Heroic Sacrifice/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

*** And to lure the Vorlons and Shadows into the battle, a shipfull of Rangers (led by Bryan Cranston!) have to die protecting a piece of misinformation, so it will be convincing enough.

* ''[[Star Trek the Original Series]]'' has a rather heart-wrenching subversion. Commodore Decker and his crew are facing an unbeatable foe, so he beams his crew down to a nearby planet and intends to go down with the ship. Except it doesn't play out like that. The enemy in question is a [[Planet Killer]], and his ship isn't what it's after.

* Two different starships Enterprise get this in the ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "Yesterday's Enterprise". Short version: A Captain Picard from a timeline where the Federation is losing a war against the Klingons pulls a [[You Shall Not Pass]] against a squadron of Klingon battlecruisers, sacrificing the ''Enterprise-D'' in order to allow the ''Enterprise-C'' to return to her own time and get destroyed defending a Klingon outpost from a Romulan attack, cementing the Federation's status as a [[Fire-Forged Friends|Fire Forged Friend]] to the Klingon Empire.

* Done rather problematically in a recent episode of ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'': after having her criminally shady past revealed, the pilot Kat voluntarily exposes herself to lethal levels of radiation while guiding a passenger ship through a star cluster. The episode was well-written and actually made sense, as well as providing an unexpected degree of depth to a heretofore slightly two-dimensional character, but... given that Kat had not only served quite adequately as CAG for the last year, but was one of maybe two or three pilots who'd never actually committed mutiny during the run of the series (and that one of the others was a ''Cylon''), would anyone other than [[Jerkass|Starbuck]] actually have cared ''that'' much?

** Might even count as [[Driven to Suicide]].

*** She's already taken too much radiation when she decides to fly the last mission. For her it's a choice between staying behind and probably dying anyway, or going out there, ''definitely'' dying, but making a difference, atoning not only for her past but for losing the other ship earlier in the episode.

** Also, in the BSG DVD movie Razor, {{spoiler|Kendra, who shot some civilians under direct order of her commanding officer, [[General Ripper|Helena Cain]], and was troubled with guilt over it ever since. This trope was invoked extremely obviously - someone had to stay behind and manually trigger a nuke, she forced the team at gunpoint to let her be the one to do it, and after her death, she was awarded a frakking medal. Also, the Cylon ship she died to destroy ''told'' her, specifically, that it knew what she had done and she was absolved, right before the nuke went off.}}

** The Ninth Doctor performed a similar feat in "The Parting of the Ways", when he absorbed the energies of the spacetime vortex from his companion, Rose Tyler, so that they would not kill her. Instead, they killed him, forcing him to regenerate. (Actually, this episode has lots of [[Heroic Sacrifices]], including the one made by the Doctor's other companion, Jack Harkness. It's kinda a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|cool moment]] as he stands there and [[Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?|flips off]] his enemy before giving a "come and get me" type gesture (he gets [[Back From the Dead|brought back to life]], though.)

*** Brought back to life, yeah, but also [[Came Back Wrong]]. The event made him physically ''incapable of death'' {{spoiler|for a few billion years, at least}}. He has it tough after that.

*** {{spoiler|He didn't fail completely -}} his actions prevented the entire population of the earth from being killed. Well, the human population, anyway.

** In "The Family of Blood", {{spoiler|John Smith -- a fake personality created by the Doctor while hiding from some villains -- sacrifices himself and dies}} so that the Doctor can save the day.

** Gleefully subverted, however, in a ''[[Doctor Who Magazine (Magazine)|Doctor Who Magazine]]'' comic strip; the Eighth Doctor is about to make a heroic sacrifice by crashing a military helicopter filled with canisters of gas into a slime creature, and makes a moving farewell speech to his friends. One of them -- the spymaster whose helicopter it happens to be -- sardonically points out that, whilst he appreciates the nobility of the gesture, if the Doctor just looks up he'll see a button that will allow him to eject to safety, thus negating the need for said sacrifice.

** {{spoiler|[[Teen Genius|Luke]] [[Evil Genius|Rattigan]]}} in the New Season 4 episode "Poison Sky".

** There's also Harriet Jones, [[Running Gag|Former Prime Minister]], (WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE !) whose personal timeline and career are destroyed by the Doctor and {{spoiler|still sacrifices herself to allow the Companions the time to summon the Doctor.}}

** In "Father's Day", after Rose destroys the timeline by saving his life, Pete Tyler {{spoiler|allows himself to be run over by the car that was meant to kill him}} to restore it.

** Similarly, {{spoiler|Jenny}} takes a bullet for the Doctor in "The Doctor's Daughter", causing Ten to flip out to the point where he [[Batman Grabs a Gun|actually threatens the killer with a gun]].

** River does this in 'Forest of the Dead" {{spoiler|Although she may be doing this to keep the timeline. If The Doctor died then he would have never met River's parents and took them on the TARDIS, thus failing in her ever being conceived.}}

* Eden, of ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]'', who kills herself to prevent Sylar from gaining her influencing abilities.

** Then subverted. D.L. takes a bullet from Linderman to save Niki. Enter season two: he is dead, and we are lead to assume that that is how he died. But then a flashback to four months ago has him make a full recovery from the hospital, and is indeed well enough to go fight fires and stuff...only to [[Dropped a Bridge On Him|get shot by some random crackhead with the hots for Niki]].

** Not to mention Sam's season 4 [[Heroic Sacrifice]] which is averted when his own attempt to sacrifice his soul to save Dean is ''rejected''. His resulting decision to [[Driven to Suicide|damn himself slowly]] by [[This Is Your Brain On Evil|using his powers]] ''seems'' like a noble act - until you get to the end and realize that Sam's efforts have been fueled by [[Psycho Serum|demon blood]] that intensifies pride in his own abilities and a sense of superiority to the point where he believes he is [[The Only One]] who can stop the Apocalypse. While Sam is genuine in his desire to help his brother and save the world (see When The Levee Breaks for his huge inner conflict), he goes about it [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight|in a]] [[I Did What I Had to Do|very]] [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|destructive]] [[Heroic RROD|(especially]] [[Suicide Mission|self-]][[The Dark Side|destructive)]] [[Death Equals Redemption|way]]. He can't know that {{spoiler|killing [[Apocalypse Maiden|Lilith]] starts the [[The End of the World As We Know It|Apocalypse]]; the angels hid that so he would [[Signs of the End Times|kickstart]] the Apocalypse by doing what he thought would prevent it.}} The goal is noble, even with the horrible outcome. It's part of the show's [[Deconstructed Trope|deconstruction]] of this trope that everything turns out so badly.

** No Gabriel?! {{spoiler|He decided that he was on humanity's side (eventually); went up against Lucifer and tried to kill him (even though he still loved all his brothers and left because he hated watching them fight); gave them a DVD which told them how to put Lucifer back in the cage and was killed by his brother. Particularly heroic as he told them before that he'd 'skipped ahead' and knew how it would all end, so it's very possible that he knew that he would be killed and still did it because his death would be the only way that Sam and Dean could save everyone.}}

* In ''[[Prison Break]]'', {{spoiler|Brad Bellick}}, who spent the first two seasons as a main antagonist and the third as a pain in the arse before joining the heroes in season 4, sacrificed himself to ensure the grand plan would be completed. They make a point to show the character's dead body by the time the episode is out, just to be clear.

** The series finale has {{spoiler|Michael Scofield}} sacrificing himself so the final prison break can succeed and {{spoiler|his wife and unborn child}} can be free.