Entertaining, but a bit silly. I rate this 6.5 out of 10. It was nice to see some new faces. I always wondered about the other 15 members of the ships company.
In this episode we have some young bunny-boiler with a rescue fetish and a bone to pick with RAN drifting around the ocean crying wolf. Apparently her Dad got screwed over by the Navy and was dishonorably discharged.
Young, attractive and smart, the sailors trip over themselves trying to impress this young woman.
ET, Buffer, Cheffo and Spider embarrass themselves and make any excuse the perve on, talk to and interact with this woman.
"His wife is about to push one out", says Cheffo in some of the best grass-cutting I've seen in years.
The XO and Navigator team up and share a saucer of milk to snipe at this young woman.
This guest star is so young and attractive even the bouncy little Navigator feels old around her. The XO is old enough to be her mother and she knows it.
The XO drops a good line straight from the HMAS Voyager storybook. "Whatever's best for the Navy", she tells the CO when he asks her advice about a difficult decision.
And there’s another poisoning courtesy of Spider’s Danger Island crabs. This time nobody dies and a few of the troops end up in a naval hospital. The naval doctor seems flustered and drops a clanger to impress the CO with his medical expertise. "I'm just an intern" he says.
The good news is there was only one "prop shot" in this entire show, and it was an appropriate cut-away in the context of the action. There was even a "bow cutting the water" shot that I hadn't seen before. New editor perhaps?
And how is it that on the bunny-boiler’s web site she had a picture of herself on a life raft about to be rescued by the RAN? Maybe one of the troops in the rib took a picture and gave it to her as a momento?
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Cheers until next week, Michelle Over, over Shane writes: I read your review of episode 1 of Sea Patrol and can only agree with you. As a civilian and with no knowledge of naval tactics, I found a scenario in episode 7 to be a bit hard to believe. The patrol boat approaches 2 vessels (dead in the water) in an area where pirates are reported to be operating.
Even though the patrol boat has what I believe to be a 40/60 mm bofors and two 12.7mm machines guns, they were not manned and the only weapon aimed at the suspect vessels was one 5.56mm Steyr.
The pirates fire upon the patrol boat and I am not sure if the rating even gets a round off. Is it creditable for a naval vessel to approach suspect craft and be so ill prepared? I am interested to hear from a knowledgeable source how real this scenario is.
Mike writes:
I have to admit that I thought the director got some of the scenes here spot on the money. The young pretty slim thing with the troops stumbling over themselves to find an excuse to get within a few inches, the sneering from the other girls, and the superb grass-cutting, are scenes I've witnessed on many occasions! And, err, cough, ahem, may well have been a part of in my earlier days. Even my wife (ex ADF too) blurted out "oh that's so bloody typical" (or rather less kind words to that effect).
In reference to Shane's comment, although not ex Navy myself, I reckon it's reasonable that they don't man the heavy artillery at the drop of a hat. Most peacetime ROE I've experienced are fairly stringent and they don't really want you to start lobbing big calibre munitions when someone sneezes. This isn't the US military, where they'd simply call in an airstrike, or fire a cruise missile at the suspected pirate boat using a Seawolf attack sub, then work out later whether it actually had any pirates on it. Having said that, I can't wait for them to break out the Bofors, realistic scenario or not! :)
Young, attractive and smart, the sailors trip over themselves trying to impress this young woman.
And how is it that on the bunny-boiler’s web site she had a picture of herself on a life raft about to be rescued by the RAN? Maybe one of the troops in the rib took a picture and gave it to her as a momento?
