When a new virus outbreak ends most of the world, one Navy ship out of the way ends up becoming the best hope for saving the world.
What They Say:
Phase Six – Captain Tom Chandler and his crew set out for the Arctic with two virologists; Chandler discovers that they’re collecting samples of the source of a virus that has wiped more than half the world.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the novel of the same name from 1988 by William Brinkley but with some updates from nuclear holocaust to viral outbreak, The Last Ship is a new TNT series that has Michael Bay producing. There’s a lot of end of the world programs out there these days as it fits in with the kind of mental narrative coming out of America with a sort of sense of hopelessness and the fight to struggle against it. This can and does lead to some compelling stories, which has largely been seen with The Walking Dead. With this series, we get something that’s not quite as location focused as it can range the world and provide a more attempted proactive approach to dealing with the problem. That gives it a big difference that can certainly help to let it stand on its own amid a sea of different end of the world competitors out there.
The show focuses on the USS Nathan James, which is captained by Tom Chandler. With a viral outbreak that is hitting in obscure areas, the ship has been assigned to take a pair of virologists to the Arctic in order to do some research on the latest that is making its way out there. We get the setup quickly enough with the people involved, which has set up shop in the ship’s helicopter bay since it’s got the most space to work with. It then shifts us four months later with all the research having been worked on and the crew certainly “enjoying” the weather. While the virologists are doing their research, the ship does its work as well with an array of missile tests and other training sessions that lets them keep on top of things. With that having them being cut off from the rest of the world for the testing phase, the end of it has them finally making contact with the Pentagon in order to finish up and begin heading back.
With the Russian that barely survives the attack, Chandler learns that the attack group came to get a cure that they believe is on the ship. THat leads to the main virologist, Doctor Rachel Scott, to reveal what happened in the initial outbreak that has been making its way out into the world. Her goal, with her partner Quincy, wanted to go to the arctic to find where the virus had originated from as it came from something primordial permafrost that’s melting. She makes it clear the importance of events going on, which Chandler is completely out of the loop on since he’s been on radio silence whereas she’s been in constant contact updating with results. Revealing that eighty percent of the world has been infected with the virus, she’s the kind of lone type that thinks she knows the way to fix things if she can find the source. That puts Chandler in a precarious position and her in a difficult one as well as there’s so much at stake.
What we get is an interesting setup as, during a conversation with the president reveals, there’s no more real nations anymore as everything is collapsing. The virus has turned things desperate and insane in many ways as panic sets in, which is what’s expected with a pandemic. With the importance of Scott’s work now pretty much the driving force, that has them figuring out the way to get her to the secure lab in North Carolina to begin the next layer of investigation. But getting there is more than half the battle as we see that the Russian government, among many others, no longer exists and that they were being pursued by a breakaway force that wants to gain the cure that they’re desperate to believe exists. It paints the ship into a pretty lonely picture as the crew is filled in on the reality of the world, the likelihood that their families may be dead already and likely infected if still alive and that their nation is certainly not what it was, if you can even consider it a nation based on the way things have unfolded. There’s a good sense of desperation here that plays into the military discipline side as well, even as some of them start to hear a few things here and there.
The collapse of the world is made even more clear when while making their way to a refueling station off of France, they get a garbled launch command for missiles that they don’t follow through on. But someone else did, which launched a nuclear missile somewhere inland on France. The pulse from the impact definitely causes its problems on the ship to be sure, including making things dicey for the virologists and their samples. But there’s also the impending radiation cloud that could be hitting them in a few hours if they don’t get moving. But they need fuel. While things move quickly here, there’s a good bit of time involved in some of the events and that helps to keep the whole thing feeling tense, especially when on their movements they end up coming across an Italian cruise ship.
With the belief that the ship is infected, they make a pretty interesting infiltration of it as they have to be in their biohazard gear and gather as much food and supplies as they can while avoiding any people or dead bodies. With this being their first view of some of the bodies, it’s not done in a hugely grotesque way, but we see that they were pretty proactive in dealing with the bodies that did hit. The further they go in though, the darker the story goes as we see more and more of the fallout from it. It’s not played for horror though, which is nice, but rather a sense of hopelessness and desperation that hits those that are falling to the virus. With refueling going on as well, there’s a lot of activity to it all and some bad moments as well as one of the soldiers gets into an accident and loses his mask. What works interesting is that we see how they do it in a pretty good military way where the guy who lost his mask makes it clear he knows he has to stay and that it’s all over. It goes dark in its own way but it reinforces the idea of just how bad it’s all going to play out if you get infected.
When the show shifts to Florida, as they get redirected after North Carolina falls, we see just how dangerous things are. With Scott having made it clear that she has an idea of how to make a vaccine, he works with the idea of creating the vaccine on the ship and getting what’s needed for it. That doesn’t quite go over well with his XO, but with all sense of an upper command from the government now gone, he’s pretty much looking to maintain order, discipline and a mission to keep his people alive and moving. Though the mission pieces itself aren’t exactly clear in a sense with what they’re going to do to get things, it’s a solid open ended kind of mission that will involve salvage and survival but also pursuing the vaccine itself and what’s needed to put it together. Chandler’s speech is a little too easy in a way, and not quite as inspiring as it needs to be, but he makes it clear the importance of the new mission he’s assigning to all the men and women on there.
In Summary:
With a solid enough concept, the opening episode lacks a bit when it comes to the humanity of the story. That’s not a surprise since we’re just being introduced to the military members here and some fleeting bits of panic elsewhere with how the world has fallen. This will all get explored as it goes on and we get to know the crew as they deal with the difficult missions ahead. Eric Dane is decent as the captain, but he’ll need to be worked on the most. The fun for me will be in seeing how Adam Baldwin handles things as he has a certain personality that could be fun to watch. What the show definitely brings out is something different from the other end of the world shows because it’s not just a ragtag group of survivors that are trying to band together. It may come across as military porn at times, but what it presents is a very different group than we usually get and that could make for some good fun across this season run. Definitely has a lot of potential and it starts off better than I expected.
Grade: B+
