THE LAST SHIP Season 2 - discussion, spoilers and general mayhem

[Scout101]

^ know it's just a TV thing, but after like the 10th time he disapproved and then looked right at the Captain, it started to be bad. At least the Captain knew enough to kinda hide behind someone when the other baddie showed up and could recognize him. Of course, the constant glances over aren't going to help him hide

 

[Star Wolf]

Blanking on the name, but could the black guy look over at the Captain a couple more times during the speech? I don't think EVERYONE noticed it, he only did it 15 or so times. He's definitely trying to get himself caught, forcing the Captain to out himself.

Not very subtle undercover work. Maybe he should have touched his ear and talked a few times, too?

Lt Burk? With international special forces on the crew He is on top of everybody's death pool.

 

[lurok]

With the 'upscaled President' angle, I'm still getting the nuBSG playbook. Not that that's a bad thing.

I'm just looking forward to them taking out the ghastly Brits, even though I usually root for the home team. Just makes the show an awkward blend of EastEnders-meets-Michael Bay.

 

[Star Wolf]

But they scared me promising he has a plan as the show ended.

 

[Gaith]

The motley crew running and operating a spanking-new sub definitely fries the ol' suspension of disbelief, but, oh well...

Interesting twist indeed with the new prez-to-be. I wonder where he's been all this time; surely the whole line of succession thing had to have occurred to him before? More plot contrivance.

 

[Scout101]

And given the arguments about how hard training and whatnot would be, probably not best that they picked a brandy-new class of ship, that just hit the water in the last year or so. Even the super-duper, most roundly-trained warrant officer in the Navy wouldn't have many hours on this new class, so doesn't really flow well.

Do we know for sure what year it is in the show? Tendency is to just assume present day, or at least when the show launched, but they also used DDG-151, which is several years ahead of our current production stroke, so implies it could be a few years into the future as well. Allows the possibility that the Astute-class has been out a couple years, but no longer than that. Still nice stroke of luck to get one with that new submarine smell!

 

[Gaith]

^ Don't think they've mentioned, no. I don't recall if they specified the pre-plague POTUS as being a man or woman, either...

 

[Star Wolf]

^ Don't think they've mentioned, no. I don't recall if they specified the pre-plague POTUS as being a man or woman, either...

I could have swore that I saw a portrait of President Obama, but it may have been some other show that I have recently seen.

 

[Gaith]

^ I don't remember one, but even if there was, it could have been an unintended consequence of filming on actual ships...

 

[The Wormhole]

A few weeks ago when they found the message from the Secretary of the Navy in the White House server, that was actually the real life SECNAV, but otherwise there's no connections to the real world I can think of. Although, this week when Bacon was telling his story about serving breakfast to the President, I think he referred to the President as "he" for whatever that's worth.

Interesting twist indeed with the new prez-to-be. I wonder where he's been all this time; surely the whole line of succession thing had to have occurred to him before? More plot contrivance.

That's another reason I'm of the opinion he's not a real immune and was given the cure by Sean who realized who he was and that he could be used as a puppet. Therefore, he would have been hiding someplace secure enough to avoid infection.

I guess, it's possible he could still be actually immune and still hiding, he wouldn't have known or have any reason to suspect he's immune. But I like the idea Sean would abandon his rhetoric if/when the situation suited him. I'm sure he could have stolen some samples of the cure when Dr. Hunter's lab was raided.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Sean either has a super devious smug plan... Or he's a massive Zealot to his own severely orthodox purity religion which he made up 5 minutes earlier.

I want to say he's crazy, but I hate that story, and would rather have a smart big bad than another wackadoodle with a death wish.

 

[propita]

I think part of his plan to to take his pet/president and have him, as president, give orders to the Captain.

 

[Scout101]

That chopper is way too big for the bay on the ship. Bad even for Voyager

It was just the size of the plot, or all the Navy could spare for the film crew

 

[Admiral2]

That chopper is way too big for the bay on the ship. Bad even for Voyager

It was just the size of the plot, or all the Navy could spare for the film crew

Seahawk is the standard embarked helicopter. The Navy wouldn't put a hangar on a ship that couldn't fit a chopper everybody uses.

There are plenty of things to nitpick about the show. Let's not start making shit up.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yeah, this was a fun and exciting episode. Especially once we get to that big kitchen fight at the end, so badass. Particularly Ravit successfully defending herself with a fork! But also, Chandler stabbing and shooting his opponents was also really cool.

So it would seem the President really is one of Sean's followers and his hesitant body language is really just a result of him not being comfortable in a leadership role in front of a crowd. And he really doesn't seem pleased to be aboard the Nathan James. I wonder how that's going to play out. Chances are, the crew's going to learn who he is, and I imagine that despite their devoted loyalty to Chandler, a few are not going to go along with forcibly holding the legitimate President against his will. And he is the legitimate President, even Chandler himself confirmed that. Though I wonder if it matters that he hasn't yet been officially sworn in?

And so Sorensen is now prisoner on board the Nathan James. Unfortunately, this doesn't really excite me too much, main because I'm pretty sure I know where it's going. After a period of being uncooperative he'll eventually end up on Dr. Scott's project and will be play a key part solving the air deployment of the cure, either intentionally as part of a plea bargain, or unintentionally.

And really, the crew of the sub are just starting to get grating. All any of them do is yell at and argue with each other. Sean, Ned, the warrant officer and others on the bridge. Yeah, I know, they're bad guys, and this is what bad guys do to prove they're unstable and by extension dangerous, but it's damn annoying. Though Ned having a chunk of his ear blown away was pretty cool.

And funniest moment this week, Greene comparing Tex to the guys from Duck Dynasty!

That chopper is way too big for the bay on the ship. Bad even for Voyager

It was just the size of the plot, or all the Navy could spare for the film crew

I remember an interview with one of the writers or producers a few weeks ago explaining the reason the chopper is always inconsistently portrayed is because the show actually has trouble securing itself a chopper to use on a regular basis. Yes, apparently it's easier to rent an actual Arleigh Burke class destroyer for a few months of filming than it is to get a helicopter. This has also resulted in a helicopter pilot character that was in the cast when the show was in early development stages being dropped.

 

[sojourner]

That chopper is way too big for the bay on the ship. Bad even for Voyager

It was just the size of the plot, or all the Navy could spare for the film crew

That's the correct chopper, unlike in star fleet, they don't fly it into the bay. They land, fold up the blades and slowly roll it in. It's about as tight as a car in a one car garage.

 

[EmoBorg]

I do like incompetent bad guys.

 

[Scout101]

That chopper is way too big for the bay on the ship. Bad even for Voyager

It was just the size of the plot, or all the Navy could spare for the film crew

That's the correct chopper, unlike in star fleet, they don't fly it into the bay. They land, fold up the blades and slowly roll it in. It's about as tight as a car in a one car garage.

I've been aboard several, and seen the helicopters, that one looked bigger than I remember, and bigger than I recall the bay being. And no shit they don't fly it in, I'm familiar with how that works. Grew up about 15 minutes from where they build these things, have worked for them before, and my father spent his whole career working for them. I've seen a destroyer or two...

Maybe it was an angle thing, but it also looked bigger than what you see when you google pictures of seahawk helicopters. Too long, mostly. Could be wrong, but it was a quick impression, the helicopter just didn't look right.

Will ignore that it didn't look like the other times they've shown the helicopter, and assume they've for some reason repeatedly swapped them out at shore sites, despite not being a ton of options for what would fit in the garage...

 

[Scout101]

Eh, i'll take it back, it at least looks consistent with what they show on the show website. Think it may have changed types a couple times, but that's the reality of trying to borrow military equipment for a tv show I guess. Still looks longer than it should accommodate, but I could definitely be wrong there. In my head, it was always a smaller helicopter than what was shown, but apparently my head is not the definitive source.

And the lab is taking up one of the helo bays, so they can't really just wink and say "yeah, that's the other one" again

Just kinda felt like in my head that they realized they had a lot of people to extract, so the helicopter that showed up was bigger this week than in the past.

And maybe by the time they get to DDG 151, the helo bay is slightly bigger anyway. Could never be as big as Voyager's though, which was based on TARDIS technology

 

[Phantom]

They'd have a lot more options with another ship for cover and firepower. Yes, also means more fuel needs and splitting supplies, but if the support ship is a little more minimal and still uses Nathan James as the supply location, it should have worked.

Do you have any actual Navy knowledge, or are you just guessing? Because I very highly doubt that you could halve or even significantly reduce a destroyer's crew and still be in fighting shape, to say nothing of the maintenance and supply requirements on any of the other ships. (Comparing this to Trek, where the ships should very probably be able to run themselves, is not helpful.) I did kind of expect the Nathan James to pick up a few random crew members in addition to the SEALS and their counterparts, but maybe that did happen, offscreen.

Believe it or not, there is actually some debate within the Navy about the "just enough" crew strategy currently in fashion with the brass. Our newest ships in particular are so-called "smart ships" with vastly reduced crew sizes (Zumwalt class destroyers will have 114, compared to over 300 in current ships of similar size and mission, the Littoral Combat Ship has a standard crew of just 40, and the New Ford class carriers ~2,500, as opposed to ~3,300 on current carriers). Long-life ship components are also being used to decrease the size of Engineering and maintenance crews.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2008/April/Pages/AsTheCostofSailors.aspx

The LCS in particular is considered by non-brass as badly undercrewed to the point of being "unsurvivable" in the event of major damage.

But you have to really dig into the comments sections on Navy related blogs and sites to learn about it, because it's considered un-politic to contradict the Admiralty.

(We had the same problem in Iraq because the Pentagon wanted to use "smart force" leverage to send in less troops than the Joint Chiefs were asking for. We did it the Pentagon way, and as a result didn't have the force on the ground to hold and control the country once we took it, with the results one would expect.)

Bring it back to the show: depending on the "generation" of ship that the Nathan James is (does anyone know?). She might not have the crew to spare to man another ship, even with support from shore.