BTW, would Danial Jackson in Stargate count?
edited 3rd Jan '11 4:02:52 AM by DragonQuestZ
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.He looked more like someone who was skilled but crazy from the original.
edited 3rd Jan '11 4:32:52 AM by Deboss
Fight smart, not fair.I don't see anything allowing them to be voluneteers in the description as it stands now. They may get interested or even enthused once they're involved, but there's nothing here:
Whenever one of these characters is pulled in, they typically describe vague and often ludicrous hypotheses as theories and are actually offended when proof is demanded of them. Always a Designated Hero, and usually opposing them is proof of being Designated Villain.
that says they join on their own. It's all about being coerced or dragooned in the first place.
"The only guy who can do it" may be a trope, but it isn't this one.
edited 3rd Jan '11 6:32:31 AM by Madrugada
Ok, I've actually gone over the examples or at least the ones I know and while quite a few of them are happy to keep going once they've been there for a while, they've all been kidnapped, bribed, or blackmailed into it.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickIt's more that DBZ sees a supertrope here, but I haven't found any examples of it on the page so it should probably be taken to YKTTW.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickBut if it's forcing someone to join up, why does it have to be an outside expert who happens to be kooky? McCoy in ''Star Trek The Motion Picture would count as this.
So the trope is still narrower than it needs to be.
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.I think I see where DBZ is going vis-a-vis McCoy, but if the subject of the trope is joining the group voluntarily for their own reasons, how is that not just a subtype of Fish out of Water ? Actually, it seems there's a case to be made here that this trope is a subtype of Fish out of Water regardless of whether the manner of joining is forced or not.
That said, I think the aspect of conscription is important, because I think most if not all the examples reflect some situation in the narrative where a group or organization of some sort where they realize they need something to solve a problem they don't normally have, and have no choice to bring in some kind of FNG that they don't normally deal with, and that friction between the new guy and the group they're brought into often becomes a thread in the narrative somehow.
Actually, an interesting case that highlights this aspect is in the novel The Forever War. In that story the humans are at war with the Taurans, but at first they have no idea what their enemy is like, so on their first actual mission the platoon of the viewpoint character (Mandella) has a subgroup that's nicknamed "the brains and weirds" made up of people picked out for a grab bag of specializations, ranging from scientific knowledge to ESP and exceptional luck. To some degree, the involuntary aspect is secondary because in the story EVERYONE has been (literally) drafted—at least as far as the humans go. You get the impression that the military in this case would clearly rather have a homogeneous group of simple grunts, but they're holding their noses and adding this group anyway because they don't think they have a choice.
edited 4th Jan '11 1:48:34 AM by nonpalindromic
OK, I'm having a problem with this whole discussion because it seems Trope Decay is underway on the trope.
This "carried him off against his will" stuff was added in as flavor text, it seems, and it shouldn't be in the opening paragraph because it narrows the trope definition beyond what it's actually about, although it's sometimes true.
Daniel Jackson from Stargate and Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day (IIRC) would be quintessential examples of this trope.
It has nothing to do with being dragooned by the military (although they often are).
It has everything to do with the fact that they are a scientific laughingstock who has stumbled upon The Masquerade and the military or authorities suddenly realize they are the only ones who understand how to deal with the problem...
Even though they are usually in an unrelated, possibly quacky, field and took some sort of Bat Deduction to figure out the problem that all the military guys couldn't.
The only things needed to fit the trope is that there is a secret MIB-like team in place combating some problem, and there's a wacky scientist or hacker on the outside who has implausibly stumbled on either the problem or the answer — or both.
Whether he's dragooned or not is completely beside the point. (Tho it's true they often are.)
BTW, I have no problem with the current title. It's creative. Must everything be changed to SPOON titles that are deceptively informational of what the trope is about? Is there any evidence of misuse?
edited 6th Jan '11 10:53:13 AM by berr
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I'm pretty sure "the worm guy" from Godzilla is the quintessential example of this trope, and not those two. I agree though that being forced is not particularly relevant. However I disagree that they must necessarily stumble upon it on their own. The basic point is that they're an expert in some obscure field that gets contacted by a secret-ish organization (often the military) for some fantastic project that somehow requires their expertise.
The guy from Jurassic Park almost certainly counts (paleontologist brought in examine dinosaur park) and he doesn't seem to meet most of the other criteria given.
Clarste, I agree. But I think those two are good examples as well. It's a common trope.
Aside from that, I agree that dragooning is not really central to the trope, merely a common side-effect.
Think of how many times you've watched a film where a scientist gives a lecture on some obscure topic. No one listens to him, he can't get no respect except for two people — (1) The Ditz who is Hot For Teacher, and (2) The one guy in back — Face Framed in Shadow — who turns out to be a representative of some secret community of "the real experts" who have been studying his research intently!
The representative himself may be a military man who has no idea why they want this cat, but The Worm Guy will often go voluntarily because — Jesus, why would he refuse? It's the scientific community's version of a Changeling Fantasy.
It's like Hagrid from Hogwarts coming to say every bespectacled geek who struggled through grad school was right all along about nematodes contracting zombie illness.
edited 6th Jan '11 11:31:56 AM by berr
Does that mean Indiana Jones (in RotLA) counts?
Rodney — I'm not sure, isn't he already Famed in Story for being a Weirdness Magnet who finds legendary lost artifacts and never brings them home with him? If he were a laughing stock in his college or a struggling, ill-respected archaeologist with unconventional ideas, it'd probably count.
Or was he not respected as a professor at first, because he never had proof of his escapades? That's certainly how it'd go down in real life :) I'm having a hard time remembering. If so, it might be a borderline case. Obviously in the sequels, everyone knows and respects Indy.
In fact, this trope was explicitly parodied by Will Ferrell's character in Land Of The Lost
Don't shoot me, it was on TV and I couldn't sleep.
Another common indication (not required) is you see him lose tenure or get fired, turned over for promotion etc. Or his girlfriend says he's become obsessed. Or he's a Crazy Awesome eccentric who never made it in his field. Etc. Then mope around for a bit before he learns he was right and gets recruited and/or kidnapped.
edited 6th Jan '11 11:35:40 AM by berr
Another question is, does this trope exclude guys who are already on the inside but otherwise fit the trope? e.g. the inverse scenario? Where the Naïve Newcomer is dragooned and/or brought in by an eccentric wackjob who turns out to have been long employed as The Worm Guy because of his special skills that are needed by the MIB. Like the "Sector-7 guy" from the Transformers film. He does get fired and discredited after his program is suppressed in the second film where he is dragooned into helping the hero on the outside...
Eccentric retired veterans of a suppressed government agency who the hero has to go to for help (i.e. people who may have been The Worm Guy in a past life) - Do we have a trope for that?
edited 6th Jan '11 11:30:52 AM by berr
Am I reading you correctly, berr? Because what I'm getting is that you are asserting that "scientist is dragooned into assisting an organization with a problem" isn't a trope because "scientist assists an organization with a problem without being dragooned into it" is one.
What I'm saying is that dragooning was never central to the trope and probably should be listed in a separate paragraph as a common side-effect. In fact, I don't remember it being central to the premise last time I read the article.
^ So I'm saying the latter is the premise of this trope and the former is a specific subtrope. The "dragooned" bit got added in to the wrong paragraph, making the trope definition unnecessarily specific.
(possibly too specific to be a separate trope; it's a trope, but all examples of X — dragoonees — are also examples of Y (The Worm Guy), and examples of Y include people who voluntarily get involved.)
The key is, he gets recruited one way or another. Whether he stumbles on it, gets dragooned into it, or shouts "I WAS RIGHT!" when the guy comes up to him and says "Young man, I know no one believes you, I don't believe you, but Mr. So-and-so back at HQ says America needs your help"... you see what I mean?
edited 6th Jan '11 11:44:05 AM by berr
Hm, the distinction between "forced" and "ostensibly given a choice but 'no' isn't really an option" is very fine. It seems like that's more about whether The Worm Guy's first impulse was to say yes or no. Agree that "force" isn't absolutely critical, probably most of the legit examples would involve threat of force dependent on the target's enthusiasm to accept the offer, and not so much about a fundamental difference in the offer itself. But then "stumbles onto it" throws a spanner in the works... what's an example of that?
edited 6th Jan '11 11:46:00 AM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.Yeah, if we tried to split and have a separate trope for "outsider scientist forced to help the experts" and "outsider scientist is only one who can save the experts" the distinction would get so fine, we'd be arguing over which trope so-and-so belongs in based on whether they wanted to go or took some convincing.
Also, I think Be as Unhelpful as Possible may apply as a writing tool to a slight extent, insofar as the guy may be portrayed as reluctant to help simply because the writers want him to be a Reluctant Hero, so they add in Padding by having him refuse the offer out of spite for The Man or whatever, only to have two more guys appear and say "it was not a request".
I think "stumbles onto it" is also optional, because it has multiple meanings. I'm just brainstorming here, but the guy could:
- (a) stumble onto a solution without knowing the problem, in the course of his wacky unrelated research.
- (b) stumble onto the problem and spend the rest of the film trying to solve it, in the course of which he learns the gov't knew about the problem already and needs his outsider expertise.
- (c) stumble onto the secret gov't test site while conducting an unrelated scientific study, only to be dragooned into service because it's a Closed Circle scenario (the base is under attack by aliens, the scientists just unsealed the evil, or whatever.) The Jurassic Park example is closest to this (the experts are there for a pre-opening VIP tour.)
- (d) not stumble onto anything, merely be the Only Sane Man who nobody else believes (except the secret agent experts.)
edited 6th Jan '11 11:57:06 AM by berr

I think either Dragooned or Conscripted are our best options. Dragooned means the closest to what we need for the trope, but it does have a completely other meaning as well which is problematic.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick