Wire Dilemma: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[The Avengers 1998 (Film)|The Avengers 1998]]'', when Mrs. Peel is trying to turn off the weather control machine, she must choose whether to pull a red wire or a black wire. She chooses and pulls one, and the machine turns off. However, a short time later a [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]] activates, which indicates she may have made the wrong choice.

* [[Double Subversion]] in The French film ''[[Banlieue 13]]'': a police officer is given the shutdown code to the bomb by cell phone- {{spoiler|but it turns out that the code would have detonated the bomb immediately, [[Utopia Justifies the Means|taking out the entire ghetto with it]]. The bomb timed out, but did nothing.}}

* ''[[Cats and Dogs (Film)|Cats and Dogs]]'' "Okay, cut the red wire." "Wait a minute. We're dogs. We're ''colorblind!''"

** Even though they aren't totally colour blind and would at least have a vague hint of which colour was which.

** Lampshaded in the Season 9 episode "Ripple Effect" in which an alternate reality Mitchell impishly leaves his counterpart with the cryptic advice, "When the time comes, cut the green one." (Fans have debated whether he was referring to an actual future event, or just messing with his counterpart's mind.)

*** [[Word of God]] says that they were going to come back to this, but they never found a good spot to use it in Season 10 and then the show got cancelled.

** In "Smith and Jones", the Tenth Doctor is about to disconnect a blue electrical cord in order to turn off a sabotaged MRI machine, but chooses to disconnect the red one at the last minute.

** In "Victory of the Daleks" the Eleventh Doctor needs to stop a bomb hosted by an [[Artificial Human]] from going off in an underground bunker:

* In an episode of ''[[Eureka]]'', the town is under threat from a "[[Death Ray]]" accidentally activated in a disused lab. Attempts to disarm it include a [[Wrong Wire|failed wire dilemma]] that shortens the countdown. When the weapon's designer shows up and simply removes the launch keys, the system seems to shut down, then activates a "deadman's protocol", an anti-sabotage strike calling for an even bigger boom. The designer asks, "Did someone cut the blue wire?"

* Subverted in ''[[Life On Mars]]'', where Sam agonises over which wire to cut, but the bomb squad appears from off screen, cuts both wires with a pair of hedge trimmers, and walks away.

* Hal from ''[[Malcolm in The Middle]]'' plays up this trope to evade the cops. After a strange series of events that leads the police department to believe that Hal's detached ankle bracelet (he was under house arrest) was a bomb, he claims he is from the bomb squad and tries to defuse it. As the police watch, Hal suddenly screams "Oh God, I cut the wrong wire! This thing's gonna blow!". When all the cops duck, Hal makes a run for it.

* Given an interesting twist in the ''Profiler'' episode "Unsoiled Sovereignty", where the villain has planted explosives at a site, all of them accessible only by the outside of the building. ATF agent Coop defuses the first, but it is affixed to the ''inside'' wall of the building, so he has to work THROUGH a small window without being able to see what he's doing. VCTF agent John Grant, who always wanted to be on the bomb squad, panics at trying to defuse the second, mounted on a strut of the building, and it is only after Coop ignores his own bomb to talk John through his that John figures out how to disarm it. Of course, both bombs are disarmed.

* A ''Benson'' episode has one of these. (Bomb squad technician: "Is it 'White you're right, red you're dead', or...?")

* A Turkish crime-drama ("Yılan Hikayesi") had a variation of it where the protagonist is trying to defuse a bomb and having trouble since neither him nor his partner have bomb training beyond basics. His partner quips that "they always cut the red wire" in the movies. The protagonist, on the other hand, works around the wires to see what goes where before taking a risk to sever the wire he suspects is the right one.

* The...third episode?...of ''[[Alias (TV)|Alias]]'' begins where the last one ended--Sydney sitting on top of a ''nuclear'' bomb that has been wired to explode. She calls the bad guys she's a [[Double Agent]] infiltrating, reasoning that if she doesn't it'll blow her cover, and speaks to the nervous technical specialist there. Notable is the [[Long List]] of wire colors she notes, including "dark blue, blue, blue-white...". It of course uses the "NO WAIT!" trick, to which she quite reasonably responds "DO NOT TELL ME TO WAIT I AM SITTING ON A TICKING NUCLEAR BOMB". The ''real'' subversion here is that she then has to ''turn a nuke over to the bad guys''.

* A future-y variant occurs in ''[[Star Trek Deep Space Nine (TV)|Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'' when a torpedo is lodged in the hull of the stricken ''Defiant'' in a room where Quark and a merchant he had earlier swindled are trapped. Rather than wires they have the choice of removing two identical components of the warhead, one of which will deactivate it and the other will cause it to detonate. Quark eventually just grabs one of them and in the process teaches the merchant a lesson about going with your gut.

* In ''[[The Six Million Dollar Man]]'', a bomb is placed UNDER the Liberty Bell. The bomber had earlier given a [[Dying Clue]] of "red, white, and blue" to Steve. When Steve lifts the Bell for a bomb tech to disarm the bomb, there are FOUR wires - red, white, blue, and green. Steve figures out that the bomber WANTED the Bell to be destroyed, so he tells the tech to cut the green wire - which disarms it.

* In an episode of ''[[Fringe]]'', [[Mad Scientist|David Robert Jones]] has his follows place a bomb placed on a window of a very tall building that releases a toxin that causes scar tissue to grow over one's [[And I Must Scream|mouth, nose, eyes and... other orifices]]. The wires are all black and the only way to turn it off is to telepathically turn off fifty or so little globes. {{spoiler|Olivia does so.}}

* In ''[[The Tick]]'', The Tick has to stop an oversized bomb from destroying The Renaissance. He finds a huge mass of wires inside, but after considering the wire problem, he finds an incredibly obvious On/Off switch instead.

** Compare with the episode "The Idea Men", where The Tick fails at disarming the bomb and ends up running it outside its intended blast zone to a place where it can't harm anyone (it detonates in ''his'' face, but The Tick is [[Nigh Invulnerable]]).

{{quote| '''Meg:''' What do you mean, cut the blue wire?! THEY'RE ''ALL'' BLUE WIRES!}}

* The 1980s ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 (Animation)|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' has the action-movie-savvy Michaelangelo calling it as the red wire, at which point Donatello cuts the blue one, banking on their enemies trying to "trick" them.

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Wire Dilemma]]