History Series / LastResort

* StealthPun: The name of the captain of the sub, who takes over an island and basically becomes its military dictator? [[TheGreatDictator Chaplin]].

To readers familiar with US Navy submarines, the RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement applies: With the sensitive nature of the locations, namely a United States Navy nuclear submarine, you can be assured that the accuracy of scenes isn't perfect. Access to nuclear-armed submarines is limited to those servicemembers assigned to her after she is completed. As a result, it is likely that the producers relied on consultants and publicly available information. Anything they couldn't verify is more than likely speculation as far as the depictions of life on a nuclear submarine are concerned.

* KidnappedByAnAlly: One of the [=SEALs=] named Fisher [[spoiler:kidnaps Christine and bugs out with a team of fellow [=SEALs=] after rescuing her and the other families held hostage by rogue Special Service Group Navy commandoes.]]

** Yet a third one shows up in Manila as a bagman to transport [[Christine]] to whoever paid for her. Luckily this turns out to be [[spoiler: Kylie]], making this a different interpretation of the same trope

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: A friend of Kylie Sinclair working for the Defense Department gives her information about the Colorado situation. Subsequently he 'accidently' eats something he is allergic to and by the time he gets medical help he is brain dead.

* ChineseWithChopperSupport: [=PLA=] forces arrive in Sainte Marina to escort Chinese envoys who are going to provide humanitarian support.

** Technically, the conspirators who keep sabotaging Chaplin's efforts (which they themselves believe is ''suicidal,'' albeit part of [[MyCountryRightOrWrong their duty]]) are the mutineers. To quote ''Film/TheHuntForRedOctober''; Mutiny is when the crew rises against their officers. When the ''officers'' try to steal the ship [[NoExceptYes it's referred to]] as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry_%28admiralty_law%29 barratry]]''.

* TheFaceless: The President. He doesn't show up until the last few minutes of the last episode, nor is he named before then.

* [[UsefulNotes/PakistanisWithPanters Pakistanis with Panters]]: Since Pakistan is destroyed mostly by nuclear missiles, most of its military is forced to disband. The crew faces off against remnants of the Pakistani Navy's Special Service Group Navy, an elite navy special forces unit.

* LogoJoke: The [=MiddKid=] Productions ([[TheShield Shawn Ryan]]'s company) logo has a submarine at sea in the background (which is usually grassy hills).

** [[spoiler:Subverted in that the system's potency ''isn't'' the reason they seize it. They're actually after the TrackingDevice it's bundled with, which would have proven that the Colorado retrieved a SEAL team from Pakistan less than a day before the US decided to nuke the country.]]

* ItGetsEasier: implied in the finale episode when [[spoiler: Kylie tearfully is forced to shoot her lover to prove her loyalty to the president, but this opens the door for her to assassinate the president later.]]

* JustEatGilligan: A lot of the problems on the Island would disappear if they would just kill Serrat.
* JustFollowingOrders: Spectacularly defied by Chaplin and then Kendell. They are not going to launch nuclear weapons and kill millions of people simply because they received an order that appears to be legitimate. COB Prosser has a problem with this [[spoiler: leading to an attempted countermutiny]].

* KarmaHoudini: Anders in "Big Chicken Dinner.[[spoiler:.. except [[AvertedTrope not.]] Sophie (who was placed on the jury as a neutral vote) reveals that Serrat sandbagged the case by convincing the islanders on the jury to acquit in order to start a riot against the sub crew, and that two of three fellow crew members voted to convict along with Sophie. Chaplin tricks Anders into admitting his guilt, proceeds to give Anders the titular "Big Chicken Dinner" (i.e. a bad conduct discharge), and sends Anders off to fend for himself among the islanders.]]

* MeaningfulName: The Black Ops commando that the crew captures in "Just Another Navy Day" is [[spoiler: secretly trying to undermine a President he thinks is behaving like a tyrant.]] His name (at least the one he offers)? [[spoiler: Booth]]

* [[UsefulNotes/PakistanisWithPanters Pakistanis with Panters]]: Since Pakistan is destroyed mostly by nuclear missiles, most of its military is forced to disband. The crew faces off against remnants of the Pakistani Navy's Special Services Group Navy, an elite navy special forces unit.

* ProductionPosse: Jay Karnes (The Deputy Defense Secretary) and David Rees Snell (Hopper, the injured SEAL) followed creator Shawn Ryan over from ''TheShield''.
** As did Robert Patrick (the COB) from ''TheUnit''.

* RapeAsBackstory: [[spoiler: The cuts to a rape victim's story during "Big Chicken Dinner" are eventually revealed to be Grace's flashback to a rape at the Naval Academy, in retaliation for her punishing another cadet's honor infraction.]]
* RebelliousRebel: [[spoiler: When Prosser's mutiny succeeds in the final episode, Anders and some of his supporters wage a successful countermutiny with the goal of selling the ''Colorado'' to the Chinese. Prosser's group then joins forces once again with Chaplin to keep the sub out of China's hands.]]

* RidiculousFutureInflation: reference is made to $8/gallon gasoline as a result of the events of the series. Justified though -- under the circumstances, not a lot of countries would be selling the US oil, so $8/gal would probably be quite a bit on the low side.

* WhatTheHellHero: Invoked often, primarily by crewmembers uncertain about Chaplin's motives, and also by the XO after [[spoiler: Chaplin orders the execution of one of Serrat's men after he was identified as rigging a female crewmember into a human bomb]].

* BaldBlackLeaderGuy: Captain Chaplin
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted. Three episodes after Grace gets the shit beaten out of her by a Spetznaz trooper, she's still sporting a shiner and a scabbed cheek. Her arm is also in a sling for a few episodes.

* FakeAmerican: British-Canadian Scott Speedman as Lieutenant Commander Kendall and Australians Daisy Betts as Lieutenant Grace Shepard and Daniel Lissing as SEAL James King.
* FakeNationality: Zigzagged all over the place with Nepali-Australian (and ethnically Tibetan) Dichen Lachman as an Australian-raised island native. Also, American-born Sahr Ngaujah, who is of Sierra Leonean descent, as an expatriate Liberian drug lord who somehow found himself in the Indian Ocean.
** Singaporean Chinese Chin Han as Chinese Special Envoy Zheng Li.
** Averted with Frenchwoman Sophie Girard being played by - gasp! - a French actress.
** Some of the "Filipinos" being depicted in "Blue Water" are a mix. Some are actual ones, but there are others who look like them. Except that they aren't. Example: One of them doesn't pronounce "Sampaloc" the right way during a conversation with King and Sam.

* FalseRapeAccusation: Averted. [[spoiler:Anders]] admits that the girl he was going with said "no" when he tried to have sex with her.

** Inverted with Chaplin; most of his immediate family was already dead when the series started, with a remaining son 'off saving the whales' and presumably not on speaking terms with him.
* FateWorseThanDeath: [[spoiler:Anders revealed to Grace that he did rape one of the locals, even though the jury found him not guilty. Chaplin found out that Serrat fixed up the trial to make it look like Anders didn't rape the girl. Chaplin decided to play along and allowed him to hide as the locals were preparing to hunt him down and torture him according to island laws.]]

** After a bit of flirting in "Skeleton Crew" and defusing a bomb in "Nuke it Out", [[spoiler:King and Shepard]] have sex on the beach. She makes it clear that it's just a one time thing.

* ANuclearError: The Colorado's missiles can be self-destructed midflight in case of an erroneous launch. [[spoiler:This does not happen when Chaplin fires at DC; however, he intentionally overshoots the target, with the explosion happening in international waters, but close enough to DC (and New York) to see the flash.]] Perhaps justified in the post-ColdWar era, but not explained. Also, the flight path from the Indian Ocean to Washington is quite a bit outside the officially acknowledged range of the Trident II missile, but of course the actual range is probably classified anyway. Interestingly, the self-destruct function does not seem to be common knowledge; Sinclair assumes that once launched, there's no stopping it short of an orbital shootdown (i.e. Star Wars, which Sinclair's father was involved in).

** [=SSBNs=] can NOT retarget their Trident [=SLBMs=] independently. Flexibility of targeting is what the Strategic Command is for.
*** I don't know how it works in the USN, but in the Royal Navy the Captain does retain the ability to target his Tridents independently of a higher authority, as he would have unlimited authority to use his weapons in the "Letters of Last Resort" scenario when he would obviously be unable to contact Headquarters to request target data.
*** Yes, but the USN is different on that front from the Royal Navy for several reasons (London being a lot closer to the USSR than Washington DC is, our Air Force having ICBM silos, etc.).

*** So is King's haircut, but he's a SEAL and those rules don't apply to him.

* TheGeneralsDaughter: Well, Admiral's daughter, but Grace. Some of the crew think it's the only reason she got her job.

** The divisions amongst the crew in light of a dubious order to fire nuclear missiles is reminiscent of ''CrimsonTide.''

Sadly, on November 16, 2012, ABC canceled the series, but the remaining seven episodes are still set to air as planned. The showrunner indicated on Twitter that the series would have a conclusion, allowing the series to avoid the CutShort scenario faced by so many other cancelled serials. The final episode aired on January 24, 2013, and did, indeed, resolve most of the show's outstanding plotlines.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The admittedly fictional island of Sainte Marina is a curious pastiche of stereotypical Caribbean and Hawaiian cultural and other cliches, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It may be an {{expy}} for the islands of Diego Garcia [[hottip:*:home to a fairly significant British Air Force Base]] or Mayotte [[hottip:*:A controversially French island in the independent Comoros]] but (much like the fictional version of Pianosa in Literature/CatchTwentyTwo) the fictional island is much larger and more populous than the possible real world equivalents.

* TheFaceless: The President. He doesn't show up until the last few minutes of the last episode

* PakistanisWithPanters: Since Pakistan is destroyed mostly by nuclear missiles, most of its military is forced to disband. The crew faces off against remnants of the Pakistani Navy's Special Services Group Navy, an elite navy special forces unit.

Sadly, on November 16, 2012, [[TooGoodToLast ABC canceled the series,]] but the remaining seven episodes are still set to air as planned. The showrunner indicated on Twitter that the series would have a conclusion, allowing the series to avoid the CutShort scenario faced by so many other cancelled serials. The final episode aired on January 24, 2013, and did, indeed, resolve most of the show's outstanding plotlines.

* SatelliteLoveInterest: Tani... oh Tani. She does nothing but wipe down the bar, dispense "sage islander advice" and flirt with King.
** I dunno. They seem to fit well together. King doesn't look like he's in for a serious romance either.
*** Looks like kind of Jossed. The finale has King shacking up with Tani. This troper likes to think he offed Serrat right after.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: [[spoiler: Two Russian Spetznaz soldiers are captured by Kendal's team and imprisoned in the island's tiny jail cell...and have not been seen since.]]

* TheScarpiaUltimatum: When local thug Serrat is threatening to murder one of his prisoners, Cortez offers herself to him to calm him down. [[spoiler: It doesn't take, the next day Serrat kills the man anyway; but only because the other sailor tells him too.]] Cortez later claims she didn't sleep with him, only offering [[spoiler: to keep him informed of the captain's activities.]]

* AntiVillain: Prosser is basically just doing what he sees as his duty, and later agrees to work faithfully under Chaplin, if only to the end of eventually seeing him court-martialed. [[spoiler: he eventually gets frustrated with Chaplin and mutinies against him, only to switch sides yet again when it turns out his fellow mutineers want to turn the sub over to the Chinese for money]]
** Zheng the Chinese envoy is not a bad guy at all, but he wants Chaplin and his sub to switch their allegiances to China. [[spoiler: This eventually results in him conspiring with the mutineers and Serrat to take the sub by force]]
** Serrat occasionally touches on this, given his fondness for Sophie (to the point of protecting her in "Another Fine Navy Day", which also establishes that [[spoiler: one of his primary motivations is apparently he just wants his island back.]]

''Last Resort'' is a 2012 television series produced by Sony Entertainment and airing on Creator/{{ABC}}. The pilot aired September 27, 2012.

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Cortez, though she does a brief HeelFaceTurn back when she returns the nuclear launch key she stole.]]
* [[spoiler:TheFaceless: The President.]]

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: [[spoiler: Cortez. Who apparently a CIA mole on the boat, working for a sub-conspiracy within the CIA against the President.]]

** [[spoiler:Wes,]] who turns out to have been interested in the money after all and not friendship.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Though Chaplin goes down with the Colorado explicitly to keep it from falling into Chinese hands and most likely Admiral Shepherd and Kylie Sinclair are dead, the President's treachery is exposed, most of the crew makes it home alive, Sam reunites with his presumed-dead wife, and James finds peace with Tani.]]

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Subverted with Kylie Sinclair who is a lobbyist for a weapons manufacturer whose advanced prototype system is being tested on the Colorado. When she finds out about the situation she does not hesitate to blackmail an Admiral in order to protect her company's interests. However, she is not one of the bad guys and she backs down when she realizes that something much more sinister is going on.

** One of the few times when [[spoiler:the assassination of the US President]] is presented as a ''good'' thing.

* DealWithTheDevil: When the Chinese offer to send much needed supplies to the island, they do not ask for anything in return. However, Chaplin knows that the deal is too good to be true and sooner or later he will be forced to pay dearly for this assistance.

* AntiVillain: Prosser is basically just doing what he sees as his duty, and later agrees to work faithfully under Chaplin, if only to the end of eventually seeing him court-martialed.