The first episode of the third series of Top Gear aired on 26th of October, 2003. It was presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Black Stig in his final appearance. Martin Kemp was the guest star. It was the 21st episode overall.
Synopsis[]
"HMS Invicible, somewhere over the North Atlantic..."
Tonight...[]
- The Stig has gone Top Gun...
- James will be looking at the new 5-Series BMW...
- And [Jeremy] will be giving himself a brain tumour.
In later broadcasts and on streaming services, the Tonight sequence comments are replaced with new comments, including Jeremy most notably mentioning that on Today's Top Gear.. the new lines are as follows;
- We'll be looking at the new 5-Series BMW...
- The epic Ford GT...
- And Porsche's fearsome GT3.
Airing History[]
Series 3, Episode 1 originally aired on the 26th of October, 2003, on BBC 2. It was then regularly reshown on channels such as BBC Prime and UKTV People throughout the mid '00s, along with the rest of Series 3, before indefinitely ending up as a permanent fixture on Dave from the channel's 2007 debut onwards, albeit in a cut 45-minute version. It would later appear on streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and IPlayer.
Episode Names[]
Though never given a name upon its original airing, much like every other episode of Top Gear, two slightly different names were retrospectively applied to the episode by the BBC years later:
- Top Gear's section on BBC's website calls it "The Team Kills Off Old Stig".
- Top Gear's own website calls it "The one with the dead Stig".
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