Apocalyptic Log / Live-Action TV

• On The 100, the nuclear apocalypse was initially believed to have been a political conflict, but Murphy stumbles across a series of videos by the people who built A.L.I.E., an artificial intelligence that hacked the world's nuclear arsenal and started the war. The videos end with one of the people involved killing himself.
• Played for Laughs in Big Wolf on Campus when Merton has been turned to stone, and Tommy and Lori find a series of post-mortem tapes left by Merton detailing how to cure pretty much any ailment he could have come down with from fighting the supernatural... except for petrification. The tapes end with a rather somber "In case you can't cure me" message where Merton tells Tommy that he was the first, best, and only friend he ever had and how much he meant to him, and then goes on to chastize Lori for picking Tommy over him as he is "ten times the man Tommy will ever be". Tommy is mortified, while Lori finds it funny as hell.
• Played for laughs (sort of) in the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth. Darling is preparing to go over the top to his death.
  Darling: Made a note in my diary on the way here. It simply says... "Bugger."
• Blake's 7. In "Power", a literal Battle of the Sexes is taking place between the primitive male Hommiks and the technologically advanced Seska. Tarrant finds a video log by a Seska detailing how they're losing the war. It ends when a large axe slams down on the table in front of her.
• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, episode "Space Vampire". The title creature (called a "Vorvon") is being tracked by a man named Helson (possibly from "Dr. Van Helsing", as a Shout-Out to Dracula). Helson's drone makes a recording of him confronting the Vorvon: it ends with him being killed. Buck discovers the monster exists by watching the tape.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Curse of Fenric" features the runic inscriptions of a Viking who made the mistake of stealing a flask containing Fenric, Evil Incarnate.
    Viking: I am the only one left now. I raise these stones to my wife, Astrid. May she forgive my sin. The day grows dark, and I sense the evil curse rising from the sea. I know now what the curse of Fenric seeks: the treasures from the Silk Lands in the east. I have heard the treasures whisper in my dreams. I have heard the magic words that will release great powers. I shall bury the treasure for ever. Tonight, I shall die, and the words die with me.
  • "Silence in the Library": The Doctor and Donna listen to a recorded message (censored "for tone and content") on a data-terminal in an abandoned library. "Message follows: Run. For God's sake, run. Nowhere is safe... We can't — Oh, they're here. Argh. Slargh. Snick. Message ends."
  • "The God Complex": The episode opens with a young policewoman writing an account of her final moments as she succumbs to brainwashing that seems to befall everyone who arrives in the "hotel". The Doctor and the others later discover this.
• In the Season 7 episode "Karma" of How I Met Your Mother, Robin temporarily moves into Marshall and Lily's house in the suburbs and spends most of her time writing and narrating on a diary as if she is an anthropologist being captured by natives and fearing she is becoming one of them.
• Jericho does this in the first episode with an answering machine. Doubles as one heck of an Oh, Crap! moment, as we quickly find out that the message originated in a totally different city than the one that the characters and viewers knew had just been nuked, meaning that the disaster was not just local.
• Land of the Lost has the Marshalls tracking down installments of a diary by a predecessor to the land. Eventually, they enter a cave full of dormant Sleetaks and find his long-decayed corpse and his final entry in a small section. They read that he never found a way home and was doomed because of being trapped in the cave with the Sleetaks awake. Suddenly, the Marshalls heard the sound of the Sleetaks waking up, take the hint, and barely manage to escape themselves.
• This happens in an episode of the Logan's Run series. The protagonists discover an ancient bunker from before the end holding a few Human Popsicle survivors (the best and brightest) from the ancient civilization devastated by a plague. There is also an Apocalyptic Video Log from a man dying from the disease, but holding out long enough to reveal he discovered that one of the hibernated people is an impostor (and potentially a murderer).
• Lost Tapes does this at times: the episode Devil Dragon starts with a man documenting his attempt to survive in the Australian rainforests for a television show, but turns into an Apocalyptic Log when he is bitten and stalked by a megalania. It even ends with him sending a message to his wife and daughter before making one last desperate break for safety, only to be caught by the megalania and dragged off, never to be seen again. Others are much shorter examples where a person tries to get out of danger until the very end of the episode when they realize they will never escape from the monster chasing them and make a last minute attempt to warn people that it's out there before they are attacked and killed.
• One episode of M*A*S*H has something of one when one of the 4077's new nurses accidentally wanders into the camp's minefield during a late night walk. Hawkeye volunteers to deliver her eulogy since she was his latest girlfriend, but no one in camp, Hawkeye included, knows much about her since she was quite aloof and anti-social. Then Father Mulcahy finds her diary in her personal effects and gives it to Hawkeye for inspiration. While we only get a summary from Hawkeye (mostly how she was so anti-social because she looked up to each and everyone there and was too shy to approach them), we do get to hear her last entry, which weighs pretty heavy on Hawkeye: "I can't sleep tonight. My head's just so full of Hawkeye right now. I think I'll take a walk."
• The TV adaptation of Nightmares & Dreamscapes: "The End of the Whole Mess" is basically this trope. Being more specific it is filmmaker Howard Fornoy's video diary explaining his scientist brother Bobby's project that brought unmitigated world peace and its unintended side-effect because "Did Not Think This Through" has been Bobby's accidental life-long motto: the possible extinction of mankind (or certainly unmitigated ruin) because the chemical has the side-effect of causing accelerated Alzheimer's on anybody who is exposed to it. Howard, who already gave his brother a Mercy Kill, is using his last moments before he himself succumbs to ask forgiveness for his brother to anybody who eventually finds it, if ever.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Manifest Destiny", the UFS Mercury medical officer Dr. Will Olsten's record of the Boarding Party from his ship exploring the UFS Rhesos is one.
• Planet of the Apes: In "The Legacy", in the ruins of Oakland, Virdon and Burke discover a holographic message recorded by a scientist centuries after their time. In this ancient message, the scientist states that various repositories of scientific knowledge were hidden in different locations around the world in anticipation of the apocalypse. It was hoped that humanity would eventually be able to use this knowledge to rebuild its civilization.
• The Clip Show episode of Power Rangers RPM featured an Apocalyptic Log that the Teen Genius left in case they lost the Robot War. It provided a brief character summary and log of the fight, but most of it focused on the merchandise toys weapons and equipment they'd been using all season that the prospective finder of the log would find nearby, the general impression being "if you've found this, we lost our war of attrition. You are now one of the last humans alive. Here's what you have to work with- now take up our fight". An odd case of seeing the Apocalyptic Log as a caution of what might happen if they lose, rather than a means of figuring out how they lost.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Parodied in "Psirens". While investigating a derelict ship, the crew find a flight recorder showing a fear-crazed astronaut munching a burger as he documents the horrible fate of his crew. A hideous insectoid monster approaches as the astronaut backs away in terror. A spray of red splatters across the screen...
    Astronaut: You've squeezed all the ketchup out of my burger!
  • There's also this, from Holly: "Three million years from Earth, the mining ship Red Dwarf. Its crew: Dave Lister, the last human being alive; Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of his dead bunkmate; and a creature who evolved from the ship's cat. Message ends. Additional: As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"
• One of the challenges in season 1 of Scream Queens (2008) has the contestants filming these, Blair Witch-style, in order to test how well they can act on their own without co-stars to prop up their performances.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • The Atlantis expedition finds an Apocalyptic Log in the pilot episode:
      Melia: In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form. Then one day our people stepped foot on a dark world where a terrible enemy slept. Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered. The enemy fed upon defenseless human worlds like a great scourge, until finally only Atlantis remained. This city's great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years. In an offer to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean. The Atlantis Stargate was the one and only link back to Earth from this galaxy, and those who remained used it to return to that world that was once home. There the last survivors of Atlantis lived out the remainder of their lives. This city was left to slumber, in the hope that our kind would one day return.
    • Also happens in "The Daedalus Variations". Sheppard and Co., aboard an empty Daedalus, find a video log left by the captain before the ship was abandoned.
  • Stargate Universe uses a variation of this concept in the episode "Time" — the difference is the log is created by Eli in an alternate timeline then sent into the past through a wormhole. This wound up being recursive: at the end of the episode, Matt records a second Apocalyptic Log explaining what had been discovered the first time 'round, so that when the crew found it the next time, they'd have a leg up. At least two loops and logs were required to ensure the crew's survival, but for all the viewer knows, there were three, or three hundred.
• Star Trek. Several episodes in several series feature the crew discovering the logs of the last folks to encounter the disease/Negative Space Wedgie/villain of the week.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series
    • In the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the crew discovered the log of the last people to encounter the A God Am I effect of passing through the barrier at the edge of the galaxy. It ends with the ship's captain giving a self-destruct order.
    • "That Which Survives". The last survivor of a colony leaves a computer message for any of her people who might find it.
      Losira: My fellow Kalandans, welcome. A disease has destroyed us. Beware of it. After your long journey, I'm sorry to give you only a recorded welcome, but we who have guarded the outpost for you will be dead by the time you take possession of this planet. I am the last of our advance force left alive. Too late the physicians discovered the cause that kills us. In creating this planet, we have accidentally produced a deadly organism. I have awaited the regular supply ship from home for medical assistance, but I doubt now whether it will arrive in time. I will set the outpost controls on automatic. The computer will selectively defend against all life-forms but our own. My fellow Kalandans, I, Losira, wish you well.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • One especially notable case: in "Contagion", the Enterprise downloads one of these from the USS Yamato. Unfortunately, the log had hidden in it the computer virus that caused the Yamato to blow up and threatens to do the same to the Enterprise.
    • "Night Terrors" has a chilling log from the Captain of the Brittain, who is going steadily insane.
      Captain: First officer Brink and his men were behind it. They got to the engines, they don't work anymore. Had to eliminate Brink!
    • In at least two episodes ("Time Squared", "Cause and Effect"), the Enterprise crew receive an Apocalyptic Log out of a Negative Space Wedgie... from themselves.
      Picard: All hands, abandon ship! Repeat, all hands, abandon—
    • Also nicely subverted in "Aquiel" where it turns out the person who made the log is still alive, and quite upset that the crew was watching her video diary.
  • At least one appears in Star Trek: Enterprise, specifically in "The Expanse". Perhaps the most disturbing example of this trope in all of Trek, this one had to have been inspired by Event Horizon: a collection of grainy imagery featuring the crew of the subject (Vulcan) starship slaughtering each other in an overwhelming display of uncontrolled emotion (remember they're Vulcans) and insanity, all from passing through a specific region of space.
  • Star Trek: Voyager has "Course: Oblivion", in which one of these is recorded by Voyager crew which turns out be bio-mimetic duplicates, which, as the title implies, are doomed to oblivion.
    Janeway / Harry Kim: We've lost 63 crewmen, and our systems are continuing to fail. Though we're still five weeks away from the Demon planet, we haven't given up hope. ... ... Our situation's getting worse every day. More than eighty percent of the ship is uninhabitable. Most of the crew are gone. It seems less and less likely that the few of us left will reach our destination.
  • In "One Small Step...", Voyager finds the ship of a long-lost 21st century Earth astronaut, Lt. John Kelly, with the crew discovering his last log entries before his death, with accompanying flashbacks.
• The first episode of Threshold has the team discover a video camera on the ship visited by the alien vessel. Playing it back reveals it was used to record the encounter with the vessel. Unfortunately, it also caught the alien signal that either turns humans into superpowered aliens or disfigured corpses and partially infects Molly, Cavanaugh, and Lucas.
• In Season 3 of The Umbrella Academy, when Five takes a look at the Infinite Switchboard, he finds a recording in which Herb explains that there's been "a rip in the space-time continuum" that's swallowing everything, including multiple members of the Commission, and that he could not find a way to prevent the timeline from collapsing. The video ends with Herb himself being consumed by the Kugelblitz.
• Dr. Jenner of the CDC is making an ongoing video log in The Walking Dead when the group of survivors comes across the CDC. Several of his entries are shown in the episode "Wildfire".
• War of the Worlds: In Season 2, one is found left by a young Englishman (after his corpse is discovered). Unlike many such cases though, it's not used to explain what happened (that's known already) and it doesn't show how he died exactly (though it's implied as a possible suicide). It takes the form of video diaries.
• An episode of Wayward Pines is a flashback montage of Mitchum waking up every 20 years from 2014 to 4014 to spend a day monitoring the outside world and making sure the Ark was running smoothly. The first several times, he monitors the global situation deteriorate through TV and radio broadcasts, with more and more stations shutting down, until all he gets is static, proving that Pilcher's predictions were true in this respect - humanity did indeed destroy itself. Also, in season 1, Theresa finds a bunker with video recordings of expeditions sent out by Pilcher to determine the status of various American cities. In particular, she finds the last video log made by Adam Hassler, her husband's Secret Service boss. Hassler shows the remains of San Francisco and mentions that no other humans have been found. He then hurriedly says that he's the last survivor of his party and cuts out to the sound of approaching Abbies. He actually manages to make it back to the town, learning much about the Abbies.
• The X-Files:
  • "Ice" shows the first and last videos of the sequence. At first, the tidy, cheerful and well-lit scientists of an arctic research base report digging ice cores from record levels; the second is gloomy and shaky, with one disheveled man saying "We're not... who we are... we're not... who we are..." before being attacked.
  • "Død Kalm" also includes the Apocalyptic Log. This episode is about an ill-fated ship which had the supernatural effect of rapidly aging its passengers. Scully keeps a journal of their misery, stating "Agent Fox Mulder lost consciousness at approximately 4:30 this morning, the 12th of March. There is nothing more I can do for him, or for myself. Supplies are exhausted, no food or liquid consumed for over 24 hours."
  • The seventh season episode "X-Cops" starts with a homage to COPS (where a cameraman follows a sheriff's deputy check up on some disturbance), when they are suddenly attacked by something that stays just out of the camera's view all the time.

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