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The Last Ship, Episode 10 – “No Place Like Home” Review

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Noooooooooooooooooooo!

It’s over.  The season is done and DONE DAMN WELL.  How did it go out?  What bodes for the next season?  How will I ever carry on till next year?!?

Too much with that last one?  Yeah, probably.  I’ll survive and so will you (if only so we can see how this all pans out).  On to the review!

Episode Summary:  Ashore, we see that Tom Chandler’s family is all sick with the Red Flu, and Poppa Chandler decides its high time they got outta there and found some help, especially for his daughter-in-law who is the most advanced with the disease.  Aboard the NATHAN JAMES, it’s muster-for-vaccine time, and everyone is getting the shot.  We catch up with several members of the crew, the CO and Dr. Rachel Scott share a moment of victory, with Rachel sticking it to Tom (not the other way around, get your minds out of the gutter, ‘shippers).  The CMC and the XO muster key crew members and tell them that they’ll be closing the coast en route to Fort Detrick and USAMRIID (the military version of the CDC), and they’ll be close enough to shore, that they may pick up cell signals and be able to call home.

The ship closes Norfolk, and the crew tries to get calls, but no joy.  In CIC, they are trying to raise the Army on the radio, but no joy.  The folks in SSES hijack a Keyhole spy satellite from the Air Force and get shots of Fort Detrick, where they find that USAMRIID, and ONLY USAMRIID has been destroyed.  Unsure what to do next, things look bleak, but the COMMO detects a signal from Baltimore, updating daily, that actually invites the NATHAN JAMES to contact them in order to work on the vaccine if they show up.  The captain calls up the folks that sent the message and it turns out to be Mrs. Granderson, the Navigator’s mom (played WONDERFULLY by Alfre Woodard), who was some sort of high mucketymuck in the President’s security council, but she survived the demise of the government, and has partnered with the Baltimore and Maryland Police to restore order.  She invites them all to Baltimore and Chandler accepts.  Meanwhile, Quincy is having a very strained re-unification with his wife, and Tom’s Dad has forced his way into the Baltimore quarantine zone, past a bunch of warlords.

The ship reaches Baltimore and they are greeted by official police and Mrs. Granderson, unaware that they were almost assassinated by rival warlords that REALLY don’t like her much.  She takes an official party ashore consisting of Tom, NAV, GUNNO, the CMC, and Sexy LT 1 (though he’s earned his respect from me now, so let’s just call him Danny from now on), and a few security bubbas.  Granderson drives them past streets filled with the dying and the starving and into a cordoned off office block in the city, where things are near-pristine.  She shows off the utopia they are managing there, with working power, schools, and a whole brand-spanking-new virology lab where Rachel can mass produce the vaccine.  Tom is very appreciative, but he really wants to get started on trying to find his family.  Granderson encourages him to go, she catches up with her daughter, and Rachel is in 7th heaven.  Tex feels rejected, so he takes off, but not without giving Rachel a goodbye kiss to end all goodbye kisses.  Aboard ship, the police form up and start getting vaccinated.  Ashore, the warlords are desperate to get control of the vaccine and keep it out of Granderson’s hands.

Tom eventually reaches his dad on the radio, and they head out to rendezvous out in sick-town.  SPOILERS ABOUND FROM HERE ON OUT, so proceed with caution.  Tom and his team, with civilian security escorts, reach the spot where his dad said his family was, but they have apparently gone on to Olympia, the sports complex where the sick go for treatment.  He wants to go, but the civilians say he can’t, despite the fact that they are all vaccinated and immune now.  This devolves into a Mexican standoff that ends with Navy on their feet and the Baltimore PD minders all dead.  Granderson gets this news and starts acting a lot more sinister.  Rachel discovers that the treatment the Baltimore team has been using to slow the spread of the disease is nothing of the sort.  Instead, it is a death sentence.  She confronts Granderson, and we discover that the NAV’s mom is actually taking a page out of Hitler’s playbook and doing a little multi-ethnic cleansing in order to support her little meritocracy.  The warlords are revealed to be the sane ones, who only want to uphold the Constitution.  And the police left on NATHAN JAMES get the drop on the XO and proceed to take over the ship, since they are the only ones carrying pistols (which they use on poor Quincy).  And at Olympia, Tom finds his family and gives them their vaccines, but it is too late for his wife.  They get out of there, but the Skipper also finds out that Granderson is purposefully killing the infected and using their bodies as fuel in the power plant.  The End.  Cliffhanger!

The Goods:  This episode expanded the plot tremendously, just as I hoped with the episode before last.  The dangling plots are wrapped up, and we were given a humdinger of a cliffhanger.  Alfre Woodard is GREAT.  She underplays megalomania and the cleansing of undesirables well.  She was a very pleasant surprise here.  Eric Dane, Tex, Rhona Mitra, and Adam Baldwin all have some great moments here, but Eric Dane and Rhona Mitra get the meatiest written roles for the recurring characters.  Ms. Woodard does outshine them, however, but through no fault of their own.  I loved Tex confiding in Admiral Halsey (the dog).  I loved his arc here, where he’s going off to be Mad Max because Rachel didn’t love him back.  I also liked the dawning pangs of jealousy and regret on Rachel’s behalf.  The ‘shippers will be delighted with Tom’s wife being dead, but I felt sorry for her somewhat thankless role here.  I liked Tom’s Dad and his drive to get his family to safety.  I liked the nod to dwindling fuel resources and the need to ground their UAV and helo.   I love (and hate) the cliffhanger.  BUT MOST OF ALL, I love the last act switcheroo and really really appreciate the advertising and teasers that completely hid the resulting surprise.  Was my mind blown by the turnaround?  No, there were plenty of hints before all was revealed, but it did surprise me sufficiently, it hangs together well, and it gives Alfre Woodard a chance to be the bad guy for once.

The Less Goods:  Why is everyone queuing up on the forecastle to get vaccinated?  Shit’s WINDY up there.  Also, I was unaware a DDG’s SSES could hack into an Air Force spy satellite in order to get free spy pics (free cable and ESPN, yes . . . useful intel, no).  I have a real problem with the chubby police LT getting the drop on the XO and the whole ship.  I’m uncertain they would be allowed to roam around armed without escort, though complacency does happen, especially at home and with reasonable authority figures.  I’m wondering about Granderson’s philosophy and would like it to be better defined.  I wish the ship had been a little more central to the plot this time.  I haven’t seen the ship FIGHT in several eps now, and this is the only decent naval porn I’ve ever gotten in the modern era.  One continuous issue again bugs me, which I’ll mention here:  all speaking roles with any weight go to the officers and the CMC.  Where is the enlisted love?  Lastly, how good a fuel does a human body make?  A dried, dessicated corpse, sure, but we are wet bags of meat and juice.  Does that burn sufficiently well?  It’s not a concept I’m keen to look into, as it conjures images of the Holocaust, but the scientist in me does wonder.

So, that’s it for season 1.  The goods definitely outweigh the bads, and we are left with a fine close for the season.  Tune back here in a couple of days for a contest and a discussion on your favorite characters, moments, and episodes!  I can’t wait for season 2!

The Last Ship, Episode 9 – “Trials” Review

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Here it is — the penultimate episode of the inaugural season of television’s best semi-post-apocalyptic near-future naval science fiction!  How does it measure up with the rest of the season?  How well does it set up the season finale?  Does it commit egregious sins of engineering?  Does it kick ass!?!?

Ha, ha, hee, hee — READ ON, DEAR READER!

Plot Summary:  We start off with the latest episode of The Walking Dead, ummm, sorry (I get confused).  We actually start off in the woods with Tom Chandler’s pop, dragging a freshly shot buck toward a mobile home.  He’s bein’ a good neighbor, trying to share his bounty with the folks down the road, but they inform him that they have the “Red Flu”.  He leaves the deer in order to give them at least a shot and returns home to his cabin with Tom’s wife and girls.  She’s been out foraging, which he warns her to be careful with.  It ain’t Disneyland out there anymore.

Aboard the USS NATHAN JAMES, it is a time of reflection and change.  Physician-of-my-dreams Dr. Rachel Scott is converting her lab over to a testing ward for human trials of her vaccine, of which there has been one positive subject, her Central American monkey.  Meanwhile, we say goodbye to our young sailor killed last episode.  Post funeral, the Skipper vows not to lose another one (proving you shouldn’t give orders you know won’t be obeyed or make promises you know you can’t keep), therefore he intends to volunteer as one of the six subjects of the vaccine trial.  The XO (Adam Baldwin RULES!) shuts him down FAST and HARD, reminding him that they just saved his sorry ass.  But someone from Command needs to go into the trial, so the CMC informs them both that he’s already approved to go.

Hmmmm, one black guy in a medical horror episode, and who already has a demeanor of Christian martyrdom?  I wonder who’s going to be our first sacrificial pathos-building death today?

The six volunteers are the CMC, the CHENG, Kara (Sexy LT 2), Petty Officer Miller (our ginger wallflower from the tactical teams), Petty Officer Maya Gibson (the chick pining for her boyfriend during the candlelight vigil in episode 2), and TEX!  Tex keeps the jokes coming and they all nervously laugh their way through receiving the vaccine (which consists of two parts: a decoy to protect the body from infection, and another component that builds antibodies), and then the virulent virus itself.  At first everything is hunky-dory, and we get a bunch of nice character growth moments for all these characters about to die.

Ashore, Tom’s wife is raiding a Radio Shack for supplies and shortwave radio parts.  But she hears an encounter outside between an infectee and a ruthless survival type, which ends abruptly and messily for the infectee.  Tom’s wife skeedaddles, not noticing that she was hiding out right next to a recently dead infectee.

In the trial, the Skipper and XO can only look on in impotent horror as things begin to go bad.  Fevers, rashes, delirium, hemorrhages, convulsions, etc.  All bad, but also not symptoms associated with the Red Flu, and nothing the monkey ever experienced.  Kara almost dies convulsing from fever and an important detail is revealed that has a huge impact on Danny (Sexy LT 1).  Tex reveals the raw emotion he feels for Dr. Scott, free of any joking.  And Maya dies, breaking Miller’s delirious heart.  Chandler has Slattery invite all the crew down to say their goodbyes, since none of these poor bastards are gonna make it.  He says his goodbyes to the CMC.  Meanwhile, Rachel and Quincy are throwing everything against the wall, to see what might stick.  They practically drain poor Patrice of her blood plasma, hoping it will stabilize things, but no joy.  Then Rachel has a medical techno-babble epiphany.  The symptoms are not of infection, but of an auto-immune response!  The human gene our Typhoid Marty added to the original virus means this foreign human DNA is spreading through-out their bodies, and they are thus rejecting their own flesh.  The vaccine has indeed suppressed the virus, but the piggyback DNA was doing itwn level-best to kill them anyway.  Rachel mixes the primordial strain in with the vaccine, and BANG/ZOOM, it works!  Everyone immediately improves, withe the Sexy LTs bein’ all sexy together appearing to be an item again, Tex telling more jokes, the CMC (almost) dying for our sins (wait just a minute there, Tommy Boy), and the CHENG proving to be a workaholic.  Rachel and Tom Chandler hug (giving more material for the slash fan fiction written after last week’s kiss) and she announces that this is both a vaccine for the uninfected and a cure for the infected!

Ashore, Tom’s wife fixes her family a meal with her own two hands, then begins to feel the effects of the virus.

Dun, dunn, dunnnnnnnnnnnnn!  Dramatic cliff-hanging ending, y’all!

The Goods:  This episode belongs to Rhona Mitra and our character-and-cast “B” team.  It took 9 episodes, but I finally didn’t want to tear my eyes out while spending time with our happy, Sexy LTs.  I reserve the right to hate on Danny and Kara later, but this time they owned their roles and felt like necessary characters.  Burial at Sea!  Yeah, it’s awful, but it’s also a fascinating, exciting, and (thankfully) rare event.  We got off the ship and foreshadowed the events to come (Walking Dead meets The Last Ship), and we see a glimpse of some post-apocalyptic action.  I’m predicting next season will be all about either their efforts ashore, or them ferrying the vaccine worldwide.  No engineering sins today, which I worried about last week, since we spend so much time with the CHENG.  Tex is great, as always, and Quincy and Chandler have a necessary scene about moving forward.  The XO appears to be a Rachel-convert, which is great growth for that character.  I appreciate that my expectations were upset, in that the CMC did not perish!  And I love that they really do have a vaccine and treatment for the virus.  This show makes progress, and we aren’t treading water through the same episode and situation over and over again.

The Less Goods:  Cap’n Crunches and our WARFIGHTER XO largely get sidelined here.  I get it, but i miss those magnificent bastards.  Nothing exploded (which is always lame).  Not enough detail about the goings-on in the outside world.  I need more than a tease, please, but maybe next week.  Too much virology techno-babble, and I have no way of judging if it was nonsensical or not.  Why are dead bodies so uber-infectious?  They aren’t breathing any more in order to spread the virus, so what is it about them that kicks the virus into high gear?  Maya should have worn a red shirt, the poor gal.  She pretty much only had time to remind us of her dead boyfriend, and we knew she was doomed.  Everyone keeps talking about the distance to the CDC, but they also keep forgetting they have a whole helo in one of the hangars, which could, I dunno, maybe  FLY THEM TO THE BEST LAB in the nation.

Soooo, a well-accomplished, necessary story-line. without all the usual fun explosions and stand-offs, but totally enjoyable nonetheless, and congrats to Rhona Mitra for giving me my favorite episode of yours yet.  And I believe this set up next week with perfection.

Vaccines! Cures! Battles ashore!  Family reconciliations!  All this can be yours next week in the season’s ULTIMATE conclusion.  Catch up with you then!!

The Last Ship, Episode 8 – “Two Sailors Walk Into A Bar . . . .” Review

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First of all, just to get it out there, that joke was terrible.  But the episode was damn fun!

This one was firing on all cylinders, implausible but fun.  We got answers, we got XO Slattery as a tactical god, we got confrontations and gunfights, ‘splosions galore, and the tidying up of a number of plot points.  Good job, Last Ship, good job.

Plot Summary:  Carried over from last week, CAPT Chandler and Tex are brought aboard the Russian cruiser.  Tex gets batted around and Tom protests, whereupon he is told that he doesn’t give orders there.  Chandler gets taken to Admiral Ruskov’s dining room, where he meets Quincy’s wife and kid.  He’s cool with the kid, reassuring her that her daddy loves her, and then playing stone-faced to Ruskov’s threats, sticking to name, rank, and serial number despite a final offer by Ruskov to go into business together, selling the vaccine to the highest bidder.  Chandler gets thrown into the brig in the same cell as a beaten Tex, under the watchful eye of one guard armed only with broken english.

Aboard the NATHAN JAMES, XO Slattery answers the HF radio when Ruskov calls.  He seems almost shocked into inaction, trying to answer whether or not he will trade Dr. Scott and her research for the Captain and Tex.  But he is deep planner nonetheless, using the extended time on the radio to better pinpoint the bearing to the Russian cruiser.  Down below, Dr. Scott has made a breakthrough and developed a working vaccine with Patrice’s DNA.  While the XO and the tactical staff try to come up with some way of getting the skipper and Tex back, Rachel busts into CIC with the offer of giving herself up.  They have the vaccine now, so Quincy and Rios can carry it the rest of the way, while Ruskov will get what he’s asking for and they get their people back.  Everyone wins (except one Rachel Scott). XO Slattery is a never say die sort, however (Adam Baldwin RULES!).  Rachel is to be a decoy and distraction while they sneak aboard to stage an escape.

She gets boated, and then helo’d onto the cruiser, where they frisk her and remove her life jacket, unaware it has a hidden beacon aboard to guide in the US tactical team.  She is taken before Ruskov and she demands to see the Skipper and Tex.  As soon as she sees Chandler, she rushes up and gives him a big, open-mouthed kiss, all to Tex’s dismay.  Ruskov chuckles and sends the boys back down below, while she takes Rachel to see Typhoid Marty and test the vaccine.  She quickly realizes that Marty is an immune carrier and the source of the human gene mod to the virus.  He gets weaselly and demands that she share the vaccine’s credit with him.  That pisses her off and she brings down Ruskov, who arrives angry at Marty for leading him on so long.  Then Ruskov goes full bad-guy and has Rachel vaccinate one of his own men, then exposes him to Marty.

In their cell, Tex is having an existential crisis due to Rachel’s kiss with Chandler, but Tom reveals that she passed an exacto razor blade and a note telling them the assault would begin at 0400.  At the designated time, Chandler calls the guard over to let him go to the head, whereupon he and Tex grab the guy, slit his throat, and escape.  They go through the ship, knocking off sleepy Russians and gathering weapons.  The tactical team has also snuck aboard, and they’ve killed a bunch of engineers and have rigged the non-nuclear half of the steam plant to blow.  They hook up with Chandler and Tex, who proceed to go find Rachel.  She’s still in the cruiser’s makeshift virology lab, waiting for either her patient to live or die.  But the Russians have realized that Chandler and Tex have escaped, so they go for her.  She pulls a .45 she had secreted away and kills the officer sent to fetch her, just before the tactical team comes in and rescue her. We finish with a running gun battle, triggered explosions going off all over the ship.  Chandler makes it a point to rescue Quincy’s family and they all get off before the Russian missiles explode within their tubes.  During the firefight, the ostracized enlisted man from last week proves himself, but gets shot and dies.  They all make it back to the ship, fade to black.

The Goods:  Ruskov calls Chandler out on his egotastic propensity to go on tactical missions when he should have his men lead.  XO Slattery being all crafty and planning out the perfect op to take out the superior Russian cruiser from within (Adam Baldwin RULES!).  The kiss, and Tex’s reaction to it, both at the time and later.  Ruskov (I hope he survived . . . .).  Guns!  Explosions!  USA, USA!!  Quincy getting reunited with his family and the surely awkward conversation that followed immediately after when his ass was placed back in custody.  Rachel Scott kickin’ ass, and shooting first, silencer or no silencer.  And the bittersweet ending, with our ostracized crewmember proving himself in the end, then getting killed.  The lack of any hint of engineering detail (except CONAS) and the COMPLETE lack of any sexy LT 1 & 2 nonsense.  This episode was not emotionally deep like episode 6, but it kicked the most ass since episode 2.

The Less Goods:  Having a WW-II battleship stand in for a modern Russian battlecruiser.  Guys, I get that you need a ship to film on, but did you have to include a tracking shot that CLEARLY includes turrets of triple 16″ guns.  Were you aware there is an ACTUAL Russian frigate up in the Fall River, MA naval museum?  I realize it is smallish, but you can’t get more accurate than the real thing!  Having everyone escape from said battleship while it is CLEARLY still moored to something.  The mechanics of the vaccine test, in that I’m pretty sure you can’t be exposed to both the vaccine AND the deadly virus near simultaneously and have a reasonable expectation of immunity.  And while I appreciate XO Slattery being more decisive this week than last, I wish he’d been MORE deadly and take-charge.  Adam Baldwing HAS the acting chops.  Release the BADASS!  I don’t hold it against him.  It’s the way the character is written and he is portrayed fine, but he could be SO MUCH MORE!  Moving on, the Russians have no waterside security, no radar, no lookouts, and can’t shoot worth a damn.  How did they get to be a super-power, again?  The gunbattle is  fun, but WAY too un-realistic.  Not enough character interaction in this ep, but that’s okay.  This sort of thing is all about the spectacle, and of that, this one has LOADS.

Now, with so many things wrapped up, I’m thinking the last two eps this season have GOT to turn everything topsy-turvy . . . AND I CAN’T WAIT!

 

Behold: GISHWHES Glory!

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As threatened promised last week, a fan of my Daily Science Fiction short story “The Rememberists” asked me to participate in the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen 2014 as a published science fiction author, writing a 140 word story featuring actor Misha Collins, the Queen of England, and an Elopus.  By doing so, I put myself into a circle of awesomeness including Misha Collins, Orlando Jones, William Shatner, David Brin, et cetera, et cetera, etc.

Pretty cool.  And here it is (fo’ freeeeeeeeeeee!):

 

TIES OF GLORY

By: Thomas A. Mays

 

“Collins!  The beast’s looped!  Set the anchor before it ‘ports away!!”

Misha Collins, actor and out-of-his-depth adventurer, swung the sledgehammer and set the piton deep into bedrock.  He turned to Laksim.  “Why are we staking down this elephant?”

Laksim circled the bellowing Indian bull.  “You wanted a supernatural adventure, like your show?  Behold!  Not an elephant . . . a mythic elopus:  the truth behind Ganesh and the source of all conspiracies!”

Misha shook his head.  “Looks like a tired old animal.”

“You see with three dimensions only.” Laksim struck it with a cattle-prod and four legs became eight tentacles, connected to Tom Cruise, Justin Bieber, Queen Elizabeth, Dick Cheney, and three other worthies.

Laksim frowned.  “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Misha looked down to see the last tentacle writhing within his own body.

 

Now, go share it with your entire social network, cuz it’s just dat cool.

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The Last Ship, Episode 7 – “SOS” Review (and other stuff)

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You ever had a day just sorta get away from you?  (Note, if you’re only here for the Episode 7 review, feel free to skip a bit, brother, down to the bold.)  I had all sortsa responsible intentions the night this aired, but dang it if “The Strain” didn’t come on right after and get me distracted.  So, fine, I’ll post in the morning.  But then the kids had to be driven to 4H day-camp, and after that, well, you gotta get the lawn mowed.  But that’s all routine, stuff that SHALL NOT STAND in the way of those clambering for my words.

But then this happened.  I was e-mailed out of the blue by a fan of my Daily Science Fiction short story, “The Rememberists” which appeared recently.  And this fan had an unusual request.  They wanted me to write a super short story as part of this grand online scavenger hunt.  Specifically, they needed a published SF author to write an original short story of no more than 140 words that contained the Supernatural actor Misha Collins, the Queen of England, and an elopus (which, naturally, is a hybrid elephant-octopus . . . how do you not know these things?).

Well, that’s just ludicrous.  There’s no way I was gonna play in that sandbox.  I had reviews to write and lawns to mow.

Heh.  So, of course, by the time the lawn was done I had the whole story in my head.  I fat-fingered it into the computer, spent twice as long editing it down to 140 words, then sent it off to accolades and hurrahs galore.  But by the time it was done, I had to leave to host my area writing seminar and there-ya-go, day lost.  Soooo, many apologies for the lateness of this review, and if you wanna see my Misha Collins / Queen Elizabeth / Elopus short story, check back here next week when I’m allowed to post it!

Review

Whew!  Lemme get my breath here.  Building off the acting chops and dramagery of the last “Last Ship” episode, “SOS” had me calling for help at the end.  That was some goooooooood naval fiction, y’all, probably the best “thriller” episode yet.  This one had it all: high stakes, background info, redemption, sacrifice, combat systems scenarios, and a cliffhanger ending.  Lemme tell all-o-youse abouts it.

Plot Summary:  We begin with a flashback to our Russian Typhoid Marty, warning a colleague about the incipient epidemic, but saying he has a radical theory about how to treat it.  His buddy scoffs, until Marty insists he knows it will work because he has already tested it upon himself.  Buddy recoils in horror and flees, whereupon Marty’s wife arrives, coughing cutely, foreshadowing that the virus was not weaponized, but Marty turned himself into an immune patient zero for the altered virus.  And now he is aboard the Russian nuclear cruiser, commanded by Admiral Roznakov/Ruskov (I’ve seen it spelled both ways), which is fully repaired and on the hunt for the NATHAN JAMES

Back in the apocalyptic present, in Radio, our young COMMO freaks out about one particular distress call among the dozens they have been monitoring.  Seems that this girl had been aboard a fishing boat off Puerto Rico, first with 50 people, then 15, and now she is the sole survivor, out of supplies, but not sick even after being surrounded by the infected.  Dr. Hot (sorry) Scott is telling ACTING GOD ERIC DANE / CAPT Tom Chandler that she’s almost outta monkeys.  The virus’ tricky human gene mod has proven resistant to all her attempts at vaccination.  News of a possibly immune girl gives her hope, however.  The Skipper decides he has to risk it, so he calls out as an American fishing boat captain, asking the girl to provide her GPS coordinates.

Of course the Russians hear him and immediately see through the ruse.  They set a matching course and the race is on.

NATHAN JAMES and the Russians both remain over the horizon from one another and the girl’s fishing boat, which puts them about 35 to 70 miles from one another.  NATHAN JAMES takes two RHIBs over, with two tactical teams containing (of COURSE) the CO, Tex, one of our disgraced Petty Officers who tried to jump ship last episode, and the GUNNO.  After an in-depth search, they locate Patrice hiding in a cabin.  Patrice is freaked, but they convince her to go with them, just in time for the Zodiacs from the Russian cruiser to make their appearance.  The CO and Tex take the Russians on, guns blazing, while the other RHIB zig-zags back to NATHAN JAMES with Patrice.  Chandler and Tex take out one Zodiac, while the other makes a break for the fishing boat to see if they can recover anything.  The CO’s RHIB starts heading back to the destroyer, but their boat has been shot up pretty damn well and it sinks rapidly, leaving the pair of them in the ocean all alone.  Tex asks Chandler to call for help or beacon their position, but the Skipper purposely left their personal beacons behind.  As for the radio, he makes one call, telling the DDG to cease all rescue efforts, abandon them at sea, and stick to the mission.

The story splits into three parts, one with the CO and Tex sharing some nice character moments as they futilely swim toward a distant reef, aboard the NATHAN JAMES as XO Slattery (Adam Baldwin RULES!) considers whether to follow the Skipper’s final directive or to disregard it since he is now in command, and finally aboard the Russian cruiser, where Ruskov continues to act like a creepy megalomaniac, threatening Quincy’s wife and kid, as well as his own men.  Everyone is soon enough searching over the horizon for the Skipper and Tex.  NATHAN JAMES uses their helo, the Russians use a UAV (which the Amerikanskis promptly shoot down, comrade), and Dr. Scott discovers that Patrice has a natural immunity to all strains of the virus.

Soon enough, Chandler and Tex get fished out of the ocean, but this is a cliffhanger rather than a happy ending, as he finds himself hoisted aboard Ruskov’s helo, held under gunpoint!  Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnnnn!  What’s gonna happen next week!?

The Goods:  Answers!  The virus was not weaponized.  Instead it was born from the hubris of a benevolent Dr. Frankenstein.  Damn you, Science, and your cautious insistence on following protocols!  Tex is from Reno!  He and Chandler have some great character moments while they float around (kudos to Eric Dane for week number two), and I love the glee the Skipper had as Tex revealed he was all hot for Ms. Rhona Mitra.  I don’t blame you, big guy, I don’t blame you at all.  Ruskov is an unapologetic BAD GUY, and that is campy, but fun.  I like the progression of the plot, even if the situation with Patrice came about was very, very convenient.  Danny (Travis Van Winkle) did a great job this week, and he had a great scene with the XO (Adam Baldwin RULES!).  The aftermath of his relationship with Kara is a hell of a lot more interesting than the relationship itself ever was.  The RHIB on Zodiac battle was some exciting action and a lot of fun, as well as the UAV vs. SM-2 scene.  The challenges of over-the-horizon search and targeting were handled well, even if the details were not quite correct.  I liked that they addressed it as that is how the modern Navy does business.  I appreciated the nod they gave to the challenges of finding someone lost at sea.  And I really like the surprise of the wrong helo picking Chandler and Tex up (though it wasn’t that surprising of a surprise, it was handled well).

The Less Goods:  I asked for more focus on the enlisted side of things.  Pity they could not have found a better story than this one sailor dealing with his rejection after essentially being a selfish, indecisive prick.  Protocols for dealing with infection on this show REALLY need a good reality check.  The CMC and Dr. Scott greet Patrice with absolutely ZERO barriers:  no clean suits, gloves, or masks.  Kiddies, that chick has been living in a virulent disease-ridden environment for a couple of months.  Even if she is immune, she might either be a carrier, or at the very least be contaminated internally and externally with fluids rife with the virus.  That girl needs some extensive decon before she is not a danger to them all.  Then there is the CO’s breaking of EMCON.  He gave a nod to maintaining subterfuge, but he could have done a LOT better.  Mask your voice and accent!  Tell everyone you’re a Panamanian trawler!  Have someone with an accent speak for you!  Next, the XO’s indecisiveness.  I get that he is in charge now, and he has to balance loyalty and honor against the mission, but the character is very wishy-washy about the choice.  This is not a dig on Adam Baldwin, because that guy RULES, but the writing here for the character could be more in keeping with what has been established before.  Helo’s have special maneuvers for providing data to their mothership without giving away where that ship is, so it would have been nice for them to handle that better.  And, though I love having an SM-2 surface to air missile blast away a UAV, energizing the SPY radar is a horrible move if you want to remain unlocated.  It doesn’t matter if it was only up for 30 seconds, that thing is like a beacon and there is no way the Russians could not have counter-targeted them.

So, a GREAT episode with the promise of even more next week.  This is a fine follow-up to the acting high-point of last week and I grow as a fan each episode.  See you next time, and don’t forget to check out “The Rememberists” (it’s only 1000 words).

 

The Last Ship, Episode 4 – “We’ll Get There” Review

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Note:  Sorry this review is a day late, but when the day/night job calls, you answer (or you end up feeding your family garbage ramen, cuz that’s all yo’ po’ ass can afford).  SORRY!

So!  Episode 4:  Enter the Stupid.  Ugh.  I think this show has done an OUTSTANDING job of balancing respect for the US Navy, a dedication to fairly honest naval realism, post apocalyptic military sci-fi drama, and fun-but-hackneyed soap-esque melodrama.  The chatter is good, the characters are cool, the plot is awesome, the settings are true to the service, but one thing has stood out as a detriment in every episode thus far:

THEY CAN’T ENGINEER WORTH A DAMN.

In the pilot, Cap’n Crunches holds a generator fuse in place with his bare hand in order to recover from an electromagnetic pulse.  In episode 2, they deal with shitty fuel and gummed up fuel nozzles through the power of “It’s no longer convenient to discuss.”  In episode 3, they do egregious crimes with the physics of radar systems, though the actual engineers remain behind the scenes for the most part.

In episode 4, we have an engineering-centric, ship-stranded-at-sea, “bottle” episode, and suddenly all I see are flaws.  The worst part is, they are largely unnecessary flaws.  The Last Ship obviously has experienced naval consultants.  They get so much background right that I’m willing to forgive the little bit wrong they do for the plot’s sake.  In this ep, however, you can tell that either NONE of the consultants are engineers or the writers just disregarded them.  And that’s what pisses me off.  There were ways to do this episode that would have made engineering sense, but they chose not to, either as a sin of ignorance or willful disregard.

(The alternative also occurs to me, that the Navy told them to get it all wrong in order to avoid giving away engineering operational secrets, but they could have looked at a DDG-51 engineering diagram out of Jane’s Defense Weekly and still gotten it more right.)

Okay, on with the review.  First, the plot summary:  It starts off with a sweet flashback to better days, with CO Chandler’s family sharing their private goodbyes right before the NATHAN JAMES departs on deployment.  Then we switch to the present, with Tom Chandler torturing himself by listening to distress calls down in Radio.  The XO checks in on him and we see some nice character moments for ol’ Slattery (Adam Baldwin RULES!).  Then we have Hot Virologist Rachel Scott make a breakthrough on the vaccine, but she needs Quincy to finish the prototype.  The Cap’n allows Rachel to try convincing our old traitor, but no joy.  Meanwhile, Sexy LT 1 is showing Tex around the ship, where they run into Sexy LT 2, all tense with each other since 1 dumped 2 for the stupidest reasoning on the planet.  So, of course Tex wants to make a play (I love that character).

Then the power fails, threatening progress on the vaccine and stranding them in the middle of the ocean without enough water.  And here is where we enter the land of Obscene Nonsensical Engineering (ONE).  It seems that a fire near the Low Pressure Air Compressors were caused by a lack of seawater cooling to the engines / generators, since escaping from the Russkies through that canal somehow ripped off all their filters (??????).  A loss of power and propulsion makes the situation desperate, but they do manage to restore juice to the lab and conjure up an hour of propulsion each day so they can limp toward an island that might have water.  Oh, and the XO threatens Quincy with keelhauling unless he helps out Rachel (Adam Baldwin RULES!).

And then the casualties get even more dire.  All power and propulsion goes kaput, such that they are going to both die of thirst and die never knowing if the vaccine would have worked.  They eventually cool the bio-samples by putting them in an armored case and dangling them below the cold thermocline in the ocean.  And what do our intrepid Engineer/Writers do?  Why, they rig three parachutes as kites, launch them with line-casting rifles, and SAIL a 9000 ton warship to Gilligan’s Isle!  And — SOMEHOW — this is fast enough to turn the propeller shaft, which — SOMEHOW — generates electricity to keep the vaccine cool (but not enough juice to make water).

Long episode shorter, it works, they reach the island, Rachel Scott is appreciative, the Captain honors the MPA, the CHENG just lays around, Quincy is humanized, the crew parties on the beach, and Sexy LT 1 regrets dumping Sexy LT 2.

The Goods:  There are good elements here still.  I like the character moments for Chandler and Slattery, I like that they finally gave a real nod to the problems of maintaining a destroyer at sea without a logistics chain, even if EVERY SINGLE DETAIL WAS FUBAR.  I like using the thermocline as a cooling water blanket, even if it was impractical.  I like the XO’s threat, though I have no idea how a homicide detective in Chicago would ever have developed the time-in-rank and experience to make it as a CDR in the surface navy and as XO on a destroyer.  I liked the stargazing.  I even liked the plot.  If I had no idea how a destroyer worked, I might even have thought it was clever.

The Less Goods:  Unfortunately, I’m a former Chief Engineer / Engineer Officer on a DDG-51 Flight II-A.  Writers, if you wanna get this stuff anywhere in the ballpark next time, DROP ME A LINE, I WORK FOR CHEAP.  This episode didn’t even make an attempt to hit naval realism.  Is the NATHAN JAMES supposed to be an electric drive ship?  That’s the only way it even starts to approach common sense.  Turning the shafts does not generate power.  Losing all power only makes you lose propulsion because you can’t run the electric lube oil pumps and seawater coolers any more.  The electric plant and the propulsion plant are totally different animals, by design.  Three parachutes won’t move a 9000 ton warship unless Neptune himself is blowing on them.  You can’t rip the seawater filters off by running aground (they’re inside the ship, though you can wreck the cowling over the seachest).  And here’s one most won’t notice, but the MPA or Main Propulsion Assistant is always a Chief Warrant Officer or an Engineering Limited Duty Officer, kind of like a senior technical rank even above the Chief Petty Officer levels.  The Chief Engineer is usually a 1st (or 2nd) tour Department Head and a Line Officer, trained in Engineering basics, but experienced as a manager and a tactical officer.  The CHENG relies on the MPA for technical know-how, not the other way around, as it was here.  Again, The Last Ship tends to be an officer-fest.  We need more enlisted-ranks appreciation. And, lastly, Sexy LT’s 1 & 2:  I still couldn’t care less about you.  In your twosome, only Tex as a third party is interesting.

So, this is a mis-step, but I remain faithful and hopeful.  As the title suggests, I think the Goods usually outweigh the Less Goods and I think — together — that “We’ll Get There.”

All I Gots Time For Is Bullets . . . .

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– Hi!

– There’s whole bunches of stuff to catch you up on, so I’m turning down the effervescent charm and wit, turning up the maximum information flow (while still remaining effervescently witty and charming.  Handsome too.  It’s a curse).

– A Sword Into Darkness has now topped over 200 reviews on Amazon and sits at 4.5 stars overall with 123 5-stars and 58 4-stars, alongside a whole buncha real nice write-ups between ’em.  If you needed an excuse to get yourself a copy, that’s a pretty good one.  I’m still continually surpised about the folks that are reluctant to give it a try because of its indie-published beginnings.  It’s good, folks.  Trust the hoi polloi.

– Speaking of good, I just listened to the first half of the A Sword Into Darkness audiobook from ACX and Will Perez of Sci-Fi Publishing, and it’s like experiencing a brand new story.  It really comes alive, and even though I wrote the damned thing, it’s like I’m just discovering it.  If you’ve read it, but haven’t heard it, you gotta!  And if you haven’t read it or lent it to your friends, ummm, see the bullet above.

– REMO continues to chug right along, though it has not had the explosion of popularity that ASID had.  Is it because it’s short stories?  A relatively short collection?  Not as much advertising as ASID had from third parties?  I dunno.  It has gotten great reviews (4.8 stars in 6 reviews) on Amazon, but it has not made it above 7000 in sales ranking yet.  It has more than paid for the investment in its cover from 99Designs, so I’m happy about that, but I would love for it to do ASID numbers.  If you haven’t tried it out, I urge you to give it a shot, or to recommend it to your friends.  And I’m also producing an audiobook on ACX for it as well, with the talented Heidi Mattson of VO Hollywood reading.  It would make your perfect commute companion!

– REMO remains Amazon Kindle exclusive, but ASID has turned out to be a dirty little book that gets around to all the e-book sites.  Shameful.  But apparently the elder book has been a bad influence on the innocent story collection, and they will soon both cheapen themselves for all the world to see in an internet wide sale!  I am shocked and you should be too.  In fact, you should tell all of your friends about it and urge everyone to get their own copies during the sale so you can tell them youself how dissapointed you are that such good books would just put themselves on the streets for a mere 99¢.  More details to follow.

– In other news (and these are the reasons I’ve been so busy), I’m waiting on the approval draft of “The Rememberists” for Daily Science Fiction, I’ve gotten a commitment from Baen on “Bumped” if I make some revisions, and I’ve completed the first draft of “The Commuter” for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Short Story competition.  For Stealth Books, I’ve also reviewed and blurbed Graham Brown’s latest SF masterpiece, and I’m working through John Monteith’s latest Rogue sub-thriller.  On top of that, I’m still working on the ASID tabletop game and app with Nathaniel Torson of Jabberwocky Media.  Then there’s life (Don’t Talk To Me About LIFE . . . .) where my brave, strong, and beautiful wife keeps kickin’ cancer’s ass and staying busy, and my three kids are ALL in baseball and softball, each of which have both simultaneous and consecutive games in different locations.  Plus work at my unspecified Day Job, which eats about 14-16 hours a day.

– What this means is, I have not yet made progress on Lancers Into the Light or on Co-Pilot, but I pledge to!  Soon(ish)!!

– Congrats to Ancillary Justice for winning the Nebula!  I gotta read that one to see what all the hubbub is about.  Best of luck to it and all the upcoming Hugo nominees, though I’m pulling for a Larry Correia and a Brad Torgerson win.

– Final note about goings on, I got to spend an afternoon with Chris Kennedy, author of Janissaries and When the Gods Aren’t Gods,  at the Virginia Beach Central Public Library’s AMAZING event devoted to their new Local Author collection.  It was a pleasure to donate books both for the collection and to circulate, as well as to meet so many great local authors and small press publishers.  A good time was had by all and I really look forward to doing it again next year.  If you live in the Hampton Roads area, I urge you to go and check out ALL the books!

– And that’s about it.  I obviously don’t understand the concept behind brief, bulletized statements.  I have a problem.  Pity me!

– Toodles!

A Sword Into Darkness – Kindle Daily Deal for 17Apr!

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Retweet! Forward! Share! A Sword Into Darkness is only 99 ¢ in the good ol’ US of A today!!!  Go there now, buy it for yourself, buy it for a friend, buy it as a hedge against inflation, buy it for someone you don’t even know and Pay It Forward! Then after you’ve bought it for that reason, BUY IT FOR ALL THE OTHER REASONS AGAIN.

I’m basically not gonna stop until Amazon’s servers are all tied up, everyone has the book, and I have all the money.  Simple enough goals, I think.

Kindle Daily Deal

Today Was A Good Day to Kick Ass

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First of all, I need help picking the winning cover for REMO from all the outstanding final entries.  So click on the picture below, VOTE, and then come back here, because you ain’t gonna want to miss this.

REMO Winner

Don’t you just LOVE proportional voting?  Now, to task!

Today was a pretty awesome day.  It started off with an e-mail at the crack of dawn, from the editors of Daily Science Fiction, who told me that they’re buying my flash (under 1000 words) soft-SF short story “The Rememberists.”  It’s a weird little tale, but thought provoking, and they’re buying first serial rights to it!  While the money off a 1000 word tale isn’t life-changing, even at professional rates, it does mark my third sale to a paying, professional science fiction market.  That — technically — makes me a pro-science fiction author, at least according to the Science Fiction Writers’ Association, the SFWA, our professional guild.  Folks have a lot of mixed feelings about the SFWA, which is currently undergoing an ideological purge of sorts, but I like writers on both sides of the divide.  Will I join?  I dunno.  But its still damn nice to be able to.

Matter two, which was why I had been thinking about the SFWA and professionalism, is the fact that I now have sold over 10,000 copies of A Sword Into Darkness (and at a royalty rate that does NOT suck).  Though it is self/indie published, selling 10,000 copies allows you to classify yourself as a pro, and as a new pro, begins your two-year countdown clock for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction.  It would be AMAZING to get a Campbell nod, like one of my favorites, Larry Correia.  Of course, there’s a few hiccups to getting that nomination and attending the Hugo Awards:  namely, the Best New Writers get nominated by the attendees of the past and current WorldCon, where the awards are handed out.  Thing is, I don’t know any WorldCon attendees, and i really doubt they just happened to be browsing Amazon, saw my cover, and said THAT is my next read!  And then there’s the matter that I may be ineligible.  “Dreams for Sale — Two Bits!” was published in Jim Baen’s Universe, a pro-level magazine, in 2009.  Since you have only two years in which to be eligible, I could sell 1,000,000 sales, and not be eligible as the Best New Writer (though I think I could handle the pain).  JBU is now defunct, and I’m not sure if the records will support there being sufficient subscribers to hit the size necessary to start my two-year clock.  Am I eligible?  I dunno.  But I’d really like to be afforded the opportunity to turn down the nomination.

And finally, after working in the yard all day, putting in a stone firepit and landscaping, I got another e-mail.  This one was from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, or ABNA 2014, announcing that A Sword Into Darkness had made it through the second round and is now a quarter-finalist.  In the first two rounds, they start off reading a 300 word pitch, choosing 2000 out of 10,000 entries on that alone.  Then in the third round, 2000 are whittled down to 500, 100 of which are Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, by reading a 3000 word excerpt from the beginning.  In the fourth round, the editors of Publisher’s Weekly write an actual reveiw of your entire manuscript, and then pick 25 books out of 500 to go to the semi-finals, and so on.  Why?  Well, in the offering is a $ 50,000 publishing contract through Amazon Publishing, and five $10,000 contracts, putting real books in real physical bookstores.  What are my chances of winning?  About 1 in 500 against, but as contests go, it’s one of the best out there.  I’m amazed to still be in competition!

So, very, very cool.  And to close out the day in an appropriately badass way, we christened the fire pit by burning our Christmas tree, which has been drying outside since January, and is thus — essentially — explosive.  And semi explode it did! I stacked paper and bone-dry, needle-filled branches high (too high). When I lit it, people inside the house could actually hear it as it sucked in all the available oxygen and shot up with 30 foot flames. My neighbors were un-pleased. Thank goodness I hadn’t just lit the entire tree at once like the Pyro within me wanted to. I then ripped off my clothes and danced around my fire spirit while I fed in the rest of the tree (it made for some very awkward smores with the kids afterward). Now the stones of my firepit are fused together and I truly understand why natural trees end up burning down homes.

Goooooooodnight, loyal readers! . . .

The Art World vs. Tom Mays

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Damn you, Jeff Edwards, you insidious voice of reason, you.

So, if you’ve been following, you know I’m launching an ebook anthology with a bunch of my military AI short stories, called REMO.  And since the last cover I did was 96-ish % successful, I started off doing my own for this one as well.  And I’ve got a cover I like, but Jeff reasoned that hey, it turns out you are NOT a graphic designer, so you MIGHT just wanna get some options rather than commit to something developed on the fly, with a kind of art you’re unfamiliar with, and which is not necessarily evocative of a military SF anthology.

Damn correct bastard . . . .

So, on advice, I’m opening up the cover design for REMO to some actual graphic artists via the 99Designs website.  I’ve offered up a $200 bounty to the designer that can beat what I already have:

REMO Cover 1

We’re looking for a cover that is more immediately recognizable as military SF, and which looks more compelling as a thumbnail image.  All the subtle sci-fi-isms of my design seem to vanish at that size.

If you’re a graphic artist and want to compete for the bounty, go HERE.  You’ve got four days to present a proposal, so no dawdling!