8 Great TV Characters Who Die At The Beginning

When a show casts big talent like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Michelle Yeoh, we all quite rightly expect it to use them. So imagine our surprise when, just two episodes in, she's taken out.

That was the case in Star Trek: Discovery, a grittier take on the Trek series which began in 2017. Yeoh played Philippa Georgiou, the commanding officer of the USS Shenzhou and an all-round badass, having seen years of front-line action with Starfleet and fought her way to the top with grit, intelligence and some nifty fighting skills.

But she was struck down during the second episode, "Battle at the Binary Stars", when a plan to capture Klingon leader T'Kuvma (Chris Obi) concocted by her protégé and series protagonist First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) goes awry. Engaging the Klingon in hand-to-hand combat, Georgiou's sizeable skills were unfortunately no match for the born and bred warrior's, and she was killed when he put his mek'leth through her heart.

But, as the old adage goes: If you love someone, set them free. And, lo and behold, an alternate, evil version of Georgiou from the Mirror Universe cropped up in season one's eleventh episode, "The Wolf Inside". Not quite as good as the real thing, but it's better than nothing!