This episode begins with a flashback to give us a view of Dr. Vellick's backstory. The crew of the Nathan James find an island used as a Lazaretto back in the days of the plague that might have clues to the location of Dr. Vellick and the seeds. Vulture Team infiltrate the Lazaretto by commingling with prisoners to get inside the building to gather intelligence. CMC Jeter's injury affects his performance while fighting, it appears that he won't be able to keep it a secret much longer. At Dr. Vellicks lab, surprising details are revealed of how his intentions could affect the entire world and a view of why he thinks humans need to change their behavior. There's plenty of action on land in this episode with hand to hand combat, SCPO Wolf's martial arts, and Vulture Team's guns but no big explosions or missiles being fired from ships. Most of the episode is shot on land and not much screen time is given to the leadership on the Nathan James, but I'm sure we will see more action at sea very soon. There's a surprising aha moment in this episode! Toward the end of the episode, proof that Sasha's instincts about Fletcher are correct.
This episode provides more depth into several characters from this season, like Giorgio, and gives details about how Dr. Vellick plans to change humans according to his weird beliefs of evolution while providing the world with uninfected food. Before this episode, I assumed the doctor was using his ability to create uninfected food as ransom to control the leaders of countries, like he did with the Greek Vice Admiral Demetrius but it's revealed that his plans are much more sinister.
I love how the writers use Homer's Odyssey as the literary device of allusion in this season: sometimes it's subtle like when Captain Slattery refers to the Lazaretto as "the land of the dead" when Sasha explains that a former Lazaretto was reopened during the red death to house the infected and they all died there, but other times references to Homer's Odyssey are more direct, like the titles of the episodes and when PO2 Miller was actually reading the book titled "The Odyssey". Back in Season 2 episode 1 when LT. Alisha Granderson is given a tour of the executive wing in Amy Granderson's building, there's a classroom where the students are learning about Homer, with words from the ancient epic Greek poems written on the board.
The comparison of the title of this episode to the building where Giorgio's previous fighters are being held and tested is brilliant. A Lazaretto, also called a lazaret, or lazzaretto in Italian, is a building or ship, usually located on islands, that were used in the past as quarantines for people with contagious diseases traveling the seas. Lazarettos were used in the 1500s and 1600s to quarantine plague and cholera victims, and some were used as hospitals up until the early 1900s. The very first Lazaret was located in Venice, Italy in 1423.
There's a clear message in this episode that when things get really bad, such as the fate of the human race, that not only individuals, but even allied countries will think of themselves first and resort to violence, putting their own needs and loyalties above their morals.
It's refreshing that The Last Ship is a multi genre series that includes hard science fiction. The drama of a pandemic, the realistic technology of an actual Navy ship, and the action of being at war is great entertainment for everyone.
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