Colonel Badass / Live-Action TV

• The seventh season of 24 features the villainous African, Colonel Ike Dubaku of Sangala. Also a Scary Black Man.
• Col. John "Hannibal" Smith from The A-Team. "Hannibal", in this case, has nothing to do with the Serial Killer, but the Carthaginian general who almost brought down the Roman Republic. This Hannibal is that good. "I love it when a plan comes together."
  • After the failure of the crappy, bumbling Major sent to hunt the A-Team down, the Army gets serious and brings in Colonel Decker, an unconventional badass in his own right who's very nearly as good as Hannibal. From then on, it goes from pratfall laughs as the Army is outwitted to hair-raising near-misses where the team's celebrations at beating the bad guy of the week are cut short as Decker closes relentlessly in. Decker's first appearance has him chatting with his superiors as he fires off every infantry weapon in the army one by one. Hard-friggin-core.
• Colonel Tigh of the Battlestar Galactica. Whether leading a resistance group on New Caprica or wielding two automatic rifles while fighting mutineers, the guy is BADASS. Bonus: he rocks the Eyepatch of Power.
• Colonel Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, who was not only a badass but H. O. T. Gotta love a woman who can be a Colonel Badass while rocking a spandex catsuit.
• Doctor Who:
  • Colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart in his first serial before he was promoted to Brigadier.
  • "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky": Col. Mace. "You will face me, sir!"
  • "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone": Bishop Octavian.
• In Edge of Darkness, all the spooks seem to be colonels.
• One episode of Flashpoint indicates that Sam Braddock's father literally earned the moniker "Colonel Badass", though he had been promoted to General by the time this was revealed.
• Averted by Col. Wilhelm Klink in Hogan's Heroes, although his rank might just be a foil to that of good guy group leader, Col. Hogan, who plays this trope more or less straight.
  • Perhaps ironically, in the German version of the show (Ein Käfig voller Helden) Klink gets his proper German rank of Oberst, but Hogan, as an American, is still called Colonel Hogan by everybody... thus playing the trope completely straight.
• Commander Harmon "Harm" Rabb Jr. in JAG. Lieutenant Colonel Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie would also qualify.
  • Thai Colonel Patano in "Déjà Vu". It's made clear that the only reason Harm isn't dead is that Patano never had the intention to kill him.
• Subverted in M*A*S*H with ineffectual Lt. Col. Henry Blake, then played somewhat straight with his replacement, Col. Sherman T. Potter, who had massive cred as a leader of soldiers as a former enlisted man and veteran of earlier wars.
  • Truth in Television for Potter's history giving respect. People who go from NCO to officer are called "Mustangs", and enjoy great respect from enlisted personnel.
  • And Hotlips' overhyped hubby Lt. Col. Penobscot is likely a parody of this type.
  • Colonel Flagg fits this role as is evidenced in the episode where he breaks his own arm so he can infiltrate the hospital as a patient.
    • Double bonus badass: When an X-ray shows that his arm has healed sufficiently for him to be released, he pulls the X-ray camera down on his cast, shattering it and re-breaking his arm.
    • Col. Flagg would come to squander his badass credibility in later episodes, though. (Sometimes edging towards Colonel Kilgore, occasionally, at least mentally.) His behavior in later appearances became more and more erratic and paranoid; culminating in complete disgrace in his final appearance.
• The British Army Colonel character played by Graham Chapman on Monty Python's Flying Circus. He can come in and put a stop to a sketch when he thinks it's getting too silly or out of control!
• Colonel Carrillo in Narcos, a highly competent and honest - if somewhat brutal - military officer and the only guy that Escobar was afraid of.
• Col. Mason Truman of Power Rangers RPM You definitely going to need a Colonel Badass to be in charge of the last remaining humans on Earth. His appearance in the first episode says it all: Explosions reflect in his shades. He just stands there watching over his soldiers as all hell breaks loose. When Corporal Hicks tells him they're all screwed, he just tells him to "go shoot at something."
• At the end of the final episode of Raumpatrouille, Major McLane is promoted to Colonel for once again saving Earth.
• Otto von Stirlitz (real name: Maxim Isaev) from Seventeen Moments of Spring, the pinnacle of a Soviet Spy Fiction, is a Standartenführer (SS equivalent of colonel) ...and in his real life as a Russian spy, a NKVD colonel. He was so badass back in his days, that he experienced a Memetic Mutation in recent times and ended up being a Memetic Badass, as well (no, seriously).
• Colonel T.C. McQueen from Space: Above and Beyond. He's the sole survivor of the battle between the Earth's best squadron and the Chigs. Like his last fight with "Chiggie Von Richtoffen," and his "I don't think 'our Lord' wants to hear from me right now," speech.
  • He's also an "In Vitro", who were genetically-engineered to fight the Silicates, after the latter Turned Against Their Masters.
• Stargate: SG teams are usually lead by a colonel or lieutenant colonel, and when the SGC (part of the US Air Force) starts building starships they're commanded by colonels as well.
  • Stargate SG-1 features Jack O'Neill as the titular team's leader until he's Kicked Upstairs in season 8, afterwards Samantha Carter is promoted from major to lieutenant colonel and put in command of SG-1. Season 9 brings in lt. colonel Cameron Mitchell after the original SG-1 is disbanded as the new team's lead.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, there's at least four colonels and lieutenant colonels, and possibly more. One episode had all of 'em arrive in the same room at once, with predictable results.
    • That scene is a reference to a scene in the SG-1 episode "Frozen", except the overused title in that one was "Doctor".
  • Colonel Everett Young in Stargate Universe would be this, if he didn't frak it up with some truly dumb-ass decisions. General O'Neill had to personally let him know that he was screwing up the mantle with his actions in "Incursion", part 1.
    • Once he gets his act together though, he quickly regains this status.
  • There's also Colonel David Telford (played by Lou Diamond Phillips).
• Kira Nerys becomes one of these in the final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but she was a badass since the pilot episode.
  • Usually the heroes in Star Trek tend to be Captains, but the Commander rank can't be overlooked. The first, and in some cases second officers, of the ships hold this rank. Any Starfleet officer that's a Captain or higher was one. Ben Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a Commander even though he was The Captain.
    • Some of the lower-ranking characters are Sergeant Rock, as well.
    • Especially Kirk could verge on this trope: a naval Captain does have an equivalent NATO officer code of OF-5 (the same as a Colonel), and Kirk repeatedly went down to planets himself and got into dangerous situations (it's a rare The Captain who can solve problems by punching them).
• Strike Back has Colonel Grant who normally commands the team from the command center but when a things go to hell she goes into the field and saved the day herself. She even commandeers an arms dealer's team of mercenaries to go and rescue a member of her team trapped in southern Sudan.
  • Her successor Rachel Dalton, while not actually a Colonel (Captain upon introduction, promoted to Major at the end of the episode), displays some serious badass cred in the season two opener, using an anti-tank rocket to blast through a Somali blockade about midway through the episode and generally keeping up effortlessly with Scott and Stonebridge on the battlefield until their extraction arrives. As a bonus, she initially appears to be little more than a junior bureaucrat until she finds said rocket launcher in the enemy's weapons cache.
    • From Shadow Warfare onward, Colonel Philip Locke takes the reigns of leadership from Dalton after she has made questionable decisions during the course of the season and becomes the official leader after her untimely death. Colonel Phillip Locke is a 30 year veteran of the British Army and served in every conflict Britain was involved in during that time. Stonebridge is clearly impressed that Locke is involved in their mission. Locke then proves his reputation correct when he singlehandedly saves Major Dalton from a hitman. When the team is ambushed at an airport, Locke's response is to go on the offensive and kill everything (until getting attacked from behind). Later, when forced to dig his own grave, he instead kills the men guarding him, and nearly escaped on his own. And even while wounded and being tortured, and offered the name of the man who killed his son, he still won't give up NATO secrets.
  • Colonel Alexander Coltrane of Revolution and Vendetta kicks ass in every action sequence he's in, either physically, with a gun, or with both.
• Nate Taylor from Terra Nova, played by none other than Stephen Lang. Due to strange time dilations, he had to spend 118 days alone in the Cretaceous Period and doesn't even have any visible scars. And he still goes toe to toe with carnivorous dinosaurs to protect his people.
• Col. Ed Straker in UFO (1970). In one episode, he shoots an opponent who can travel through time and downs a UFO with a rocket launcher.
  • By that time, Straker was a "Commander" with colonels and naval Captains as subordinates. This Commander-is-the-boss idea occurs in many of the Gerry Anderson series.
• On Ultimate Force, Colonel Aidan Dempsey reliably kicks a lot of arse when called upon, most notably in the episodes 'Dead Is Forever', 'Never Go Back' and - particularly - 'Charlie Bravo'. In the latter, he strides through a gunfight, casually taking one-handed potshots at rebels, while exhorting his local counterpart to "Pretend you're an officer and get your men in order!"
• Sergeant Major Jonas Blane from The Unit, even though he's not a colonel. The show's resident colonel, Tom Ryan, is more Da Chief.
  • Sergeant Major (or his battalion staff equivalent, the Command Sergeant Major) is the Colonel Badass of Army NCOs. Any officer who doesn't give their advice careful consideration is extremely foolish.
• Colonel Cedric Daniels in The Wire. He starts as a Lieutenant, and becomes Majorly Awesome, Colonel Badass, and finally Da Chief, before realizing he doesn't want to be at the head of such a flawed police department. the fact that he immediately starts getting blackmailed doesn't help. He quits and becomes a lawyer.
• Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman (1975). He gets knocked in the head with a blunt object about once per episode, but he always wakes up with no ill effects and never complains. In early episodes, he even wears military ribbons that weren't even issued until after the war ended.

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