Screw You Elves / Live-Action TV

Screw You, Elves! moments in Live-Action TV series.

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• Babylon 5: "Now get the hell out of our galaxy! Both of you!"
  • Used on several occasions in Babylon 5. The highlights are Delenn shaming the Minbari Grey Council out of their non-interference policy, Sheridan similarly refusing to back down from pestering Kosh until the Vorlons give them a much needed victory against the Shadows, and of course Sheridan telling both the Vorlons and Shadows where they can stick it, ending the war by demonstrating to them that there was simply no point to it anymore now that the races they'd been manipulating had caught on to them.
  • Humans have a saying: 'Minbari never tell anyone the whole truth.' Delenn, a Minbari herself, acknowledges that there is some justification for that expression.
  • Sheridan's Screw You, Elves! speech to Kosh in "Interludes and Examinations":
    Sheridan: Don't turn your back on me. Don't you even try to walk away from me. Just who the hell do you think you are? Wait. I know what you think you are, what you want us to believe. But I don't buy it. For three years now you've been pulling everyone's strings, getting us to do all the work and you haven't done a damn thing but stand there and look cryptic. Well, it's about time you started pulling your own weight around here. I hear you've got a saying, "Understanding is a three-edged sword." Well we've got a saying too. "Put your money where your mouth is."
    Kosh: Disobedient!
    Sheridan: Up yours!
  • (paraphrased) "Zog? Zog what!? Zog, yes? Zog, no? We're not going anywhere until you give us a proper answer!"
  • A far more mundane (and funny) example: When Delenn is having some extremely embarrassing trouble with her new human-style hair, Ivanova asks what she's washing it in. Delenn gets her beatific Minbari ahh-our-beautiful-meaningful-rituals smile on and starts talking about how their daily chemical scrub symbolizes rebirth, and — Cue Ivanova's "Yeah, no" expression.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor is not a human, but having sat through a fourteen-week Kangaroo Court devoted to stitching him up and having suffered several years of pompous Time Lord arrogance and self-righteousness before that, the Sixth Doctor isn't shy about telling the Time Lords off at the end of "Trial of a Time Lord":
  The Doctor: In all my travels through time and space I have battled against evil. Against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilization — decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core! Power mad conspirators? Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen — they're still in the nursery compared to us! Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt.
  • Colonel Mace of UNIT shows this strongly during the Sontaran Stratagem. The Doctor is being his usual self, insisting that nobody fights and that guns are bad, and Colonel Mace (who is dealing with a hostile alien invasion) stops listening and gives out an epic Rousing Speech.
    Colonel Mace: "Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much for your lack of faith, but this time I'm not listening." He pulls off his gas mask and dons his hat.
• Jack O'Neill has done this a few times in Stargate SG-1, most often to the Asgard.
  Daniel: Well, let's just say that Jack made a reference to Freyr's mother...
  • The Asgard must think it's funny. After all, they did name a class of starships after him (the namesake of the class got blowed up, but that was another story).
    • For Space Elves, the Asgard are pretty cool with less advanced races. Thor, at least, is not only friendly with humans (particularly Jack) but also respects them. Freyr and some of the others play the trope straighter — but when the entire race basically wills all its stuff to humanity, you get a sense of how they really felt.
  • The Nox (aka the Bad Hair Elves) are even more irritating in that they NEVER get called on a 'pacifism' that relies entirely on being Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that can restore the recently dead to life and completely hide their civilization from aggressors; leaving other species to be victimized while they enjoy their virtue and avoid contact with anyone willing to use violence for self-defense against a lethal enemy.
  • The Tollan on the other hand got their comeuppance — after demonstrating the shallowness of their principles.
  • The Ancients, despite being a race made almost entirely of gigantic dicks, don't really suffer from this. The few times they are called out, they ignore it (apart from a few exceptions). Then again, they are all either dead or Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, Woolsey of all people delivers one to a group of un-ascended Ancients who returned to Atlantis after 10,000 years and immediately kick Humanity out on the curb. When the Ancients subtly mock the suggestion of Humanity remaining in the Pegasus Galaxy by pointing out that their recklessness reawoke the Wraith, he politely counters by pointing out that the Ancients were the ones who accidentally created the Wraith in the first place!
  • In early series, the Tok'ra are often on the receiving end of this, usually from Jack. He regularly lampshades their tendency to screw over their Human allies by not giving them crucial information, as well as hog some technological prize that SG-1 busted their tails trying to acquire. They may not be evil like the Goa'uld, but they sure have their arrogance.
• The Greek gods tend to consider themselves as better than us lowly humans and as the only thing keeping humanity from dying off. Hercules and Xena tend to disagree with that.
• Red Dwarf: In "Holoship", we learn the titular Holoships are made out of the most capable members of the Space Corps. Creating a population of immortal, highly intelligent, nigh-indestructible holograms out of what can be stated to be amongst the best of humanity also creates a population that is incredibly arrogant. So, when a member beams over and starts making snide and condescending remarks about the crew during his analysis, Lister mocks him back, ultimately culminating with threats backed by a holowhip, a device that can actually cause pain to holograms. The observer decides that discretion is probably the better part of valour in this case and flees back to the Holoship.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Humans and dwarves often tell off elves for being haughty immortals who think they own everything, while the mere mortals have to deal with things like "death" and "scarcity." Generally speaking, the elves just quietly accept the criticism, though it's obvious they're annoyed (except for Elrond, who immediately works to redress his mistakes). Galadriel eventually snaps when Halbrand won't tell her where the orcs she's seeking are.
  Halbrand: Look, elf. You didn't cause my suffering and you can't fix it. No matter how strong your will. Or your pride. So let it lie.
  Galadriel: I have pursued this foe since before the first sunrise bloodied the sky. It would take longer than your lifetime even to speak the names of those they have taken from me. So letting it lie is not an option.
• Everyone who isn't an elf thinks this about the elves of The Shannara Chronicles. Rovers^note nomadic bandits, in particular, seem to be of the opinion that Elves screwed them first, turning a blind eye to their poverty and homelessness while sitting in their nice comfortable castle (though the guy who expresses this belief is a known Con Man, so maybe take his words with a large amount of salt). All that said, Rover Eretria starts warming up to her traveling companions, Amberle and Wil (an elf princess and an elf/human hybrid, respectively), to the point where, by episode six, she has made romantic passes at both of them.
• Star Trek: The Original Series. McCoy's attitude seemed to be very much "Screw you, Vulcans!" And the Big Three confronting the Vians for their use of torture to test the mettle of "lesser" races in "The Empath".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Captain Picard is a master at these.
  • In "When the Bough Breaks", after an advanced alien race uses their technology to steal all the children on the Enterprise, then tried to ease their consciences by offering "compensation" for taking them.
    Picard: [slowly advancing on the viewscreen] Compensation? You have stolen our children away from... away from their classrooms, away from their bedrooms, and you talk about compensation? You claim to be a civilized world, and yet you have just committed an act of UTTER BARBARITY!
  • In "The Ensigns of Command", the Sheliak, a species that finds human language so inferior they insist on insanely long contracts and treaties that they constantly Rules Lawyer in their favor, are demanding that the Federation remove a lost colony from Sheliak space, or they'll annihilate it. Picard finds a loophole to exploit (their treaty allows for the selection of a neutral party as arbiters, and Picard picks the Grizzelas, a species who are currently in hibernation for another six months) and takes much pleasure in leaving the Sheliak on hold for a good minute and a half, the way they've been doing to the Enterprise throughout the episode, before the Sheliak finally agree to his original offer of a three-week window for evacuation.
  • Towards the end of "Allegiance", Picard is unaccepting of his abductors' apology, as he gives them a taste of their own medicine.
    Alien 1: We were merely curious. We meant no harm.
    Alien 2: We did not, after all, injure you in any way.
    Picard: Captivity is an injury, regardless of how it's justified. And now that you've had a taste of captivity, perhaps you'll reconsider the morality of inflicting it upon others. [Beat] Now get off my ship.
  • Picard also slips into this with Q, whenever the latter slips out of Blue-and-Orange Morality and into just being a pompous ass mocking Picard for how much better he is than humanity. For example, in "True Q":
    Picard: Your... arrogant pretense at being the moral guardians of the universe strikes me as being hollow, Q. I see no evidence that you're guided by a superior moral code or any code whatsoever. You may be nearly omnipotent, and I don't deny that your... parlor tricks are very impressive. But morality, I don't see it. I don't acknowledge it, Q! I would put human morality against the Q's any day. And perhaps that's the reason that we fascinate you so — because our puny behavior shows you a glimmer of the one thing that evades your omnipotence: a moral center. And if so, I can think of no crueler irony than that you should destroy this young woman, whose only crime is that she's too human.
    Q: Jean-Luc... Sometimes I think the only reason I come here is to listen to these wonderful speeches of yours.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The Baseball Episode "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" starts out as Screw You Elves, thanks to Sisko's rivalry with his Vulcan opposite number, but winds up more along the lines of Let's Just Laugh at You, Elves.
  • Especially in DS9, many feel that the whole of the Federation is this way, and appreciate when, say, Klingons or Ferengi tell off the Federation's representatives. Eddington in "For the Cause" rips a particularly nasty and bitter example of this trope in the form of a Motive Rant once he is revealed to be with the Maquis, too.
  • Since humanity (or the Federation) acts as the "elf" in the 24th century Star Trek universe (that is, after the death of Gene Roddenberry), it sometimes ends up on the wrong end of this trope. One example in "In the Pale Moonlight" when Quark takes a great delight in reminding Sisko that "every man has his price" for resorting to deception and treachery in spite of all the Federation arrogance about superior morality.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • Vulcans (other than T'Pol) are very arrogant, and Archer repeatedly calls them on it throughout the series. Culminating in a scene in "Home", after Soval (wrongly) blames Archer for the loss of a Vulcan crew and ship in "Impulse":
    "Maybe that'd crew would still be alive if you'd been a little more helpful. ... You did everything you could to sabotage our mission. I got more help from the Andorians than I ever got from the High Command! ... This planet would be a cloud of dust right now if we listened to you!"
  • In a later episode, Soval reveals why Vulcans act they way they do towards humans. They're terrified of us. It took Vulcans 2000 years to get from nuclear power to warp drive. Humans did it in a little over a century. They're scared to imagine what we'll do next. Which, as it turns out, is found a multi-species Federation and bring some peace and order to our little corner of the Universe. Horrors. To be fair to the Vulcans of this era, humans also had the whole Section 31 thing going on in the background. Generally speaking, bioweapons and political murders aren't exactly a good thing. Still, screw them and their pompous behavior.
• Supernatural:
  • The angels have plans for Sam and Dean. Specifically, they've planned for Sam to get himself possessed by Lucifer and kickstart the Apocalypse (with all the civilian casualties implied therein) so that the archangel Michael, while possessing Dean, can finish Lucifer off. Dean suggests that they take their plan and shove it. It's worth noting that only the senior angels apparently had this plan; they admit they had to appear to be preventing Lucifer's rise to avoid a rebellion by the grunts. Once it has already happened they figure everyone will fall in line in the face of the new threat, regardless of how he arose.
  • A more typical example occurs in "The End", when Dean meets Lucifer in person for the first time:
    Dean: You're not fooling me, you know that? With all this "sympathy for the Devil" crap. You're the same thing, only bigger. The same kind of evil cockroach I've been squishing my whole life. The only difference between them, and you, is the size of your ego.

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