All The Tropes

The Siege: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

The Siege (view source)

Revision as of 11:34, 26 January 2014

68 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (Mass update links)
m (Mass update links)
Line 2:
{{quote|''"This is where ''I'' live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house."''|''[[Straw Dogs]]''}}
 
Good guys hold off an overwhelming enemy threat against impossible odds. The opposite of [[Storming the Castle]]. [[Super -Trope]] of the [[Last Stand]].
 
Compare with [[Hold the Line]] and [[You Shall Not Pass]]. Contrast [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us]]. If they fail, see [[Watching Troy Burn]]. If they send someone to get [[The Cavalry]], it's [[Bring Help Back]].
Line 54:
 
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]''
** The first series of the revival ended with a Siege, though it was slightly subverted in that the good guys did not actually end up holding off the evil Daleks, and by the end of the episode, every main ''and'' minor character, with the exception of Rose Tyler, was dead. Two [[The Nth Doctor|get]] [[Back From the Dead|better.]]
** "The Base Under Siege" is a standard ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' plot ("Moon base, sea base, space base, they build these things out of kits!"), especially in Pat Troughton stories, such as "The Wheel in Space"
** {{spoiler|"The Waters of Mars" subverts a number of conventions in this regard.}}
* ''[[Firefly]]''
Line 113:
* This trope is a case of [[Truth in Television]]. Sieges have been and remain a common military strategy and a good number of movies and television programs base their siege plots on real life sieges like Leningrad and the Alamo. These are well-remembered by a (defending) nation's population if their people either won the siege by successfully holding their position against an overwhelming enemy OR (more commonly) lost gloriously.
 
* Back in 134 BC, the Iberian hillfort of Numantia, in today's Spain, held off a [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Numantia:Siege of Numantia|siege by the Roman Army for 13 months]]. In the end, the surviving defenders chose to suicide rather than be killed or captured by the Romans. To this day, the Spanish language has the adjective/noun ''numantino'', meaning "he who tenaciously resists to the limit, often on precarious conditions."
* During Spain's War of Independence, the city of Saragossa suffered TWO sieges by the French Army. The first (1808) ended with a Spanish victory; The second one (1809), historically noted for its brutality, ended with a French victory. Saragossa was reduced to 12,000 people from its pre-second siege population of 100,000.
 
Line 121:
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:The Siege]]
[[Category:Trope]]
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/605186"