Sea Patrol: Season 4, Episode 1

Booyah, bitches, Sea Patrol is back.  The crew of the HMAS Hammersley has undergone a few cast changes since last season, but the formula remains faithful.  And why not start this year with plenty of action and intrigue as our fearless navy takes on terrorists.  With so much awesomeness packed into one show, I'm simply going to focus on one or two slight oversights.


Synopsis:  Basically the Sea Patrollers race against time to foil terrorists intent on assassinating the US ambassador while he's holidaying on some secret island resort.  The episode is entitled 'Night of the Long Knives', even though it has no resemblance or reference to the purge of political and military rivals by Hitler in 1934 Germany.  Oh, there is a knife in it, towards the end, but it's not particularly long.

Hang on, he's got a knife, right? AND it's night-time...you know what we

should call this episode?

I can understand writers taking a literal historic reference and applying it to a fuguratively themed title, but who the hell does it the other way round?


Through a series of mystifyingly convenient events, the SP crew learn that the ambassador's secretary has been kidnapped at sea by a group of Al-Queda terrorists and tortured into disclosing the location of the secret diplomatic resort.  They save the inexplicably still alive girl - mainly because Commander Flynn promised her over the radio that he would do so 42 scenes earlier - then head for the island to kick some terrorist ass.  As they close in a speedboat charges the Hammersley.  The crew soon realise that it contains heavily armed terrorists, one of whom is toting... "an RPG!" 

Watch out, its' an extremely caucasian Al-Queda with a tube thingy!

'RPG' stands for Rocket Propelled Grenade (and launcher), a cheap, mass produced piece of shit found in the hands of third-world militias across the globe.  The non-RPG bit, the launcher, is a shoulder-mounted exhaust tube with a simple periscopic sight and ignition trigger that activates an unguided, 5 kilo explosive warhead that's plenty crude but also plenty messy.  Do you know what's missing from this terrorist's launcher?  The unguided, 5 kilo explosive warhead.  You know, the bit that goes Boom!

Circled: the bit that goes Boom!

Before being blown to ash by the Hammersley's 25mm auto-cannon, the terrorist does manage to somehow fire his unloaded RPG at the ship, but the hastily post-edited CGI warhead misses.


One last thing.  When the final fight occurs it involves the heroic Commander Flynn and a knife-wielding* assassin disguised as a waiter.  The duel goes on for a while, long enough to ask where the hell the ambassador's bodyguards are at.  Probably snorting coke off a hooker's ass.  Or, if they've ever encountered C.O. Flynn and his motler crew before, standing around cheering and taking side bets. 

*Surely if you can smuggle in a steel knife you could maybe revamp your tactics by a thousand years and bring in a gun instead.