History Main / Planetville

* Played straight in ''Literature/TheLostFleet'', in which a hundred million people is considered quite a significant population for an entire ColonisedSolarSystem, but justified by deep cultural hang-ups about the dangers of overpopulation that came scarily close to wiping humanity out completely before the first off-world colonies were founded. Apparently even [[OneNationUnderCopyright the Syndicate Worlds]] haven't completely abandoned such considerations in the name of greed.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

-->-- Richard Hell and the Voidoids, "The Kid With the Replaceable Head"

*** Even with all the above factors taken into account, the people in charge of the setting have admitted that planetary populations are far too high for the levels of military forces used to defend them, but they don't to RetCon either one, since at that point they'd pretty well have to keep retconning until they'd redesigned then entire setting from the ground up.

* In ''[[Anime/MashinHeroWataruSeries Wataru 2]]'', Wataru was sent across the universe to Soukaizan's neighboring planet, a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dipper Dipper]]-like [[Main/{{Constellations}} constellation]] planet named "Seikaizan (''Stellar Realm Mountain'')" to take out the army lead by Doakudar's younger brother, Dowarutar.Dowarudar. The seven "stars" of Seikaizan are provinces, therefore Wataru's gang has to travel across space to reach the next province; usually via a [[EverythingsBetterWithRainbows rainbow bridge]].

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'' is an especially [[TVTropesDrinkingGame egregious]] example, with each planet having an average of 2-3 cities. CasualInterstellarTravel means that a quest to talk to the governor of one SingleBiomePlanet will involve buying a cake from the only bakery in the star system, located at the bottom of a dungeon on another planet. Alis even has the Fly spell, designed to take you back to the last church you visited, which works without regard to whether or not it is on the same planet you are currently visiting.

* ''Outpost 2'' (by Sierra) features a distant planet called New Terra, with only two cities (Eden and Plymouth). And both cities ''still'' fight over the land's resources, especially when a plague (called the Blight) slowly takes over the planet.

** Another episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zagged]] this trope beautifully in its teaser scene, where Worf, Data and Dr. Crusher are sitting in a cafe on a planet-of-the-week that is experiencing domestic terrorism because of a conflict between the planetary government and a minority separatist group. The Ansata [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters rebels/terrorists]] detonate a bomb near the cafe, and several civilians are injured. Dr. Crusher leaps into the fray to provide medical aid, with Worf and Data urging her to be more cautious. It's a great character moment for Beverly Crusher. While Crusher is tending to the wounded, Data invokes this trope by telling her that "It would be prudent to return to the ship" and then states "This planet has its own physicians." Dr. Crusher simply replies, "They're not ''here''. I ''am''," and continues doctoring.

** Another episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zagged]] beautifully in its teaser scene, where Worf, Data and Dr. Crusher are sitting in a cafe on a planet-of-the-week that is experiencing domestic terrorism. The terrorists detonate a bomb near the cafe, and several civilians are injured. Dr. Crusher leaps into the fray to provide aid, with Worf and Data urging her to be more cautious. It's a great character moment for Beverly Crusher. While Crusher is tending to the wounded, Data invokes this trope by telling Dr. Crusher that "It would be prudent to return to the ship" and then states "This planet has its own physicians." Dr. Crusher simply replies, "They're not ''here''. I ''am''."

Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, stories about Planetville make no sense. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' in which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] [[EasyLogistics or left out entirely]] in many stories.

* Played straight and justified in Larry Niven's ''KnownSpace'' series, as teleportation and other technology all but eliminate differing cultures across Earth.

* OneWorldOrder: A country has one government except in civil wars. Planetville has only one except in civil wars.

* ScaryDogmaticAliens: Nazis... [[RecycledINSPACE In Spaaaaaace]]!

* A popular set of British Gas adverts in the UK takes place in a galaxy where each household has their own personal mini-planet, playing on their slogan "look after your world"

* Oddly inverted in a Creator/MarvelComics miniseries, ''Captain Universe''. Gladiator, a FlyingBrick alien flies to Earth from across the galaxy. That sort of travel is usually hand waved in comics as those characters being just that darn powerful. It gets odd when Gladiator has to fly from one part of the globe to another once he gets there and uses the Captain Universe PowerUp in order to grant himself enough speed to make the flight in time. So essentially, space is smaller than the planet Earth, according to this story.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' is made of this trope. Luke is supposed to find Yoda, but he's simply told to find him in the Dagobah system (although in that case he only succeeds because Yoda crashes him near his hut). Obi-Wan is told that General Grievous is in the Utapau system, and the first place he lands is the city that Grievous has taken as his headquarters. Anakin tells Padme that he's going to Mustafar, then she has no trouble at all finding him later. Granted, a combination of The Force and on-ship guidance systems can be (and in the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', have been) used to HandWave all of those.

** Justified at one point in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': when Darth Maul traces Amidala's ship to Tatooine, he points out that the planet is very sparsely populated, with only three major cities across the entire thing, which simplifies his search greatly. He is then shown dispatching groups of scout droids to each of the cities rather than trying to search them personally.

* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': The Federation engages in a shady deal with some aliens to secretly relocate a total planetary population of 600 in order to harvest the planet's radiation for medical purposes, which would require a process that would make the planet hostile to life.

* Justified and Deconstructed in Dan Simmons' ''Literature/{{Illium}}''. Fax Portals (teleportation booths) are all pervasive and no one needs to walk more than half a mile to get anywhere (no planes, no cars, no boats). The problem is that they start thinking they really do live in a Planetville, most of the planet has been completely forgotten.

* A very literal example is found in ''Literature/TheLittlePrince'', who is the sole inhabitant of a planet about the size of a house.

** Not just on earth. Earth colonies are all varying degrees of this, largely because the worlds humanity's ramrobot scouts found for humans to colonize rarely have more than a few places humans can live safely. The world of Plateau is one giant mountain (Mt. Lookatthat) on a Venus like planet, only the upper parts are habitable. On Jinx the planet's shape and gravity mean that only narrow areas between the poles and the equator are habitable, and then only just. We Made It is earthlike, but has a nasty storm season that means you can't build above ground. Naturally the first colony dug out a city (Crashlanding City), and has just expanded that as needed. And so on. Largely averted later on with Wunderland (Alpha Centauri), which initially came across as a monoculture Planetville, but was greatly expanded on in the Man-Kzin wars collections.

* Jack Vance's science fiction abounds with Planetvilles. Typical is ''Literature/TheDemonPrinces'' series, where, for example, one planet is organized around its publishing industry, being the source of the main magazine found throughout a ''star cluster'' in the manner of a dominant regional town paper. However, such immediacy is central: it is hard to see how it could be written more realistically without spoiling the story and its setting. A redeeming justification is the incredibly sparse nature of settlement, where a planet might only have a single town. Or Smade's World: halfway between Smade Mountains and Smade Ocean lies Smade's tavern. All else is wilderness.
** Completely averted, though, with several worlds that are the settings of entire novels: Tschai, Durdane, Big Planet. These are diverse and rich in detail. Except Pao, whose Planetville nature caused the crisis that gets the plot started.

* In Creator/ElizabethMoon's ''Literature/VattasWar'' books, while a single star system frequently has a system-wide government, various lower levels of government seem to exist. Also, [[PlanetOfHats one-Hat planets]] tend to have been originally colonized by racists or religious extremists.

* Fantasy fiction can make similar errors, but with ''Plane''villes instead of Planetvilles. It's particularly egregious when other planes/realities are considered infinite, yet are ruled over by a single archdemon, fey lord, or the like.
* Avoided in regards to Earth in Harry Turtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' series - the difference in national identities confuses the Lizards, as does the human propensity to keep fighting even after the capitals and major cities have been subjugated. The tropes is in full effect on the Lizards' homeworld, however, and to some extent justified in that it is (mostly) a SingleBiomePlanet that has had a single, united monarchy for millenia.

** In Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy, where Luke thinks being given a planet as a location for a warehouse means the informer will not need come with them. Han points out that a planet is a big place to hide one building in. The Thrawn Trilogy also explains away the Dagobah example when Luke theorizes that Yoda used the Force to blank his sensors and bring him to the correct location.
** In ''Literature/{{Shatterpoint}}'', Mace Windu's homeworld is a planet-sized {{Bulungi}}, but this is because only one landmass is both habitable ([[DeathWorld to an extent]]) and of significant size, not much larger than the average African nation. The rest of the planet is submerged under a thick atmosphere of toxic volcanic gases.
* Justified with Yellowstone in the ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries''. The planet is described as being somewhere between Mars and Titan; i.e. a DeathWorld, bar its capitol, Chasm City, which is a [[DomedHometown massive domed city]] covering a volcanic vent that spews out breathable air. Outside of a few scientific and industrial towns, the rest of the planet is unpopulated; if something is on Yellowstone, it's in Chasm City. Yellowstone's Glitter Belt - a ring of hundreds of orbiting space stations featured primarily in ''Literature/ThePrefect'' - however, has extremely diverse cultures, ranging from voluntary dictatorships to BrainInAJar virtual realities. Sky's Edge was colonized by multiple GenerationShips that broke out into war shortly after landing, and has at least three warring nations with unique cultures descended from their generation ship's source culture/population.

* Both ''Series/StargateSG1'' and ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' are very consistent with this. Nothing of interest happens more than a few kilometers from a Stargate, most planets seem to possess a few thousand people at most, and conquering/purging/eating an entire planet is apparently a very simple affair. The characters even seem to be aware of this, as one episode featured Carter and O'Neill trapped in a frozen cave and ''immediately'' thinking they were on an [[SingleBiomePlanet ice planet]] -- but it turned out that they were really [[spoiler:on Earth, in the Antarctic]]. On the few occasions that a planet has more than one state, such as Jonas Quinn's homeworld, they are always at war with each other.
** At least for SG-1, they're walking through the gate, which severely limits the amount of the planet that they're capable of exploring. So, while each destination is essentially a "planet", the area of relevance to the SGC is only a few dozen square miles. But the excuse hardly works for their enemies, who are kind enough to place all their facilities within walking distance despite having spaceships and teleporters.
*** The teleporters are limited, and if the only methods of travel you had were by magic doorway, Learjet and massive spaceship you'd probably spend a lot of time walking too, and you'd ensure that said magic doorways were as near to your current resource pile as possible. Further, the Goa'uld are repeatedly noted as discouraging the sort of independent thinking that would involve moving away from the Stargate.
* Various ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' series portray Earth as Planetville. Apparently, conquering whatever town the Rangers happen to live in is the key to taking the whole thing.
** Are you sure they're targeting the city to conquer it and not to draw the Rangers in the open to kill them?
*** It tends to vary, however a particularly egregious case happens in ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace'' where the attack on Earth only seems to concern Angel Grove and no indication is given that any other part of Earth is under attack.
** In ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers,'' the villains once used the Rangers' trip to Australia as an opportunity to attack the city while they were away. Apparently, attacking a city that never had Rangers just isn't an option.
** Subverted in ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'', where the rest of the planet was conquered first. It is in fact one of few series to address why the one city is so important (in RPM, Corinth is [[AfterTheEnd the only city]] ''left''; in ''Series/PowerRangersLightspeedRescue,'' reestablishing their palace on their old sacred ground is the only way the demons can return to full strength and Mariner Bay, built upon it while they were [[SealedEvilInACan in the can]], has to go; in ''Series/PowerRangersOperationOverdrive,'' we throw out "Earth = Angel Grove" ''entirely'': The artifact of the week can be anywhere on Earth and we don't even learn that the city the Rangers are based in is called San Angeles until the halfway mark.)
* Justified in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'', as all the planets there are colonies of varying sizes, usually initially settled by a cohesive group of people in just one area.
** At least a few planets/moons are shown to have multiple cities, towns, and jurisdictions. When the crew visits Ariel (a Core World), we only see the big city, but its beautiful mountains and wilderness are discussed. Being a thriving Core World, it's very advanced, with cutting-edge 26th-Century culture and technology. The recently-terraformed Rim Colonies, on the other hand, are dirt-poor, sparsely populated, and scrape by with whatever little the pioneer colonists could bring with them, relying on horses for transportation.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'' is a constant offender in stories set on non-Earth planets, whether they're inhabited by human colonies or native alien cultures.
** Gallifrey originally only had one city, the Capitol. In ''The Day of the Doctor'', we learn there is a '''second city''', called Arcadia (the Doctor actually refers to it as "Gallifrey's second city" - though this could be in the same sense as Birmingham or Manchester get referred to as the UK's or England's second city) However, we also learn that there were 2.47 billion ''children'' living on Gallifrey when the Doctor seemingly destroyed it. As Gallifreyans are LongLived, the planetary population would likely be quite high. They have room for it. In ''The End of Time'', Gallifrey was brought out of the Time War and into near-Earth space, where it was seen to easily be several times the size of Earth. But this is also the species that ''invented'' BiggerOnTheInside! Only they know how big the interiors of their cities really are...
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' occasionally does this, although it's better than many space opera shows in regularly making it explicit that stories are taking place in a single community that isn't necessarily the only one on the planet.
* ''Series/BlakesSeven'': Commander Travis says on one occasion, "There's Blake's ship! I knew he'd have to return to this galaxy!"
* Both {{Justified}} and {{Averted}} in ''Series/BabylonFive'', depending on the occasion:
** Mars is given on-screen a population of two millions. That's {{Justified}} in that Mars is still being terraformed, thus the population is concentrated in a few large [[DomedCity Domed Cities]], and possibly {{Averted}}, as the statement was ambiguous enough it could have been referring to Mars Dome One, the capital. In fact the show implies that Mars is one of the largest colonies if not the largest one, thus indicating a far larger population when compared to the known ones.
** {{Averted}} by Earth Alliance in general: Earth has a population of ''ten billions'', and the only reason Earth colonies (such as Mars and Proxima) never even reach two hundred millions is that Earth is relatively new to space and has managed to colonize multiple systems in a previously unexplored area of space, thus having dozens of worlds to settle the five billions people that don't live on Earth.
** The entire population of Centauri Prime, capital of the largest polity in the show, is a mere three billions. {{Justified}} as the Centauri purposefully moved large numbers of their population off-world in their glory days, thus they have multiple worlds with a population in the high millions and even billions with a total number given on-screen of forty billions, without counting their subject species.
** {{Justified}} and {{Invoked}} with Vreetan: the Vree simply built a large city and concentrated almost their entire population there for better efficiency for their factories and to not spoil the rest of their homeworld, with the remaining settlements being necessary to extract resources or feed their population.
** Played painfully straight in the RPG, that tends to give ridiculously low population figures, often contradicting the show (for example the RPG gives Proxima a population of 900,000 and Mars 3 millions, contradicting the show that gives Proxima a population of 130 ''millions'' and implies that Mars is at least comparable to that).

* Both averted and played straight in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', where the background fluff suggests that capturing a planet can involve tens of millions of soldiers and require weeks or months in order to wrest control of strategic locations, and afterwards the occupation forces might have to wage a low-intensity campaign for years in order to root out the remaining resistance... but in gameplay terms, world- or system-spanning campaigns may be decided by small-scale battles held by players around the world.
** Justified in the cases of Hive Worlds, where pollution forces the inhabitants into a few gigantic cities surrounded by endless ash wastes, and {{Death World}}s, where the local geography and/or wildlife makes widespread population growth impossible.
** Played straight with the Space Marines, as less than a thousand of them can crush entire rebellions and purge whole worlds. Than again, aside from being extremely powerful {{Super Soldier}}s, and most citizens thinking of Space Marines as literal angels, believing them to be divine agents of the God-Emperor, their strategies revolve around swift, brutal strikes that decapitate the enemy's command structure, before or after some judicious use of [[DeathFromAbove orbital bombardment]], so it's less blatant than normal.
** Also justified in some locations, such as Holy Terra, which is indeed a planet-wide city.
*** ...with the Emperor's palace complex taking up ''most of Europe''.

** A number of worlds in the Spinward Marches have only a small town on them and perhaps a hinterland of agriculturalists or nomads. There are several [[JustifiedTrope reasons for that]], such as recent settlement, low technology among natives, raids by Vargr looking for plunder and Aslan looking for land and perhaps most important constant warfare with the Zhodani-led Outward Coalition,

* ''Star Wars Rogue Squadron'' has an aversion in the level where rebels fight for control of Gerrard V. Wedge radios in, "Luke, I'm on the other side of the planet, we got trouble". Wedge is being tailed by an Elite Tie Fighter Squadron. One of the very few senses of planetary scale in the Star Wars series.
* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' features this. In order to find the Star Maps, all the group need to learn is what planet it's on. They're even within walking distance of the starport (Manaan excepted, maybe). The sequel averts this however, you land on Telos, which is a planet recovering from war. The main first part you land on is forest and tropical, and then you fly to the polar ice caps.
** ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' is similar: a planet is roughly equivalent to a zone in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', and the ''largest'' "worlds" are fleets or space stations rather than planets.
* Justified in ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. Whenever the Covenant invade a human world, they usually seem to land on only one city/country, ignoring the rest of the planet. However, the only reason the ground assault usually exists is to recover [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] artifacts, which are only on whatever part of the planet they land on. Once finished, the Covenant fly back into space and glass the entire planet, assuming they defeated the local SpaceNavy. Which they almost always do, given how much more advanced they are compared to humanity. In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', a character specifically notes that the Covenant's Prophet of Truth could've landed his forces anywhere, but specifically chose the area around New Mombasa, Africa.
** They also do ground assaults to destroy the ground-based generators which power the planet's [[KillSat orbital]] [[MagneticWeapons MAC]] [[WaveMotionGun cannons]], which are pretty much the only weapon humans have which can reliably destroy Covenant ships.
* ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' is a major offender: every single planet is a Planetville. Without exception. Pittsburgh, for example, appears to be an entire planet with just one little mining site. And on top of that, planets usually offer the same services as a "tiny little" battleship. This is rather justified due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail, though, because ''Freelancer'' has hundreds of planets and space stations within its own world.
** Somewhat justified in that you are a freelance trader, you only ever go as far as the single spaceport on each planet. You buy/sell resources in the port, and visit the port bar to get contracts. The rest of the planet is irrelevant to you.
** You don't need to see anything on the planets because nothing happens there. Any planet-side parts of the story are limited to chats in the local bar.
* In ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'' all action (apart from the endgame) takes place in and around a single town (justfied/handwaved using guard towers that drive you back if you attempt to leave "territorial waters"); yet in the beginning of the game you are given a task of completing a full photographic inventory of the species living on the planet. Likewise, there seem to be no pearls on the planet apart from the gameplay area (judging from the message you get after [[GottaCatchThemAll collecting all of them]]).

* ''Outpost 2'' (by Sierra) features a distant planet called New Terra, with only two cities (Eden and Plymouth). And both cities ''still'' fight over the land's resources, especially when a plague (called the Blight) slowly takes over the planet.
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'' is an especially [[TVTropesDrinkingGame egregious]] example, with each planet having an average of 2-3 cities. CasualInterstellarTravel means that a quest to talk to the governor of one SingleBiomePlanet will involve buying a cake from the only bakery in the star system, located at the bottom of a dungeon on another planet. Alis even has the Fly spell, designed to take you back to the last church you visited, which works without regard to whether or not it is on the same planet you are currently visiting.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays this straight but also averts it. In the Codex, it is mentioned that planetary invasions are common. However, thanks to the way colonization works in most cases, there are rarely any planets with more than a dozen settlements, and most of the worlds visited by the player are in the process of being colonized, having only a few hundred inhabitants at most. The exceptions are mainly the species of the galaxy's homeworlds (Earth, Pavalen, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, etc.) However, most planets are home to only one mission or point of interest, with most of the gameplay taking place within a couple square kilometers traversed by an all terrain vehicle.
** Although these few square kilometers around any settlement always include (as yet) undiscovered crash sites, mineral deposits and so on, which are supposed to be rare in universe.
* Played straight, yet averted, in ''VideoGame/PlanetaryAnnihilation'' where planets are much smaller than real life planets and generally singular biomes. Yet the whole game is about taking control of the planets. Meaning that your opponent could (and probably will be) on the same hunk of rock as you.
* In the GameMod ''Videogame/StarWarsConquest'', each planet is only represented by a small inhabited zone which harbours the barracks, the shops, the quest-givers, etc. It is also where sieges occurs.
* In ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar'' a few dozen ground units land just outside a city, kill all enemy forces in the city and the entire planet is conquered.

* ''[[WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers Galaxy Rangers]]'', being a SpaceWestern of the same era also rocked this Trope: Tortuna was a WretchedHive with a few domed cites that [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Her Travesty]] didn't nuke into ashes. Ozark was an isolated LostColony backwater. Granna and Nebraska were farm worlds. The justification for using the Trope was that large-scale human colonization had only been going on for a decade at most, and sleeper ships only launched about 50 years prior to the series.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' Movie, Mace Windu says Obi Wan Kenobi captured an entire planet by himself. He probably meant "General Kenobi and the clone fleet under his command", but still that seems like a small amount to take a planet. Either that, or an over reliance on those Droid Command ships (or something similar) like in ''ThePhantomMenace'' means that a conquered friendly planet could be liberated by a commando unit.

* Oddly inverted in a MarvelComics miniseries, ''Captain Universe''. Gladiator, a FlyingBrick alien flies to Earth from across the galaxy. That sort of travel is usually hand waved in comics as those characters being just that darn powerful. It gets odd when Gladiator has to fly from one part of the globe to another once he gets there and uses the Captain Universe PowerUp in order to grant himself enough speed to make the flight in time. So essentially, space is smaller than the planet Earth, according to this story.

*** The teleporters are limited, and if the only methods of travel you had were by magic doorway, Learjet and massive spaceship you'd probably spend a lot of time walking too, and you'd ensure that said magic doorways were as near to your current resource pile as possible.

* Played straight and justified in Larry Niven's ''Ringworld'' series, as teleportation and other technology all but eliminate differing cultures across Earth.
** Not just on earth. Earth colonies are all varying degrees of this, largely because the worlds humanity's ramrobot scouts found for humans to colonize rarely have more than a few places humans can live safely. The world of Plateau is one giant mountain (Mt. Lookatthat) on a Venus like planet, only the upper parts are habitable. On Jinx the planet's shape and gravity mean that only the poles are habitable, and then only just. Wemadeit is earth like, but has a nasty storm season that means you can't build above ground. Naturally the first colony dug out a city (Crashlanding City), and has just expanded that as needed. And so on. Largely averted later on with Wunderland (Alpha Centauri), which initially came across as a monoculture Planetville, but was greatly expanded on in the Man-Kzin wars collections.

* Justified in ''Franchise/{{Halo}}''. The Covenant have battles in space above the planet, and usually seem to land on one city/country, ignoring the rest of the planet. However, the only reason the ground assault exists is to recover [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] artifacts, which are only on whatever part of the planet they land on. Once finished, they fly back into space and glass the entire planet, assuming they won the space battle. Which they almost always do, given how much more advanced they are compared to humanity. In the third installment, a character specifically noted that Truth could've landed his forces anywhere, but specifically chose the ruins of New Mombasa, Africa.
** They also do ground assaults to destroy the ground-based generators which power the planet's [[KillSat orbital]] [[MagneticWeapons MAC]] [[WaveMotionGun cannons]] which are pretty much the only weapon humans have which can reliably destroy Covenant ships.
** This trope is thoroughly averted however when on the eponymous Halo rings. They're about the size of Earth, and they have a very diverse ecosystem.

[[quoteright:349:[[VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Gateway_Galaxy_Planet_2310.PNG]]]]

-->--'''Richard Hell and the Voidoids''', "The Kid With the Replaceable Head"

** Bajoran factions are referred to in a few early episodes, but became less common after The Dominion, the Klingons, and even the Ferengi took up more time. Bajor's treated more like a single political entity with religious and political in-fights rather than regional ones.

** In ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', all that's needed to conquer Naboo is simply taking the capital city, and "blockading" the whole planet from surrounding space with a handful of ships. Nevertheless, the protagonists trying to flee the planet aim their ship straight at the enemy fleet to "break through the blockage", and have to do so before they can jump to hyperspace.
*** Just taking Theed to take Naboo makes some sense: planetary governments in such a galactic culture could very likely have most of their important infrastructure in one place, meaning the only thing left to fight back would be police forces and the like lacking an overall leadership (which actually happened).
*** And let's not forget that the ship can only jump to hyperspace when outside gravity wells, both the planet's and those of the Interdictor ships the Trade Federation most likely used.

* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': The Federation engages in a shady deal with some aliens to secretly relocate a total planetary population of 600 because the planet emits radiation that heals people. The people on the planet had abandoned most technology. At no point was the possibility of simply setting up a few hundred miles away ever mentioned.

* The main setting for ''WesternAnimation/LoonaticsUnleashed'' is Acmetropolis, a city that's literally the size of a planet.

** Completely averted though with those worlds Vance wrote complete novels or even series about. These are diverse and rich in detail. Except Pao, the Planetville nature of which caused the crisis that gets the plot started.