Main cast: Doug McKeon (Lieutenant Eric J Tyler), Stephen Burleigh (Captain Stanley R Levitt), Carrington Garland (Lieutenant Maureen Knox), and Leo Garcia (Captain Andrew Garza)
Director: Bruno Spandello
It all begins with Lieutenant Eric Tyler and Captain Stanley Levitt beginning their 36-hour shift at a military command center. Shortly into their shift, they are tasked to launch the missiles and the whole place blows up shortly after they do.
Oh no, when they come to, it seems like they are the only ones alive, but they are stuck inside the remnants of the center because apparently the world outside is now so radioactive that they can’t just go out.
Then, they hear voices over the comm system. Lieutenant Maureen Knox and Captain Andrew Garza are also alive, somewhere in the center! Thing is, those two also have no idea what has happened, or whether anyone else is still alive.
Hence, they all decide to just do The Waiting Game and see whether there will be any help incoming—Knox doubts that there will be any—while trying to figure out what to do.
Garcia quickly bails on this episode, going out to look for his wife and kid. He reports that he sees “something” out there, and then all communication with him goes dead. Despite Levitt’s protests, Knox decides to go outside too, and she too reports seeing “something” before she too bails on the episode.
What is going on here?
Well, here’s the biggest problem of this episode: there are vampires in this one, and they decide that they are now masters of the world after the humans nuked everything else. However, if there were no other life forms left aside from vampires, what are these vampires going to feed on again? One another? That will make for a far more interesting episode than this one, I’d say!
Also, Tyler is so annoying to watch, and he along with the other so-called military people aside from Levitt all act like they are amateurs conscripted just 20 minutes prior to the episode. Over-emotional, oblivious to the most obvious things, and making dumb decisions are their specialty, so the entire episode is about nine parts annoyance and one part illogical.
The acting is okay, though, for what that’s worth, and the pacing and atmosphere are all fine. It’s just that the premise itself is whacked from conception, and Tyler is just insufferable.