After Action Report: Run Silent, Run Deep

Greetings WingNuts,

We're back from the depths of viewing Run Silent, Run Deep and it was a solid experience! Despite the age and the subject matter, it was a taut film loaded with compelling character relationships and a satisfying story. And while everyone is happy that it's (probably) the last submarine movie of the series we didn't have any real complaints about the film itself! One thing it has over Wing Commander is that it gives all of this room to breathe instead of needing to devote much of its run time to the 'Top Gun' part of the story.

Now let's talk about how it is Wing Commander! When we first started looking at the reference to "Silent Running" in the original Wing Commander movie treatment I suspected that there was an additional mistake: that Chris Roberts was not thinking of Run Silent, Run Deep but the somewhat more prestigious Enemy Below. Enemy Below was released a year prior to Run Silent, Run Deep and it is indeed a source for many of the submarine movie tropes that are now standard. But I was wrong about the reference: we found that Wing Commander was, indeed, greatly inspired specifically by elements of Run Silent, Run Deep.

The real meat of this movie is the conflict between the sub's captain, Richardson (Clark Gable) and executive officer, Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster). Richardson is an Ahab figure out for revenge against the Japanese destroyer that sank his previous command and Bledsoe represents the other tack but is ultimately forced into achieving the same ends. This conflict is very similar to how the crew of the Tiger Claw was imagined, headlined by the divide between Captain Sansky and Commander Gerald. Run Silent, Run Deep and Wing Commander put these interpersonal shipboard conflicts through several similar beats across their respective stories. (Note that in most cases the similarities were reduced in the Wing Commander movie's final edit; we are considering these next few points from the perspective of the rough cut.)

The message from Captain Richardson to his crew after the ship arrives for combat in the (forbidden) Bungo Strait is extremely similar to the one Captain Sansky broadcasts to the Tiger Claw crew after the arrival in the Ulysses Corridor. Both roughly mark the start of their film's second act.

SANSKY (V.O.)
(over intercom)
This is the Captain. AS most of you have guessed, we just made one hell of a jump. Actually we've just taken a little short cut into the Ulysses Corridor... If you don't already know, that's where the Pegasus Naval Base was attacked and destroyed. The main Kilrathi battle fleet is in the Quadrant and headed for the Charybdis Quasar. In eleven hours, it will be in position to jump into Earth space.Our mission is to find the Kilrathi, assess their capacities and plan of action, and if necessary, stop them. We're the only Confed ship in the sector, people. We can count on no help and no rescue. We can only count on each other. That is all.

There's also the 'debriefing mystery' scene. In Run Silent, Run Deep, it takes place after Tokyo Rose reads off the names of the ship's crew. Bledsoe goes below to ask if any message has been sent from the ship to account for this. In Wing Commander, it happens after the reconnaissance flight where Sansky and Gerald debrief Blair on the bridge and ask the computer if there has been a similar message to the Kilrathi.

SANSKY
This is sterile conjecture. The Kilrathi are aware that Rapiers don't fly around in deep space without a carrier close by.
(To Blair:)
Tell me about this "communication" you claim to have heard.

BLAIR
(Eyes on Gerald:)
It was a ULF signal emanating from the vicinity of the Tiger Claw, sir.

SANSKY
(To the Tiger Claw A.I.)
What about it, NAVCOM? Were any communications sent from this ship?

AI VOICE
Negative, Captain. There were no transmissions sent by the Tiger Claw.

Finally, there's the fate of Captain Richardson and Captain Sansky. Richardson takes ill in the third act and must be replaced by Bledsoe while Sansky is wounded during the battle and left bedridden until his treason is discovered. In both cases we cut back to the captain wounded in bed, listening to his subordinates fight the battle differently than he had intended.

The USS Nerka and the TCS Tiger Claw both make use of their chart rooms as a way to move action away from the bridge. Again, it's not completely clear in the final cut of Wing Commander but if you watch carefully several of the bridge scenes are actually in the smaller chart room visible to the back of the set. In Run Silent, Run Deep, the chart room (and the captain's office) is down a ladder from the bridge.

Both ships also take damage to their torpedo rooms in advance of the final battle, forcing them to find a different way to conclude the battle. And as we saw in Das Boot, the torpedo room sets are pretty similar!

Finally, both movies also give us tragic crushing scenes! In Run Silent, Run Deep a loose torpedo rolls onto a sailor during the destroyer charge attack and in Wing Commander a Rapier falls and crushes one of the deck crew during the initial Kilrathi ambush. This shot was actually intended for Wing Commander's depth charge scene, showing the fate of two of the shooting script's 'lower decks' characters.