Archaic Weapon For An Advanced Age / Live-Action TV

• Subverted in the second season of Fargo, when one of the Kansas gangsters coming to attack the Gerhardts fetches a longbow out of the trunk of his car (bragging "Anyone can fire a gun - the longbow is an art.") only to be the first on the receiving end of a headshot (with a gun).
• Inconsistent in Star Trek.
  • The Klingons love their Cool Swords like the bat'leth, and Deep Space Nine makes a point of mentioning that while they use ranged weapons like disrupters, when they get angry enough or close to short range with their enemies, they will inevitably reach for their bladed weapon to attack their foe hand to hand. Klingons are tough and fierce enough to make this strategy work pretty well. A Star Trek: Voyager episode even shows a group of holographic Klingons armed with bat'leths handily defeating a group of (also holographic) Germans armed with submachine-guns. Granted, anyone would panic at the sight of angry Klingons charging at you, but still.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Worf favors a smaller weapon called a mek'leth that proves more practical in close quarters, and at one point he snaps Jadzia's bat'leth clean in half with it.
    • The Jem'Hadar are perfectly happy to use the Slow Laser equivalent of an assault rifle most of the time, but at melee range, they switch to a short, bladed polearm called a kar'takin.
    • In "Field of Fire", it's mentioned that Starfleet had experimented with chemical-propelled firearms for use in environments that render phasers useless. However, they eventually just put out a new, more resilient model of phaser. The villain of the episode is using a specially modified version that integrates their super-advanced transporter and scanning technologies to create a sniper rifle that can look through walls (no way to hide) and teleport the bullet it fires directly to the target (no way to take cover), turning the archaic weapon into an almost perfect tool of assassination
  • Star Trek: Picard:
    • Elnor carries a tan qalanq, a Romulan sword, instead of any kind of energy weapon, thanks to his training by the Qowat Milat warrior nuns. "Absolute Candor" proves that he's lethal with it, and although another Romulan claims that a tan qalanq is no match for a disruptor, Elnor effortlessly slays several disruptor-carrying Romulan guards in "The Impossible Box" and "Nepenthe" with just his sword. He's not above using Ray Guns, however, as "Stardust City Rag" shows him relieving Bjayzl's personal bodyguards of their phaser pistols and then turning the same firearms on them Guns Akimbo.
    • There are several Romulans at North Station on Vashti who are equipped with a sword.
• Stargate SG-1 plays a little with this with Goa'uld personal deflector shields. Energy weapons and bullets have no effect on them but they can be penetrated by slower-moving objects, a fact exploited by SG-1 on two occasions (for instance, Jack O'Neill throwing a rifle bayonet through Heru'ur's shield and through his hand in "Secrets"). In most other cases though, guns, regardless of form, rule the day.
  • In one episode the Jaffa scoff at Earth weapons since they still use mere bullets instead of energy blasts. After Major Carter promptly demonstrates the P90's superior accuracy and firing speed, Colonel O'Neill explains that the Jaffa staff weapon is a weapon of terror, designed to intimidate the enemy, while the P90 is a weapon of war, designed to kill the enemy.
• Buffyverse:
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampires and demons prefer to use either their teeth and claws or edged weapons rather than firearms, as do Vampire Slayers and other demon fighters. There are notable exceptions, more so in the Angel spin-off which is set in Los Angeles with vampires, etc. acting as part of (and therefore influenced by) the criminal subculture. The trope is lampshaded in "Bad Girls" when the modern-thinking vampire Mr. Trick remonstrates an opponent who comes at him with a sword.
    "Why do they always gotta be using swords? It's called an Uzi, ya chump! Could have saved your ass right about now."
  • For the slayers there is a justification: guns don't kill vampires (or demons) and the gunshot can attract innocent bystanders. Darla however makes a point of shooting Angel because although it won't kill him getting shot will still put him out the fight, which makes one wonder why demons hunters don't shoot vampires and stake them while they're down. Fortunately explosives can still bring down even the biggest monster and The Scoobies use this fact from time to time.
  • The reverse is also true; when a human villain shoots Buffy, he boasts about it in a demon bar afterward. The demons and vamps just laugh at him, pointing out that Slayers are notoriously difficult to kill, heal very fast, and get really pissed when they get better.
• Firefly: Despite space travel taking place most people use lever-action rifles or revolvers. The resultant Cowboys in Space setting is partly justified in that the planets are in the process of being colonized and they only have what they need (the Alliance gear is much shinier and spacey). Jayne also mentions once that Vera needs oxygen around her to fire, which, assuming it wasn't just Artistic License – Chemistry, suggests that a different type of propellant is in common use.
• The Walking Dead takes place in the modern American South, where there's no shortage of guns, but the extensive use of crude impact weapons is justified by the fact that most of the ammo was used up in the early weeks of the zombie outbreak. (This justification is also often subverted when our heroes spray-and-pray their allegedly-scarce ammo in the best action-movie tradition.)
  • Gunshots (or any noise) draws in nearby walkers, one of the reason Daryl's crossbow is so important, and what causes the issues time and time again. Guns tend to be a last resort for this reason, though when other humans are around (who don't have to be next to you to kill you and are able to think and plan) it almost always turns into a firefight.
  • Many times simple pits and traps are shown to be a great defense because the walkers can't think and walk into the trap. The season shows many times the use of simple solutions to problems.
• In The Outer Limits (1995) episode "Rule of Law", the protagonist wields a firearm while everybody else wields laser guns. When he confronts a lynch mob, they mock his weapon for being inferior, but he defeats them with ease.
• Babylon 5:
  • Despite the general dominance of Slow Lasers of various stripes in the setting, the Rangers (a paramilitary group of Minbari origin, originally for monitoring the Shadows, but whom Sheridan turns into international peacekeepers) favor collapsible quarterstaffs ("Minbari fighting pikes") and martial arts. On the other hand, the Rangers' Space Navy is famously equipped with the Pint-Sized Powerhouse White Stars.
  • Played with in the episode "Grey 17 Is Missing". An early scene has Garibaldi playing with one of his ancestors' police revolvers, and he explains that Earthforce favors PPGs over firearms mainly because they're less likely to cause a hull breach when fired aboard a starship or space station (firearms are supposedly much more common planetside). Garibaldi later uses the bullets to kill a man-eating alien.
• Farscape:
  • Subverted in "Throne for a Loss". After Crichton accidentally overloads her pulse rifle, Aeryn asks for another weapon and D'Argo hands her his qualta blade. Aeryn is displeased to be handed a sword, but then D'Argo reveals that the qualta blade is also a pulse rifle. Later episodes indicate the qualta blade is somewhat antiquated by Peacekeeper standards, but it's still a very effective weapon.
  • Justified in "...Different Destinations". The Repeating Crossbow-armed Veneks reduce the pulse weapon-armed Peacekeeper soldiers to fighting with clubs and knives with technobabble that renders the Slow Lasers inoperable. This includes D'Argo's qualta blade, but not Aeryn and Crichton's pulse pistols from 500 years in the future.
• The Power Rangers and the like use chop-socky and melee weapons over the blasters that are usually part of their arsenals as well (and if blasters aren't part of their arsenal, it's a bigger example of this trope - you'd think the would be, and they exist in a world where such things can be made easily enough!) pretty much just because it's how the franchise rolls and what part of the attraction is - you wouldn't want them to trade kung fu for "we stand over there and shoot you stand over here and shoot" any more than you'd want Jackie Chan or Jet Li films to do the same. Against Mooks who do have firearms, the Rangers are able to dodge even in their civilian forms and then take them out with one punch or kick apiece because they're just that good. Your average Ranger's morphed arsenal consists of each ranger having a unique melee weapon and a sidearm (that sometimes shifts into a blade or baton that will be heavily favored over gun mode.)
• In Doc Sidhe, Noriko carries a katana as his primary weapon while her teammates are armed with modern firearms and explosives. Somewhat justified as it has a pure steel blade with is very effective against anyone with fae blood, but she still receives a lot of ribbing for it from the rest of team; especially her boyfriend Jean-Pierre.
• Wonder Woman (1975): Whether it's during World War II or The '70s, Wonder Woman faces off against gun-toting bad guys armed with a boomerang tiara and a lasso.