• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

The Last Ship - Discussion Thread (spoilers possible)

Feel free to do it yourself, asshole. (Hint: There is no info.)

A fictional hero for a fictional ship. From the book:
"She was named the Nathan James after a young ensign who had received the Navy Cross for valor in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea in World War II."

I know it's nautical tradition to refer to ships as "she" but it really doesn't feel right when a ship with a male name is referred to as "she."
 
A fictional hero for a fictional ship. From the book:
"She was named the Nathan James after a young ensign who had received the Navy Cross for valor in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea in World War II."

I know it's nautical tradition to refer to ships as "she" but it really doesn't feel right when a ship with a male name is referred to as "she."

I guess it comes down to what you are used to hearing. After 40 or so years of WWII movies and Trek it seems right to me. On the other hand I agree with Captain Janeway and calling female superiors "sir" in a language with gender distinctions seems weird to me still.
 
Feel free to do it yourself, asshole. (Hint: There is no info.)

A fictional hero for a fictional ship. From the book:
"She was named the Nathan James after a young ensign who had received the Navy Cross for valor in the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea in World War II."

I know it's nautical tradition to refer to ships as "she" but it really doesn't feel right when a ship with a male name is referred to as "she."

Then do what the Soviets did. They called ships "He."
 
^ Make like the Russkies?! Nyet! The Nathan James is a "she". This is 2014, people; haven't we all had enough training in fluid gender identities not to be thrown off by something so trifling? :p
 
^Yes, but according to that training since the ship itself has not yet expressed its own gender identity what we really should call it is "Undeclared." :D
 
I love how the E-vil Private Military Contractor is turning into the Voice of Reason. And does it seem like he's been taking bad-ass lessons from Pope on Falling Skies?

And Chandler manages to keep the crew together. Nice job.
 
Last edited:
Well, they saved money on this episode. All standing sets and not a gunshot fired.

It's nice to see contractor guy playing the good guy for a change. That actor has played the season long villain in so many shows.
 
^^^I just like that he and Doctor Scott seems to be developing into "something." She needs a love interest and as long as Chandler thinks his wife's still alive... :shrug:
 
I took "Nathan James" to be a nod to Reuben James, DD-245, the first US naval ship sunk in WW-II, and which was famously used to point up the Nazi U-boat menace. Reuben James (commissioned in 1920) was named after the boatswain's mate who was incorrectly thought to have saved Stephen Decatur's life by blocking an incoming pirate's saber blow with his head, apparently based on a 19th century artist's image.

I imagine that after the dust up over the sinking of the USS Reuben James in October of 1941 , somebody dug into the records and figured out that the ship should have been named after Daniel Frazier, who was the seaman with Decatur who was treated for a serious saber wound to the head, because by March of 1942 the Navy launched the USS Frazier, DD-607.
 
I took "Nathan James" to be a nod to Reuben James, DD-245, the first US naval ship sunk in WW-II, and which was famously used to point up the Nazi U-boat menace. Reuben James (commissioned in 1920) was named after the boatswain's mate who was incorrectly thought to have saved Stephen Decatur's life by blocking an incoming pirate's saber blow with his head, apparently based on a 19th century artist's image.

I imagine that after the dust up over the sinking of the USS Reuben James in October of 1941 , somebody dug into the records and figured out that the ship should have been named after Daniel Frazier, who was the seaman with Decatur who was treated for a serious saber wound to the head, because by March of 1942 the Navy launched the USS Frazier, DD-607.

Thinking. Too. Hard. The guys reading the book have already answered the Nathan James question.
 
An okay episode this week. This show doesn't do the character stuff as well as it does the action episodes, but this one at least held my interest. I didn't quite buy that "Bacon" would be swayed by Quincy this quickly. Bacon doesn't really like the guy and resents the fact that he has to play chess with him, yet he listens to Quincy bad mouth Chandler and nearly walks away from the ship and talks others into joining him? I don't know. I know there were other catalysts, Scott throwing her dead monkeys overboard, the scare that the virus was on board, but Quincy shouldn't have had such an easy time turning Bacon, unless Bacon had pre-existing doubts. Which unfortunately we know nothing about his character prior to this storyline.

So nitpick time, am I interpreting things correctly, when the ship went into lockdown, everyone had to put on one of those bio-hazard suits? I thought the Nathan James only had 80 of those suits, and has a crew of 200 or so? Even allowing Chandler and the others in the lounge weren't in suits, that's still a lot more people wearing suits than should be possible.

Meanwhile, this is the first time I got a decent look at the ship doctor's rank insignia. Am I correct that he's actually enlisted? Maybe I'm looking at the Navy through a Trekkie's eyes again, but I thought the CMO aboard ship was an officer?
 
No there are not that many doctors in the services. A battalion sized unit, about 800 soldiers would only have a Warrant Officer Physicians Assistant.
 
Am I correct that he's actually enlisted? Maybe I'm looking at the Navy through a Trekkie's eyes again, but I thought the CMO aboard ship was an officer?

Doc Rios is indeed a Chief Hospital Corpsman, "Doc" being a traditional nickname. The only ships that have regularly assigned medical officers are carriers and the big gator freighters: LHA, LHD, LPD, LSD, LCC. CVNs, LHAs and LHDs also have a dentist. Independent duty corpsmen handle everything else on their own.
 
Look at it this way in Trek there are no real economic restrictions on the numbers of doctors and the ships really do go out alone. In our world there is a doctor for every thousand people and the active military personnel are young fit and undergo command generated preventative medicine and dental treatments before deployment. Simply put there would be little for a doctor to do unless she was experimenting on vaccines in the hanger deck in her spare time.

In case of an medical emergency that ship will almost always be either a helicopter flight from shore or a ship with an actual doctor on board for most of her lifespan. And then we have radios for paramedical personnel to contact doctors like the paramedics did on Emergency 40 years ago. The Last Ship actually put a real warship in a situation faced by a Federation starship.
 
Not a great ep for the Captain, who seems to lack even a high schooler's understanding of the vagaries of the scientific progress. The sensible thing to do would be to stay in that Nicaraguan bay for some time, letting the crew socialize with the freed town, helping them build some houses, etc., and killing a s***-ton of monkeys in the name of Science!.

That said, it was a pretty compelling ep for a bottle show, even though I'm 95% sure that even if you're past your EAOS (end of active obligated service) date, you're not out until you're discharged, and even then you're usually in the inactive Reserves for a while anyway, so the Master Chief's comment that "technically, these guys aren't even in the Navy any more" was just plain wrong.

Not perfect, and the writing isn't HBO-level or anything, but the ship feels a heck of a lot more like a real ship with all sorts of people on it than Voyager did.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top