History VillainDecay / LiveActionTV

* Dr. Bob Kelso in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' starts out as a harsh jerk who openly cares more about Sacred Heart's bottom line than about taking care of patients, and loves making people feel small (especially [[BeleagueredAssistant Ted]]). But later episodes make it pretty clear that his morally questionable actions are the result of [[TheChainsOfCommanding the difficult decisions that he's forced to make as Chief of Medicine]], and that he's really not a bad person at heart--as made clear by his many PetTheDog moments. In particular, his "money first" philosophy becomes a lot less rigid as the show goes on: in Season 1, he outright tries to have Dr. Cox fired for [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight performing a medical procedure on a patient whose insurance doesn't cover it]]; in Season 6, he admits that he ''knows'' that the doctors regularly go behind his back to help uninsured patients, and he's perfectly fine with it (as long as they do it subtly enough that he can maintain plausible deniability). He mellows out even more after stepping down as Chief of Medicine, to the point that he and his "nemesis" Dr. Cox become best friends.

** The Borg are probably the most infamous example, gradually going from a once-a-season menace to a routine annoyance. In their original appearance in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Q Who?", they were a faceless, inscrutable HiveMind who could never be truly defeated because they always acted in perfect synchronicity, and could never be reasoned or bargained with. This gradually changed with "I, Borg" and ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', which presented the idea that the Borg could be taught to act as individuals, and introduced the Borg Queen as a physical leader figure whose defeat could provide an easy way to resolve plots. Then came ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', which took place entirely in the Delta Quadrant (the site of the Borg's home territory), thus making the Borg regular antagonists for the first time in the franchise's history. Since tangles with the Borg suddenly became frequent occurrences, the writers of ''Voyager'' had to regularly depict them being defeated by the crew of the titular lone starship (in contrast to appearances in previous shows, where the Borg mopped the floor with entire ''fleets'') in order to keep the story moving, thus robbing them of a good deal of their original scare value.

* Most antagonists in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' do this, since we learn more about them. Dr. Kelso, for example, starts out as a harsh jerk, who loves making people feel small, especially Ted, but after he retires, he mellows out considerably, to the point that he and Dr. Cox, who had argued with him all the time, became best friends.

*** The new series inverted most of the Classic Master's decay. The Harold Saxon Master was given a plausible motivation — complete insanity — and showed how badass he could be; not least by stranding the Doctor at the end of time itself, becoming [[PresidentEvil Prime Minister of Great Britain]], massacring a tenth of the population of Earth and all in all being a rather MagnificentBastard before the Doctor managed to [[ResetButton undo everything]]. In his next appearance in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], due to [[CameBackWrong a botched resurrection]] he becomes more crazy and is left more concerned with eating to keep his body stable. He succeeds in turning most of humanity into copies of himself, however he is revealed to have been manipulated by [[PresidentEvil Rassilon]], who easily turns everybody back with a literal flick of his wrist, just to prove a point. The Master then saves the Doctor.

** It's worth noting that while all these villains suffered building decay, there is both implicit and explicit justification in many cases, due to Starfleet engineering prowess. The Vorta Weyoun explicitly refers to "famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators", similar to Dukat's comment above. This is implicitly shown with great frequency when Starfleet personnel defeat technological threats. Sometimes it just takes longer than others.

** Rassilon is on the receiving end of this ''hard'' in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]]. In previous stories, Rassilon was one of ''the'' Big Bads of the Doctor Who Universe, a rarely-seen but immensely powerful and influential villain, the corrupt co-founder of Time Lord society, a MadScientist of such staggering genius that he made his fellow Time Lords seem dimwitted by comparison, and obsessed with immortality. In his new series reappearance, he'd successfully masterminded the ending of the Time War on Time Lord terms via 'the Final Sanction', destroying reality to ensure the Time Lords AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, establishing himself as EvilerThanThou to the Master, responding to the latter's unwise gloating by undoing all his plans with a mere flick of the wrist. Come the Series 9 finale, however, and this once impressive villain has regenerated from Timothy Dalton into Donald Sumpter as a result of the Master's attack, with the new interpretation coming off as an ineffectual, whiny, ranting old man who can do little more than ramble about his supposed invincibility, threaten (but not actually kill) people with his gauntlet, and froth with rage about the Doctor doing Doctor-y stuff. He gets defeated in about fifteen minutes via the Doctor simply staring him down, convincing all of his minions to abandon him, and booting him off of Gallifrey. However, this might have a lot to do with his very clearly coming out on the wrong end of the regeneration lottery, and the fact that the Doctor single-handedly [[TheNthDoctor (sort of)]] saved Gallifrey, ending the Time War, and even then, one of the comics demonstrates that this incarnation is not to be underestimated when he returns to Gallifrey and conquers it with [[spoiler: an army of Cybermen.]]

** The Dominion in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' suffer heavily from this trope as well. In Starfleet's first military encounter with them, three of the weakest Dominion fighters [[spoiler:destroy the ''Galaxy''-class USS ''Odyssey'', ostensibly one of Starfleet's most powerful ships, with relative ease]]. By the end of the show we can see ''Galaxy''-class starships destroy the Dominion fighters ''in one shot''. [[note]]That said ''Deep Space Nine'' relied unapologetically on ConservationOfNinjutsu and RuleOfDrama for ''all'' fights, often having wildly inconsistent or improbable results compared to the rest of the franchise and its own series.[[/note]] There ''is'' an in-story justification in "The Ship", though: [[spoiler:a particular Vorta by the name of Kilana allowed the Federation to get its hands on a more-or-less intact Jem'Hadar fighter. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers did the rest and at the two powers' very next combat encounter, most of their old tricks, e.g. shield-piercing weapons, suddenly don't work.]] There is a further in-story justification in Season 5 finale "Call to Arms": [[spoiler:Weyoun is astonished to see DS9's shields holding against Dominion weapons fire, when previously they'd been ineffectived, but Gul Dukat witheringly points out that Starfleet engineers have had years to develop countermeasures to Dominion technology.]]

** The Dominion in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' suffer heavily from this trope as well. In Starfleet's first military encounter with them, three of the weakest Dominion fighters [[spoiler:destroy the ''Galaxy''-class USS ''Odyssey'', ostensibly one of Starfleet's most powerful ships, with relative ease]]. By the end of the show we can see ''Galaxy''-class starships destroy the Dominion fighters ''in one shot''. [[note]]That said ''Deep Space Nine'' relied unapologetically on ConservationOfNinjutsu and RuleOfDrama for ''all'' fights, often having wildly inconsistent or improbable results compared to the rest of the franchise and its own series.[[/note]] There ''is'' an in-story justification in "The Ship", though: [[spoiler:a particular Vorta by the name of Kilana allowed the Federation to get its hands on a more-or-less intact Jem'Hadar fighter. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers did the rest and at the two powers' very next combat encounter, most of their old tricks, e.g. shield-piercing weapons, suddenly don't work.]]

** Goldar (who might be considered TheDragon to both Rita and Zedd) was an excellent case. In early episodes, he was a nightmarish opponent, more than a match for all five Rangers at once. But once he lost the element of surprise and they got accustomed to him, he slowly lost his edge. Jason handed him his first true defeat, and then Tommy handed him another. Around the time of Rita and Zedd's wedding, he had become little more of a joke and a parody of himself.

** ''Series/StargateSG1'' fits this trope like a Goa'uld hand device. The Goa'uld were introduced as merciless, brutal and could effortlessly obliterate Earth as well as having a firm grip on much of the galaxy, held back only by in-fighting caused by their lust for power. When our heroes encounter just a small group of Jaffa, they manage to escape in one piece if lucky. But as the series progressed they became a bunch of arrogant, scheming, childish fools with a [[TheNapoleon Napoleon complex]] and their mighty Jaffa armies become [[MonsterThreatExpiration P90 fodder]]. Their flanged voices sounded cool and creepy when spoken slowly and calmly, but sounded ridiculous when they put any real emotion into it. By the end of the series, a Goa'uld encounter is just an inconvenience as our heroes have bigger fish to fry.
*** The TV movie ''Film/StargateContinuum'' attempted to reset the Goa'uld villain status by having Ba'al go back in time and prevent the creation of the Stargate program and using his knowledge of the future to unify the Goa'uld under his rule (he also casually executes Apophis, the first true major villain in the series, while Apophis's brother Ra, supposedly the ultimate System Lord, is just one of his lackeys). It seems to work, as there is absolutely nothing Earth (without alien tech) can do against a fleet of Goa'uld ships in orbit. Indeed, the only solution is to go back in time and prevent Ba'al's change.

** The Replicators, on the other hand, largely avert this trope, as each time the heroes meet a bunch of those things, it has required an even more insane plan than the last one to merely stall them. Trapping them in a time-stop bubble (they escape), sending then into a black hole (escape too), finding a ancient-made BFG specially designed to destroy them (become immune) and friggin' finally, using a weapon that can fry the entire Milky Way to destroy them all at the same time once and for all. Their Asuran brethren in ''Atlantis'' required a similarly insane plan -- drawing them all into one huge blob then following that up with an EarthShatteringKaboom -- to put them down once and for all.

** Among their human opponents, Harry Maibourne starts as a menacing KnightTemplar, then winds up doing a semi HeelFaceTurn and eventually just gets PutOnABus.

** The Wraith in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' also went the way of the Goa'uld, as first the Atlantis Expedition develop a retrovirus to turn Wraith into humans, but then get reduced to in-fighting amongst themselves over dwindling food (read: human) resources. The Wraith lost their powers to cause hallucinations after their first appearance. Even though they can regenerate from wounds quickly, their scab-masked grunts quickly become just so much [[MonsterThreatExpiration cannon fodder]]. Back around "The Lost Boys" (season 2), it was a difficult prospect for a small team to infiltrate a Wraith hive; by the later seasons ("The Queen" or "The Shrine"), the good guys are almost nonchalant about walking into Wraith territory. This wasn't helped by the introduction of the new {{Big Bad}}s on the block, the Asurans (who were really just the Replicators, but ''less'' threatening). Part of the reason for the Wraith's decay was that they had to be weak and fragmented enough to not be able to simply curb-stomp the isolated Atlantis expedition. At the end of season 1 they realized they could never beat the Wraith ZergRush and had to fake their own destruction to fly under the radar. However when Atlantis regained contact with Earth, the Wraith threat became increasingly ridiculous, especially the idea that they were any sort of threat to the Milky Way considering the large amount of factions present there that could easily wipe the floor with them.

** The Wraith in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' also went the way of the Goa'uld, as first the Atlantis Expedition develop a retrovirus to turn Wraith into humans, but then get reduced to in-fighting amongst themselves over dwindling food (read: human) resources. The Wraith lost their powers to cause hallucinations after their first appearance. Even though they can regenerate from wounds quickly, their scab-masked grunts quickly become just so much [[MonsterThreatExpiration cannon fodder]]. Back around "The Lost Boys" (season 2), it was a difficult prospect for a small team to infiltrate a Wraith hive; by the later seasons ("The Queen" or "The Shrine"), the good guys are almost nonchalant about walking into Wraith territory. This wasn't helped by the introduction of the new {{Big Bad}}s on the block, the Asurans (who were really just the Replicators, but ''less'' threatening). Part of the reason for the Wraith's decay was that they had to be weak and fragmented enough to not be able to simply curb-stomp the isolated Atlantis expedition. However when Atlantis regained contact with Earth, the Wraith threat became increasingly ridiculous, especially the idea that they were any sort of threat to the Milky Way considering the large amount of factions present there that could easily wipe the floor with them.

* The earlier seasons of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' almost always begin with current the villain being replaced by a new one -- because after 40 episodes of losing, the old villain doesn't seem as cool. This trope also applies when a MonsterOfTheWeek reappears after its initial episode; a monster who nearly killed the Rangers in its original appearance would often return to be defeated with a single blow or be incapacitated with slapstick. Notable instances from [[Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers ''Mighty Morphin''']] include:

* The earlier seasons of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' almost always begin with current the villain being replaced by a new one -- because after 40 episodes of losing, the old villain doesn't seem as cool. This trope also applies when a MonsterOfTheWeek reappears after its initial episode; a monster who nearly killed the Rangers in its original appearance would often return to be defeated with a single blow or be incapacitated with slapstick. Notable instances from [[''MightyMorphin'' ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'']] include:

* The earlier seasons of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' almost always begin with current the villain being replaced by a new one -- because after 40 episodes of losing, the old villain doesn't seem as cool. This trope also applies when a MonsterOfTheWeek reappears after its initial episode; a monster who nearly killed the Rangers in its original appearance would often return to be defeated with a single blow or be incapacitated with slapstick. Other notable instances include:
** Serpentera goes from destroying a planet, to being ineffective because the bad guys don't know how to keep it powered, to destroyed by a flying motorcycle in its final appearance (albeit a motorcycle from a god).
** Goldar (who might be considered TheDragon to both Rita and Zedd) was an excellent case. In early episodes, he was a nighmarish opponent, more than a match for all five Rangers at once. But once he lost the element of surprise and they got accustomed to him, he slowly lost his edge. Jason handed him his first true defeat, and then Tommy handed him another. Around the time of Rita and Zedd's wedding, he had become little more of a joke and a parody of himself.

*** The Season 2 trilogy “Liars, Guns, and Money” brought back a ton of Season 1 villains, and several of them suffered this, albeit mainly because Moya’s crew now outclassed them. However, one villain, Durka, suffered it far more than the other returning villains, going from an opportunistic, talented Peacekeeper who was able to take over Moya singlehadedly to being unceremoniously shot by Rygel, who had realized Durka would have bertraued him.

** Rassilon is on the receiving end of this ''hard'' in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E12HellBent "Hell Bent"]]. In previous stories, Rassilon was one of ''the'' Big Bads of the Doctor Who Universe, a rarely-seen but immensely powerful and influential villain, the corrupt co-founder of Time Lord society, a MadScientist of such staggering genius that he made his fellow Time Lords seem dimwitted by comparison, and obsessed with immortality. In his new series reappearance, he'd successfully masterminded the ending of the Time War on Time Lord terms via 'the Final Sanction', destroying reality to ensure the Time Lords AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, establishing himself as EvillerThanThou to the Master, responding to the latter's unwise gloating by undoing all his plans with a mere flick of the wrist. Come the Series 9 finale, however, and this once impressive villain has regenerated from Timothy Dalton into Donald Sumpter, as a result of the Master's attack, with the new interpretation coming off as an ineffectual, whiny, ranting old man who can do little more than ramble about his supposed invincibility, threaten (but not actually kill) people with his gauntlet, and froth with rage about the Doctor doing Doctor-y stuff. He gets defeated in about fifteen minutes via the Doctor simply staring him down, convincing all of his minions to abandon him, and booting him off of Gallifrey. However, this might have a lot to do with his very clearly coming out on the wrong end of the regeneration lottery, and the fact that the Doctor single-handedly [[TheNthDoctor (sort of)]] saved Gallifrey, ending the Time War, and even then, one of the comics demonstrates that this incarnation is not to be underestimated when he returns to Gallifrey and conquers it with [[spoiler: an army of Cybermen.]]

* Dr. Smith on ''Series/LostInSpace'' may be one of the most iconic examples of this trope. He was originally a dangerously intelligent saboteur attempting to kill the Robinsons, but by a few episodes in he had deteriorated to complete pest/buffoon status. Early attempts at character development soon puttered out, and he became simply annoying comic relief. This was a rare case of intentional villain decay. Jonathan Harris, and the show's writers, realized very quickly that the Robinsons would never have tolerated the much darker Smith from the pilot staying around. In comparison, he's a ''much'' more series threat in the [[Film/LostInSpace film]], especially once he [[spoiler:turns into a HalfHumanHybrid]].

*** The GrandFinale shows that the Wraith are one ZPM away from becoming a nigh-unstoppable threat. The Super-Hive they create with just one of those oversized batteries can mop the floor with ''any'' ships and can take a hit from a weapon capable of OneHitKill Ori motherships with minimal damage (that the organic armor heals quickly). Even Atlantis itself barely manages to stall the Super-Hive for a few minutes and nearly crashes as a result. Oh, and the Ancient chair that controls Earth's drone weapons gets wiped out by a couple Wraith Darts making a kamikaze run at it, something no other enemy thought to do. They have to go back to the old school method of sneaking a nuke aboard.

** As shown in ''Series/StargateUniverse'', the Lucian Alliance is doing the opposite, rising from a fairly weak cartel to a major opponent to Earth, starting a SpaceColdWar at which they're ''very'' successful. They even manage to upgrade their previously-weak Ha'taks to be able to match Earth's Asgard-improved ships. It turns out Earth humans aren't the only ones who can be smart. (The writers even addressed this: when asked about how the original-film-era pyramid ships that became SoLastSeason ''many'' seasons ago can match the Asgard-improved ships, the answer was simply that the whole universe hadn't stood still while Earth made improvements.)

** Crowley's character arc has taken a few weird turns over the seasons to the point where he [[ZigzaggingTrope zigzaggs the trope]]. He was genuinely threatening in season 5-7 and a rare demon who avoids the VillainBall, but not above entering an EnemyMine with the Winchesters solely for his own benefit. In season 8 he became more evil than ever, capping it off with [[spoiler:trying to kill ''everyone'' the Winchesters have ever saved]]. Due to a partial demon cure trial, he becomes a lot more emotional in season 9, and spends most of his time chained up in a cellar. His position is all but usurped by Abaddon, and the Winchesters openly express their disgust at [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen how inconsequential the supposed King of Hell has become]]. Then a gambit of Crowley's played out at season's end - [[spoiler:Dean is now a Demon, and in Crowley's claws.]] This is eventually lampshaded when his mother rants that he's not the king of hell but the Winchesters' bitch.

* This happens to many reappearing villains in crossover and anniversary events of long-running tokusatsu like Franchise/SuperSentai and Franchise/KamenRider. While the general rule of thumb is that resurrected villains are always weaker than they were originally, it is still quite jarring to see top-tier bad guys like [[Series/KamenRiderBlack Shadow Moon]] and [[Series/KamenRiderX Apollo Geist]] getting defeated in less than a minute.
** It goes both ways, though: While they're defeated much more quickly, the crossovers became such MassivelyMultiplayerCrossover affairs that the number of heroes they face make them seem a lot ''stronger,'' as well. Each of these villains were long-running foes of ''one'' hero, eventually defeated in one-on-one combat. Now you've got these same guys effortlessly handling ''multiple'' Riders or Sentai teams or ''multiple Riders and multiple Sentai teams at once'' until they manage to defeat them using powers they didn't have in the original series. Doras from ''Film/KamenRiderZO'' is the best example: the fight against him in the ''Series/KamenRiderDecade'' finale movie doesn't last two full minutes, but it consists of him handing thirteen Riders a CurbStompBattle. To beat him they ''all'' (well, the ten who had them) had to use their SuperMode, two using their super-er modes that they didn't ''get'' until ''Decade.'' This makes Doras the single most powerful enemy in Kamen Rider history, something no one Rider could have ever taken even (in the case of Kuuga) using powers that could supposedly destroy a whole planet. Yet somehow, it doesn't have quite the same feeling as his previous appearance, the one film where he was the protagonist's Terminator-like implacable foe who's probably right behind you no matter how sure you were you got rid of him in the previous act.
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* After seeing how much respect the Borg lost during his writing stint on ''Voyager'', Ronald D. Moore rather neatly avoided the trope in his remake of ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}''. The villainous Cylons are only sparingly used as a direct threat to the heroes, and typically when the heroes do beat them there's some kind of price. However, one particular Cylon, Caprica-Six has [[BadassDecay decayed rather badly]]. Given she was only in one episode (the miniseries), where she performed one {{mercy kill}}ing and lectured Baltar and that was it, and then wasn't seen again until the late second season where she followed through on being sad at taking a baby's life by regretting the holocaust in its entirety and missed a man she from the beginning cared about, or why else bother to save him, she didn't have much badass to decay anyway.

** Angelus went from a terrifyingly manipulative force of evil in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer season 2, to rape/sex-obsessed and just kind of yappy in ''Angel'' season 4.

* Series/KirbyBuckets' older sister Dawn was an active [[BigBrotherBully Big Sister Bully]] to the titular Kirby on the show for the first few episodes on the show, doing cruel things to him like gluing him to the toilet or locking him and his friends in a fly-infested school. However, this was dropped very quickly, and while still a {{Jerkass}} was more of a desperate ButtMonkey BrattyTeenageDaughter than an actually malicious antagonist.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':

** [[BadassDecay Spike starts out as one of the most feared and dangerous vampires Buffy has ever encountered. By season 4 he's a joke -- he's the actual butt of the joke in many scenes.]] He becomes less of a joke over seasons 6, 7, and Angel season 5, but never reverts back to being a villain proper.
** Angelus went from a terrifyingly manipulative force of evil in Buffy season 2, to rape/sex-obsessed and just kind of yappy in Angel season 4.
** Plus the Vampires themselves, who constitute a major threat in the first season, becoming progressively weaker until finally they're just a bunch of wussy mooks that even ''Xander'' has roughly even odds of killing in a fair fight. This was briefly {{Zig Zagg|ingTrope}}ed in later seasons where Riley had to become a SuperSoldier just to keep up, but overall in both Buffy and the spinoff, ''Series/{{Angel}}'', Vampires went from "Major threat that requires an incredibly superhuman girl to be born every generation just to deal with them" to "A random passerby can take one out with a pencil". They're still treated by the characters like they're a major threat, but the actual quality of the threat tends to be far inferior to how much they act like it's a threat, as exemplified by their strength being wildly inconsistent; sometimes being portrayed as being far above any normal human's and at other times they can be easily overpowered and restrained by a young (non-Slayer) woman who can't weigh more than 120 pounds.

** This was even lampshaded by Steven Moffat, who commented that they had lost to the Doctor "400 times" This was probably an exaggeration, but he does have a point as the Daleks have only won ONCE over the past few years — and even then, the only thing they "won" was the chance to run away rather than inflict any serious damage. For this reason he temporarily retired the Daleks, probably for a good couple of seasons. Considering that they have appeared ten times since the show's revival, it's certainly fair enough. And in the first episode under him the Daleks [[TheBadGuyWins actually win]] by tricking the Doctor into enabling their race to be restored.

### In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E10Blink "Blink"]] they had an extremely disturbing appearance and behavior that caused them to be deemed the most terrifying Who villain of all time, but all they did was send people back in time a few decades and they had a weakness that they couldn't move while being looked at (and therefore if two or more caught sight of one another at the same time, they'd be frozen like that forever).
### In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E4TheTimeOfAngels "The Time of Angels"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E5FleshAndStone "Flesh and Stone"]], they appear to have lost the weakness for each other's sight (although they still freeze when a person looks at them), they kill prolifically in the dark, any image of them becomes an angel itself, and if stared at too long, they infect the person looking at them and turn them into an Angel. However, the overwhelming response to this episode was that they were far less scary than in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E10Blink "Blink"]], partly due to ConservationOfNinjutsu, and partly due to stylistic/directorial issues that stripped some of their mystery (such as acquiring the ability to communicate and moving onscreen, thereby breaking the conceit that the viewers gaze functioned like a character's gaze). This is granted very debatable within the fanbase (as with many things), but the point still stands.
### In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E5TheAngelsTakeManhattan "The Angels Take Manhattan"]], they became an even crueler villain, sending people back in time when they entered a room, trapping them in a room for the rest of that person's life, and luring the past version of the person into the room just when their future self was on the brink of death, in a temporal loop that they fed off of. Yet once more, fan reaction deemed that they had lost all scariness and mystery, due to the same reasons as the previous episode and due to massive plot holes that made them seem ridiculous (such as the Statue of Liberty being an Angel).
### In [[Recap/DoctorWho2013CSTheTimeOfTheDoctor "The Time of the Doctor"]] they are reduced to merely a cameo. When one touches Clara she isn't even sent back in time, and the Doctor and Clara first escape by summoning the TARDIS round them, then the Doctor stops one with a mirror.

*** Grayza began to suffer decay as the Scarrans became the main villains of season four- and ended up kidnapped by them due to her own gullibility. Particularly blatant was the revelation that [[MauveShirt Captain Braca]]- who she'd supposedly enslaved with her infallible pheromone glands -- was actually still working for Scorpius; he went on to personally remove her from command to prove it. And just to rub it in, her command carrier was retaken by Scorpius, who'd recovered from ''his'' bout of villain decay.

** ''Series/StargateSG1'' fits this trope like a Goa'uld hand device. The Goa'uld were introduced as merciless, brutal and could effortlessly obliterate Earth as well as having a firm grip on much of the galaxy, held back only by in-fighting caused by their lust for power. When our heroes encounter just a small group of Jaffa, they manage to escape in one piece if lucky. But as the series progressed they became a bunch of arrogant, scheming, childish fools with a [[TheNapoleon Napoleon complex]] and their mighty Jaffa armies become [[LoweredMonsterDifficulty P90 fodder]]. Their flanged voices sounded cool and creepy when spoken slowly and calmly, but sounded ridiculous when they put any real emotion into it. By the end of the series, a Goa'uld encounter is just an inconvenience as our heroes have bigger fish to fry.

** The Wraith in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' also went the way of the Goa'uld, as first the Atlantis Expedition develop a retrovirus to turn Wraith into humans, but then get reduced to in-fighting amongst themselves over dwindling food (read: human) resources. The Wraith lost their powers to cause hallucinations after their first appearance. Even though they can regenerate from wounds quickly, their scab-masked grunts quickly become just so much [[LoweredMonsterDifficulty cannon fodder]]. Back around "The Lost Boys" (season 2), it was a difficult prospect for a small team to infiltrate a Wraith hive; by the later seasons ("The Queen" or "The Shrine"), the good guys are almost nonchalant about walking into Wraith territory. This wasn't helped by the introduction of the new {{Big Bad}}s on the block, the Asurans (who were really just the Replicators, but ''less'' threatening). Part of the reason for the Wraith's decay was that they had to be weak and fragmented enough to not be able to simply curb-stomp the isolated Atlantis expedition. However when Atlantis regained contact with Earth, the Wraith threat became increasingly ridiculous, especially the idea that they were any sort of threat to the Milky Way considering the large amount of factions present there that could easily wipe the floor with them.

* A brilliant example of [[TropesAreTools Tropes Are Not Bad]] from ''Series/TheWire''. In the first season the Barksdale crew ruled the West Side of Baltimore. By the third season, they were in a tit-for-tat and being matched by independent drug lord who had no backing and was young and inexperienced. Marlo's ruthlessness surprised even Avon but it went beyond that, particularly with the collapse of Avon and Stringer's friendship where the cracks could be seen as early as the beginning of the second season.