Vestigial Empire / Live-Action TV

• Andromeda:
  • Tarazed was an isolated colony founded by Captain Hunt's ex-fiance and a group of humans and loyalist Nietzscheans she organized when he briefly went back in time and told her the Commonwealth was going to fall but he would attempt to restore it in 300 years. They managed to keep alive the traditions of the Commonwealth, short of having an actual Vedran Empress, and became the Restored Commonwealth's capital. Prior to the restoration, Tarazed's Space Navy mainly consists of slipfighters, and no capital ships are seen. The only reason the planet escaped the notice of the Nietzscheans and the Magog is thanks to its out-of-the-way location. Even the Restored Commonwealth is hardly the same Systems Commonwealth that once spanned three galaxies, its initial membership being only 50 worlds. The Commonwealth fleet is later all but wiped out in an ambush.
  • The Nietzscheans have also fallen from grace since their heyday. The unified Nietzchean Empire that caused the downfall of the Commonwealth quickly splintered into warring clan-groups after the battle at Witchhead. While the Nietzscheans as a whole are the largest power bloc in the former Commonwealth and large clans like Drago-Kazov and Sabra-Jaguar are significant power players on the intergalactic scene in their own right, the clans spend more time fighting each other for resources and mating rights than doing anything else. The Nietzscheans are far too politically fractured to be any more than a shadow of their past glory, and even if they could find a leader to unite behind, they have still fallen far from the point where they could take on the Systems Commonwealth.
• The backstory of the Centaurum in Babylon 5, with Londo recalling a time when the Centauri ships were the most feared in the sky before they started losing territory. It gives the audience an instant reason to fear their upcoming influx of technology from the Shadows.
  • Differently from most examples, they are arguably more powerful than in their heyday: the Expanded Universe shows they invented artificial gravity and antimatter-fueled reactors just in time for a civil war to force them to abandon most of what is now the League of Non-Aligned Worlds (with one of their former subjects developing the technology well beyond what the Centauri can do with it), and by the time the contraction stopped they had developed the ships, infrastructure and high-powered weapons to actually make use of that technology. The only thing that kept them from overwhelming the League of Non-Aligned World was a lack of will, and when the Shadow War caused the expansionist factions to come into power they first crushed the Narn (with some help from the Shadows, but it's shown the Centauri did a large part of the work), and then started twelve wars at the same time and were winning (albeit precariously, and again with crucial — and ultimately pricey — support from the Shadows) when Londo managed to force a stop.
• The Federation in Blake's 7 ends up as one of these in the last two seasons. Invaded by aliens from Andromeda, they achieve a pyrrhic victory in which they only survive at all through sheer force of numbers. In the early part of the third season, they seem to have pretty much ceased to exist, with Servalan facing rebellion on Earth and many worlds free of Federation influence. Although the fourth season sees them rebuilding, they still don't have the resources for conventional military conquest, relying on mind control drugs for which the resistance have a vaccine.
• Doctor Who: In "Fugitive of the Judoon", Captain Jack Harkness, trying to warn the Doctor about a universal threat, tells the companions that the Cybermen have been reduced to this state in the future. However, that could all change if the Lone Cyberman manages to get what it wants.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The former colonies of the Valyrian Empire which became the Free Cities. Valyria was a Fantasy Counterpart of the Roman Empire, and seemed destined to conquer the world until a sudden cataclysm destroyed the heart of the Empire. All that was left was a far flung group of colonies that suddenly lacked the Fantastic Nuke that had given Valyria so much power: dragons. While several of these free cities (particularly Volantis) like to proclaim that they will restore Valyrian glory, everyone knows it's so much Cultural Posturing and none of them have anywhere near the ability that the Empire did.
  • Dorne, after a fashion. Dorne's Rhoynar elements are descended from refugees fleeing their old homeland in Essos as it burned under the Valyrian Freehold.
  • As of the end of the sixth season, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros has become this. Cersei Lannister finally managed to destroy a great number of her opponents and officially grasped the reins of power, but of the Seven Kingdoms, Dorne is openly revolting against the throne, the Vale, the Iron Islands, and the North are doing so in secret with the Reach about to join in, and Young Conqueror/Dragon Rider Daenerys has finally launched her own invasion to attempt to retake the kingdom. On top of all that, Cersei's house was confirmed several seasons back to secretly be bankrupt, nobody in the Court aside from a few toadies is personally loyal to her, and the Crown itself is heavily in debt to a bank with a reputation for getting rulers who don't pay back their loans overthrown and replaced by their rivals who will do so. Cersei has finally gotten her hands on the throne right when the throne lost all its power. As of the end of the seventh season she's mostly turned it around; the Iron Islands are hers, Dorne has been neutralized by taking out its leaders, the Reach has been effectively wiped out and the money looted from there used to pay off the bank, and all her other enemies have agreed to a ceasefire to fight a greater war in the North.
• Justified shows us that this happened to the Crowder criminal empire. A few years before the start of the series all criminals in Harlan County were beholden to Bo Crowder who got a cut of every criminal enterprise in the area with the exception of the marijuana trade which was controlled by the Bennett clan. However, a Crowder cousin kidnapped and murdered the niece of the local sheriff and Bo refused to turn him over to the police. The sheriff cut a deal with the Miami Cartel who turned over the killer to him for vigilante justice. In return he framed the guilty party and sent Bo away to prison on trumped up charges. Bo left his oldest son Bowman and trusted associate Arlo Givens in charge of his criminal operations. However, Arlo was starting to go senile and Bowman was a thug who lacked the Pragmatic Villainy favored by the rest of his family. When Bo gets out of prison, his empire is in tatters. Bowman abused his wife one too many times and was shot dead by her, Arlo is a mess and Bo's younger son Boyd is going through a weird Heel–Faith Turn. Bo tries to rebuild his criminal organization but Boyd wrecks his attempt to partner up with the Cartel and Bo is killed. Later Boyd tries to take over but is thwarted by law enforcement and rival gangs moving in. The final nail comes when he allies himself with the Detroit Mob only for that organization to implode. When Boyd finally goes to prison, the Crowders have little influence over the crime in Harlan.
  • At the beginning of the series, the Bennett clan controls all marijuana trade in Harlan County and surrounding areas and even the Crowders will not mess with them. However, Mags Bennett, the family matriarch, and her oldest son Doyle plan on retiring and going legit. Dickie Bennett tries to take over the operations but he quickly messes things up and in the ensuring conflict all the Bennetts except Dickie end up dead. Dickie attempts a comeback but he fails again and ends up in prison. The conflict in the final season is kicked off when Avery Markham returns from exile and tries to take over the Bennett's old marijuana operation. By the ends of the series the Bennett criminal empire seems to get a resurgence as Loretta McCready, a Teen Genius Mags took under her wing, is able to convince the local marijuana growers to back her against Markham.
• Rise of Empires: Ottoman: The Roman Empire is on its deathbed, being reduced to a single city-state which, while heavily defended thanks to its walls and advantageous location, is surrounded by the Ottomans on all sides.
• The Sopranos is set during the period when the American Mafia is long past its prime, with its members constantly longing for the "golden age" of their fathers and grandfathers, increasingly effective crackdowns by the FBI, continuous internal strife and conflicts between the crime families eroding what few assets are left, new technologies and regulations making it harder to profit from their criminal activities, and trouble filling the void of deceased or imprisoned old guard with reliable new blood. It's frequently shown how the organization is a shadow of its former self by the time Tony takes command, and what little remains continues to crumble over the course of the series.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dukat feels this way about the Cardassian Union, which has been reduced to a shadow of itself following the Federation-Cardassian War. It's what leads to him aligning Cardassia with the Dominion, hoping to use them as a means of regaining their lost glory. Ironically, his actions ultimately leave it even more of a vestigial empire by the end of the series than it was circa mid-Season 5.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • In the episode "Dragon's Teeth", the crew awakens several hundred members of a species that used to rule the quadrant, who find that their enemies have overrun their old empire and that the name of their species is now a synonym for "foolish."
  • The Krenim Imperium in "Year of Hell", before Annorax started wiping out entire species with his giant spacefaring RetGone cannon in an attempt to restore the Imperium to its greatest glory. Unfortunately, he didn't take certain side-effects into account - wiping out their first race also wiped out a key antibody that had prevented a vicious plague from nearly wiping out the Krenim. His attempt to fix that cost him his home colony, and he spends the next two hundred years trying to restore that colony, while also nominally restoring the Imperium. It takes Janeway crashing Voyager into the time ship to hit the Reset Button, sending the Krenim back to vestigial status (and resetting Voyager so that the eponymous Year of Hell fighting the Krenim never happened).
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • The Klingon Empire is said to be this before the unification attempts by T'Kuvma and Kol lead to war in the first season. T'Kuvma's goal of reuniting the warring Great Houses becomes Kol's goal as well when he gets his hands on T'Kuvma's cloaking technology, and begins to trade this for the loyalty of the other Great Houses. By the time the war ends and the dust has settled, L'Rell is the last one standing to claim the Chancellorship, with the backing of the Federation.
  • In Season 3, the Federation itself has become this in the 32nd century. Following the Burn, an event which caused nearly every warp-capable vessel to explode for no apparent reason, galactic civilization collapsed and the Federation dropped to a tenth of its size. It can barely maintain its current state with its limited resources, especially with the threat that whatever caused the Burn could happen again with no warning. By the end of the season, the cause of the Burn is discovered and neutralized, a new massive source of dilithium will enable the Federation to recover, the Emerald Chain, the primary threat to the Federation, collapses after Osyraa's death, several former worlds (Trill and Ni'Var, formerly Vulcan) are already considering rejoining, and the spore drive may also allow ships to make instantaneous jumps even without the use of genetic engineering thanks to the Kwejians' empathic abilities.
• Star Trek: Picard confirmed that the Romulan Star Empire became this after their home planet was destroyed in the 2009 movie. They were replaced with the Romulan Free State that gets on more peacefully with The Federation and got rid of The Neutral Zone between their two territories.
• A few live-action streaming Star Wars series on Disney+ (The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka) are set between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, in which the wicked and once-powerful Galactic Empire is defeated, following the climatic battle of Endor and the deaths of its Sith Lords, but remains shattered into smaller surviving remnants that periodically threaten the fledgling New Republic that has supplanted it. One is led by the notorious warlord Moff Gideon, who has become a major archenemy of Mandalorian bounty hunter hero Din Djarin, and it is later revealed that he was among several surviving Imperial warlords awaiting the return of the exiled alien strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn, who promises to become a greater threat to the Republic once he finds his way.