Way to take one for the team, dude.

If it wasn't for WWI, nations wouldn't "need" secret services*
If it wasn't for the British Secret Service, Ian Fleming would be just another geek not unlike you or me.**
If it wasn't for James Bond, we wouldn't have had Secret Agent Man***
If it wasn't for Secret Agent Man, we wouldn't have The Prisoner****
If it wasn't for The Prisoner, we wouldn't have had Twin Peaks or Babylon 5.*****
If it wasn't for Twin Peaks, we wouldn't have Lost or Buffy.******
If it wasn't for Buffy and Babylon 5, then Dr. Who never would have reinvented itself******* into something good.********


So I guess geeks everywhere (like you and me) owe a debt of gratitude to Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Way to take one for the team, dude.

*: World War I was started by the assassination of the Austrian Archduke. This illustrated two points. One, the power that fanatical individuals and clandestine conspiracies could have upon the global political structure. Two, that if forced to solve things via traditional means, conflict between superpowers would risk collapsing society on a planetary scale. Hence the "need" for Secret Services. Or anarchy.
**: And thus we'd have no James Bond. Ian Fleming was not only a novelist and an actor, he was also a spy for MI-6. He wrote Casino Royale based in part on his own experiences as an agent. From there he just kept glamorizing it, and building on the myth.
***: Secret Agent Man (aka Danger Man) was a cheap rip-off with a really catchy themesong.
****: The Prisoner was a surreal later show starring the same actor playing what is not officially the same character, but no doubt is quite clearly the same Secret Agent Man, just in a different (more artsy and meaningful) context.
*****: Both shows make numerous references to The Prisoner. So does the Simpsons, but I think it would have come to be without The Prisoner. Twin Peak's references are mostly in Fire Walk With Me, the movie prequel, which is pretty overt about it's nods to the last episode of the Prisoner. Peaks also references many other films and TV shows. Babylon 5 actually stole lines and salutes out of The Prisoner, the implication being that PsyCorps runs The Village.
******: Twin Peaks revolutionized the way TV series were engineered. It raised the artistic bar and forced you to talk about the show in order to get it's many levels. It had hidden mysteries that were alluded to throughout the show, but not revealed till near the end. It used language in ways that were very unique. It used an ensemble cast of very quirky / goofy characters, juxtaposed against a darker backdrop. It started mundane, then slowly doled out tantilizing hints at the supernatural big picture, just as Lost does. It occurred to me today that Twin Peaks even pioneered the concept of "This Season's Big Bad" which Buffy would later perfect. That's what inspired this post.
*******: Buffy's perfection of the Big Bad is clearly emulated in Dr Who's current seasons. Babylon 5, despite it's many flaws, showed us that a weekly genre TV show could, over time, strive to be something more epic and meaningful than it previously had been.
********: Not that I didn't love old Dr. Who, but much of it is really hard to watch today. In contrast, I'm confident that the current Dr Who will be worth re-watching when I'm 50.