I've rewritten the "five" part of the description because it was assuming that Five-Man Band is a trope that covers every 5 people group, which is not the case. Five-Man Band covers a particular team setup but not all groups of five fall under that.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanWhy was the Six-Student Clique trope turned into a redirect to this page? Especially since its topic isn't particularly well-covered by this page's contents.
Hide / Show RepliesBecause it wasn't a trope, really.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThe Magnificent Seven Samurai isn't an ensemble, it's a Whole-Plot Reference. Most of the examples on there admit to having a different number of characters, including some of the most famous (The Three Amigos has three, A Bugs Life nine). However, the page itself is confused about this, so I suppose it'd be better to TRS that trope and only retool this one once a decision's been made on that.
WHY is Doctor Who listed as a one-man band? 95% of the time "Team TARDIS" consists of at least two people (often many more in the older series), sometimes with recurring characters, and more often than not with at least one guest-star native to the time and place where the episode is set. On the rare occasions when there is no regular companion, a guest star generally steps up into the basic 'companion' role. In the extremely rare cases in which no one has, this is a main theme of the episode, and the Doctor's mental condition suffers massively as a consequence.
I would suggest to characterise Doctor Who as a fairly typical two-lead series for the newer version (2005+), and as ranging from 2-4 leads for the older one.
Apparently, some people are starting to write for a specific sixteen-character ensemble, the Myers-Briggs Personality Types, eg, the webcomic MBTimes.