obstinate.org

Over the past year there has been repeated news stories about the tightening budgets that the BBC would enforce on Top Gear production costs. Sunday night, Top Gear Season 13 came to a close with the Airing of Episode 7. In the closing episode of the series you go the sense that it would be the last, the last 5 minutes of the show was a cascade of Aston Martin V12Vantage visual-porn over the backdrop of some ridiculous British countryside. In this segment, the usually hyptertastic Clarkson only has a mere few sentences to say:

“Weeeelll.. it’s an Aston Martin Vantage…. With a V12 engine… what do you think it’s going to be like?”

“It is fantastic….. it’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”

“What it makes me feel though…. is sad.”

“I just cant help thinking, that, thanks to all sorts of things: the environment, the economy, problems in the middle east, the relentless war on speed, that cars like this will be consigned to the history books.”

“I just have this horrible, dreadful feeling that what I am driving here, is an ending.”

“Good night.”

I have gotten the sense over the past year or so that this was coming, that Top Gear had slowly been losing it’s soul. With each season a bit of the sparkle had gone. With whatever has been happening behind the scenes it looks like there might be a final nail in the coffin. If Top Gear did come back for Season 14, and I think that really is a big if, that it would be souless and thoughtless that it might not even be worth watching.

I want my Season 10 & 11 back.