Needs Help: The Doctor Dolittle

This is an exceedingly common trope in fiction: a human who can talk to animals. In spite of that, it has only 20 inbounds since january last year (and that figure includes its redirect). Clearly something is wrong here, and this name is not what people search for when looking for a trope about talking to animals.

Well, the movie it is named after is fourteen years old, and scores pretty badly on Rotten Tomatoes (44%, certified rotten), so it's probably not commonly talked about. If you're not familiar with that movie (or, I suppose, the 1920s books it was based on) then the name means "lazy medic", which is not this trope. Of course, Dolittle is not even remotely the oldest or the most prominent example of the trope.

Regardless, at 20 inbounds this isn't working. I suggest we rename this.

I think Doctor Dolittle is the most famous example of the trope.

And who would think about the film before the books?

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:26:47 PM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I've always heard the name in association with people who can talk to animals. Also, you might want to do a Wick Check.

You thought of the Eddie Murphy version before the Rex Harrison version? Shame on you. Shame!

It does have substantial wickage. I dunno. *shrug*

I think the problem is that when (some) people hear "Dr. Dolittle" they think of "talks to animals" but when people are looking for a trope on "talking to animals" they do not think of this guy.

That would explain the problematically low inbound count. We want names that are easy to find, and this isn't one.

edited 23rd Feb '12 12:33:05 PM by Spark9

Hm, I think we've got this somewhere else under a different name. Can't remember it though. Perhaps Animal Speak or something?

Rather Animal Speaker, since it's about talking to animals.

We have Talks to Squirrels which is kind of related, if that's what you're looking for.

Good catch. The header of Talks to Squirrels adds some complications, but almost all the examples are literally somebody who can talk to animals.

Talks to Squirrels looks like it's covering two things: Talk To The Animals, but for just one type of animal; and revealing that you can talk to the animal in question at the point in the story where it comes up (like Finding Nemo's "Don't worry, I speak whale" scene).

Sure, whatever. Just looking at its examples section is all. *shrug*

edited 23rd Feb '12 1:16:37 PM by troacctid

I'm not sure why you would say one kind of animal. In fact, it's not even about animals, it's about a character suddenly revealing they can speak with someone they shouldn't be able to. It's just as applicable to human communication (ex. someone reveals they can speak Chinese just when they need it).

That's a problem with that trope, which incidentally doesn't even mention The Doctor Dolittle in its description.

And isn't this rename thread made under false pretenses, if the OP is assuming it's named for an Eddie Murphy movie and not the popular series of childrens' books it's based on? At least fix the OP, please.

Inbounds don't always prove everything. Maybe no one has reason to link to our explanation of talking to animals; it's a fairly straightforward concept that doesn't need TV Tropes to explain.

Talks to Squirrels isn't just about squirrels. (I wish the page quote and page image weren't squirrels...) It's not even just about animals. It's when the ditzy one steps up and unexpectedly can communicate with the animal, the foreigner, the space alien, etc.

edited 23rd Feb '12 9:54:42 PM by rodneyAnonymous

So we have two tropes here - one is talking to animals, and another is The Ditz having an unexpected skill, yes? Most of the examples on Talks To Suiqrrels appear to be the former.

Well like I said, most of the examples on Talks to Squirrels are either the unexpected language skill or talking to a specific kind of animal (not a universal Animal Talk).

Sure, but is "talking to one particular kind of animal" really a different trope than "talking to any animal"? Tropes Are Flexible.

And many works blur the line between those two: a character who is said to be able to talk to any animal, but it is only ever demonstrated with monkeys and cows. Or, a character who can talk to only one kind of animal, and that kind is "birds" (which is really thousands of kinds).

You claim disuse but the stats tell another story.

The Doctor Dolittle found in: 289 articles, excluding discussions.

Since January 1, 2011 this article has brought 20 people to the wiki from non-search engine links.

20 inbounds is not all that bad, when as someone else pointed out, this isn't exactly something that is going to attract lots of attention in terms of people linking it because they want some obscure concept explained, or because they want a list of something particulary exciting.

Also, this is not about any character talking to any animals. This is scenarios where only one particular character or type of charter has the special ability to talk to animals. A story where everyone can talk to animals would not have such a character. The description does need a bit of clarification on that point, but it is there.

Also, it already has a redirect for Talk To The Animals.

Honeslty, I don't think it has been demonstrated that this is broken.

edited 24th Feb '12 5:54:50 PM by Catbert

Talks to Squirrels is "The Ditz demonstrates unusual competence in languages (or somehow turns As Long as It Sounds Foreign into a viable communication method)". For some reason it's a common gag. It's not specifically about talking to animals and is therefore not necessarily related to The Doctor Dolittle.

I'm starting to think that Talks to Squirrels needs to be taken to the Trope Repair Shop. The description isn't very well written, and a lot of the examples are difficult to separate from The Doctor Dolittle, when they're not outright examples of the latter.

Well, it is now.

Also, 20 inbounds is rather low, as pointed out here.

Along with the mess and misleading-ness of Talks to Squirrels, this name seems far too obscure for a rather widespread concept. Wick check on Talks to Squirrels shows that it was used instead of The Doctor Do Little, for two reasons as I see it. a) Talks to Squirrels is misleading and b) this trope's name is horribly unindicative. Severe disuse is reason to rename.

Switch with redirect is what I think would work.

edited 25th Feb '12 5:22:49 AM by lu127

"Switch with redirect is what I think would work"

The redirect is too generic and will get confused with any world with Talking Animals.

About 2,900,000 results for "dr. dolittle" on Google. Once again, people are confusing personal ignorance with obscurity.

edited 25th Feb '12 6:00:50 AM by Catbert

Well, the people of this website obviously have trouble understanding this name, considering its severe disuse. We can't teach our userbase about one specific movie/game/comic/whatever when a name is not working.

Since when is 289 wicks considered severe disuse? Looks to me like it falls in the "renowned" category. Also, once you switch the bad wicks from Talks to Squirrels over to this, it will be doing much better. This isn't the trope that is broken. Talks to Squirrels is the one that needs to be fixed.

Wick

edited 25th Feb '12 6:11:04 AM by Catbert

Extremely low inbounds are underuse and disuse. It is not wicks alone. If a name has low inbounds, it's not catching on outside the website. It is not helping the wiki.

Character named tropes can work, but they don't always do so. Example: The term Xanatos Gambit was coined by this wiki. It currently over 20K inbounds. It's catching on. It's working. This one, not so much.

edited 25th Feb '12 6:18:55 AM by lu127

300 wicks in proportion to how many times this trope is expected to occur.

2.9 million Google hits are a lot, however, but are they about the character or the archetype?

edited 25th Feb '12 6:21:10 AM by SeptimusHeap