The Last Ship, coming to TV

[raketenjagdpanzer]

All jokes about Michael Bay aside, this looks like a good series. I read part of the book years ago and found it too bleak, too depressing...like a combination of Down to a Sunless Sea meets On The Beach. But this is something else!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZ6bpIjeLs

[Raellus]

Looks like it'll either be really good or really bad. If I had to put money on it, I'd go with the latter (CH-53s attacking an Arleigh Burke class DDG?!?). Still, it definitely looks worth a try.

[stormlion1]

Its funny, I remember reading the book a long time ago but forgot the name of it until I heard about them bringing it to TV. I remember it not being about a virus though.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Its funny, I remember reading the book a long time ago but forgot the name of it until I heard about them bringing it to TV. I remember it not being about a virus though.

The book was an 80s cold war gone hot novel that dealt with a lone Arleigh Burke class missile destroyer getting "the" flash message. Fires the missiles its ordered to, then receives no further message from National Command. A bit later they get an automated signal from Norfolk ordering all remaining elements of the Navy to return, but the message just keeps repeating until it degrades to gibberish (shades of On the Beach).

Rather than that, the captain cruises into the Med and later the English Channel and they find out that most population centers have been bombed out of existence and there are very few if any survivors.

Getting no further word from anyone of authority in the US the Captain makes the decision to sail to an island out of the worst of the fallout-laden weather patterns and wait for word from someone, or just settle down (it's a mostly male crewed ship but there are some women onboard). Part of the ship's command staff and some of the crew however claim that their last orders were to return to Norfolk and argue for that. Rather than have a bloody mutiny on his hands and knowing he can't imprison the dissenters forever or execute them, he chooses to give them the captain's launch and enough fuel and supplies to (hopefully) make it back there. That group is never heard from again.

Along the way they encounter a Soviet SSBN, the Pushkin, which like the Nathan James, has declared itself independent of command and is seeking safe haven. The two commands agree to seek out some refuge.

They find their "island paradise", but more trouble occurs: the crew is almost unanimous in their decision to rid the new community of nuclear weapons, and fires the remaining missiles, but one detonates prematurely and irradiates the island and kills much of the surviving crew. The Pushkin arrives and in it the remaining members of both crews sail for McMurdo Station in Antarctica to try and rebuild society.

[Michael Lewis]

Acting looks terrible.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

It's a Michael Bay movie, all focus will be on making things explode and the action scenes. Story, acting, coherence, continuity, logic, all are secondary or of no importance compared to getting teenagers and twenty somethings to see the movie.
He doesn't make movies for us, he makes movies to convince teenagers to spend money in cinemas.