The Last Ship Archives - Channel Guide Magazine

The Sounds of the Series: The Last Ship

June 21, 2015 Kellie Freeze 34

TNT’s dramatic thriller, The Last Ship chronicles a global catastrophe that nearly decimates the world’s population. Because of its positioning, the Navy destroyer U.S.S. Nathan James avoided falling victim to the devastating tragedy. But now the crew and its captain exist in a chaotic world with few survivors. As the second season opens, Captain Chandler (Eric Dane), XO Slattery (Adam Baldwin), Dr. Rachel Scott (Rhona Mitra) and the rest of the crew come home to a world they no longer recognize. I spoke to Emmy winning composers Jim Dooley and James S. Levine about the musical elements that turn the […]

The Last Ship Season 1 finale recap: The Dog Returns

August 25, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson Comments Off

It’s season finale time in the plague-ridden world of The Last Ship. The penultimate episode saw Dr. Rachel Scott officially test the vaccine on something other than monkeys and although it didn’t go well at first, the end result was something that not only inoculated the test subjects, but cured them of the infection entirely. It also tracked the progress of the Chandler family and we saw Captain Tom’s wife unceremoniously infect her entire family, apparently not recognizing the symptoms of the disease that has killed everyone they once knew. That leaves this final episode with the task of mass […]

The Last Ship Episode 9 recap: Who wants to do shots!? … Nobody?

August 19, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson 1

It’s been a long road as we head into episode 9, fellow fans of TNT’s The Last Ship. The intrepid crew of the Nathan James has faced a worldwide pandemic and the realization that they’re mankind’s last hope, plus Al Qaeda agents, crazy former drug lords, and a dogged Russian destroyer whose sole purpose in the apocalypse was to hunt them down. They accomplished all this while running on minimal food and fuel and dealing with the reality that most of their loved ones are probably dead. In last week’s episode our hearty crew cured a virus, saved a family, […]

The Last Ship Episode 8 recap: Spies, Lies, and Manly Cries

August 11, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson Comments Off

Oh dear, oh dear! It’s been a long week, so let’s jog our memories, shall we? When last the audience left the Nathan James it had just picked up a Jamaican girl named Patrice (who is immune to the virus and possibly humanities’ last hope). In the process they lost Captain Chandler and Tex, who were picked up by the Russians, although the crew has no way of knowing that for sure. The Russians have a Norwegian scientist with a secret remedy to the virus but still need Dr. Scott to complete a cure. Now that they have real leverage […]

The Last Ship Episode 7 recap: Wherefore Art Thou, Captain?

August 4, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson 1

If you thought last week’s attempt at a bottle episode lacked network TV violence, The Last Ship has it covered in episode 7! We open on a sweet, unexplained, high seas gun battle between two of the Nathan James’s boats and mysterious Russian boat. Somebody in a TV show finally points out how hard it is to shoot a gun in a moving vehicle and the crew (including Tex and Commander Chandler) call for backup in the form of an armed helicopter. The Blackhawk successfully drives off the Russians but the Commander’s boat is damaged and sinking, forcing them to […]

The Last Ship Episode 6: Where Have All the Calm Men Gone?

July 28, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson Comments Off

As we fade in on “Lockdown,” Episode 6 of TNT’s The Last Ship, the music clues us in that things on the ship are tense as we scan past angry, tense faces. A comms officer mentions that people are frustrated that they can’t communicate with the outside world. The ship’s officers discuss over dinner the impact of keeping last week’s events in Nicaragua on the crew and decide that trust is necessary for them to continue on with enough time for Rachel to make the vaccine and safely deliver it. The Captain makes a ship-wide announcement that we’re headed home to the U.S. and that […]

The Last Ship recap episode 5: ‘El Toro’

July 21, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson 1

As we begin episode 5 of TNT’s The Last Ship, our intrepid crew has landed safely on a tropical island and the ship still needs repairs, but the good Doctor Scott and her partner are collecting monkeys to begin testing a vaccine for the virus. Love is in the air as former Gitmo guard and new crewman, Tex, begins flirting with Dr. Scott and tries to coax her out of solitude and encourage her to bond with the rest of the crew. Turns out there’s too much unrest in Costa Rica to get safe passage into the jungle via dry […]

The Last Ship episode 3 recap: I Wonder if He’s the Bad Guy?

July 6, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson 6

Episode 3 of TNT’s The Last Ship grabs last episode’s cliff hanger and keeps on being underwhelming. Three episodes in, The Last Ship has started suffering from a lack of character development and although the pacing of this episode was significantly better, the tensions were empty of emotion or any real investment in the characters. We finally meet the Russians who have been chasing our ship since the Arctic and learn the reason for Dr. Tophet’s treason, which is great. The romantic subplot was less great, however, and more infuriating. Trapped in the harbor Guantanamo, this could have been a […]

The Last Ship Episode 2 recap: Who Let the Doc Out?

June 29, 2014 Sara S. Gustafson 7

If the first episode of Michael Bay’s The Last Ship was a picture-perfect Subway-commercial sub, the second episode was more like what you actually get at Subway: a lackluster sandwich made by a sullen teenager that still manages to taste better for you than most other fast food. • RELATED: The Last Ship premiere recap: “Is the Dog Dead Yet? “Welcome to Gitmo” failed to deliver on the drive of the first episode, seemed to lose the plot about halfway through, and then snapped itself back together in the last thirty seconds. I still have hope for the rest of […]