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The Only One

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alt title(s): Only One
"You're the only man alive that can handle this mission, Kremmen."
— The introduction to every Captain Kremmen radio episode.

Our beloved protagonists are the only people who can handle the problem.

Unfortunately, those who have actually been given the job are woefully incompetent.

If the series is about a local police force, the FBI are ivory-tower glory hounds. If the series is about an FBI agent, the local police are all useless Corrupt Hick types. If the series is about the military, government higher-ups will only be interested in pleasing the voters. If the series is about the government or an anti-military type, then the military will be The Evil Army commanded by a General Ripper type who is just itching to Nuke Em back to the stone age, never mind the asking questions part. If the series is about a rogue hero, all levels of government and law enforcement, plus the military, are either corrupt or clueless. And everyone else will just think that it is Somebody Elses Problem. In those cases where the people who are supposed to be handling the situation are not also bad guys, you can end up with a Red Shirt Army.

Sometimes this is actually warranted by the show's premise, notably Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, Stargate SG-1... okay, any show featuring The Chosen One.

A variation that often occurs, particularly in shows or movies where there is a Race Against The Clock situation, is that those who are responsible for taking care of a particular situation (such as the bomb squad) will, for some reason, not be able to make it in time to resolve the problem that the protagonists are facing. In this scenario, the experts may be fully competent and on the side of the angels, but are prevented for some reason from taking care of the problem themselves, meaning that the untrained protagonists are forced to be the only ones who can take care of the problem. This often works to increasing tension; will the non-expert cut the right wire?

Compare the subtropes Last Starfighter, Its Up To You, where it has been justified by the loss of one's allies. Compare I Work Alone, where the hero chooses this voluntarily. Contrast Hero Of Another Story.
Examples:

Comic Books
  • This is the very heart and core of the Super Hero concept - that only The Big Damn Hero can Save The Day. In fact, once Lois Lane asked her husband "Why does it have to be you?"; he replied "Because no one else can."

Film
  • Die Hard:
    • In the first movie, the FBI agents blindly follow their standard anti-terrorist procedure, which allows the criminals to break into the vault. They also decide to launch an attack on the terrorists on top of the building, even though they expect 20-25% of the hostages to be killed. The Los Angeles deputy police chief is totally incompetent, and the SWAT team leader (a) has his team foolishly charge in and get slaughtered and (b) sends in an armored car which the criminals blow up with a missile.
      • To be fair, who would have expected that terrorists would be packing antitank missiles?
    • In Die Hard II, the terrorists are renegade U.S. troops, the military troops sent to take out the terrorists are in cahoots with them, and for most of the movie the airport security guards actively oppose McClane's heroic efforts.
    • From Live Free or Die Hard:
      Farrell: Then why are you doing this?
      McClane: Because there's nobody else to do it right now, that's why. Believe me, if there were somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it. But there's not, so we're doing it.
      Farrell: Ah. That's what makes you that guy.
  • In Blue Thunder, the villains are part of a Government Conspiracy that has the local police department on its side. Frank Murphy is forced to hijack the titular Black Helicopter and fight an aerial battle against police and military forces in order to provide cover for the evidence he's collected to make it to a reporter. Averted at the end when the U.S. Justice Department does in fact start an investigation.
  • Subverted in Lethal Weapon 3, in which Riggs persuades Murtagh that they are the only ones present who can defuse a bomb because, of course, "the bomb squad never arrives on time!" Unfortunately, Riggs fails the Wire Dilemma, the bomb goes off, and the building collapses, causing millions of dollars worth of damage... and at that point, the bomb squad arrive, having made it in plenty of time to defuse the device had Riggs and Murtagh not interfered.
  • As the Batman franchise went on, the role of the police became diminished to the point of utter uselessness, meaning the city was defenceless without Batman. This is somewhat averted in the Dark Knight Trilogy, where Lieutenant/Comissioner Gordon plays a major role in saving the city too.
    • Also averted in the fact that though he is indeed the only one with the resources and resolve to see his One Man War On Crime through, any honest portrayal of Bruce Wayne character never has him desiring to REMAIN the only one. Parallels thus observable, with V for Vendetta.
  • Justified in the new Star Trek movie. The cadets are put aboard ships because the vast majority of Starfleet was massed elsewhere in preparation for a battle against the Klingon military, and the cadets weren't expected to go into combat anyway, just undertake evacuation operations of Vulcan citizens.
  • Spoofed in The Hidden (1987) when the Chief says that is the cop protagonist is reassigned:
    "My department will then crumble, crime will run rampart, the city will fall into ruin, rampaging hordes will control the streets and life as we know it will end!"

Literature

Live Action TV
  • In The X Files, Agent Mulder and/or Agent Scully were often the only ones who could defeat the Monster Of The Week - partly because of the astonishing amount of Corrupt Hick law enforcers they encountered, and partly because they were usually the only ones who believed or accepted that the threat actually existed in the first place.
  • The Doctor is often The Only One who can save the day in Doctor Who, because he's a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who's way above everyone else.
  • The local police force vs. FBI variant is the central plot of an In the Heat of the Night episode, in which the Sparta DA's daughter is kidnaped and Gillespie's force - using their small-town savvy - competes (almost literally) with by-the-book FBI agents to locate her.
  • The starship Enterprise seems to be the only ship in the sector when a crisis goes down a lot of the time. Most egregiously in Star Trek Generations, in which the crisis takes place near Earth, the capital of the Federation, and the Enterprise, whose best Applied Phlebotinum won't be in until Tuesday, is still the only ship close enough. Apparently, if the Romulans ever decide to bring the fight to our heroes, they'll only have to get past one ship...
    • But fully justified in the prequel series Star Trek Enterprise, as the NX-01 Enterprise is the only Warp 5 spacecraft available until the NX-02 Columbia is completed mid-way through the fourth season.
    • Likewise justified in the series Voyager. Since the entire premise is that Voyager is stranded halfway across the galaxy from home, there will obviously be no other Starfleet authorities or reinforcements around for them to fall back on.
  • Believe it or not, CSI Miami actually does this. The Crime Scene investigators are the only law enforcement personnel who care about getting the criminals. The DA's only care about getting convictions, even if it is a wrongful one. Judges are at best unhelpful or helpless, at worst are corrupt and seek to hinder the CSI in anyway possible. Other cops just don't care. Parole Boards are more focused on bureaucracy than on doing their job of making sure bad people stay in jail.
    • Similarly, cops are unable to do anything without Horatio - a CSI. Down to the point where SWAT teams, in full gear, will wait for Horatio to show up - wearing a suit and using a handgun - before entering a location. Of course Horatio enters first. Most evident in an episode where gunfire was heard in a house,— the cops surround the house, then wait for Horatio before going in to check what happens. One has to wonder what happens if there are two crimes in Miami at the same time. Another episode has Horatio personally escorting a truck filled with confiscated drugs that are to be incinerated.
  • In the new Battlestar Galactica, despite a fleet of some 40,000 plus, every job that needs doing seems to need doing by our major characters, regardless of their qualifications or profession. Thus we see fighter pilots as undercover police (Black Market), deck hands as planetary recon team (Kobol's Last Gleaming), fighter pilots as SWAT team (Sacrifice), fighter pilots and deck hands as algae harvesters (The Eye of Jupiter), etc.
    • Somewhat Lampshaded by Baltar that only the head of the fleet (the main character) are the ones in control keeping everyone else down
      • It is mitigated somewhat by the military figures being the only functioning organization right from the beginning and responsible for much of the mundane operation and provisioning of the fleet. Given they are needed to keep things functioning as well as keep them all alive, it is unsurprising they tend to oversee any major operation. Admiral Adama explicitly has no love for dealing with civilian matters and would prefer the president simply do the administering, but if it overlaps with his crew (as most things do) and duties, he will react regardless of anyone else in the fleet.
  • Used to the extreme in Heroes where more or less every character has once been declared "the only one who can stop" the bad guys (Sylar, usually.)
    • Which is mostly half justified by how powerful the individual is and half played pitifully straight as a result of a few of the villains and precisely none of the protagonists having any idea what to do with their powers.
  • A thousand and one Star Trek stories. The bridge crew usually are the only ones to stop the Menace of the Week...because the extra guys they brought with all got killed.
  • In 24, Jack Bauer is the only one allowed to save the day. He is one of usually five people in CTU that isn't a mole, as well.
  • Justified in Stargate SG-1 as the public (and, therefore, any help outside of the SGC) don't know about the Stargate program. Unjustified in instances when this isn't the case.
    • Similarly, the number of times it's SG-1 offworld when a crisis erupts, or that they can't contact the base, or that the endangered aliens specifically ask for that particular team makes you wonder what all the other teams are doing wrong... or right.
      • Ask yourself, knowing people often number things according to quality (and SG-1 are said to be the point team because they are the best - aiding the assumption), would you want SG-24 helping you or SG-12?
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the Chosen One, the only one who can defeat the vampires, demons, etc. etc.
    ''In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone can stop the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.
    • Later inverted by the appearances of Kendra, Faith, and eventually, the entire Slayer Army.
    Xander: I knew all that "I'm the only one" business was just an attention-getter!
  • The FBI agent characters in Numb3rs, especially Don, are not exactly incompetent, but it often tends to look like they need Charlie before they can solve cases. Granted, he's one of the main characters, so cases where they didn't need him wouldn't take up whole episodes, but still, there's got to be someone in that office who can catch a criminal without calling in a mathematician.
  • Taken to extremes in Las Vegas. The hotel security team is a veritable crime fighter unit that hunts down (and sometimes judges and punishes) suspects all on its own. LVPD is mostly content with picking up the criminals at the end of the show. Moreover, said hotel security team only consists of Ed, Danny, and Mike. Literally every bad guy is personally captured by Danny, never mind there being dozens of other guards in the hotel.
  • From Sharpe's Challenge:
    Harper: You and me, we're going to stop a rebellion? Just the two of us?
    Sharpe: I don't see no bugger else.

Tabletop Games
  • The Living City campaign featured the most incompetent 15th level fighters imaginable as its local police, called the "City Watch". It was claimed that the police weren't incompetent, just portrayed that way so that the players could be the main heroes and not just call the cops to handle problems. Of course, many players believe that by that point, even if they weren't incompetent, they wouldn't be able to do much against high-level threats anyway.
    • Also a problem in World Of Warcraft and a bunch of other MMORPGs. Level 60 guards patrol the city streets, but only you can defeat the current Dire Peril, guaranteed!
      • Well, if the guards left the city, who'd be left to keep all the bad guys from... taking over the city?
      • Of course, for many early examples one guard could easily wipe out the entire threat. Reclaiming the Troll homelands from one guy is the most obvious.
    • Justified in the D&D setting of Eberron. Elite City guards are level 2 or 3 warriors. Warriors is an NPC class weaker than a fighter. This means that effectively the PCs are the city's only hope against anything, as all but the lowest level of players severely overpower guards (and mid level players can wipe the floor of an entire precinct).
      • The setting has a few higher-level characters, but they often come into play only at a time where the P Cs already out-level them.
      • Also, this justifies the inclusion of the Warforged, hideously expensive sentient golems used in the latter stages of the Last War (which happened to last about 100 years). They were worth their price because of the unorthodox strategies they allowed (try besieging someone who has no need of food or water. Also, consider the ease of logistics when operating somewhere gettings supplies to would be difficult) and because they came out of their Creation Forges classed as fighter 2. PC classes represent an enormous potential in this setting, so for many jobs they were indeed The Only Ones capable of doing them. After the war, they also were The Only Ones capable of handling jobs like salvaging sunken ships or working in other hazardous conditions.
  • Somewhat averted in the Shadowrun RPG where the police (Lone Star) are a dangerous paramilitary unit that all player characters should try to avoid. Although, in some campaigns (fortunately, not in any of the official campaigns) they still become bunglers when the player characters are around
    • Of course, Lone Star is also portrayed as something of a compromise between competence and budget. Knight Errant, which isn't the official police but does significant security business, is the big player. I think the whole point of the game averts this, though, as the basic outline of a run is your shadowrunning team facing security/police. Yes, the point is to win, but the point is also to have it not be a cakewalk.

Western Animation
  • Kim Possible discovers that this week's Mac Guffin was stolen a week ago, and sounds peeved that the world thought it could get along without her:
    Kim: Why am I just finding out about this now?
    Wade: Um, Local, federal and international law enforcement are on the case. They thought they didn't need you.
    Kim: Well, I guess they thought wrong.

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