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TAR behind the scenes: Oral History of TAR 1 (from Reality Blurred)

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theschnauzers:
The show did lose something with very little self driving (stick manual transmission) and self booking flights. Quite a few early seasons were affected by those two skill sets, and I miss those as elements of the Race. As to the long range effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think that’s harder to predict. It’ll affect 33, and presumably 34 and 35, but we can’t assume that things might get back to something closer to pre-pandemic international travel after that. No one knows.

tarflyonthewall:
My gut feeling is self-driving (or self-cycling, or self-walking or whatever) is going to wind up being how they solve the logistics of travelling between destinations without exposing anyone to Covid. Like, "avoid crowds" has been the show's bread and butter for years, first because of the security risks following 9/11 and then because of spoilers when the show was at its peak. At worst we'd probably get a situation like the Palawan island-hopping leg in TAR5, with the teams taking boats for the day and the show ensuring all of the drivers test negative to avoid the contestants (who will have to be vaxxed for legal reasons, obviously) causing asymptomatic spread in a location where there aren't many cases.

Flights are probably harder, but I imagine - especially with South America, Africa, and Oceania essentially closed for different reasons - that long-distance overland travel might be a solution. Like they could absolutely rent a couple of coaches to ferry the teams from, say, Brussels to Vienna and then to Belgrade, and just set it up so the top half get the early bus and the bottom half get a bus that arrives 45 minutes later.

The bigger issue, I suspect, is going to be getting a route production is happy with. It's probably going to wind up involving new countries production doesn't have experience in (it feels like we might get at least a couple of legs in eastern Europe where the show's barely touched before, a situation that usually results in underwhelming legs), or countries they've visited very recently in the race canon (maybe Cambodia again?), or countries they've avoided for whatever reason (eg, "not exotic enough" Canada). And all of that is fine - given the circumstances, I don't think many people would honestly hold it against the show for doing a third of the season in the former Yugoslavia, for example - it's just how do you do it in a way that comes together and feels like a normal season of the show?

It feels weird to say, but the show already has the solutions to the logistical issues and has shown it can deploy them effectively without ruining the race (and indeed, in a lot of cases, making the race better). It's just the solutions are the things the show's kind of moved away from over the years in an effort to streamline the thing and get Phil's #12Legs21Days hashtag to happen, and bringing them back will require production to truly think about what the race actually is in a way they haven't really done since about TAR12.

georgiapeach:
Actually I think we will see almost ONLY self driving with the addition of navigation instruments. No more asking strangers for help. And a much extended filming time to account for required entry quarantines.

JMO

theschnauzers:

--- Quote from: georgiapeach on September 06, 2021, 07:20:09 AM ---Actually I think we will see almost ONLY self driving with the addition of navigation instruments. No more asking strangers for help. And a much extended filming time to account for required entry quarantines.

JMO


--- End quote ---

The problem I see with that is the length of quarantines entering each country. There are countries with three week period s, others with two, and for a nine country race that would add 18 to 27 weeks,. That just ain’t practical. It’ll have to be countries that avoid quarantine periods or not more than a week, but with less impediments if fully vaccinated. But even that won’t help unless the US gets off the international travel red list with COVID-19 case counts. That, to me is the biggest barrier to restarting production.

LandonM170:

--- Quote from: georgiapeach on September 06, 2021, 07:20:09 AM ---Actually I think we will see almost ONLY self driving with the addition of navigation instruments. No more asking strangers for help. And a much extended filming time to account for required entry quarantines.

JMO

--- End quote ---
I would LOVE THIS! I loved the early seasons having 8-9 self driving legs!

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