokes, and there you are.". Catch my drift?
 
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I will make this short: Series 13 was great. There have been better ones...and worse ones. This was a pretty good but still average season. I am already fed up waiting for November.
 
I do agree in part with you there the Interceptor. This series has defintely felt different and for a while it felt like it did lose its magic in the middle of the series after a great start.

I found epsiode 4 as to be the episode which represents my lowest point of Top Gear fandom, where during and after it I really was questioning if I still liked Top Gear as a show or had it just become something I like just because it has the Top Gear brand and that I was forcing myself to like it.

But of course it wasnt just that episode it was certain parts in episodes 3 and 5 just felt tacked on and uninteresting while also being blatantly scripted.

But then came episodes 6 and 7 which brought me back to why I love Top Gear and reassured me that this was just following a trend I found with Top Gear and me. It seems that Top Gear is at its peak every second series. Series 6, 8, 10, 12 I always have regarded as being Top Gear at its best while every series in between is underperforming but yet with a number of jewels still scattered in it.
 
Nah, I enjoyed season 13. I always say that seasons 10 and under were the best ones, and season 10 was the cream of the crop.

HOWEVER, they aren't getting better and better. They've climaxed (so-to-speak), and like highvoltage said, they just need to break for a while and get things in order with them.
 
I think we need to wait and see to be quite honest. I agree that there was something missing from this run of shows, but I don't think it's the end of things like some people think.

I agree with some of you in saying that maybe after series 14, they take a prolonged break to relax and refresh themselves. I think it would do wonders for them as the hosts and us as fans.
 
With the recent surge in popularity for Top Gear there's a slim chance they'd be taking a break any time soon. Look a the hysteria Clarkson made with last night's AM review. This is the moment when the BBC makes its way into the show and makes them do it, no mater what because it's the most popular auto show in the world
 
The current problem with Top Gear is the same as the problem in the whole car industry - nothing too radical is happening.
When Top Gear started getting popularity back in 2004, it was because of all the supercars that were release about that time. In the late 90's there was nothing on the "exciting cars" front, except for the Ferrari 550 and the Lamborghini Diablo.
Then we got the Murcielago, Zonda, Enzo, Carrera GT, SLR, Koenigsegg, Bugatti, DB9. We got a new M5, we got a whole bunch of new mad Mercedes'. These were what made Top Gear popular again. These cars were a huge leap forward compared to what we had in the 90's.

Now...nothing much is happening. "Wow, a new Lambo - looks the same and has 30 more hp." "Wow, new Ferrari - looks ok, very technological, but not much of an improvement over the F430..."
Even the exciting cars have become a little boring. So how can we expect them to make an insteresting car programme, if nothing's new is happening?

I don't know about you, but I find the cheap (old) car challenges more exciting than the new car reviews, simply because of the cars.
 
You know what I realized, the summer series tend to be not as good or interesting as the winter ones. And I think that's because when they film the stuff for the summer series it is all done during winter giving the crew and team less possibilites to do stuff or make interesting challenges.

At least that's what I felt watching the summer series. I really think we need to give them some time (as it gets harder and harder to come up with good ideas) a see what happens next season.
 
They are starting to become german
 
It is also important to keep in mind that the current financial situation largely affected TG's budget and therefore didn't allow the same kind of spending as the previous series.
 
I see exactly where Herr Interceptor is coming from. I've felt it too, for the last 3-4 seaons in fact, that increasingly they seem merely to be going through the motions. I had the same feeling watching "Crystal Skull" last Saturday - all the elements were there it just didn't feel like a proper, pukka Indiana Jones movie and at the end I was disappointed.

There have been some real highlights this series - the race in 13x01, Ken Block, the Classic Cars (Ms Welch excepted) and the final piece in 13x07 which utterly blew my mind and reminded me that TG can still surprise and delight as well as delivering a huge helping of pathos.

The industry they have as their raison d'etre is in a huge state of flux right now for all sorts of reasons, their budget has been reduced, and there are fewer exciting cars on the horizon for them to get excited about. And they're all getting older and we can't expect them to keep topping their previous efforts every series.

My take on it is that they should gradually get back towards to TG of old, without becoming merely a car show a la Fifth Gear. Those who have latched onto it because it's popular will get bored as they always do (Big Brother anyone) and those who've always been fans will remain. I think it's high time they returned to making the show they want to make, rather than the show they think people want them to make.
 
JleeLink said:
It seems that Top Gear is at its peak every second series. Series 6, 8, 10, 12 I always have regarded as being Top Gear at its best while every series in between is underperforming but yet with a number of jewels still scattered in it.
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The best ones I've seen so far have been Series 5-8, 10, and 12. I thought S9 started off alright but then dipped with the last two episodes (IMO, 9x06 just screamed "Filler content!", which it was), while S11 was just plain lacklustre for me, with the exception of 11x04 (the only full episode in that season I enjoyed).

desertgeek said:
I agree that there was something missing from this run of shows,...
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James doing a car review. :nod: (I'm not counting the Panamera race or the Scirocco bit.)

but I don't think it's the end of things like some people think.
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Nah. It isn't the end.
 
_HighVoltage_ said:
Imagine your favorite music band releasing a new album every 6 months - great at first, but then it's all starting to get a bit boring and repetitive.
Click to expand...

On the other hand it REALLY sucks when you wait 4 years for the next album and it still sucks! ::coughDMBcough::
 
It had great moments, it had crap ones. It's well known that there was a lot of external pressure during the making of it when it comes to things like budget, and on occasion the pressure seemed to cause fatigue. Still, saying things like "it lost its soul" is a bit loaded.

Great bands put out bum albums. Great directors put out crap films. Great sports teams lose games. Great TV shows can have a mediocre series every so often.
 
I think, what I need on Top Gear is more unexpacting private things bringing up in the news section to get something we could laugh about, like for instance the Tampon-Thing with James, and bits that went really wrong not to cut out, just let them happen and put it into telle, so it feels more like a real mistake

What i dont want is dull stuff like a drive thrue the midlands in a Diesel Hatchback vs an electric Gwiz, to see which get the longest distance, for that we have 5th Gear (so Tiff, Vicki, Jason, if you reading, theres an idea you can steal, have fun). I want more things like Jeremy loosing an bet and has to eat his Hair -stuff! :lol: :)
 
Mineworksfine said:
I had the same feeling watching "Crystal Skull" last Saturday - all the elements were there it just didn't feel like a proper, pukka Indiana Jones movie and at the end I was disappointed.
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could have been worse, they could have got James May surviving a nuclear bomb by hiding in a fridge.
 
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