Uriah Gambit / Live-Action TV

As this is an Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Uriah Gambits in Live-Action TV series.

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• The 100 opens with one hundred juvenile delinquents being sent on a mission to the Earth's surface, to see if the radiation from the nuclear war has subsided enough to make the planet livable. According to everyone's calculations, Earth shouldn't be livable again for another hundred years, and all of the kids they sent down are expected to die. That's fine as far as the Council's concerned, since their real goal is to conserve their limited oxygen supply by reducing the population; the only reason the kids were given their "mission" instead of just being slaughtered is that, legally, the Council's not allowed to execute children.
• Angel: Angel has one in the final episodes by sending Lindsey to kill one of the leaders of the Black Thorn; in case he survived, Angel sent Lorne to finish him off.
• In the Blackadder Goes Forth episode "Corporal Punishment", when Edmund is court-martialed, and Baldrick and George fail to do anything to save him, he volunteers them to a mission named "Operation Certain Death" (though they apparently manage to survive). However, since we only hear Capt. Blackadder's side of a telephone conversation in which the operation is mentioned, it's possible that he was just making it up, knowing the two dimwits would fall for it.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: An ally who thinks Buffy is getting a little too inquisitive sends her out to investigate what's presented as a possible low-level threat (maybe just a raccoon triggering their sensors):
  Buffy: (speaking through a monitor) Professor Walsh. That simple little recon you sent me on? Wasn't a raccoon. Turns out it was me trapped in the sewers with a faulty weapon and two of your pet demons. If you think that's enough to kill me, you really don't know what a Slayer is. Trust me when I say you're gonna find out.
• This is one of the main strategies of Michael in Burn Notice. He very rarely lethally shoots someone, but far more often gains their trust and sets them up on a course where they will be killed by their accomplices.
• In Community episode Modern Warfare Jeff discovers the position of the Glee Club by telling Pierce ''not'' to come over to him.
  • In the Western-motif second season paintball episode, Pierce returns the favor (having become something of a villain within the group), sending Jeff out with blanks instead of real ammo in the hope that he would get "killed" on their mission to find the stash of last year's equipment.
• Doctor Who: In "The Caves of Androzani", after Chellak discovers that he executed android duplicates of the Doctor and Peri instead of the genuine articles, he sends Ensign Cas, the only eyewitness to his screw-up, on a deep penetration mission, noting that "very few return."
• In the Dollhouse episode "True Believer," Boyd attempts to get Echo pulled off of the job she's on because it's become too dangerous. However, Dominic (who believes Echo is becoming a liability to the Dollhouse) refuses to allow Boyd to extract Echo. When it seems that Echo is going to manage to scrape out of her situation after all, Dominic goes above and beyond this trope: he takes a private jet to the scene and slugs Echo in the face while she's in a burning building, and then flees with the hope that Echo will remain unconscious and burn to death. It doesn't work.
  • After a handler is caught raping the Active in his care, Adelle offers him another chance to prove himself by killing Ballard's girlfriend, Mellie. Too bad for him the target was a sleeper active...
• Game of Thrones:
  • Near the end of Season 1, Tyrion suspects (with good reason) that his father Tywin is pulling this on him by making him lead the inexperienced Mountain Clans in battle. He calls him out on it too, saying that there have to be less costly means of getting him killed.
  • In Season 4, Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt attempt this against Jon Snow by allowing him to lead a dangerous mission against a group of mutineers from the Night's Watch, hoping that he'll die in the attempt, since they know that he's quite popular within the Watch and might actually have a chance of becoming the next Lord Commander if they don't take steps to ensure otherwise. Ultimately, they fail (as Jon succeeds in his mission, arguably boosting his popularity even more), and in the next season, Jon does become the new Lord Commander.
  • Cersei takes Ros hostage to ensure Tyrion doesn't intend to do this to Joffrey at the Battle of Blackwater.
• In the second series of Horatio Hornblower, Buckland orders Horatio to blow up the Spanish fort on his own and several characters accuse him of envying Horatio's natural leadership and youth. Including Captain Pellew, on the board of a court-martial. Since Horatio is at the court-martial too we know it didn't work, mainly because Kennedy and Bush quietly stayed behind to help him.
• Section One, in La Femme Nikita (the TV series), has an entire protocol dedicated to this trope. Abeyance operatives are agents considered by the Section to be especially expendable, and are thus sent on missions to die. Additionally, the group of troubled youths in the episode "Time to be Heroes", although not explicitly abeyance operatives, are also set up to die during their mission.
• Revealed to be the situation in the Law & Order episode "Legacy." A woman unsuccessfully tries to have her daughter-in-law's second husband murdered, and she tells the police that she'll admit to everything if they take another look at her son Rick's suspicious death. It turns out that Rick and the second husband, Jim, had been best friends; Jim had been Comforting the Widow after Rick died. Of course, Jim had been the reason Rick had died, because of his obsession with Rick's wife Robin, and what had finally pushed Rick's mother over the edge was Jim's intention to legally adopt her granddaughter. Robin is innocent, having had no idea that Jim had arranged Rick's death until the police proved it; the episode ends with a mention of her serving Jim with divorce papers. As the DA puts it, "Gotta be tough finding out you married your stalker."
• The Lost episode "The Other Woman" strongly implies that Ben sent Goodwin on a risky mission to infiltrate the tail section survivors because he knew Goodwin was having an affair with Juliet and if Goodwin died then he could have Juliet for himself.
  • And again in "Sundown" where Dogen sends Sayid out to kill Esau/NotLocke/Jacob's Enemy with a knife. Sayid, being the survivalist badass that he is, knows it's a Uriah Gambit but goes anyway. He lives. Dogen doesn't.
    • He might not have done this actually. He told Sayid to not let "Locke" speak a word, but Sayid didn't stab him until after he'd said "Hello, Sayid". If he had followed Dogen's instructions, perhaps it would have worked.
• Dyson's flashbacks in the Lost Girl episode "Brother Fae of the Wolves" ultimately lead to this trope being played out by his King. Not on him, but on his best friend. As in the case of The Bible, it was so the King could get the guy's wife. Dyson was so disgusted that he quit his "pack", which is a very rare thing for wolf shifters.
• M*A*S*H
  • In "The Tooth Shall Set You Free", the doctors discover that a racist commander has a particularly slimy way of dealing with the African-American soldiers he was assigned with. Namely, he always orders them into dangerous duty instead of white soldiers in hopes of them earning points to be transferred out faster — if they aren't killed in action, of course. The medical staff arrange a sting to force him to resign his commission.
  • Threatened in the episode "For The Good Of The Outfit". A South Korean village gets leveled by Friendly Fire from the US Army. Hawkeye and Trapper prepare a report on the incident, which is then conveniently lost in bureaucracy and the guy to whom they gave it is reassigned. When they keep pressing the issue of getting the Army to take responsibility for what happened, a general comes to speak to them and subtly hints that they will be reassigned to a battalion aid station (where fighting is heaviest and they'll probably be killed in action) if they don't drop the case. Averted when Margaret and Frank prepare their own report on the incident.
• Referenced in Merlin (2008). Morgana claims that Uther sent Gorlois into battle and withheld backup, which resulted in Gorlois' death. It's never confirmed that Gorlois' death was intentional; but since Uther had an affair with the wife of Gorlois and fathered Morgana, it's certainly possible.
• It turned out that future NCIS director Leon Vance was first recruited specifically because he was a loner with no one who will miss him. The original idea was to send him on a suicide mission in Europe and use his death to justify an increase in funding to NIS's European branch. Needless to say, Vance turned out to be a better agent than expected and actually managed to accomplish the mission with help from Badass Israeli Mossad agent Eli David.
• Although not as formalized as it is in La Femme Nikita, Nikita also features this trope, showing up in the episode "The Recruit", where a Division recruit, considered not to be up to snuff, is sent on what she doesn't know is a suicide bombing operation. Another episode, "Looking Glass", has Amanda send Division agent Lisa to a mission on Belarus with the full expectation that she'll fail, solely so that her death will motivate Alex, a free agent Amanda doesn't control, to execute the mission in Lisa's stead.
• This is tried on T-Bag in Prison Break, multiple times. But he always comes back.
• Private Schulz: After being caught with his hand in the till, Schulz is sent on a Suicide Mission to England from which he barely escapes (as the entire German spy network is in British hands). At the beginning of the next episode, Major Neuheim is toasting those unsung heroes who parachuted behind enemy lines and never returned, when a Smug Snake Gestapo agent brings in Schulz.
  Major Neuheim: How DARE you come back alive!
• In the Sherlock episode "His Last Vow", Holmes has, in order to save Watson from a possible treason charge, killed Big Bad Charles Magnussen in cold blood. The government bigwigs quickly realize that, given Holmes saved the entire country from Moriarty last series and is the most popular man in Britain, imprisoning him for this crime would be political suicide for everyone involved. Instead, they decide to send him on an extremely difficult mission for MI6 in the Middle East, presumably hoping he'd die "heroically" and thus keep the public happy. But before his plane even leaves the ground, Moriarty turns out to be not nearly as dead as he seemed.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The head of the Lucian Alliance, trying to knock off a popular underling, sends him on a suicide mission to capture the Odyssey. Problem is, the guy is clever enough to pull it off and is well aware that he wasn't supposed to succeed.
  • In the Season 5 episode "The Warrior", K'tano (ostensibly the leader of an army of rebel Jaffa, formerly the first prime of the minor Goa'uld Imhotep who he killed), sends Teal'c on a suicide mission against the System Lord Yu. Yu captures Teal'c and spares him, allowing him to return to the rebel army and inform them that "K'tano" is not a Jaffa at all, but is in fact Imhotep himself, trying to build himself a power base with the free Jaffa. He was hoping Teal'c would get himself killed to prevent his eventual exposure as Imhotep.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Court Martial", Kirk is accused of having done this to Finney who turns out to have faked his own death in order to frame Kirk. This rivalry isn't over a woman, but rather over command of the Enterprise... inasmuch as this makes any difference considering the two of them.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "Rocks and Shoals", a Vorta field officer deliberately sends his Jem'Hadar soldiers walking into an ambush, so that he can safely surrender once they are out of the way (and so they won't go Ax-Crazy and turn on him when the drug used to keep them in line runs out). They know it's a trap, but they go anyway simply because obeying the Vorta "is the order of things".
  • During the Dominion War, Klingon Chancellor Gowron feels threatened by General Martok's increasing popularity, so he repeatedly sends Martok on near-suicidal missions (instead of using him where he'd be most effective). It doesn't work; Worf kills Gowron in a duel over this and gives Martok the chancellorship in "Tacking into the Wind".
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In "In a Mirror, Darkly", Archer mutinies against Captain Forrest when he refuses to go on a risky mission into Tholian territory to steal an advanced Starfleet vessel from the 'normal' universe. Forrest retakes the ship with the help of T'Pol, but is forced to release Archer on orders from Starfleet, who want him to go ahead with the mission. Forrest sends Archer on the Boarding Party and orders T'Pol to go with him, making it clear Archer isn't to come back alive. When Enterprise is destroyed a short time later, Archer becomes captain by default, so T'Pol never carries out these orders.
• Survivors is often about political conflicts, in one case resolving in a Uriah Gambit. In the two-part episode "Lights of London", a post-pandemic London of under 500 residents is mostly concerned with surviving rat attacks, mourning the vast majority of people, and trying not to think about the very real possibility of human civilization collapsing within weeks... which is technically suppressed information, but easy enough for any resident to figure out and thus suppressed mostly by denial. Two of the biggest exceptions, the fascist Mayor of London and his last remaining anarchist critic, find out that London is indeed the last surviving population center, a situation where a principled revolutionary can be forced into a suicide mission due to surviving Londoners' high tolerance to the virus. The Mayor predictably attempts this out of any well-meaning sycophants' view, but then uses a battle plan against the protagonist that is so openly insane, his ditzy right-hand man finally wakes up to reality and abandons him to a well-deserved death.
• In the Tales from the Crypt episode "Forever Ambergris", a jealous war photographer sends his young protege to take photos in a village that had been ravaged by germ warfare, knowing that the younger man would catch the same disease that killed the villagers and die, leaving his girlfriend free for the older man's taking. Unfortunately for him, the younger guy's girl gets suspicious and deliberately exposes both of them to the same disease in revenge.
• In the final episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, Oswald Danes is the guy that ends up acting as a suicide bomber when the team needs one.
• The usual practice in The Unit for officers who are discovered to be sleeping with a shooter's wife is for the shooters to put the officer on trial and then execute him to prevent this sort of thing. When Mac finds out that Tiffy and Colonel Ryan have been sleeping with each other in the season three premiere, Jonas stops Mac from killing Ryan there and then, and states a trial can wait until they've dealt with the more pressing problem of the terrorists who are targeting them.
• Vera: The Victim of the Week in "Sundancers" is revealed to have pulled this in Afghanistan. Learning one of his subordinates was having an affair with his wife, he sent the soldier into a supposedly cleared building to pronounce the all-clear, knowing that there was still an IED inside. The bomb went off, killing the soldier.

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