I have not. Last I heard anything about it, The Green Hornet was in the seventh or eighth circle of Development Hell.

--G.
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Oh, yeah, that's been locked down for a bit now, coming out December 2010. Here's some pics and stuff. We walked past it a few times at SDCC, but it was in a shit place for pictures if you weren't press and there without the hordes. :)

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

Ha! I almost bought one of those once. (A 1965 Imperial Crown, I mean, not a movie prop car.) Still kind of regret that I passed on it. If I had known that within a year I wouldn't be living in the heart of the Boston Metro West sprawl, I wouldn't have.

--G.
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(The first was "Gimme!" :) )

That is correct. It's essentially the track entitled "Wild Signals" on the special edition of the Close Encounters soundtrack, except without the bit at the beginning where the mothership makes random noises and doesn't quite get it. :)

--G.
"Honorless dogs! Make way for Captain Slow!"
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Polychrome

Yeah, the Aztechnology guys? Not so much.

That has six tones, surely. :)

>Yeah, the Aztechnology guys? Not so much.

Aztechmotors cars almost always come in for a kicking on Top Gear, mainly because of build quality issues. No one's really sure why they keep sending press demonstrators to the show, and haven't gotten fed up and blackballed Top Gear in a fit of pique, like Chrysler did a couple of years ago in real life. :)

--G.
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In real life, they made fun of Chrysler, then went and brought the car themselves. Aztechmotors may have decided it's easier to just give in, rather then give Jeremy more ammunition to use on them. :)

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I liked the part about the ride quality of a Locust.

Polychrome

Heh. I was figuring if people got that curious, they'd just look it up, but I salute your diligence. :)

--G.
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Alternatively, it could just mean that the Doctor Who writers threw in a line they figured would sound cute without thinking through the implications of it. :p

Given the overall penchant for being precious that the Doctor Who writers have historically demonstrated (particularly in the new era), I'm thinking this is probably a lot more likely.

--G.
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Not just the tiny one. The manufacturers name seems to be a shout out to his most beloved car. He HAD to take it :)

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

You should, perhaps, bear in mind that it's entirely possible - indeed, even probable - that this segment was done as a joke by a production staff, presenter, stunt driver and guest star who are all familiar with the 20th-century motion picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that the Stig does not, in fact, communicate in ARP 2500 alien mothership tones. :)

(There's plenty of precedent for that kind of thing where the Stig is concerned. I mean, Perry McCarthy didn't really drive an old Jag off an aircraft carrier and drown in the first episode of series 3, either.)

Ironically, Kate wasn't the first guest star whose segment I started to put together for this episode; I decided to go with her instead after getting some way into another segment when it occurred to me that the production team would, as you say, want to match up the segments. (I don't know as I'd read all that much into her time, either, since whoever appeared in that segment was going to get the "That wasn't really going to happen, was it? ... But it did" dialogue from Clarkson; I lifted it from an actual SIARPC segment that I happened to be watching to make sure I'd got the format right.)

--G.
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"I've got to know, what did he say?" "Hammond's pregnant."

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

Cut to Hammond's jaw dropping, then to James as he falls out of his seat from laughing too hard.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

That makes more sense. I'm not familiar with the programme, and the movie segment went out of its way to point out that the UF version is not staged. Plus, in this setting it's kind of hard to tell between the author making a pop culture reference and the characters making a historical media reference.

The road films and reviews and whatnot generally aren't, but almost any segment featuring the Stig is going to be at least a little tongue-in-cheek. Mind you, I want to convey the impression that the UF version of the Stig is an ambiguous sort of creature - that he may not be entirely, or even partly, human, that he doesn't interact with people in the normal way. We saw that in The Sandero Affair and Guns 4 Hire.

But then again, it's also entirely possible that the Stig in the Close Encounters scene is an actor in a Stig costume put there for comedic purposes, not the "real" Stig (who would presumably have been as indifferent to the mothership tones as he is to any other human overture). If the "real" Stig is really so incommunicative, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have him train the celebrity guests anyway, when you think about it. But that's the beauty of the Stig - you can just never tell. Top Gear's policy toward the Stig is just to present him and let the viewer decide. :)

As an aside, my first choice for the SIARPC guest in this segment was Kara Zor-El, until I realized that the timing of the Tau Ceti counteroffensive and Last Transport doesn't quite work out so that it makes sense for her to be a) at large and b) famous enough to get on TV so soon after the Tau Ceti thing. One of the jokes I had planned was that she was going to get entirely too ambitious and end up destroying the Reasonably Priced Car in a manner reminiscent of this (comedically staged) crash in one of Clarkson's solo videos. This notion survived, as the work of a different guest, in Jeremy's recounting of why the second-to-last corner on the Top Gear test track is called Atomic Corner.

(We also considered Cassie Cain, if only because the scene in which she and the Stig sat in the Reasonably Priced Car being silent at each other was, in its way, as amusing to consider as the Close Encounters joke. :)

--G.
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When this came up that it was being written, I went looking and there's a Top Gear channel on YouTube. (It includes the time of Patrick Stewart being the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car, which has him being exceptionally hilarious.)

If you get the chance (and it works in the country you're currently in) to watch some of the stuff there, then come back and read it again, the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car section may end up being a bit more funny.

(Season 14 just started in the UK. The first Star In A Reasonably Priced Car? Eric "The Incomprehensible Hulk" "Hi, I'm Nero" Bana.)

Followup: http://www.youtube.com/user/TopGear is where you can find it.

(Gryphon has sort of infected those of us who didn't know about it before with great amusement and enjoyment of the show. And QI.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

-==FEVERED SPOUT HO!==-

Alan Davies missed out on Project Hero and has been replaced with a cybernetic equivalent. Phil Jupitus became so bent on expanding his waistline that he founded a criminal corporation to fund ever more extravagant meals, and was killed by Atomic Robo after eating IPO operative Bill Bailey. Jo Brand assumed Zardon citizenship and became a street Judge with the frankly unnecessary callsign 'Meatshield'.

Dave still shows QI reruns.

... and back.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's
barren too, // "She's not
worth feed or hay, // "But
I'll give her this," - he blew
smoke at me - // "She was
something in her day." --
Garnet Rogers, Small
Victory

As amused as I am by the image of a Max Headroom-esque AI construct based on Alan Davies, I imagine we'd just hire Jonathan Creek. (And that was a cheap shot about Phill Jupitus. He's one of my favorite frequent guests. :)

--G.
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Oooooo.

And it was cheap about Phill Jupitus and I apologise. I love him really.

... A thought occurs. If you get the chance, Gryph, watch Mock The Week. Much weight as my approval of something may carry, it is supremely funny and a good starting point for insight into the affairs of America's newest state. That Frankie Boyle, eh? Hehehe... Earthdome would have had him killed.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's
barren too, // "She's not
worth feed or hay, // "But
I'll give her this," - he blew
smoke at me - // "She was
something in her day." --
Garnet Rogers, Small
Victory

"It's difficult keeping up with the cross-continuity, but I think Cosmouse just gave The Saturnian Scraphunter his Ultimate Pacifier to use against Galactapuss..."

Consider the thousand of planets, and their cultures and flora and fauna, and all the places between, all of which can be ridiculously obscure and questions on QI. I think it would be Quite Interesting to see it!

>Stephen Fry, yes, possibly bombing around a Klingon
>planet in a beaten-up London taxi, but not QI.

Now I have the image of Stephen Fry, a couple of security Buma and some WDF LSD and GENOM R&D types doing a "Last Chance To See" series for the purposes of getting DNA samples to try to roll back the possible extinctions. (Post-CorpWar, I now visualize the LSD and a similarly-intentioned GENOM group working together in with a friendly rivalry as to who can get things dome first without genetic misfirings. And a couple of weird-but-living genetic misfires kept as lab mascots. Like a four-legged parrot. )

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

If we're talking about doing fun things with SIARPC guests, you really can't go past Christopher Eccleston, whose Reasonably Priced Car materialised at the starting line accompanied by the TARDIS sound.

I wouldn't call it spoiling, so much. One of the best parts of Top Gear, and in particular the time challenges, is seeing records get broken. Simon Cowell and Jamoroquai's JK's ongoing battle for the top spot is a great example of that in real life (incidentally, torrents of the shows are availible at www.finalgear.com if you want to catch up - I'd strongly recommend it). Presumably this show will lead to a similar competition between Kate, her dad and Tony Stark (assuming neither JK nor Simon Cowell were given Omega 2).

I mean, sure, the episode seems a bit Hutchins focused but it really does stay true to the original while adding a touch of UF. It was also an unconventional way to catch up with a character who hasn't seen much of the spotlight this year, which I enjoyed a lot. If anything, I would say that the Griffon, rather than Kate, was the bridge too far, but even then it's only by a bit and it does make a kind of meta-sense in that it's conceivable that you'd see that sort of car/guest crossover on a real episode of Top Gear.

Even that's only a minor niggle though. For me, it's the greatest fake Top Gear script...

...In the world.

If Simon Cowell was involved in Project Hero, something went horribly, horribly wrong. Jay Kay, maybe; I'm not a big Jamiroquai fan (I think the only song of theirs I've even heard is the one with the video that had the sliding furniture), but he seems to be a fun guy, and a friend to the motorcar, which is always a plus. :)

>Even that's only a minor niggle though. For me, it's the greatest fake
>Top Gear script...
>
>
>...In the world.

I see what you did there!

(Although one wonders - idly, rhetorically, and entirely not in a way that should be construed as wanting anyone to actually go and find out - just how many fake Top Gear scripts there are... in the world.)

--G.
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S.

I guarantee that there's going to be a furious argument on alt.fan.top-gear over the relative crappiness of Gryphon's car (which, for all I know, was a 2399 Trabant) and the '07 Popular, with some people claiming that if they were in the similar cars, Gryphon would win the time trial.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Wow, what an image. The mind boggles, especially picturing the East Germany-style planet such a thing would presumably come from.

In real life, when they changed Reasonably Priced Cars in series 8, they reset the lap time board, recognizing that the new RPC performed slightly better than the old one had (though they still dust off the old one from time to time to test F1 drivers). If the same convention is still observed in 2410, then presumably G also set his time in the Pop (or another one just like it - we know Atomic Robo destroyed "the previous Reasonably Priced Car", but we don't know whether that was also a 2407 Popular or, perhaps, the show took that opportunity to change models).

I should note here that Top Gear has not been continuously in production since 2002 in the UF universe, nor has it had these same three presenters the whole time. One or another (or all) of them will tend to wander off and pursue other occupations from time to time; the show will either go out of production or continue on with other presenters, and then, eventually, there'll be a revival. The Galacticpedia page tracking the various series and episodes is enormous.

It's also worth noting that Clarkson and May aren't the only people associated with the original pre-Contact version of Top Gear to survive into the 25th century. Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson still pop up from time to time as well. VB-H, for example, has been known to function as a sort of backup Stig (for those occasions when they need two of them) and general disruptor of the all-boy clubhouse atmosphere (similar to the Grey Spy in Spy vs. Spy). She also makes frequent appearances on Richard Hammond's Galaxy of Danger!, The Adventures of Captain Slow, and Jeremy's semi-fictionalized young person's supernatural detective adventure series, Clarkson & Brunel (Deceased).

--G.
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As for the concept of a 2399 Trabant, you're right. That is brain-breaking, especially since I hadn't considered the requirement of a planet to have it come from.

(Based on the anecdotes I've heard, the real-life Trabant is a strain to the imagination.)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Another thought, related to the above: This incarnation of Top Gear getting a challenge to 'take the most crap car on the market, and turn it into something you'd actually enjoy going for a drive in.' (In May's case, a rather leisurely drive, I would think.)

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

I have relatives in the former East Germany (near Dresden, in fact), and they still have a Trabant. The parts are cheap, even today, and as one of my family over there is half-owner of a metal shop, he gets his income in part by making whatever isn't still sold for spare parts.

Of course, he says, he'd never drive the Trabant. He likes not having matching bruises on buttocks and skull, as he puts it.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

True fact: The body panels of the Trabant are made from cotton. (Well, cotton-reinforced resin. Or resin-reinforced cotton, depending on how you look at it.) So, if nothing else, it's not like they'll have major fender-rust problems. :)

--G.
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Well, FIBRE-reinforced resin. But yes, cotton was one of the fibres that was used in Duroplast. So was wool.

It's pretty hideous. I've seen one once (and only once, thankfully) in the Cold War section at the USAF museum in Dayton, OH. Just reading the materials used is enough to make one cringe - very little metal or plastic for the body, mostly wood and fabric scraps, IIRC. I would not want to by driving one if a bicycle slammed into one.

--
-Pasha (who drives over a stretch of road called "Devil's Slide" twice a day)
What was that feeling again?
Oh yes.
-Rage-

ANTI-PEDANT ALERT
I don't care.

... well, actually, I thought that was a generic name for the entire span of California 1, since it, you know, follows the Pacific coast. But now that I think about it some more, I really don't care, so. :)

--G.
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I've never heard anyone down here refer to it as anything other, as technically correct as the other multiple regional names it has may be. Must be one of those snobby Bay Area things. :)

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

It's more one of those "not SoCal" things, since nobody north of, say...SLO calls it that. It's like how you all say "The 101" and we just say "101". To you, it's the PCH, to us it's Highway 1, or just 1.
--
-Pasha
What was that feeling again?
Oh yes.
-Rage-

**Starts to interject into this...**

**Realised thats a really DUMB idea**

All in all, I cant think of anything to add that someone else hasnt said already, well except for this:

Is whatever it is that May's (or was it Hammond???) owes Skuld breakfast over pertainent enough we might hear about it later? Doubt it, but thougth I'd ask...

Seems unlikely, given that that line is a kind of salacious joke. Customarily speaking, you see, a man owes a woman breakfast when he's done something that's kept her at his house all night. May's stuffy answer (which is a quote from Live and Let Die, I think - one of the Roger Moore 007 films, anyway) is the sort of answer someone in that position would tend to give.

Mind you, this is James May we're talking about - and Skuld, for that matter - so it's entirely conceivable that what she spent the entire evening at his place doing with him was playing with his Scalextric set. But still. That's the point of the joke - it's ambiguous and might or might not even be salacious. Though it must be admitted that he is rather her sort of chap.

(As an aside, you guys seem to have forgotten - again! - that it doesn't cost money to make new topics for things when the old ones get up past 50. I mention this solely because I'm on very slow dial-up at my grandparents' tonight and it has come back home to me what agony it is to download a long story post with 70-odd comments after it when you're not on your 3-megabit DSL at home. And I'm never really in a position to do that myself because I'm almost always answering a question when I post in mid-thread. :)

--G.
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I don't know how I missed this years ago, but hey, it's my party and I'll necro if I want to, so:

Yes; yes it did. Well, one of them did. (Forgot I'd had James say there was only one Mk I.)

--G.
Although in my memory of the actual OVA, the car's final form ends up looking eerily like a Gumpert Apollo.
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Man, I'd forgotten all about this, too, but it's good to have confirmation. Especially since the paragraph in question still makes me burst out laughing every time I read it.

("I'm not joking. Richard Hammond was afraid of it, and in his life he's owned ten Zondas and one atomic bomb. Though not all at the same time.")

>Although in my memory of the actual OVA, the car's final form
>ends up looking eerily like a
>Gumpert Apollo.

After the Apollo suffered a tragic transporter accident with the dread beast of Ormagoeden, yeah.

<chuckle> "It's so quick, it can destroy your entire face..."

-- Bob
-------------------
Five years ago I was a four-stone apology. Today I am two separate gorillas.

--
Kokuten Daysleeper
RCW #13013
(Insert Witticism Here)

Just be careful of the hotwireability factor.

Oh yes, and the bees. They do love those epiglottises.

Epiglottis; bees.

--G.
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==================================================

"I believe that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
Then find someone whose life gives them vodka and have a party."
--Ron White, stand-up comedian.

==================================================

At a guess, something along the lines of, What the fuck is this in aid of? God, the Internet. Especially in America. :)

>time time? :v

What, your whole life has been typo-free? Congratulations on that...

--G.
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