Having just watched the end of Stargate Atlantis, Series 3, I got to "enjoy" a very well done episode that results in the death of Carson. As a farewell episode it was one of the better ones I have seen, actually making you stop and think about it. I have heard others praise "Body" from Buffy.

I was thus wondering if people had a favourite "death" espisode, one where a character they have come to know and love departs the show for a last time in a fitting and well written way that is meaningful for both the characters and fans of the show.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Tasha Yar and Jadzia Dax are tied for first with me.

Senseless, pointless, and cold blooded. No solliloquy, no heroism, no gibberish technobabble. Just dead.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

"The Body" from Buffy probably tops my list.
I like the episode in M*A*S*H when Henry Blake dies too. It's so unexpected and well-handled in the episode.

Would Star Trek II count, even though it's a movie?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

The producers shot the episode with an "original" ending of Henry going stateside. After they "finished" shooting, they called the cast back on to the set for an operating room sequence they needed. There was no script, just a little surgical patter. They were told Radar would enter and deliver some lines, and they should simply respond in character.

This was the first the cast knew of Henry's death; the shots of their reactions were genuine, and just what the producers wanted.

"The Body" from Buffy probably tops my list.

I liked it; it was very unexpected and quite well done. The same goes for Buffy's death; I really liked the tombstone at the end. Tara's death was also nicely handled... no rhyme, no reason, just random chance.

I also liked how Wash was done in. (The way, not that he died.) You saw the character at his best, and then... whoa.

Joss sure knows how to kill off his characters.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

not really sci fi, but the season 3 episode of Scrubs where Dr Cox's brother in law (and best friend) dies was very well done. he wasn't really a "regular"- having only appeared in a couple of season 1 episodes- but he was a fan favorite.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

The death of Judith on Joan of Arcadia. She was doing something stupid, and she died--and God didn't just save her. Dignity--we also, for once, followed up with some actual grieving on further episodes. (I believe, based on the IMDB page, that the episode I'm looking for is "Death Be Not Whatever.")

"Abyssinia, Henry" is one of the best episodes of any show in TV history--M*A*S*H was full of them.

I don't feel like searching through seasons and seasons of Law & Order summaries to find the name of the episode, but I also have a fondness for the episode where Claire Kincaid dies. I mean, I like the episode as a whole, not just the death. But again, there's some followthrough in later episodes.

Actually, that, to me, is one of the signs of a really good TV death. Do the characters continue to react to the death even in later episodes?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The original series end for Magnum, pi started with the Magnum getting shot. The rest of the show was about him letting go and it ended with him walking off into a field of pure white as Higgins ordered him to come back. I thought it was great. Then the "fans" freaked out and basically demanded that he be brought back to life. The whole season saw one, maybe two good episodes, and the second finale was a cliched joke where they brought back all the old semi-regulars for a wedding.

I didn't care much for Tasha Yar. She bugged me in a big way. I agree with Doodler though. They way both she and Dax died was very powerful from a story standpoint, because it meant basically nothing. Fans felt cheated because there was no heroic sacrifice, but that's sort of how the other characters felt too, I imagine.

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

I agree that a good TV death requires some follow-through. And crucially, the character must not be brought back. Star Trek let itself down there with Tasha, although it didn't let itself down too badly as she was still doomed after her resurrection.

Doctor Who did it well with Adric, I thought. His death came completely out of the blue at a time when audiences generally "knew" the regulars would not die. Only two companions had died before, but they were short-term companions in episodes shown 17 years earlier and never repeated.

The thing I can't stand is any variation on this: a bunch of regulars get killed (usually in slow motion) and then it turns out that this is a glimpse of the future, and although the future is set in stone, the heroes are going to try and change it anyway, and of course they do... This was of course well spoofed in Galaxy Quest.

I do like how they turned her death into a major character development point for Data. It was senseless in an internal sense, but it did have a ripple effect.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I always have liked Spock's death in "Star Trek II" and Darth Vader's death in "Return of the Jedi". Darth Vader's death was particularly special because it took this most extreme baddie, who we rooted against, and actually made him a sympathetic character at the very last moment. I actually felt sadness when vader's helmet came off, reveiling his sad and tired face.

Speaking of Joss Wedon deaths...

I was moved by the death of Angel at the finally of Season 2. Buffy finally got back the man she loved and had to shove him into Hell to save the world. Even the Mutan Enemy was choked up with that one.

And, yea Angel came back from the dead. But the Angel/Buffy relationship never could and there in lies the drama.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Technically, of course, "The Body" was the episode after Joyce Summers' death, which happened at the very end of the previous episode. But it still holds true, as it showed the characters' reaction starting literally seconds after her death.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Speaking of good Buffy deaths, Angelus' killing of Jenny Calendar and leaving her body for Giles to find is one of the best-shown and most disturbing onscreen deaths.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Yeah, ditto on the L&O episode. I also give a lot of credit to L&O for their handling of 9/11. They incorporated it very well in the season following it, and it was obviously much on the mind of the people in the series, as you would expect for cops and DAs. It fairly naturally diminished over time, but it still kept coming up now and then, as it really does.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

The Christmas M*A*S*H episode (Death Takes a Holiday I believe) has a scene that has stuck with me, probably because I saw it when I was fairly young. Pierce, Hunnicutt, and Houlihan are trying to keep a mortally wounded soldier alive so his family “won’t have to remember Christmas as the day their daddy died.” They fail and he dies fifteen or so minutes before midnight. Houlihan says something about how quite death is. Something along the lines of no fanfares, no trumpets, you're alive one second and dead the next and that's that. Pierce then changes the clock so that it's 12:01, Dec. 26th.

Joss does do a good job of the sudden, unheroic deaths. That's one thing I really enjoyed about his shows. You knew no cast member was sacred, and you probably weren't going to get any climactic buildup, or any form of warning for that matter, either.

Although it wasn't a physical death, the activation of the sleeper personality inside Talia Winters effectively killed the original. While it was held until the end, thus kinda letting you deduce who the sleeper was, the sudden and complete change from good to "bad" Talia was surprising. Marcus using an execution device on himself to save Ivanova was also moving.

Didn't she give the two of them a bit of a guilt trip over falsifying medical records? I recall the conversation right up until her line, but the rest is a bit of a blur.


Forethought on the part of JMS. He had trap doors ready for all of his lead characters. Of the planned deaths, I'd say Warren Keffer's death to the Shadow vessel was handled pretty well.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

I read last night on TV Tropes that Keffer was added solely as the result of executive meddling. JMS went along with it because they threatened to axe the show outright if he didn't. They wanted [paraphrased] "Han Solo meets Top Gun", a hotshot fighter jock. JMS barely used him, and got rid of him at first opportunity. The executives in question never noticed they'd insisted on him in the first place.

I'm fond of Sleeping in Light. Not so much the death scene itself, but the events leading up to it, in particular the party. Especially the music. The music has me in tears nearly every time I hear it.

The scene where the crew/cast are doing a group-shot with White Stars buzzing by overhead in formation, just as the music builds again... Every single time.

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[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

I believe she went along with it fairly easily. She stared blankly at the clock, and said something about falsifying medical records, but not in any overly condemning way, and then agreed to it.

I'd forgotten about Keffer, and yes, Sleeping In Light is one of those "can't watch with friends around" episodes.

Daniel's death in 'Meridian' is pretty good, though it's not really a death.

The best has got to be Starbuck's death in 'Maelstrom'. Holy frac!

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2 good 2 need 4 engines