The Guards Must Be Crazy / Live-Action TV

Questionable guarding tactics in Live-Action TV.

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• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the soldiers guarding Creel appear to have missed out on three fundamental points of guarding. 1: If you are in a secure military base and are set to guard a prisoner, you should be looking at the prisoner. Let other people worry about guarding threats from the outside unless something happens. 2: If the prisoner appears to have disappeared from his cell, immediately inform people of that. It's better to look stupid radioing back a few seconds later to tell them "Wait, never mind, there he is" than to let his escape go unreported. 3: And this one is really important, do not open the cell door. If he hasn't escaped, all opening the door will do is give him the chance to escape. And if he has escaped, opening the door isn't going to make him magically reappear in the cell, and also will distract you from the dangerous escaped prisoner. On a more plot-specific note, if you know for a fact that the guy you're guarding can change his body into any material (and if they didn't, then their superiors are crazy too for not telling them) and his prison is made of solid glass, then you should consider that he has used this power to blend into the background rather than immediately assuming he has escaped, especially if there's no visible way he could have escaped.
• Alphas had a pair of guards (working for the protagonists, actually) who are given one order: do not open the cell. Shortly thereafter, Parish stabs himself in the neck, so they open the door to stop him bleeding to death. Parish, an immortal alpha with a Healing Factor, points out as he's killing them that they should really follow orders.
• Justified in the Angel episode "Smile Time": the guards at the studio don't notice Angel because they're under the effects of a spell that reduces them to mindless automatons. When the evil puppets running the place discuss Angel's break-in, one of them angrily suggests (in a tone making it clear this isn't the first time) that they should let a couple of the guards out from the spell so that they can see intruders.
• The A-Team. Many a villain has been laid low by not paying attention to machine sounds after Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard. There was a particularly egregious instance (not involving villains) where Hannibal and Face are arrested in "Black Day at Bad Rock". Hannibal seems to have escaped, so the sheriff unlocks his cell and checks inside, then both he and the other officer in the building leave to find him... when Hannibal turns out to be hiding under the bed and promptly lets Face out and escapes.
• In the Babylon 5 episode "Between the Darkness and the Light", Garibaldi plays on his recent media fame in capturing Sheridan to break him out again. This gets him past the outer guard, but the cell guards aren't so impressed.
  Guard: I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite.
• Subverted in Battlestar Galactica (2003) in that when someone escapes from a cell it's either a gambit by their captors (Bulldog, and later Ellen Tigh escaping from the Cylon basestar) or because the guards are in on things (Laura Roslin in Season 2, and Tom Zarek during The Mutiny). Probably the least plausible occasion is when Gina escapes from the Pegasus' brig, makes her way to Admiral Cain's quarters and shoots her, and then slips off the battlestar unnoticed. Although she had the help of Baltar, a uniform and things were chaotic in the aftermath of a major attack, it still stretched the bounds of credibility.
  • And played straight when you consider that with all the little accidents happening there, no one comes up with the bright idea of placing a guard at the airlocks. This is justifiable in the beginning when Galactica is massively understaffed, but not so much in the later seasons.
  • At another point late in the series, the Chief manages to knock out one of the human Cylons, carry them all the way to the brig, create a blackout, and then replace one Cylon with the other in the space of about 5 min. Apparently in the middle of a blackout, the guards in the next room don't think it's important to double check the status of their genocidal machine prisoner.
• Black Saddle: In "Client: Meade", the deputy Scott leaves to guard the prisoner immediately goes to sleep and is taken completely by surprise when the prisoner's mentor breaks in to free him. Made even worse by the fact that Scott had woken the deputy up when leaving, and warned him what might happen if he dozed off again.
• Blake's 7:
  • On the prison transport in "Space Fall", they station a lone guard inside the prisoners' room, whose palm print can open the door from there. Naturally, once the camera is taken out he's overpowered and coerced to open the door by Gan threatening that they'll simply take off his hand if he refuses.
  • From a review of the episode "Bounty":
    "...to say nothing of the guards' color codes, which include Red Standby Alert (apparently meaning stand around and do nothing), Red Mobilisation (wander around outside the house), and Blue Mobilisation (allow the President and his daughter to escape in a vintage car accompanied by two terrorists)."
  • Zigzagged in "Rumours of Death". La Résistance knock out a camera, and rather than say It's Probably Nothing a squad of guards is immediately dispatched to the area. However Security refuses to seal off the area as per regulations, pointing out that if it IS nothing then their superiors will come down on them hard if the VIP's are locked out of President Servalan's Fancy Dinner. Unfortunately the squad is ambushed and stripped of their uniforms which are then used to infiltrate the event.
• Lampshaded by Michael's voiceover in Burn Notice. The two thugs who are supposed to be guarding a kidnapped kid are watching a baseball game on TV instead. Michael snarks that poorly-timed ball games have brought down dictatorships.
• The Chaser's War On Everything
  • The Chaser boys proved this was Truth in Television at the APEC summit, getting to George W. Bush's hotel, past two security checkpoints in a fake motorcade, with "insecurity passes" that stated they were NOT official delegates. And a guy dressed as Osama bin Laden in the back seat. See it here. The motorcade had runners with handheld cameras. Even the Chaser boys themselves started to get scared at how easy it was for them to get in — they'd been expecting to be stopped at the very first checkpoint! The were finally nabbed when their motorcade began turning around, and "Osama" (Chas Licciardello) decided to exit his vehicle and began asking guards why he hadn't been invited. And as far as can be seen in the footage, the guards seemed to be more interested in arresting Julian than "Osama". As one commenter pointed out, it appears that day the world's leaders were mainly under the protection of the honour system.
  • Another episode had them carting around a literal Trojan Horse in an attempt to gain entry to various locations in Sydney. They were granted access to most of the locations, the exception being the Turkish Consulate, so at least the Trojans learned their lesson.
• Subverted in Dark Angel when Max tries to distract a guard with a rock, but he isn't fooled. She laments, "Why did I get the smart one?"
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Deadly Assassin": Lampshaded during Security Chief Spandrell's criticisms of Commander Hilred for allowing the Doctor to escape:
    Spandrell: Well done, Hilred. An antiquated capsule, for which you get adequate early warning, transducts on the very steps of the Capitol. You are warned that the occupant is a known criminal, therefore you allow him to escape and conceal himself in a building a mere 53 stories high. A clever stratagem, Hilred. You're trying to confuse him, I take it?
  • "State of Decay" both averts and plays it straight — one of the guards recognizes that the man claiming to be a guard is, in fact, a known deserter. But the other doesn't... and falls for "the old prisoner trick".
  • "Dragonfire": Played With when the Doctor distracts a guard by engaging him in a philosophical discussion on the nature of existence, a subject about which the guard is particularly enthusiastic.
  • "Bad Wolf": After the Doctor, Jack and Lynda have been arrested and put in a cell, the Gamestation guards leave their gear and weapons on a table two metres away from the door of the cell. Naturally, when the trio break out moments later...
  • "Planet of the Dead": The museum's security for the Cup of Athelstan includes armed guards (when even the police in the UK rarely carry firearms) and a fancy laser grid which they all stand around facing away from. It has less functionality than a glass case — for one, the latter has a top.
  • "The Impossible Astronaut": A Secret Service guard insists on treating the Doctor as a serious threat for having teleported right into the Oval Office and won't put up with the Doctor's usual quips. He's shut up by an FBI agent who points out that everybody is clearly out of their depth and the Doctor is worth listening to. And if he's not, he'll kill the Doctor himself.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Subverted with Mord, a turnkey who's so thick that Tyrion Lannister, from the richest family in the Seven Kingdoms, can't even bribe his way out.
    Mord: [searching Tyrion] No gold!
    Tyrion: Well I don't have it with me! [Mord thumps him] Sometimes possession is an abstract concept— [thump]
  • But played straight in Season 4. One spectacularly boneheaded guard sees a grappling hook pop over the wall. Rather than calling out to another guard or raising the alarm in any way, he very slowly investigates the hook he can physically see, and takes an axe to the face for his trouble.
  • Jaime Lannister manages to escape by baiting the only guard by killing his cellmate.
  • Averted by Brienne, who insists on keeping the talking to a minimum and watching Jaime take a piss. She eventually makes the mistake of getting too close, but it takes weeks.
  • Winterfell is guarded by a couple of complete tools who fail to recognise a highborn girl but then let her slip into the castle behind their backs.
• The Handmaid's Tale: This appears to be a hallmark of Gilead's security forces. Multiple episodes appear to have established them as quite incompetent, considering they allowed a suicide bomber to attack the Commanders in Season 2. Not to mention that they allowed June to escape twice in Season 4, once from the van carrying June to a Magdalene Colony, and the second on a boat trying to return to Canada, with June in front of them the entire time.
• Intergalactic: The prison ship's security is full of holes. First, they didn't search the prisoners well at all, with one even smuggling past a lockpick while another kept a weapon in her hair. Second, they're armed with guns, which might seem like a good idea but not when the prisoners soon get ahold of them after they kill two guards and take theirs before killing most of the others (this is why real prison guards don't have guns except if putting down a riot, to avoid this). They brush off Ash's warnings that the other prisoners are planning something, and in fact one punishes her for being a snitch. Not surprisingly, the prisoners easily escape later, despite them acting pretty suspiciously in plain view (they're inside clear cell bubbles that can be seen into at all times).
• Kaamelott:
  • According to King Arthur, all the guards in the castle of Kaamelott are either stupid, drunk, sleeping at their posts, or all of the above. After having to fight to the death an assassin that sneaked into the castle, he swears out loud that they have some serious drill training ahead in their future.
  • Not that having some of the Knights of the Round Table commanding them is any better. Once, the guards were too busy playing games with Karadoc and Perceval at the tavern that they missed a band of brigands invading town. And Bohort tried (poorly) to cover for them!
  • The Weaponmaster and Grüdü guarding the front door are so busy arguing with each other on who should be guarding the back door, they completely miss a bunch of assassins sneaking inside behind their backs.
• Subverted in the Knight Rider episode, "Indecent Little Town", when the corrupt police arrest Michael Knight and impound KITT. Specifically, when the Mooks try to secure the robot car, he resists by backing up each time they try. Although obviously surprised at this, the head Mook calmly advises one of his minions to simply provoke KITT into backing continually until the robot car inadvertently rolls onto a car garage elevator platform and they elevate it, trapping KITT.
• The team on Leverage regularly talk their way past security, but they usually have fake IDs and the guards are standard office building rent-a-cops. However, in one episode, Hardison talks his way past security to get into an airport's control tower. He has an employee ID, but it is for a female employee, so he makes a big deal of how he is in the middle of a sex change and the guards are too embarrassed to pursue this further. The danger of their negligence becomes apparent when Hardison almost causes a plane to crash. There is a reason why security at airports is supposed to be very tight. Also, the man in charge of the tower apparently doesn't know who's supposed to be working for him.
• In Season 3 of Lost, Sawyer tries the whole "prisoners making out" thing to get the guards to come over when he kisses Kate, then overpowers them and takes their gun. It doesn't work, though.
• Merlin:
  • In the first episode, two guards go chasing off after some enchanted dice.
  • In the fourth episode, they fail to notice a servant girl riding off into the night. What temp agency do they get these guys from?
  • You can practically set your watch by the inability of the guards to actually "guard" anything.
  • They're bad enough that Fanon has long decided the guards actually know Merlin's secret and are only pretending not to notice him sneaking around.
• The prison in My Name Is Earl is staffed by incompetents from the ground up. On Earl's first morning in prison he discovers that his cellmate tunneled out of the cell and used a watermelon as a dummy in the bed, the common room has a display case full of shivs with a sign saying "Don't make these", and the Warden once contracted out inmate labour to a ladder company. Randy however proves to be a standout case, taking inmates out for ice cream after a scared straight talk to a middle school and letting them go into the parlour unsupervised while he stayed in the transport van.
• Player: Invoked. Byeong-min sends a fake message to one guard telling him his wife is in labour. The guard immediately runs off. Ha-ri takes his place and convinces the remaining guard to leave.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Rimmerworld", the heroes are shoved into a cell without even their possessions being confiscated, leading to this classic exchange:
  Lister: Why don't we scrape away this mortar here, slide one of these bricks out, then using a rope weaved from strands of this hessian, rig up a kind of a pulley system so that when a guard comes in, using it as a trip wire, gets laid out, and we put Rimmer in the guard's uniform, he leads us out, we steal some swords, and fight our way back to the 'Bug!
  Kryten: Or we could use the teleporter.
• Space: Above and Beyond:
  • The episode "Ray Butts" starts out with the title character docking his fighter into the ship and laying there in the cockpit when security shows up. A guard gives him a light shove and declares him dead. The moment everyone lets down their guard he proceeds to jump out and beat up the entire security detail. LTC McQueen lampshades this declaring "Real bummer getting your butt kicked by a dead guy."
  • In the finale episode "Tell Our Moms We Did Our Best", an alien envoy stabs a man with a giant knife then pulls a grenade and kills the senior officers of the human military. He'd been on the ship for several days in a cell and apparently nobody bothered to search him for weapons.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • "A Taste of Armageddon": One scene has a guard at an enemy installation watch calmly and not take action as Spock walks up to him. Spock "informs" him of an imaginary "multi-legged creature" on his shoulder before using the Vulcan Neck Pinch on him. Justified in that the week's Planet of Hats has obedience and order down to the point they'll just walk into a disintegration chamber to die when told to do so. The guard may simply have been unable to anticipate any resistance - this is a society that hasn't seen real violence in a long time.
    • "Space Seed": Khan, a man described as being strong enough to lift two men with one hand, has but a single guard keeping him prisoner. Suffice to say the guard doesn't last long. Later, when Khan is defeated and tried, he has multiple bailiffs on him holding him at phaser point.
    • "All Our Yesterdays": A lone guard, with the key to the cell dangling from his belt, walks right up to the bars to give Kirk a drink of water. Kirk grabs him, takes the key, lets himself out and locks the guard in.
    • "A Piece of the Action": Kirk escapes after being captured by each of the two top rival gangsters. Most famously is his creation of a convoluted card game with the goal of confusing the guard trying to keep up with the rules Kirk is making up on the fly.
    • "Whom Gods Destroy": Spock lies down and pretends to be unconscious. Two guards pick him up to haul him away and he uses the Vulcan Neck Pinch on both of them to escape. Also justified since the 'guards' are inmates of a lunatic asylum. Logic and caution are probably not strong points.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation. Security has not improved a century later: shouting for Security will get you Lt. Worf, Chief of Security, and Lt. La Forge, Helmsman ("Conspiracy").
  • When there's a terrorist bombing of a meeting with the Klingon chancellor, the two candidates are put under guard. Duras manages to get past the Federation flagship's security by... having his flunky stroll out the room, causing the one (1) guard Worf posted to chase after him, allowing Duras to go find, attack and kill an ambassador who was snooping on him and get back to his ship with no-one the wiser. Did we mention Worf already knows Duras is a shifty bastard who's tried to kill him?
  • What do you get when you put a Vulcan Ambassador, a Starfleet Captain, and the galaxy's most advanced android in a room, and then … just leave them there? Nothing good, if you're the human-Romulan Commander Sela. After imprisoning Spock, Picard, and Data in her own office in "Unification", she does nothing further to prevent them from escaping, or from sabotaging her planned invasion of Vulcan. Guess what they do next.
  • In the episode "Descent," Troi and Picard pull the "prisoner is sick" routine on a Borg guard and convince him to open the door. They don't escape, but Picard manages to kill the Borg for his naivety. Then it turns out that this was actually what they were going for; Picard needed technology from the Borg to try and reboot Data's systems remotely, and the apparent escape attempt was a way to get a hold of a drone so they could swipe the needed piece.
  • Deep Space Nine. Apparently Cardassian guards are known far and wide for being an easy bribe. Kira saunters into a prison camp pretending to be a prostitute and easily beats up a guard because he let her within kissing range to show him her goods. In a later episode, Garak (involuntarily posing as a Bajoran) offers money to a guard as if it's a common transaction, and is only refused because the guard's commander was nearby.
    • Mid way through the series a group of the main characters get captured by the Dominion, who built a very effective prison in the habitat dome on a former mining asteroid. However, for some crazy reason, they leave the shuttle craft the main characters came in on in orbit of the prison and still activated, which allows several prisoners to escape to it — and once they're on board, there's no one there to stop them getting away, because the Dominion were so certain that their prison was escape-proof that they didn't bother posting a second line of defense.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Standard procedure for security personnel on Voyager is to stand in the formal "at-ease" position, looking straight ahead (not at the person they're guarding) so they can be knocked unconscious at a suitable moment. Even the normally efficient Tuvok has his moments when someone has to steal a shuttle for plot-related reasons.
    • Because the Kazon needed to be terrible at everything, their idea of prison was literally a line on a floor the prisoners are told not to cross. This isn't a one-off thing, either. In both a cave and on a ship, the prisoners are just shoved into some random room and told to stay put. Several episodes had the heroes escape by literally just walking away.
    • In "The Killing Game", two Hirogen guards find Harry Kim suspicious and stop him for questioning. He convinces them to let him go with this line: "All right! You'd better call the bridge. Tell your superior I'm going to be late, that I'm working under your orders now, not his. Go ahead, make the call. I don't want to take the blame for this." (Though Harry was also playing on the Alpha Male psychology of the Hirogen).
  • Star Trek: Discovery: In "The Escape Artist", Harry Mudd successfully cons an Orion guard into believing his story about being rich, offering him a big payoff to be let go. Unfortunately, the guard's boss walks in and calls him an imbecile because he forgot the cells are under camera surveillance. When Harry tries to con her, she just tazes him.
• Played straight in the episode "Let It Bleed" of Supernatural. The mooks who guarded Lisa and Ben heard fighting noises outside the room, and went there one by one.

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