Lt. Alisha Granderson is a lieutenant on the USS Nathan James. She is responsible for the ship's navigation. She is one of the few female crew members, and one of the three female officers. Lt. Granderson is firm yet kind, and has a real aptitude for her work. She is friendly with mostly everyone on the ship.Lt. Granderson has a beautiful singing voice, as is shown when the crew finally finds an island with water after being without water for two days following a malfunction in the ship's water filtration system. They gather around a campfire; Lt. Granderson sings A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke, a capella. The entire crew is entranced by her singing.At the end of season 1 she gets to see her mother for the first time in almost a year, and since the viral outbreak. It is revealed that her mother, Amy Granderson, is a high-ranking member of the now-defunct President's Council and arranged for Lt. Granderson to be on board the USS Nathan James due to Dr. Rachel Scott's research for a virus cure. Her mother is running a makeshift local government and focused on keeping an elite few safe, and wants Dr. Scott to administer the cure to that group only while letting the others die naturally or be killed by injecting them with poison. Lt. Granderson tries to go back to the USS Nathan James to warn the others when she is captured by members of the Baltimore Police, who are working for her mother to keep safe zones throughout Baltimore.Lt. Granderson had a girlfriend, Sarah, and reminisced that they'd always talked about going to Paris on a romantic trip, but never went. When Lt. Granderson reunited with her mother, she asked her mother to try and find Sarah, but her mother refused her request. Her mother's reaction implied that she did not fully approve of her daughter being a lesbian, or of Sarah. Alisha's joy and relief at seeing her mother quickly turned to dismay when she realized that her mother was only expending resources on a select few, instead of helping the general population get the cure--and that she had the Maryland State troopers and Baltimore police helping her. She was also upset to learn that the Nathan James had been taken hostage by the troopers, on her mother's command. When her mother tries to get Alisha to go along with her program, Alisha refuses and tells her mother that, as an officer in the Unite States Navy, she is authorized to accept her mother's surrender. Amy Granderson refuses to surrender and has Alisha held as a prisoner. While helping a group of students evacuate, Alisha is almost attacked by a group because her mother made an announcement that Avrocet was under attack by the military and to shoot anyone in a Navy uniform. Alisha escapes, but is shot by accident by a trooper while running away. Alisha is found lying in a pool of blood by Lt. Danny Green, Cmdr. Chandler, Lt. Burk, and members of Thorwald's underground group. Granson managed to tell Chandler that she had no idea what her mother had been doing, and implored Chandler to believe her. Green and Burk got Alisha underground, where they run into CMC Jeter. Jeter helps get Alisha to the underground medical personnel and eventually back to the ship, once the crew has taken it back from the state troopers.While recovering from her gunshot wound, Alisha shuts down; she is seen in the makeshift recovery bay with other wounded people from the Baltimore incident. Green holds her hand as she stares into space. She is later shown in her bunk, staring at the wall and refusing to speak to anyone. Jeter tells Chandler that physically, Alisha is fine but mentally, she's shut down. Chandler asks Jeter to try and get her to open up. Alisha tells Jeter that she was one of the lucky ones that found her mother alive but since her mother killed others, then herself rather than be subject to a military trial, her luck had run out. She was also concerned that the rest of the crew blamed her for everything that happened when they landed in Baltimore, and that she didn't want to face them. Jeter assured her that no one blamed her, but Alisha told him that her bunkmate, Lt. Kara Foster, could barely look at her, and that Alisha felt guilty for what Dr. Himata (on orders from Amy Granderson) had done to Foster. Jeter explained that that may be because Foster didn't know what to say, or how to say it.Alisha comes to attention when Chandler, Jeter, and Foster enter her bunk. Chandler hands her a set of lieutenant's bars and tells her that they were given to him by a captain in Iraq, and now he was giving them to her as a promotion to full lieutenant. Foster swears her in as Lieutenant. Alisha is seen in subsequent episodes on the ship's bridge, back on duty.