Spooks: Difference between revisions

* [[Dirty Coward]]: How Adam describes a rival agent {{spoiler|who was helping rogue Mossad agents to take hostage and kill Saudi officials}} for this when he kills himself rather than face the team.

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: {{spoiler|Lucas.}}

* [[Dropped a Bridge on Him]]: Adam's death. One of the country's best spies has to drive a bomb-rigged car away from any danger. [[Idiot Ball|He first puts his seatbelt on to drive the car, and near the end, he does a useless handbrake turn which costs him precious seconds]]. Although the seatbelt sort of makes sense since, if you crash, you'd probably want to be injured as little as possible when the car's rigged with a bomb...

** Also, to be fair, his goal was preventing civilian casualties; only after the car was stationary in middle of an empty square could he look to saving his own life. He didn't know exactly how long he had left, of if the trigger would be delayed for some reason. Had he jumped out of the side while it was moving, the car might have gone careering into the side of a building and caused civilian casualties.

* [[Dying Moment of Awesome]]: {{spoiler|The death of Ros, though YMMV. Even though she knew it was probably hopeless she stayed with the paralysed Home Secretary, dragging him painstakingly down the corridor despite him insisting that he leave her. Brave, brave woman.}}

* [[Eagle Land]] - the US is generally portrayed as a somewhat corrupt country, with [[Strawman Political|the CIA not being nice people]]. By series 8 and the time of the Obama administration, this changes somewhat: a new CIA station chief announces "We're the good guys now" before {{spoiler|a [[The Mole|duplicitious agent]] tosses him over a balcony to his death.}}

* [[Evil Plan]]: Frequently, but Angela Wells's masterplan in "Diana" sort of sticks in the memory: {{spoiler|holding the entire Grid hostage overnight with a fake bomb, solely for the purpose of getting access to Buckingham Palace security information, so that a lockdown would be ordered and the Royal Family would be rushed to a secure location which, after getting herself employed there as an electrician ''seven months earlier'', she'd already rigged with plastic explosive INSIDE THE ELECTRICAL WIRING. And then there's a sniper rifle.}}

* [[Face Heel Turn]]: {{spoiler|Juliet Shaw in season 6, in a [[Shocking Swerve]].}}

* [[Fictional Political Party]]: The British Way Party, a [[Fictional Counterpart]] to the real-life British National Party.

* [[Groin Attack]]: Ros takes the phrase "put the squeeze on him" VERY literally.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]] (several)

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: several agents have issues with maintaining a stable reality. This [[Freak-Out|does not end well.]]

** Hermione Norris (Ros) in season six

** In each case, the actress' pregnancy [[Real Life Writes the Plot|forced her into maternity leave]] before the end of the respective season - although only one ultimately chose to PERMANENTLY exit the show.

* [[Idiot Ball]]: this may come very ''very'' close to [[Too Dumb to Live]], but Danny {{spoiler|sleeping with Harry's DAUGHTER}} was so ''not'' smart. Really really not smart.

* [[Improbable Aiming Skills]]: Perhaps not literally, but the sniper in Series 9 Episode 5 must come pretty close. {{spoiler|His shot is from 1.67 miles away (beating the [[wikipedia:Longest recorded sniper kills#Confirmed kills 1.2C250.C2.A0m .281.2C367 yd.29 or greater|previous record]] as specified by Dimitri at 1.5 miles by a sniper in Afganistan), goes directly through a building after he takes the trouble to blow out the windows, and manages to calculate the trajectory of the bullet accurately enough to come with millimetres of his target's head (and even then, he hits him in the shoulder).}} Unfortunatly, directly afterwards, {{spoiler|Lucas comes up behind him and shoots him dead.}}

* [[Moral Dissonance]]: Lampshaded by Danny when he has to assassinate a scientist planning to sell weaponized plague to terrorists, who references a line spoken by Tom in the very first episode that stated killing in the name of life is still wrong.

* [[More Expendable Than You]]: An interesting variant is season 8. {{spoiler|The British Home Secretary and Pakistani President have been left paralysed in a room rigged to explode. When Ros and Lucas show up for the rescue, Lucas is heartbreakingly forced to leave Ros and the Home Secretary behind. If the President dies there could be nuclear war, and Lucas is the only one strong enough to carry him.}}

* [[Murder.Com]]: In Season 8 a group of eco-terrorists kidnapped a load of [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Corrupt Corporate Executives]] to host a live trail and execution on the internet if the businesses were unethical (and of course, [[Kangaroo Court|they were]]). The Jury was an internet vote.

* [[Never Mess with Granny]]: And never, ''ever'' {{spoiler|be alone in a locked room with Connie.}}

* [[Our Hero Is Dead]]: noticeable for subverting this rather harshly. There is a very good chance in this show that if it looks like the hero is dead, they [[Kill Them All|probably are]]. And if they manage to [[Not Quite Dead|escape a near-death experience]], expect [[Heroic BSOD|the emotional trauma to manifest in their behaviour]].

* [[Overt Rendezvous]]: In seasons one and two, the characters frequently have meetings on the benches across from the Houses of Parliament.

* [[Psycho Psychologist]]: Miranda from season 2 interviews the entire staff and pits them against each other with the express purpose of finding the weakest link. Portrayed realistically in that she doesn't see anything wrong with this.

* [[Put on a Bus]]: {{spoiler|Tessa, Tom, Zoe, Sam, Ruth (though she returned in the first episode of season 8) and Malcolm.}}

* [[Spy Satellites]]

* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: Many. Generally, after a character leaves they get one of these.

* [[That Man Is Dead]]: {{spoiler|Lucas, after his true identity is revealed.}}

* [[There Are No Girls on the Internet]]: {{spoiler|Subverted in episode 1 of series 9, in which an undercover al-Qaeda [[The Cracker|master hacker]] is traced to west London and assumed to be the father of a Muslim household. It's actually his 17-year-old daughter.}}

* [[The Troubles]]: Harry was active in Northern Ireland during these, and rogue IRA agents appear frequently in the early seasons.

* [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]]: {{spoiler|Ruth and Harry. Also, done in a very cute way with Ros and Adam Lawrence (the new Home Secretary at the end of Series 8).}}

* [[The War on Terror]] (first British series to feature it)

* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]]: In addition to several Villians of the Week from the earlier series (most memorably, Collingwood and his cohorts from "Gas and Oil"), at least two season arcs from the later years (six and eight) are built around massive conspiracies consisting of such individuals.