Javier Lopez
Urban Legend
|
|
|
« on: 10-25-2012 12:50 »
|
|
Well yesterday i watched the pilot.. me being an submarine (and generally naval ship among many other things) geek.. The series is like a mix between Crimson Tide and Silent Service... Silent service was an anime (and i think a manga too) about a nuclear secret japan submarine wich goes rogue and declares itself a nation called Yamato to protect the world against the nuclear threat the US and USSR represent.. Last resort goes about a ficticial Ohio class boomer wich receeves orders to launch a nuclear strike , the Captain and XO concuur to confirm it , and when they refuse to launch unless order is confirmed throught the proper chanel , other US forces attack then. Given for death they retreat to a french island in the indian ocean where they are attacked again and they declare a 200m exclusion zone threating to attack with nukes anyone attacking the island until the issue is resolved.. Well sounds good... tought what i saw in the pilot wasnt much good yet... i will watch the next episodes but its like judging by the enormous amount of plot holes and goofs in the pilot things doesnt look like going for better.. now dive dive dive: -US Navy would NEVER send a boomer to extract an special forces team.. NEVER.. boomers are to hide in the end of the world for months , hiden not only from other forces but even of US forces (only almiralls know where they are).. so the Navy would never send them to expose to pick some boat... they would send an attack boat wich is their role.
-When they are about to launch the Captain and XO put their keys ... and later they even launch an ICBM at US .... ok the producers have seen the Hunt of Red October and Crimson Tide.. but even seeing Crimson Tide would have revealed to them than sinze 1997 the final button push to launch is pushed by the pressident himself.. boomer crews cant launch anymore nukes on their own .. so no matter if the order came throught official or reserve chanel.. the president would still need to push the launch button and so the order would need per see to be confirmed by him.. the plot fails heavility here .. for the same reason the crew wouldnt had been able to launch the ICBM
-Sets could been way better... ok its a show after all ..we wont require them a set on the level of the Hunt for Red October (USS Dallas bridge was almost perfect) but.. 3D lame animations of everything in the sub? officers standing in consoles with touch screens with animated graphics? sonar having a radar screen AND being in the same room as everyone else?
-The launch of the ICBM at washington was totally fail ... first off tridents even II variants probably wouldnt had range to reach DC from the pacific.. second tridents are ICBMs, and so they are vehicules carrying multiple warheads , 8 MIRV heads to be precise, they open in stratosphere so all 8 fly independtly to their targets.. here we see the missile fly into atmosphere "as one piece" .. fly over DC .. in one piece .. and hit the ocean... in one piece as a single unit.. even if it had only one target it would opened up all MIRVs doing roughly same route
-Plot is too open... it would had a mystery if they would had keep in the dark from the rest of the world and their quest would be to contact proper authorities or general public to inform of whats going on... but here they allready do it in the open, they inform the whole world of what happent and whats going on.. they contact the "good" admirallty and autorithies.. so whats the mystery now?
-Ohh local mafia moob is so "badass" , he sees a US boomer arrive, first off he tries to blackmail them into acepting conditions and then when fails kidnaps two crew... for what? he has literally like filthy 5 moobs with him... and he goes straight to blackmail a nuclear US submarine as soon as he sees it without knowing whats going on yet .... and even with a SEAL team on board (wich he meets first?)
Oh come on its that the best they could do? they only had left to have that "bad guy" have curved up moustaches
-The sexy woman and her unnecesary sexy scenes wich i guess are for attracting audience had a rushed plot about the antimagnetic device in the sub... at least she is used to reveal info to the admirall but still while magnetic signature is a factor, noise (more specific reactor noise) is still a larget stealth enemy
[/spoilers]
By the way.. a sub called USS Colorado would be launched in the near future, but it will be a Virginia class
|
|
|
|
|
|
Javier Lopez
Urban Legend
|
|
I don't see why nuclear subs would need the president to launch. I mean, as mobile nuclear platforms that hide out in dark corners of the globe, I assumed part of their mission is to function somewhat on their own in the most dire of consequences, including the removal of top authority (ie the president, etc.) in really critical situations. I suppose that might be too much power for one submarine to have by itself though.
That was the game in the 70-80 and most of 90s .. but in the end it was decided that it was in fact too dangerous to left nuclear weapons at the disposal of just one crew.. its extremely unlikelly that someone can on their own or even with some few allies trigger boomer missiles.. but just in case why not delegate the final button to the person in charge? That also avoids confusions and miss interpretations.. In crimson tide for example they get a launch order, and just when they are reciving a second order they get attacked and lost comunications with the rest of the world ... so they have a valid launch order and not abort order and no way to quickly veryfy it.. making the system so it requires the direct command from the president finishes ambiguities or the posibility of not being able to abort. Also unlike in this series launching nukes even in the old times doesnt require just 2 keys... there are up to 5 keys to insert , it requieres the active confirmation and cooperation of the weapons officer and tactical officer too. Even russian subs had a similar system ... actually Crimson Tide was insipired by an incident in the cuban missile crisis.. a russian sub was deep charged by accident by US forces and lost comunications , the captain interpretated it as the start of world war III and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at the blockade fleet that fired on them and the political officer agreed with them , but the XO Vasily Arkhipov refused to carry the order and he prevented the launch until they surfaced and got confirmation from Moscow of not firing.. at that time (1962) it was just necesary in soviet ships that all 3 superior officers (captain, XO and political officer or Zampolit) agreed
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tachyon
DOOP Secretary
|
|
I worked with many ex-nukes (submariners on boomers). IF a missile was spun up and IF it already had the targeting loaded and IF certain other things were done and the ONLY thing left was to turn the firing keys (one of the keys was a button on a cord with a guard covering it) the key interlocks could have been bypassed and the missile launched if a couple of people were sufficiently determined. In practice, a missile would never be that close to launch, though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Frisco17
DOOP Secretary
|
|
This sounds every bit as terrible as I expected it to be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Javier Lopez
Urban Legend
|
|
Well thats it.. show's over I have to admit that the ending was way better than expected.. it was quite rushed but as said the show was cancelled and they had to tweak the season finale into a series finale.. and i had guessed it wasnt possible to tweak a cliffhanger into a finale.. well they managed to did it.. and it was inevitable for it to feel rushed as it was added in short time ... Considering the options i cant complaint much, i would love to see the mafia boss dead.. thats my main concern , and in the end he was useless, the show would been better without him , he did nothing much for the history overall .. also dont understand why they left him to live... he knows about the strange minerals in the island and the french NATO lady said that if he could he would ruin the island to get them... killing him would not only be quite satisfacting , but would close the island plot , mafia guy is dead - island is safe .. the end.
So the US Goverment falls... the conspiracy is all out, Killye exacts revenge on the president himself (didnt saw that coming) , the crew comes back home more or less clean (at least the COB survived, he had his redemption moment at least, least they could do after turning him into a douchebag in the last 2 episodes), the Colorado is gone and so is Marcus, XO gets his wife back (also in the end her kidnapping was pretty much pointless)..
Still in the end it was a decent finale for a quite missleaded series.. it ends , but would liked to know more about the plans of the "evil" pressident and administration, what they wanted to acomplish by sinking the Colorado... and why exactly they nuked Pakistan .. we know how they planted fake evidence , murdered a NATO inspector and then nuked it.. but apart from the def secretary dialoge about "reclaiming their position" (why? did USA ever lost his "best of the world" self proclaimed position ever?) we dont know why... and for what is told to us the entire world was position against USA, wich cant be good unless you are the Galactic Empire and have death stars....
|
|
|
|
|