"It's expedition time!"Note
"Another perfect landing"
Doki is a Canadian animated children's TV series produced by Portfolio Entertainment for Latin America's Discovery Kids, based on the mascots for that channel.
The show is about Team Doki, a team of six Funny Animal kids who are members of the Worldwide Expedition Club, an online club dedicated to travelling the world and learning things. In every episode, the team goes on an expedition to anywhere in the world to answer a question they want to know the answer to.
The members of Team Doki are:
- Doki, the leader of Team Doki, who founded the team because of his love for adventure and a need to quench his curiosity.
- Mundi, who happens to be a genius with technology and is the one who does everything for the good of others.
- Fico, the hyperactive "wild card" of the group, always looking to do something just for fun.
- Gabi, essentially the wisest team member, always trying to follow a plan while the rest of the team just wants to rush into things.
- Oto, who is also experienced with technology, and is the owner, pilot and in charge of fixing the team's plane.
- Anabella, essentially the definition of "cheerful young girl", with a fondness for ballet and art.
The Spanish version of the show originally aired on Discovery Kids in Latin America, while the English version originally aired on Canada's TVO Kids (in Ontario) and Knowledge Network (in British Columbia). In the U.S., the Spanish version aired on Discovery Familia (the Spanish version of Discovery Kids, launched before the latter became The Hub) while the first two seasons of the English version aired on Qubo. The special "Doki Rocks Rio!" also aired on Discovery Family to coincide with the 2016 Olympic Games, but unfortunately, they've never shown any other episodes.
Not to be confused with Doki Doki Literature Club! or Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic.
"Trope examples, here we come!":
- Aardvark Trunks: Oto is an anteater with his mouth under his snout instead of at the tip.
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Doki wears a cap and a collar, Gabi has a flower, Oto wears a bowtie, Anabella wears a tutu, and Fico wears goggles.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Oto is a yellow anteater and Fico is a blue otter.
- Berserk Button: Do NOT copy Anabella's painting without her permission. Fico learned that the hard way in "The Copycats".
- Beware the Nice Ones: Anabella is the kindest member of the team, as long as you don’t make her angry.
- Big Eater: Fico is shown to love eating food at several points in the show.
- Birthday Episode: "Aloha Birthday" takes place on Fico's birthday, and sees the team distracting Fico so he won't ruin the surprise party they have planned.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: At the beginning of "Doki's Bright Idea", while Fico was making shadow puppets, Anabella asks him to do a kitty, a unicorn, and a kitty riding a unicorn.
- Bungling Inventor: Most of Oto's inventions don't work as intended, if they even work at all. The main exception is the team's plane, but even that has problems at times.
- By "No", I Mean "Yes": Anabella: "Capoeira is just like ballet, only completely different!"
- Cartoon Creature: It's never made clear whether Mundi is a fairy or a ladybug.
- Cartoonland Time: Somehow, Team Doki can to fly to their destination and be back home before dinnertime, no matter where they go. In fact, there's a few places where this is extremely noticeable:
- In "The Trouble With Truffles", Oto and Anabella stay at a TV station for the cooking competition while the rest of the team go to Italy to get truffles, which Oto needs for one of the dishes he was gonna make for the competition. The team leaves right before the competition starts and come back during the final round.
- "Team Doki's Big Squeeze". The team splits up to see who can sell the most lemonade, with Doki, Gabi and Fico going to the Sahara Desert, Beijing and somewhere in Russia in quick succession while Oto, Mundi and Anabella stay in the park near the clubhouse. And in the meantime, Mundi and Anabella make and release a commercial for the lemonade stand while Oto hands out flyers. One of the customers Oto brought in somehow recognizes Anabella from the commercial. Then, Doki, Gabi and Fico come back to the park to help the others after learning of their success. All of this was done in one afternoon.
- Catchphrase: Doki says, "It's expedition time!" and "Another perfect landing!" Oto's catchphrase is "To the toolbox!"
- Chain of Deals: In "Traders of Taters", the team goes to a town in Peru where all items are bought by exchanging other items. The episode's subplot has Oto and Mundi getting fuel for the plane by using this system to get a toy for the dealer's son. When the kid decides he doesn't one thing, Oto trades it for another thing to try again.
- Character Title: Doki is both the name of the show and the main character.
- Child Prodigy: Gabi is the wisest member of Team Doki.
- Clear Their Name: "The Art of the Steal". Anabella was at a special art class next to a grumpy guy named Walter, and they both have to paint a copy of the "The Starry Night", using the original painting as a reference. When the time is up, Walter complains that he didn't get to finish his painting and demands to more time with the reference, but he doesn't get that. Anabella then asks Walter to take a picture of her with her painting, but he just gives the camera back, only to accidentally take a picture, distracting everyone and making off with the painting. When the security guard sees that the painting has been stolen, he immediately blames Anabella because her painting was an almost perfect replica, causing the rest of Team Doki to help her be cleared of the charges and catch the actual thief.
- Cute Bookworm: Gabi is easily the Lisa Simpson of Team Doki.
- Christmas Episode: "The Sky's the Limit" and "The Nutcracker? Sweet!"
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: While competing on a cooking show, Oto ends up being unable to get to any of the ingredients he needs and has to improvise, resulting in a peanut-butter and pickle sandwich and sushi with popcorn and jelly beans. However, the judge ends up liking these concoctions, letting Oto go on to the final round.
- Description Cut: From "Climb Every Mountain"; while Doki, Gabi and Fico are climbing Mt. Everest and learning how unprepared they are for it, the others realize they need coats, only for Oto to discover that the mountain climbers did not get their coats:Oto: Uh-oh! The guys ran off without their warm coats!
Mundi: Don't worry, Gabi knows what she's doing!
(cut to Gabi climbing the mountain)
Gabi: What am I doing?! - Digging to China: Fico, Oto, and Doki attempt to do this in "Doki Digs To China". They don't even make it out of the outer crust before they have to turn back.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening theme song (as well as most of the other songs) are sung by Team Doki themselves.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Earlier episodes stuck to the show's formula more closely; more specifically, there was an extra step where Oto and Mundi had to stay behind to fix the plane while the others went out to explore. Later episodes started playing with this formula more often.
- The character's voices were more high-pitched than in later episodes, but since all their voice actors
were children, this could be explained by said actors hitting puberty or being recast. - Early episodes were more blatant about the educational aspects, which fit in with the whole "exploration" premise of the show. Later episodes were a little more subtle about it.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Mundi gets these in the episode "Mundi's Day Off".
- Fingerless Hands: The main characters except Mundi have mitten hands.
- Firefighting Episode: "Fire Team Doki"
- Free-Range Children: The main characters are all 5 or 6 years old, and yet their parents are perfectly fine with letting them be part of a club where they travel the world with little adult supervision.
- Furry Confusion: The show does have regular animals, despite all of the characters being anthropomorphic animals. It's especially noticeable in a couple episodes where Doki, an anthropomorphic dog, chases after a mundane dog.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Oto and Mundi. The former is responsible for building many different kinds of machines, including the plane the team uses, while the latter is basically Oto's assistant, usually having to clean up after his messes.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: Three boys and three girls.
- Gentle Giant: Oto is the biggest member of Team Doki despite being 6 years old.
- Growling Gut: Fico's stomach growled in the episodes "Doki and the Dholki", "My Fair Fico", "Doki Digs To China", "The High Life", "The Sky's The Limit", and "Tomb Explorers".
- It also happens to Fico on three separate occasions in the special "Team Doki: From Past to Presents".
- Guinness Episode: In "Oto Flips", after realizing he's the only one on the team who doesn't have any trophies, Oto brings the team out to Quebec so he can getvthe world record for making the biggest pancake. He does manage to actually make the pancake, but it ends up being an inch shorter than the previous record. However, the invention he used to flip the pancake manages to get him the record for highest pancake flip.
- Halloween Episode: "Monster Masquerade", which has the team preparing for a Halloween party and end up starring in a horror movie.
- Identical Stranger: "Doki's Double Trouble" had Declan, an astronaut who looks almost exactly like Doki. While he shows the team around a space station, Doki wears an astronaut's outfit and everyone who works at the station confuses him for Declan, resulting in Doki taking Declan's place on the launch.
- Immediate Sequel: "Happy New Year... Again" is strongly implied to take place right after "Happy Noodle Year". The former episode starts with the team on the way home from celebrating New Years in China, which they did in the latter episode.
- Mythology Gag: Some of the pictures seen in the background at the clubhouse use the characters' designs from when they were mascots. These designs also show up when Anabella tells the story of the Nutcracker in "The Nutcracker? Sweet!"
- Once an Episode: All of these are very, very occasionally subverted in one way or another, but you can usually count on:
- Doki (or sometimes another character) saying "It's expedition time", followed by a sequence of the team grabbing their bags and boarding the plane.
- Mundi putting a pin on a map, saying "[Destination], here we come!" during said sequence.
- Doki (or occasionally someone else) saying "Another perfect landing!" after a relatively rough landing.
- Anabella giving the team stickers with pictures based in the expedition, after every expedition.
- Origins Episode: "Team Doki: From Past to Presents" tells the story about how the main characters became Team Doki.
- Oven Logic: In "S'No Trouble", Gabi, Oto and Anabella have to make a batch of strudels for the guests at the ski lodge, but are worried about it taking so long that they won't get to ski. Then Oto comes up with the idea to raise the temperature. This isn't brought up again until the end of the episode, where Oto mentions in passing that it was a disaster, and he saved one of those strudels to use as a doorstop.
- Pilot: Two pilot episodes were made back in 2009. Known as "Doki's Adventures", they were produced by Nelvana as opposed to Portfolio Entertainment, and contained numerous differences to the final show.
- Pink Means Feminine: Anabella is pink, has pink as her favourite colour, and is the most feminine character on the show.
- Playful Otter: Fico the otter is extremely hyperactive and often just wants to have fun.
- The Prankster: Fico loves to play practical jokes on his friends, which usually come back to bite him.
- Scaling the Summit: "Climb Every Mountain" is about the team trying to climb Mt. Everest, despite Gabi's objections, saying they weren't ready. She turned out to be right.
- Secret Diary: "Secrets and Spies": Gabi has been acting very secretive of her diary, and the rest of the team go to huge lengths to find out what her secret is; Doki, Mundi and Anabella go to a spy school to learn some tactics that spies use while Fico and Oto try using those tactics to get to Gabi's diary. They never get to find out the secret until they come clean and Gabi tells them it was a surprise for them; she just won six tickets to a movie.
- Sequel Episode: "Fico's Floaties" is about the team recovering the rubber ducks Fico lost back in "Fico's Hot Bath".
- Shout-Out: In one episode, Robin Hood is depicted as a fox.
- Sticky Situation: In "Team Doki's Big Adventure", Fico gets ahold of some really sticky candy and gets stuck to several things throughout the episode. Case in point, He gets himself, Doki and Gabi stuck together for a portion of the episode.
- Strictly Formula: At least, usually. The team has a question, so Doki declares "it's expedition time" and his team goes an expedition to find the answer. When they land, Doki declares, "another perfect landing" no matter how dizzy everyone else is. When they find the answer, the song, "Yay, Team Doki" plays.
- However, "Doki's Bright Idea" left out one of Doki's catchphrases — he doesn't note "another perfect landing" (the landing in this episode was particularly rough). Also, Mundi not Doki says "It's expedition time".
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- "S'No Trouble" starts with Fico trying to start an avalanche to get snow off the roof of the clubhouse by yodeling, like he saw on TV, but it just disturbs everyone else. Later in the episode, the team has to cause an avalanche to get an overhang off a ski hill (long story). Their first attempt, blowing a horn and causing a loud noise, does nothing to move the snow.
- In "Doki Digs to China", Oto builds a super drill, and Doki and Fico want to use it to dig to China, while the girls want to race with them by using the plane. The girls easily win the race, while the boys can't even make it to the mantle because the drill won't be able to handle all the pressure, plus the Earth is big.
- Tempting Fate:
- While trying to climb Mt. Everest:
Gabi: Let's head back to camp.
Doki: Why stop now? I mean, we've made it this far. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
(The wind picks up, blowing them away)
Gabi: Oh, you just had to ask...- While Gabi and Doki are on an obstacle course that leaves them both covered in tar:
Gabi: This can't possibly get any harder!
(The timer runs out and bunch of feathers fall on them.)
Doki: It got harder. - Title Theme Tune: "We're off to travel around the world to see what we can see/Expedition is always fun we're Team Doki!"
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Many episodes have the characters split up during the expedition and have their own subplots. Usually there's two, but a few episodes have three, in spite of every episode being eleven minutes long.
- Whole-Plot Reference: "My Fair Fico" is a parody of My Fair Lady.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- Gabi is shown to be afraid of darkness on several occasions.
- "Doki Goes Batty" reveals that Doki is afraid of bats. When the team decides to take Anabella to see a bat so she could draw one, Doki tries to get them to not go on the expedition, only agreeing to it when he realizes the rest of the team wants to go. When they get to their destination, Doki decides to stay near the plane with Fico (who was writing a comic book, which is why Anabella needed to draw the bat) while the rest of the team goes to find the bat. He gets over it when he sees a baby bat that somehow got on the plane.
- World of Funny Animals: Every single character is an animal and there are no humans whatsoever.
🎵Yay Team Doki!
We found the answer!
Our expedition was so fun!
See you on the next one! Yay!🎵
Doki: Way to go everyone!
