Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

The Last Ship: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

New Frontier

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 20, 2016

Spoiler warning: This review assumes that the reader is familiar with Season One of The Last Ship. Readers new to the series should stop here and consult the Season One review for a spoiler-free introduction.

TNT's original series The Last Ship is TV popcorn fare (or, as my colleague Kenneth Brown dubbed it, "Big Dumb Fun"), but it's well-made stuff. Season Two builds on the show's strengths, while effectively avoiding some of the pitfalls that plagued the inaugural outing. Co-creators Hank Steinberg and Steven Kane have carefully mapped out plotlines to avoid the episodic wandering that sometimes undercut the dramatic tension of Season One. The recurring cast has settled comfortably into their roles, aided by some colorful new arrivals. The stunt and effects teams have designed bigger and better firefights, hand-to-hand combat and displays of pyrotechnics. And the writers' room has zeroed in on the peculiar mixture of post-apocalyptic despair and patriotic derring-do that makes The Last Ship an addictive guilty pleasure.

The thirteen episodes of Season Two (three more than the first season) first ran on TNT from June 21 through September 6, 2015. The third season debuts on June 12, 2016.

The ship of the title is the U.S.S. Nathan James, a naval destroyer that becomes humanity's last hope when a global pandemic, the Red Flu, decimates the earth's population. While the world collapsed, the ship was deployed to the northern polar icecaps in search of the Red Flu's "primordial strain", from which virologist Dr. Rachel Scott (Rhona Mitra) hoped to develop a cure. By the end of Season One, Dr. Scott's efforts had proved successful, and Cmdr. Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) set course for home, docking at Baltimore with the good news.

But the world that Chandler and his crew left behind no longer exists. The friendly welcome offered by former Presidential advisor Amy Granderson (Alfre Woodard), who also happens to be the mother of one of Chandler's crew, was a ruse. Granderson's real objective was to steal the cure and mass-produce it for the select group she has assembled in a fortified facility, where Granderson is creating a new America according to principles that sound suspiciously eugenic. Those she deems unworthy are left to die in the crumbling streets of Baltimore, and their bodies are gathered and burned as fuel to power the generators supplying her facility with electricity. As Season One ended, Granderson's forces kidnapped Dr. Scott and seized the Nathan James. Meanwhile, Cmdr. Chandler was shattered to discover that he had returned with the cure too late to save his wife (Tracy Middendorf) from the Red Flu. He does, however, rescue his two children and their grandfather (Bill Smitrovich).

The fight to defeat Granderson and retake the Nathan James proceeds on multiple fronts and lasts for several episodes. It also inflicts heavy casualties on all sides. The battle establishes a template for the rest of the season, as Chandler and his crew repeatedly discover that finding the cure was only the beginning. The challenges of distributing it to a world in which governments, infrastructure and social cohesion have all been destroyed are even more daunting.

Granderson is just the first enemy that Chandler and his crew must defeat. A more formidable opponent emerges in the persons of two English brothers, Sean and Ned Ramsey (Brían F. O'Byrne and Nick Court), who have seized control of a British submarine staffed with a motley crew of irregulars. The Ramseys' plan for rebuilding civilization is even more grandiose than Granderson's, and it is driven by a messianic fervor that treats the Red Flu as the modern-day equivalent of Noah's flood, cleansing the world of those judged by God to be unworthy. As the season progresses, the Ramseys' reach is revealed to be much wider than the immediate crew of their vessel, thanks to an innovative system of communications through which they have gathered a cult-like following in both Europe and America.

The cure aboard the Nathan James represents a threat to the Ramseys' vision of a new world order, and they do everything in their power to destroy the ship, its crew and its cargo. Assisting the Ramseys is a familiar face whose reappearance will come as no surprise to viewers who paid close attention to the final battle between the Nathan James and the Russian ship that was Chandler's chief adversary in Season One. Caught in the middle is a former U.S. government official, Jeffrey Michener (Mark Moses), who may be the key to reconstituting a legitimate authority that can rally the surviving populace of America.

Eric Dane's Cmdr. Chandler remains the moral anchor of The Last Ship; his devotion to duty, discipline and tradition becomes even more intense as he suppresses his grief and guilt over his wife's death. The romantic tension between Chandler and Dr. Scott is sharpened by the captain's newly single status, but there is no opportunity for them to explore it, as the pair repeatedly find themselves at odds on critical issues. Other members of the crew must deal with family matters, now that the Nathan James has returned home. Some experience joyful reunions, others find their worst fears confirmed, and still others must endure the agony of uncertainty, as the fate of their loved ones remains elusive.

Joining the crew in Season Two are two new recruits from the Navy's Joint Operations Training Program: Ravi Bivas (Inbar Lavi), a veteran of the Israeli army, whose small stature belies her finely honed fighting skills; and Wolf Taylor (Bren Foster), a member of the Australian navy's special forces unit and a martial arts expert. Both quickly become valuable assets of the Nathan James's Vulture Team, the elite fighting group that includes Lt. Danny Green (Travis Van Winkle) and Lt. Carlton Burk (Jocko Sims). The irreverent civilian contractor, Tex Nolan (John Pyper-Ferguson), whom the ship picked up at Guantanamo in Season One and whose resemblance to Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider makes him easy to spot among the Nathan James's spit-and-polish crew, remains one of the show's most consistently surprising characters.

The medical "science" of The Last Ship doesn't bear close scrutiny. The breakthroughs attributed to Dr. Scott in Season Two are dictated by the needs of the plot, not by credibility. But no one should be watching The Last Ship for its portrayal of virology. It's a show about heroes who remain heroic even when all is lost.

The Last Ship: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Last Ship is shot digitally by a team of cinematographers with extensive TV credits led by Cort Fey (Under the Dome). According to IMDb, the production uses the Red Epic Dragon with post-production on a digital intermediate. Although Warner is the producer and distributor, TNT has produced the three 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays presenting Season Two's thirteen episodes. The image on these discs is comparable to the Season One discs reviewed by Kenneth Brown: bold, aggressive and heavily saturated reds, greens and blues (especially blues) dominate scenes on the Nathan James. By contrast, the scenes aboard the Ramseys' vessel tend to be softer and muted. Contrast is excellent, blacks are solid, and the image is free from distortion, banding and artifacts.

The only negative is a slight falloff in detail, especially in longer shots, which is sufficiently subtle that it might go unnoticed, if not for the intense colors and contrast. The culprit, I suspect, is some degree of filtering to facilitate bitrates at an unusually low level, even for digitally acquired footage. The average varies slightly from episode to episode, but it consistently falls around 15.87 Mbps. What's particularly unfortunate is that there was no need for TNT to aim for such tight compression. Each of the three BD-50s in this set has vast amounts of unused space (anywhere from 15 GB to 20GB) that could have been used to maximize image quality. It's puzzling why anyone would refuse to use these discs to their capacity, but perhaps TNT is following the aggressive practices formerly employed by Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, but now (thankfully) abandoned for the most part. Maybe they'll do better with Season Three.

The Last Ship: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the previous Blu-ray set, Season Two of The Last Ship arrives with a 5.1 mix, encoded in lossless Dolby TrueHD, that is among TV's most immersive and involving. Gunfire, explosions, whirring helicopter blades and torpedo impacts all register forcefully, as do the punches and body-blows of hand-to-hand combat. The omnipresent chirps, beeps and alarms of the Nathan James' equipment surround the listener. The ebb and flow of oceans and inland waterways supply critical ambiance, and unique venues like the nightmarish electricity plant in Baltimore have distinctive sonic signatures. Dialogue is always clear, and the action/thriller scoring by Jim Dooley (Obsessed) and James S. Levine (American Horror Story) blends seamlessly.

The Last Ship: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Inside the Episodes (1080p; 1.78:1; 36:17) (discs 1-3): As with Season One, each episode is accompanied by a brief behind-the-scenes featurette. Creators Kane and Steinberg and director Jack Bender are the most frequent participants.



• Exclusive Look (1080p; 1.78:1; 16:25): Each of these promotional shorts focuses on one or more character(s) and actor(s).
• Eric Dane
• Adam Baldwin
• Rhona Mitra
• John Pyper-Ferguson
• Bren Foster
• Enlisted Men



• The Making of Season Two (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:09): Also promotional in nature, this featurette examines the scale of the production and the challenges accompanying it.



• Vulture Team (1080p; 1.78:1; 33:42): Although you wouldn't suspect it from the title, this featurette is the heart of Season Two's extras. It focuses on the action squad known as "Vulture Team", which is led by Capt. Chandler and includes Lt. Carlton Burk, Lt. Danny Green and, in Season Two, Wolf Taylor and Ravi Bivas.

The Last Ship: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Like The Last Ship's first season, Season Two ends on a cliffhanger, but it's a different kind. Season One left the entire mission and crew of the Nathan James in jeopardy, whereas by the end of Season Two, so much has changed that it's unclear how Cmdr. Chandler's ship can remain the central focus (or, for that matter, whether it will even continue to be Chandler's ship). Steinberg and Kane have so far been pretty good about avoiding arbitrary "twists" in their plot, but the conclusion of Season Two felt tacked on and contrived. It remains to be seen how the creators and their team of writers can get the Nathan James back out to sea and into the fray in a way that feels organic. Meanwhile, with some minor quibbles over the video quality, Season Two is recommended.