I watched last week’s premiere of Z Nation with some trepidation. I mean, did the world really need another post-apocalyptic television show featuring zombies? I already watch The Walking Dead–need I say anything more? I was left with mixed feelings after watching, unsure if I liked it. Turning a baby, though reminiscent of Chucky, was a nice touch, but there was something that didn’t sit right about it (the show, not the zombified infant).
It took a few more days and a bout of in-class free association with respect to themes in literature for it to hit me.
Z Nation and The Last Ship are essentially one and the same.
[Tweet “#ZNation and #TheLastShip are essentially the same #tv show. Here’s how…”]
Let me explain…
The Last Ship is about a navy ship sent on a top secret mission to gather the primordial strain of a flu virus that is killing off most of the world’s population. They engage in war-lord-type power struggles including one with a Russian ship before finding a girl who is immune to the virus. They synthesize a cure for the virus from her blood and must rush the girl and the cure to a lab somewhere in the U.S.
Z Nation is about a group of people on a secretive mission to take a prison inmate to a lab in California. After being bit by zombies, the prisoner is seemingly immune to whatever it is that turns people into zombies. They need to take him to the lab so they can synthesize a cure for the zombie virus from his blood. So far there have been no war-lord-type power struggles, but you can bet they are sure to be on the near horizon.
I will be watching more of Z Nation, if only to compare it to The Walking Dead (in which, coincidentally, the characters are also sort of on a quest to take a scientist who claims to have a cure to a lab somewhere in the U.S. to create a vaccine) and other similar post-apocalyptic tales.
Did you watch Z Nation? Do you watch The Last Ship? Do you see a connection? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Elise Abram 
