Rating summary
Movie | | 3.5 |
Video | | 4.0 |
Audio | | 4.5 |
Extras | | 1.0 |
Overall | | 3.5 |
The Last Ship: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie Review
Alone Again
Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 22, 2018
Spoiler warning: This review assumes that the reader is familiar
with prior
seasons of The Last Ship. Readers new to the series should stop here and consult
the Season
One review for a
spoiler-free introduction.
How long can you prolong an apocalypse? That's the challenge facing every dystopian tale,
especially if it's a TV series. At a certain point, the world either has to get saved or it ends, and if
the story drags on for too long, its credibility seeps away.
The creative team behind TNT's original series,
The Last Ship, has been struggling with that
dilemma since the end of
Season Two, when a cure for the deadly Red Flu was discovered
and dispersed throughout the U.S., while the federal government was reconstituted in St. Louis.
At that point, the battleship
Nathan James could no longer be dubbed the "last" ship, as its heroic
commander, Tom Chandler (Eric Dane), left his bridge to become the new administration's
military chief and the Navy and other armed forces began to reorganize under his leadership. The
series seemed to have reached its conclusion, which is probably why creators Steven Kane and
Hank Steinberg felt it necessary to cap the season with a last-minute shocker by killing off a
major character.
Season
Three struggled to
generate plot lines in the aftermath of the Red Flu's cure, diluting the
series' focus on heavy weaponry and military heroics with geopolitical maneuvering, government
conspiracies and an extended prison camp subplot. By the season's conclusion, the new U.S.
government was in shambles, and Capt. Chandler had left both the bridge and the Navy, taking
his two children (whose mother died before Chandler could reach her with the cure) and
disappearing for parts unknown. But the apocalypse appeared to be over. The continuing
challenge was to pick up the pieces of civilization and move on.
For Season Four, though, Kane and Steinberg devised a clever stratagem to reboot the threat of
mass extinction and return
The Last Ship to its original mission statement. As people are once
again dying en masse and naval stations are being abandoned, Cmdr. Mike Slattery (Adam
Baldwin), now the ship's captain, sums up the situation succinctly: "The
Nathan James is once
again on her own."
Season Four was limited to ten episodes, down from the previous two seasons' thirteen. It was
filmed back-to-back with the upcoming fifth season, which TNT has already announced will be
the series conclusion.
Sixteen months after Chandler left the
Nathan James, a new threat has emerged. The virus that
caused the Red Flu has mutated and is now known as "Red Rust", because it attacks plant life
instead of people. With the world's food supply rapidly disappearing, starvation and riots have all
but destroyed the fledgling governments attempting to salvage the five percent of humanity
that survived the plague.
Now the world's only hope is a rare strain of ancient African palm tree that appears to be
immune to the virus. Its genetics hold the key to creating new, Red Rust-resistant crops. As the
series opens, Cmdr. Slattery and the
Nathan James have been tasked with securing the only
known supply of these precious seeds from the world seed bank in Morocco and delivering them
to an international cooperative of agricultural scientists who hope to propagate new crops and
feed the world. As usual, if the
Nathan James is "the spear of the Navy" (as the crew's caps
proudly proclaim), the tip of that spear is the elite commando group known as Vulture Team, led
by Lts. Danny Green (Travis Van Winkle) and Carlton Burk (Jocko Sims). Australian
Special Forces fighter Wolf Taylor (Bren Foster) and intelligence agent Sasha Cooper
(Bridget Regan) are permanent members of the squad, the former noted for his martial arts
expertise and the latter for her linguistic prowess. (Sasha's proficiency in Mandarin and Japanese
is joined this season by equally fluent Arabic. Seriously: How many languages can one person speak?)
But
Nathan James isn't the only party after the African palm seeds. The crew faces a succession
of ruthless and increasingly dangerous competitors, starting with a thief named Mahmoud (Faruk
Amireh) and continuing with a warlord, Omar (Anthony Azizi), both of whom are looking to sell
the seeds to the highest bidder. Then there's a Greek-American pair of siblings, Giorgio and
Lucia Vellek (Jackson Rathbone and Sibylla Deen), whose interest in the seeds is unclear but
who appear to be well-backed by powerful interests, including the Greek navy (or what remains
of it). Giorgio also has a number of side enterprises, including an organized fight club, in which the
winners get to survive—and eat. Then there's a final opponent that
Nathan James has to
confront in its quest to restore the world's food supply, but it's an adversary who can't be
identified without spoilers and is as fanatical as the messianic Ramseys in Season Two. He also has a plan for world domination that's a little different than most.
Season Four is set entirely in and around the Mediterranean Sea, which provides the creative
team with new vistas and the crew of the
Nathan James with new challenges. It also prompts
periodic references to the voyage of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, which are entertaining if
somewhat tangential. The ship's crew has been expanded with some interesting returnees,
notably Lt. Kara Foster (Marissa Neitling), still married to Danny Green and now the ship's
Tactical Action Officer, and Capt. Joseph Meylan (Emerson Brooks), who has remained aboard
the
Nathan James since his own ship was sunk in Season Three. New faces include Azima
Kandie (Jodie Turner-Smith), a veteran of the Kenyan Navy who brings impressive fighting
abilities to Vulture Team and who generates sexual sparks with Wolf (although, given the series'
history of killing off Wolf's girlfriends, Azima should probably steer clear). Kathleen Nolan
(Jade Chynoweth), the daughter of military contractor Tex Nolan, who was killed defending
Chandler at the end of Season Three, is now training as a gunnery officer in
Nathan James'
helicopter, where she submerges her mourning in a determination to master a new set of deadly
skills. Also in the mix is an MI6 operative, Fletcher (Jonathan Howard), whose relationship with
Sasha is more than professional and who, like most career spies, probably knows more than he's
telling.
And what of Capt. Chandler? The crew hasn't heard a word from him since he walked off the
ship, as Chandler has attempted to fade into civilian life in a Greek fishing village with his two
children and a new girlfriend. But unexpected events and the ingenuity of screenwriters contrive
to reunite Chandler and the crew of the
Nathan James. The catalyst is Giorgio Vellek, who, in
addition to his other pursuits, runs a protection racket along the Greek coast, extorting the local
fishermen who are already struggling to sustain a livelihood from the dwindling supplies of
seafood in the Med. Chandler's innate hostility to injustice is aroused, and so is Giorgio's
curiosity, as he immediately senses that Chandler is much more than he seems. It takes nearly
half the season, but eventually Chandler is reunited with his former shipmates. ("Of all the gin
joints in all the towns", mutters Slattery when he first sights Chandler in the last place he might
have predicted.) The reunion isn't an easy one, after Chandler's long absence, but if there's one
value that remains central to
The Last Ship, it's the special bond among comrades-in-arms. By
the season's end, Chandler is once again leaping into the fray with Vulture Team, backed by the
powerful weaponry and skillful dedication of the vessel and crew that remain the Navy's
unsinkable standard-bearers, even in the worst of times.
The Last Ship: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
With only ten episodes instead of thirteen, Season Four of The Last Ship fits onto two discs more
gracefully than the sardine-like packing to which TNT subjected Season Three, even though
Warner and TNT still refuse to take full advantage of the available space, with over 20 GB left unused on each BD-50. The
average bitrate of just
under 17 Mbps slightly improves on
that of even Season Two,
and the image is correspondingly superior, with an absence of
compression artifacts and less falloff in detail. It may not be the best possible image, but it's a
small improvement over broadcast and streaming versions.
As far as I have been able to determine, the show continues to be shot on the Red Epic Dragon,
with cinematographer Christopher Baffa (Glee and
Nip/Tuck) responsible for the bulk of Season
Four's episodes. Scenes aboard the Nathan James continue to feature bold, aggressive and
heavily saturated reds, greens and blues (especially blues), while scenes in the various
Mediterranean locales favor earth tones and more delicate, pastoral colors. Contrast is excellent,
blacks are solid, and I did not observe any banding or aliasing. From a video perspective, this is
the best presentation since Season
One.
The Last Ship: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
Season Four's lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack continues The Last Ship's proud tradition
of aggressively loud, active and immersive audio mixes, with plenty of small weapons fire,
artillery shell blasts, grenade explosions and missile strikes to enliven the proceedings. Amateur
boxing matches organized by one of the season's villains offer a cacophony of body blows and
cheering crowds. The ship's tactical operations headquarters is filled with beeping alerts and
blaring alarms. The whir and hum of equipment in a lab run by an evil genius gives the place a
distinct sonic character. Waves, wakes and ship engines add to the ambiance. Dialogue remains
clear and intelligible, even when the ship's crew is spitting out mouthfuls of military jargon and
yelling commands back and forth in the heat of battle. Composers Jim Dooley
(Obsessed) and
James S. Levine (American Horror Story
) resume their duties
and deliver yet another rousing
action/thriller score.
The Last Ship: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
- Inside The Last Ship (disc 1) (1080p; 1.78:1; 17:50): A "play all" option is included
for
this collection of short behind-the-scenes featurettes focusing on different aspects of
Season Four. There's a fair amount of overlap and repetition among the five segments.
- Season 4
- The "Med"
- Villains
- Tom Chandler
- Nostos
- The Last Ship's Odyssey (disc 2) (1080p; 1.78:1; 12:33): This featurette explores the
inspiration drawn by the series' creators from Homer's epic poem. Some of the interview
clips are repeated from "Inside The Last Ship", but the comments by classics Professor
Vincent Farenga of USC are new (and one of the most interesting parts of the extras).
The Last Ship: The Complete Fourth Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
As the Nathan James prepares for its final voyage on TNT, one can only speculate at the ending
that its creators have designed. The series now exists in a world that has been decimated by
disease, famine and the collapse of every major national and social institution. Most of the crew
have lost all or some of their families, so that the ship is now their only home and the crew their only kin. If they make it back to America (and this
would be the third time), what chaos will they find? Whatever fate the writers room has in store for The Last Ship, you can be
sure that the crew's discipline will never falter, and their commitment to military tradition and
the values of truth, justice and the American way will remain steadfast to the end.
Recommended.