Anyway, back to the programme by Chris Terrill:
I thought that it was pretty good, but the focus on the Chef was a bit excessive, particularly with the way things went wrong in the end. He did say he had been sorting his life out by joining the RN...
Chris Terrill filmed something like a thousand hours of footage and had to edit this down to six, so things had to be left out. In the first few days of the deployment took part in Exercise Steadfast Defender 21, a Cold War style NATO reinforcement exercise. I would have liked to have seen more flying. However we did see a fair bit of flight deck action, with the F-35B Lightnings intercepting Russians with a destroyer providing control, as well as hitting terrorist targets ashore. Later we saw a Merlin do some submarine hunting, with the initial detection by one of the frigates. We also saw the Merlins doing SAR practice and VERTREP. So much for those who claim that the carriers depend entirely on escorts for defence, and they do not contribute to the defence of the wider force.
Chris Terrill has said that the first series about HMS Queen Elizabeth featured the ME department a lot, so he opted not to feature them. As will all naval documentaries there were people sorting out gash, close range weapons being fired, and both real and practice emergencies. He was interviewed and said that seeing the jet crash was alarming, but it was impressive to see the fast responses - seaboats launched, helicopter on scene, medical personnel closing up, lookouts looking for the survivor, and chockhead spotting the pilot coming down.
Christ Terrill's first naval documentary was HMS Brilliant - filmed in 1994 and broadcast in 1995. For all the criticisms, it was about a warship deployed on operations in the Adriatic, including time near the Yugoslav coast when they were in defence watches - the first episode included air defence exercises (including with Sea Harriers from the CVS) and the third included an incident that caused the the launch the Lynx with live Sea Skua. They also were film doing more routine board and search operations, and there was filming from aboard the vessels being boarded of the boarding party at work. They did also cover some guy going to the table, but he did seem to get treated fairly.
The CO later became a Rear Admiral (and FOST I think), the First Lt also became an Admiral after several commands, the PWO is still serving and is a Cdr up in Scotland, the Lynx Observer carried on flying and had several ship commands, but left the service and command of HMS Queen Elizabeth in a hurry, the Lynx pilot was CO of 771 NAS at Culdrose not so many years ago, and the Leading Seaman who was featured a lot was in another documentary a few years later and was a Petty Officer.
Some of the RN documentaries in the following years were a bit crap - to be blunt. I think part of the problem is people talking waffle and being too self focussed.
I did notice the narrator (of this series) refer to 'sailors and aviators' - is that a reference to the RAF personnel who are now called aviators and not airman, or is it a reference to the WAFUs?