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The Last Man Heard a Knock: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door."''|'''[[Fredric Brown]]''', ''Knock''}}
Whenever there is but [[The Aloner|a single living soul left on Earth]] in an [[After the End]] scenario, we know that no matter how lonely it seems, there will '''always''' be other people left on Earth. Or perhaps zombies. Or a helpful dog. There always are. When it comes to exceptions, there are next to none. And even better: They are somewhere relatively close to him, and will run into him, despite the fact that Earth (or even a major city) is a [[Sci
The reason this trope exists, of course, is to take the burden off a single actor. For the most part, stories focused on a single person who never encounters others are ''boring'' unless that person is an excellent actor (or the writer is brilliant) - it's interaction that makes for entertainment. Plus, it opens up more potential for conflict, often called the driving force of fiction.
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* Averted in the ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode "Time Enough at Last".
* [[Doctor Who
* ''[[Star Trek Voyager]]'', "Projections." The Emergency Medical Hologram is activated and told by the computer that he's the last person on the ship. As this is still early in the show and he's stuck in Sickbay, he prepares to shut down his program, but suddenly there's a knock at the door.
* ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]'' makes this the whole premise of a sitcom. On a mining ship in deep space, a radiation leak kills everyone except one man in a temporal-stasis-field prison cell. He wakes up three million years later, [[Everybody's Dead, Dave|utterly alone]]. Except for the ship's computer. And a hologram of the one member of the crew he really dislikes. And a humanoid creature that evolved from his cat. And, later, a robot butler. And an alternate-universe version of his ex-girlfriend...
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[[Category:Solitary Tropes]]
[[Category:The Last Man Heard A Knock]]
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