History HeroicSacrifice / LiveACtionTV

** In ''[[Recap/LegendOfTheRangersS01E00 The Legend of the Rangers]]'', the ''Valen'''s weapons are knocked out by the ships working for the Hand. The ship's captain sends all the dignitaries to the ''Liandra'' in a shuttle and then utilizes the only weapon he has left -- the ''Valen'' herself. The ship [[RammingAlwaysWorks rams]] one of the Hand ships to their mutual destruction. "[[BadassCreed We die for the One]]" indeed.

** In the TV movie ''[[Recap/BabylonFiveFilm04ACallToArms A Call to Arms]]'', Captain Anderson has his ship ''Victory'' (sister to ''Series/{{Crusade}}'''s ''Excalibur'') ram the control center for a Shadow planetkiller before it can lay waste to Earth.

* Subverted in the ''Series/{{Chuck}}'' 5th season premiere, [[Recap/ChuckS5E01ChuckVsTheZoom "Chuck vs The Zoom"]]. Seemingly cornered by Bale, Chuck tells Sarah and Casey to leave him behind so they can survive. Once they make it to their van, they find a video of Chuck saying, "For God sakes, don't leave me behind! [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee I have a plan!]]"

** Kosh also deserves a mention. By getting the Vorlons to strike at the Shadows, he opens himself up to be assassinated by them.

** Years later, in the future of the TimeTravel sequence, Londo, under the control of the symbiote, has the heroes at his mercy. In a moment of lucidity, he lets them go, then asks G'Kar — either his sworn enemy, his best friend, or both — to kill him so the symbiote won't alert anybody to the escape. This G'Kar does, in a manner which Londo had foreseen decades earlier in a prophetic dream — which at the time he took to mean G'Kar would eventually murder him in cold blood. Londo is therefore an example of HeroicSacrifice, RedemptionEqualsDeath ''and'' ProphecyTwist. The symbiote then wakes up, kills G'Kar, and fulfills the rest of the prophecy.
** "The Long Night" and "Into the Fire" feature multiple examples:
*** To lure the Vorlons and Shadows to Coriana VI, a shipful of Rangers ([[RetroactiveRecognition led by]] Creator/BryanCranston!) have to die protecting a piece of disinformation, so it will be convincing enough.
*** In order to save his planet, Londo destroys the Shadow presence on Centauri Prime by blowing up their island base (including a number of Centauri who knew ''they'' were being asked to sacrifice themselves). When the Vorlon Planetkiller takes station above the planet, his sidekick Vir points out that there's still one person on the planet who's been touched by the Shadows... Londo himself. Londo orders Vir to kill him. [[spoiler: He doesn't, but events conspire to save Centauri Prime anyway... temporarily, at least]]
*** At the end of the battle at Coriana VI, the [[AbusivePrecursors Shadows]] attempt to destroy [[ChosenOne Sheridan]]'s ''White Star'' with two missiles. A Drazi ''Sun Hawk'' and a Minbari ''Sharlin'' interpose themselves between the ''White Star'' and the missiles, not only saving Sheridan but also showing the Shadows and the Vorlons that the younger races will no longer take their crap.
** Near the end of the fourth season, [[spoiler: Marcus]] dies so that [[spoiler: Susan]] can live.
** Kosh deserves a mention. By getting the Vorlons to strike at the Shadows, he opened himself up to be assassinated by them.
** To end the [[spoiler: Minbari Civil War]], Delenn manages to trick the leader of the Warrior Cast to join her in a ritual which will decide the [[spoiler: outcome of the war]] by whoever lasts in a wheel of fire the longest. [[spoiler: She's replaced at the very last second by Neroon who pushes her out, announces his conversion to her side, and dies, thus allowing her to reorganize the Grey Council.]]
** [[TheCaptain John Sheridan]] pulls one of these when he detonates a nuclear warhead in the capitol city of the Shadows ... using his own position to guide it in.
** At the beginning of "Acts of Sacrifice", an unnamed Narn cruiser does this to allow a civilian transport to escape from a war zone, interposing itself between the attacking Centauri and the jump point.
** Sinclair also deserves a mention, [[spoiler: in that he travelled back in time to live out the rest of his life as Valen. Though he got to assume the role of a venerated, messianic figure among the Minbari, in doing so he left all he knew in his life as a human, with no reasonable hope of ever returning to it, leaving the familiar for an alien society in a different age. Plus, to avoid disrupting the timeline in any way, he sort of had to follow a script laid out by history. (He couldn't even use his regard as a prophet to somehow avert the Earth-Minbari War through any forewarning about the Humans.) In the final farewells before this time travel ("War Without End Part II"), clearly Sheridan and the others recognize that this ''is'' a big sacrifice on his part, some trying to talk him out of it.]]
** In ''The Legend of the Rangers'', the ''Valen'''s weapons are knocked out by the ships working for the Hand. The ship's captain sends all the dignitaries to the ''Liandra'' in a shuttle and then utilizes the only weapon he has left - the ''Valen'' herself. The ship [[RammingAlwaysWorks rams]] one of the Hand ships to their mutual destruction. "[[BadassCreed We die for the One]]" indeed.
** In the TV movie ''A Call to Arms'', Captain Anderson has his ship ''Victory'' (sister to ''Series/{{Crusade}}''[='s=] ''Excalibur'') ram the control center for a Shadow planetkiller before it can lay waste to Earth.
** In the Earth-Minbari War, some humans rammed their ships into the Minbari vessels to protect Earth.
*** During the Battle of the Line, Jeffrey Sinclair attempted a kamikaze run on a Minbari ship after his Starfury was damaged. Obviously, it ended differently than he expected it to.
** '''3.10 "Severed Dreams"''': The EAS ''Churchill'' was already critically disabled up from damage taken, so it rammed a hostile Earth Alliance Ship to take it out as well.
** '''3.22 "Z'ha'dum"''': Sheridan took a one-way trip to Z'ha'dum, home of the Shadows, hoping that it will end the war sooner and prevent the destruction of Centauri Prime. Since he figured it was a trap, he took along some bombs as well, enabling him to destroy their capital city. This one is seemingly subverted in the following episode, but then turned back around with the reveal that when he came back to life, he could only be given twenty more years. He accepted this, but some of his loved ones weren't happy about it.
** '''4.05 "The Long Night"''': A Ranger ship went on a suicide mission solely to give the Shadows information that would get them where the good guys wanted them, without their becoming suspicious.
** '''4.06 "Into the Fire"''': The one on Centauri Prime. A few Centauri remained on the island the Shadows were using as a base to keep up appearances when Londo set up his gambit to get rid of Shadow influence before the Vorlons came to destroy them. He wasn't able to convince the Shadows to leave, so instead he put nukes in place without them noticing, and those citizens were killed in the process.
*** Also from "Into the Fire"''': The one by Coriana VI. A number of ships take one for the team as part of their collective "screw you" to the Vorlons and Shadows at the final battle, when they are trying to destroy Sheridan's ship but the others fly in front of the missiles.
** '''4.14 "Moments of Transition"''': Delenn was willing to do this as part of an ancient ritual, with the hope that it would mend the rift between the Minbari castes and end their civil war. In the end, Neroon pulls her out of the circle before it activates, and dies in her place, so there is still a sacrifice, just not the one initially expected. It helps that, in his final moments, he converts to the Religious caste, thus signifying their moral victory.
* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'':
** Done rather problematically in a later episode. 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 DrivenToSuicide. 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.
** In the BSG DVD movie ''Razor'', [[spoiler: Kendra, who shot some civilians under direct order of her commanding officer, [[GeneralRipper 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.]]

* ''{{Series/Bones}}''
** : Brennan’s dad Max fought a squad of hired guns [[PapaWolf to save his grandkids.]] The guys were working for the son of a warlord Booth killed during his sniper days. Max took out a couple of the guys while being shot himself. He died at the hospital because it was too much for his weak heart.
** In the same story arc, Booth’s friend and former Army chaplain Aldo Clemens was captured and tortured to force him to give up Booth’s location. He couldn’t escape but freed himself from the table he was tied to just enough to whip his head backward and kill himself. Booth outright says it wasn’t suicide but a sacrifice so he wouldn’t give in and talk.

* In episode 5 of ''[[Series/Loki2021 Loki]]'', [[spoiler: Classic Loki sacrifices himself to [[EldrichAbomination Alioth]], distracting it with an illusion of Asgard long enough for Loki and Sylvie to enchant it and enter The Citadel .]]

** In "[[Recap/SmallvilleS7E12Fracture Fracture]]", Chloe uses her healing powers to bring Lex, who is pretty obviously a villain at that point and has done her great personal harm previously, back from the brink of death at the cost of her own life. Luckily, she has ResurrectiveImmortality, although she remained dead for 18 hours. Clark is worried the next time she won't be coming back.
** {{Deconstructed}} in "[[Recap/SmallvilleS10E1Lazarus Lazarus]]". [[spoiler:Clark Kent finds himself in the afterlife after dying in the previous episode to stop Zod. Jor-El calls him an idiot for not realizing that even though he did save the day, he's now left Earth vulnerable to future threats. Fortunately, Lois manages to revive him.]]

*** This isn't the only time Daniel's sacrificed himself by far. He [[TakingTheBullet took a staff blast]] for Jack in the original film, pulled a YouShallNotPass at the end of the first season (but managed to make it back), entered the virtual reality where he keeps getting "killed" to save Teal'c in "Avatar", got killed by [=RepliCarter=] after stopping the Replicators long enough for the rest of the team to kill them all, prepares to send himself to the Ori galaxy with the Sangraal in order to destroy the Ori (although his friends intervene and beam him off the ship before it goes through the supergate, leaving the Sangraal onboard to activate after it gets through), and so on. This guy really likes his heroic sacrifices.
*** Gerak, who chose to [[RedemptionEqualsDeath heal the Prior plage from Earth]] despite having been made a Prior himself, also qualifies. Especially when you consider that his last words were, "If I do this, I will die. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis But I... will die... free!]]". "I die free!" was practically the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy rebel Jaffa's]] CatchPhrase.
*** The entire team pulls this in "2010" in an alternate future. In ''Moebius'', they all sacrifice themselves in an alternate past. Both times, they fixed it.
*** Sam''antha'' Carter in the alternate universe in "There But for the Grace of God" has a particularly awesome sacrifice, which allowed Daniel to get to the gate and back into the normal universe and stop the Goa'uld there.

*** Dr. Janet Fraser in the series 7 episode "Heroes". She absolutely will not leave the side of a badly injured soldier on a battlefield. It saves his life, but she loses hers in the process. The soldier she saved named his newborn daughter Janet after her.

*** In the AlternateRealityEpisode "Vegas", Sheppard takes the [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Wraith]]'s cash, quits his job, and leaves to live the life of a rich man (or lose it all in the nearest casino). However, on the way, he has a change of heart and manages to find the Wraith and radio his location in time for the alien to be destroyed by an airstrike before he can call in the others. Unfortunately, he himself is shot in the process and is shown bleeding severely in the middle of nowhere.
*** The episode The Last Man presents an alternate timeline wherein Sheppard was transported several thousand years into the future. Things quickly went south without him. The UN's IOA pulled support out of the Pegasus galaxy when the wraith/human hybrid Lastlight (Michael Kenmore to the humans) became a challenger on the galactic stage. With the Tau'ri pulling out support, and the wraith hives defeated or assimilated by Lastlight, la resistance was left to a few humans. Colonel Samantha Carter took the USS Phoenix to lead a guriljea war against Lastlight, relying on her superior technology to match Lastlight's vast numbers. Eventually they managed to lure her into a trap by attacking a densely populated planet. With no chance left, she beamed her crew down on the planet, and piloted the Phoenix on a suicide attack against one of the hive ships, using the resulting explosion to destroy two others.
*** Meanwhile, Ronon Dex led his own guriljea war against Lastlight, using what little means Stargate Command were willing to provide, and a force of volunteer pegasus humans. During a mission to destroy one of Lastlight's cloning facilities, he encountered an old friend: Guide/Todd the Wraith, an unreliable ally of the Atlantis expedition. While Ronon's forces escaped, the two held the wraith off, until they detonated the explosives while inside the facilities.
*** In the GrandFinale, Sheppard is fully prepared to do this, strapping a nuke to his F-302 and flying it into the Super-Hive in order to detonate it inside, as the ship is too damn tough for any weapon to penetrate it from the outside (even the vaunted Asgard beams). Luckily for him, the rest of his team ends up aboard the ship on a similar mission and he uses a timer to detonate the nuke instead. Ronon does die heroically during the mission... but the Wraith [[HealingHands bring him back to life]] in order to interrogate him.
** In the pilot of ''Series/StargateUniverse'' [[spoiler:the senator]] seals a damaged shuttle through which they were losing oxygen, though doing so means being trapped inside and asphyxiating. His daughter got to watch. [[spoiler:He was going to die anyway from either internal bleeding or a heart condition, so he was just [[TakeAThirdOption choosing a third option]]]].

* Two different starships Enterprise get this in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E15YesterdaysEnterprise Yesterday's Enterprise]]". Short version: A Captain Picard from a timeline where the Federation is losing a war against the Klingons pulls a YouShallNotPass 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 [[FireForgedFriends Fire Forged Friend]] to the Klingon Empire.
-->'''Picard''': Attention all hands! {{As you know}}, we could outrun the Klingon vessels, but we must protect the ''Enterprise''-C until she enters the temporal rift. And we must succeed. Let us make sure that history never forgets the name, "''Enterprise.''"
** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E9TheQualityOfLife The Quality of Life]]" has one for one of the Exocomp droids (who had just been established to be self aware). Three of them enter a highly dangerous radiation field in order to allow Picard and Geordi to be rescued. However, in order to rescue the Exocomps, one chooses to stay behind to prevent the radiation from killing the other two, and it is destroyed in the process.
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E14FaceOfTheEnemy Face of the Enemy]]", Troi is persuaded (well, forced) to act as a double agent for a member of a Romulan underground resistance movement named N'Vek, who uses surgery to disguise her as a Romulan officer of the Tal Shiar. At the climax of the episode, when Troi is about to escape back to the ''Enterprise'' after completing the mission - helping three high-level dissenting members of the Romulan government defect to the Federation - the Romulan Commander is onto her, and N'Vek threatens the Commander to buy Troi time. The angry Commander vaporizes him using a disrupter, but the stalling works, and Troi manages to escape.
* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''

** In ''[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS07E07OnceMoreUntoTheBreach Once More Unto the Breach]]'' the aging Klingon warrior Kor sacrifices himself alongside a crew of volunteers to save the lives of Worf, Martok, and the rest of a Klingon task force from a Jem'Hadar attack fleet.
* The ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' finale "[[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS4E22TheseAreTheVoyages These Are the Voyages]]" ends with [[spoiler:Trip]] sacrificing [[spoiler:him]]self to stop a group of boarders who were threatening the ship. However, many fans dislike this and believe it to be a StupidSacrifice, since all [[spoiler:he]] had to do was stall for time until the [[SpaceMarines MACOs]] intervened. Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse {{RetCon}}s this into a cover-up: [[spoiler:Trip was recruited by Section 31 and was doing black ops missions after his death was faked. The impossibility of the "pirates" catching and boarding the warp 5 Enterprise with a warp 2 ship is also addressed - Archer hired them to fake Trip's death]].
* This is discussed in ''Series/StarTrekPicard'' after Picard's HeroicSacrifice, where his consciousness ends up in Data's simulation once he died. Since Data did not remember his own death, having [[Film/StarTrekNemesis uploaded his memory to B-4 before sacrificing himself]] during the ''Enterprise''-E's battle with the ''Scimitar'', Picard told him about it, and expressed [[HowDareYouDieOnMe fury that he had done it]], [[TakeMeInstead and regret that it wasn't himself instead]]. Data countered that if Picard didn't regret sacrificing himself for the synths (Soji and the others), then he shouldn't expect Data to regret his own sacrifice, nor should Picard regret Data's sacrifice either.

* ''Series/SweetHome'':

*** [[spoiler:The 10th Doctor]] in the second part of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]]. [[spoiler:He switches places with Wilf in a box-thing which was going to fill with radiation when opened. Cue TearJerker as The Doctor comes out dying, and then proceeds to say goodbye to all his friends and/or companions from throughout the series]]. And incredibly, [[spoiler: The Master!]] But then again, the viewers should have seen it coming... "Get out of the way!" It might mean "''My'' prey. Scram." He's too pissed off to care about anything other than [[spoiler:making the Time Lords pay dearly for what they did to him, in the sense of TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou. This is BigDamnVillains. This is the Master. And they NeverFoundTheBody...]]

** "My Three Crichtons" has Crichton split by an energy probe into the original, a caveman version and a highly evolved version. As the probe will continue to tear their ship apart until one of the Crichtons is fed to it, a game of cross & double-cross ensues. The Neanderthal Crichton, [[{{KillingYourAlternateSelf}} by killing future Crichton]], saved Crichton. Then proceeds to [[{{BigDamnHeroes}} save everyone else]] by sacrificing himself to the probe.

** In the season 12 finale, [[spoiler: of all people, [[OverarchingVillain Crowley]] pulls one of these, killing himself to trigger a spell to trap Lucifer in an AlternateUniverse.]]

*** In the Direct-to-DVD crossover special ''Kamen Rider Yongou'', released during ''Series/KamenRiderDrive'''s run, the evil organization Shocker uses a machine to trap the Kamen Riders in a GroundhogDayLoop, giving Shocker the time to strengthen their army. Each time one of the Riders dies, the loop resets. In the end, it is revealed [[Series/Kamen Rider 555 Takumi Inui]] keeps the loop active with his desire keep everyone he cares for alive, making him the anchor for the loops. In the original timeline, he was supposed to have died after the events of ''555'', but with Shocker's meddling of history, Takumi survived. If the original timeline is restored, Takumi would cease to exist. In true heroic fashion, Takumi destroys Shocker's time machine and restores the timeline to normal, at the cost of his own life.

*** Sento/Kamen Rider Build attempts to use an incomplete Genius Bottle to increase his Hazard Level to lure [[BigBad Evolto]] out of Banjo's body, then attempts a suicide attack to eliminate him. It ends up backfiring Sento, because Evolto manages to survive and possess him.
*** Kazumi/Kamen Rider Grease after transforming into Grease Blizzard and knowing that he wouldn't survive it, decide to use his body to complete the final Lost Bottle,causing his ultimate demise.
*** Gentoku/Kamen Rider Rouge manage to broke Evolto's Evol Trigger giving both Sento and Banjou a fighting change in exchange of his death.
*** Banjo/Kamen Rider Cross-Z knowing that he has some of Evolto's DNA in his body, decide to be the one who takes Evolto to the Dimensional Rift, probably causing his death, instead of Sento.

** "The Changing of the Guard": A teacher forced into early retirement questions if he's made any impact on the world. He's visited by the ghosts of some of his former students who all gave their lives to save others. One was killed at Iwo Jima, another died as a result of experiments into X-ray treatment for cancer, yet another saved twelve men on the USS ''Arizona'' during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and all alongside so many others. They were inspired by lessons they taught him.

** Du-sik gaves a OneWingedAngel Hyun-su a CooldownHug to stop him from attacking the other residents, being ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice in the process.

** Du-sik gaves a OneWingedAngel Hyun-su a CooldownHug. and gets ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice in the process.

* At the end of the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' Season 2 opening arc, one of the conspirators tries to shoot Sisko in retaliation for Sisko having foiled their attempted coup. Guest character Li Nalas intervenes and takes the shot instead.

** ''Series/KamenRiderGhost'': Alain/Kamen Rider Necrom tries to pull this twice, but the first attempt is interrupted by his [[TrueCompanion fellow]] riders and he can't go through with the second attempt because he realized that he doesn't hate his [[BigBad brother]] as much as he thought.

* ''Series/TheWarOfTheWorlds'': [[spoiler:George]] sacrifices himself by going outside to draw the Martian's attention so [[spoiler:Amy]] can escape. [[spoiler:She does, though it kills him.]]