Season 1 Episode 9 of The Last Ship begins human trials for the vaccine. Will it be proven to work? Will they even get volunteers for the human trials? Will they die? Also on this week’s episode, Chandler’s wife is trying to survive on land as she hopes to make contact with her husband. There was a lot to enjoy with this episode. Check out Josh’s recap after the jump!
To see Josh’s thoughts on this week’s The Last Ship episode, Trials, click here to get directly there!
Don’t need the The Last Ship episode recap for Trials? Click here to jump directly to Violet’s thoughts on the episode!
The Last Ship, Season 1 Episode 9: Trials Recap Overview
So this episode of The Last Ship is a big one–human trials for the vaccine. But first, the episode begins on land. A man is hunting, and gives a deer to a sick family. He heads home, and we see that the man is Chandler’s father, who is holed up with Chandler’s wife.
The next day, Chandler’s wife decides to head out to find a capacitor for a shortwave radio. Outside, she hears a woman calling for help, and then sees a man shoot the woman dead. Turns out there is a group of men killing the infected. The wife makes a run for it, but we see that there seemed to be an infected man hiding in the store.
Chandler’s wife makes it back to their house they are in, and they get the radio going briefly. There is a message on the radio saying to go to Olympia. They’re not sure what it is, but Chandler’s father seems skeptical of it. Meanwhile, we see that Chandler’s wife could possibly be sick….
On the Nathan James, Cossetti is given a “hero’s farewell”. Meanwhile, Dr. Scott prepares for her human trials. She needs a variety of diversities–race, age, gender, etc. Tex is worried there won’t be many volunteers.
After Cossetti’s funeral, Chandler, Slattery and Jeter discuss how to get people to volunteer. Chandler says leadership must volunteer. Jeter says he already has–and he conveniently meets many requirements for the test.
It turns out, there are plenty of volunteers. Dr. Scott makes her picks, which includes Tex among the group. Lt. Foster is also among the trials. Dr. Scott prepares the 6 subjects, first injecting the antibodies/”decoys”. The six are then moved into the quarantine area, where they will be camping for the next few days. Dr. Scott then moves to phase 2–infecting the subjects with the virus.
The six are in good spirits to start. Dr. Scott continues her checkups on the crew, and everything seems to continue going well until Kara Foster, begins to seize from fever. Dr. Scott is able to get her under control though. Other symptoms begin to show up, but nothing shared among different subjects–sore throat, weakness, rashes, numbness, and hallucinations.
Dr. Scott is puzzled about the various symptoms. Quincy begins to think that the vaccine wasn’t made strong enough. Dr. Scott remains adamant that the vaccine is fine, and these aren’t symptoms of the virus. Symptoms progress worse, until Owens, a young woman, dies. This really tears Dr. Scott up, and Quincy ups his insistence that the vaccine isn’t strong enough. Chandler asks for solutions, and Quincy says using Bertrise’s plasma could be the solution, to get stronger “decoys”. Scott warns it could kill Bertrise, but Bertrise volunteers for trial. Unfortunately, this solution doesn’t work either, and Scott breaks down, at a loss.
In the midst of the chaos, Scott discovers Foster is pregnant with Green’s baby. Green is allowed visitation, and Chandler then opens up visitation to the entire crew, as he prepares for the worst.
Quincy prepares morphine to make the patients comfortable, expecting that the trials will end with six deaths. Dr. Scott rushes in, and explains she has a solution. She explains that the human gene in the virus is the problem, and comes up with a solution to get around it.
Thankfully, Scott was right, and the crew begins to recover. Dr. Scott then says that they not only have a vaccine, but they have the cure. They can begin helping people who are infected. They celebrate, and set a course for home.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Last Ship, Season 1 Episode 9: Trials
This was a pretty intense episode of The Last Ship. I was curious when they would start human trials at the end of the last episode, and it turns out that it would be pretty quickly. I would have thought more testing would have been done for the cure in order to make sure it works, but I guess Dr. Scott wanted to jump right in!
I was surprised how many volunteers there were for trials. I figured Tex would definitely be in to do it, but thought it would be a tough recruitment from there. I guess people’s sense of duty really runs strong. I am sure it helped that a person of leadership volunteered as well. That showed good leadership in my opinion.
Since they were testing the cure so soon after the show began, I was wondering if it would really work. I was prepared for all six patients to possibly die. Tex would be a hard character to kill off though, so I still had my doubts. There’s not a whole lot of humor without Tex. And besides, he has his love story to pursue still.
But Chandler’s wife seems to be in trouble now. I have a feeling she is going to be infected, and we will have to see if Chandler can find her in time. I am curious about this vigilante-looking group that his wife has encountered. Are they trying to be the new government? Are they just a gang trying to take everything they can? Based on the scenes from next week, they are not too happy to see Chandler and his men making port near them.
The big question that comes to mind for this episode is, where does the show go from here? The cure is found, and we see the Nathan James make port in the US. Is that the end of the sea travel? Is the mission now to mass produce the cure and administer it as quickly as possible? I have a feeling the next plot device will be attempting to make enough of the cure to help everyone. It has already been hinted a couple times this season that they need a pretty big lab in order to manufacture the cure. It will be interesting to see where the show goes from here. Until then, season finale up next!
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 9 of The Last Ship: Trials
This episode had a surprising start to it – not on the ship, but on land! THIS is what I’ve been waiting for – to see how things are going back in the real world! I’ve been getting cabin fever being stuck on that boat almost this whole series, so it’s nice whenever we get a break from that. Seeing what the post-apocalyptic world looks like is definitely my main interest in these sort of global epidemic shows. It turns out that we get to see what Chandler’s family is up to. What I didn’t understand, though, was why Chandler’s wife would go out without any sort of mask, when we just saw Chandler’s dad using a mask! You’d think these people would take proper precautions! Ugh. Now it looks like she may have caught the virus from the dead guy that was at the electronics store. But, no matter, I’m sure Chandler will show up just in time to administer the cure.
Ah yes, that’s right, the cure, not just the vaccine. Not only can they give a vaccine to prevent people from catching the virus, but they can also administer a cure to get rid of the virus in those people who already have it. This was a very emotional episode, and I found it admirable that so many people stepped up to volunteer for the trials. Although it seemed kind of fast that they had already moved on to human trials. You’d think they might have some other way to avoid infecting and endangering the lives of their own – say, maybe they could have taken some Russian soldiers, but I guess they had to have a larger gene pool variation than that.
At first, I thought it would go smoothly for the most part, with only an anomaly or two. But then when everyone in the trial got sick, I wasn’t really sure how many people would die. I was sure they wouldn’t kill off Tex, since he’s the comic relief. And if anyone was going to die, I would have guessed Owens, since she’s the volunteer that we know the least. But other than that, it was anyone’s guess. I also find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t test the females for pregnancy in the first place! I know they’re not supposed to fraternize, but Dr. Scott and everyone else knew that Kara and Danny were in a relationship, so that seems like the first thing to check for if you want viable candidates. It seems really irresponsible that Dr. Scott would endanger a baby’s life like that. Good thing that the baby will be fine and be born immune. Those drugs really could have messed that baby up.
Overall, I did enjoy this episode. It was very suspenseful, and like I said, we got to see things that were going on outside of the ship, back in the “real world,” which made things a lot more interesting. Looks like the crew of the Nathan James will be having a run in with this gang of people who are going around shooting the infected. I’m curious to know what exactly their agenda is, and if they’ll be getting any of the vaccine or the cure. I’m looking forward to how the vaccine and the cure will be dispersed going forward, and what the rest of the “real world” looks like at this point! Bring on the season finale!
Scenes from The Last Ship, Season 1 Episode 10: No Place Like Home
Here are scenes from the season finale of The Last Ship, titled No Place Like Home:
I really need to finish this series. I’ve got them all DVR’d but I’ve been too lazy to go and finish them. LOL!