->''"When you live on a planet the size of a town''
->''You can't get your kicks by getting around"''
-->--'''Richard Hell and the Voidoids''', "The Kid With the Replaceable Head"

->''[Ransom] became vividly conscious that his knowledge of Malacandra was minute, local, parochial. It was as if a ''sorn'' had journeyed forty million miles to the Earth and spent his stay there between Worthing and Brighton.''
-->--''OutOfTheSilentPlanet''

Most SpaceOpera stories are lifted from other genres, then transposed into outer space. And the most obvious way to do it is to make everything take place on a planet. Not just any planet, but {{Planetville}}, the planet that serves the same function in space that towns and countries do in Earth-based stories.

If a [[TheWildWest Wild West]] story is about outlaws going from town to town, the WagonTrainToTheStars will be about outlaws going from planet to planet. If the Nazis conquer a dozen small countries, the [[GodwinsLaw space Nazis]] will conquer a dozen planets. If a plague broke out in a Third World country, the alien plague will fill an entire planet.

By extension, if a planet represents a country, an alien race represents an ethnic group, and an empire that spans Earth becomes a multi-planet empire.

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 Dodgeville, and the outlaws have to leave...instead of challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire planet to hide in. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And they can make a planet surrender by capturing its capital. Back on Earth, capturing London, Paris or Beijing won't give you the whole planet (or even a whole country), but on {{Planetville}}, one city is all you need.

This would work if technology was really advanced -- so much so that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing an Earth country does today. But that almost never happens.

A side effect of this is that the characters never realize that things can happen in parts of planets. You will never see aliens trying to capture a planet's equator, or its polar caps -- it's the whole planet or bust.

{{Planetville}} instantly explains these SpeculativeFictionTropes:

* DittoAliens: To outsiders, most any human ethnic group looks alike.
* ItsASmallWorldAfterAll: {{Planetville}} is as small as a town, so finding things is the same.
* OneWorldOrder: A country has one government except in civil wars. {{Planetville}} has only one except in civil wars.
* PlanetOfHats: It's just like the wacky AdventureTowns of Earth.
* ScaryDogmaticAliens: Nazis...[[RecycledINSPACE In Spaaaaaace]]!
* SingleBiomePlanet: Do Earth towns have both a frozen and a jungle region? {{Planetville}} doesn't have them either.

This trope is sometimes extended further still, with each star system apparently only having a single planet in it... every body in the system aside from Planetville itself is merely decoration if it is considered at all.

Sometimes a result of the {{Law of Conservation of Detail}} in universes with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems.

Not to be confused with planets that are ''literally'' covered by a single city--that's an Ecumenopolis, a subtype of the aforementioned SingleBiomePlanet.

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Examples:
* ''StarTrek'' is a constant offender here, where everybody on a planet is the same and nothing happens on a smaller scale, ever. When a low-tech planet isn't united, Starfleet considers it in civil war. Earth in 2000 BC was presumably in civil war, and (except for some arguable periods of peace) continued to be at least into the nineteenth century. Possibly the only exception is the depiction of Bajor in ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' as its proximity to the show's main setting meant that the writers were able to focus on the planet in greater depth than any other planet depicted in Star Trek's history before or since.
** Particularly conspicuous in ''The Next Generation'' episode "Reunification", in which the Romulans planned to seize control of the entire planet Vulcan with just a few thousand ground troops.
* The ''StarWars'' films are just as bad. Luke is supposed to find Yoda, but he's simply told to find him in the Dagobah system. Obi-wan finds planet Kamino, then he has no difficulty finding the Kaminoan cloning facility. 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 Malastaire, 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 ExpandedUniverse, probably already have been) used to HandWave all of those.
** Less handwavable is the fact that the fates of entire planets seem to be decided by single battles.
** ''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 subverts this, 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.
** In the ''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.
* Justified in ''{{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.
** This trope is throroughly averted when on the titular Halo rings. They're about the size of Earth, and they have a very diverse ecosystem.
* A rare exception: ''{{Dune}}'' is set on a real planet, not {{Planetville}}. The fight for control of Arrakis feels as big as a fight for control of Earth, and the multi-planet empire feels as big as a multi-planet empire should.
* Both averted and played straight in the tabletop wargame ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'', where the background fiction 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.
**Played straight with the Space Marines, as less than a thousand of them can crush entire rebellions and purge whole worlds. Than again, most citizens think of Space Marines as literally angels, believing them to be divine agents of the God-Emperor. One imagines that on most worlds, having a few hundred Space Marines wipe out a few armies might be enough to convince the rest to give up, or stir the civilians to hunt down the traitors to spare themselves.
*** Of course, the Space Marines are extremely powerful {{SuperSoldier}}s. Having even a few hundred of them attack you is a problem because, according to Warhammer fluff, every one of them is a superhuman commando who's already demonstrated "legendary war hero" levels of skill and courage. Oh, and their personal weapons can fry tanks. It might be nearly impossible to fight a war effectively with a few hundred troops like that running around and blasting things.
** Also justified in some locations in the fluff, such as Holy Terra, which is indeed a planet-wide city.
*** ...with the Emperor's palace complex taking up ''most of Europe''.
* The animated series ''{{Bravestarr}}'' by {{Filmation}} is a major offender in this regard. It features an entire futuristic western-styled planet with exactly one -1!- village-sized settling by the name of Fort Kerium. Especially mind-blogging considering that the planet is said to be rich with the rare and valuable element Kerium. However, considering that one episode had the local star stolen and buried in the desert, that might be the least of the show's logical problems. Yes, that's "star" as in "celestial body".
** It had a shotgun wielding cyborg horse. It was awesome
* ''{{Freelancer}}'' is a major offender too: 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, though, because due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail, ''Freelancer'' has hundreds of planets and space stations within its own world.
** 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.
* Like most sci-fi tropes related to planets, ''TheFiveStarStories'' largely averts this one, as most planets have several different countries with different customs & styles of architecture & national dress. Even the series' lone {{One World Order}} planet is made up of a handful of different cultures ruled by a single God-King. This takes a while to become evident, though, as we usually only get to see a bit of a planet at a time, usually where the main characters happen to be. Also, most planets seem to have a very low population density, with huge tracts of apparently uninhabited desert of forest between population centres & it seems most countries only have one or two major cities.
*The main setting for ''LoonaticsUnleashed'' is Acmetropolis, a city that's literally the size of a planet.
*''{{Lucifer}}'': The birth of a new "creation"--explictly described as a new "multiverse"--seems to consist of approximately one region the size of Europe being made.
** That's just where all the interesting stuff happens (following in daddy's footsteps). Twenty six pages showing the inky blackness of space in order to demonstrate scale does not make for a fun story.
* Murray Leinster several times used this trope, [[JustifiedTrope justified]] strongly by the worlds in question being new, young colonies with only one settlement established, or exotic worlds with very little human-habitable land.
* Generally avoided in ElizabethMoon's ''[=~Vatta's War~=]'' books. Planets generally have climates that vary by latitude, seasons, and some ethnic/cultural diversity in their populations. While a single star system frequently has a system-wide government, various lower levels of government seem to exist. [[PlanetOfHats One-Hat planets]] tend to have been originally colonized by racists or religious extremists.
* Justified in ''{{Firefly}}'', as all the planets there are colonies of varying sizes, usually initially settled by a cohesive group of people in just one area.
* Averted in ''SectorGeneral'', where a medical team can usually develop a solution to the environmental problems or plagues on a planet, but only make a good start at implementing it. If a world government is present they can get more done after a prolonged diplomatic and bureaucratic hassle. The lone exception was a world with a population of ten thousand and falling. It's further stated that invading a planet is a complete logistical impossibility. Unfortunately, scouring one is not.
* Justified in StargateSG1 and StargateAtlantis. Why would anyone have any reason to move to an area not within walking distance of the stargate?
** To use resources that are not within walking distance of the stargate? To prevent the enemy from just walking into your secret base? To avoid dying when someone sends a nuke through the gate? Even races with spaceships never have anything that isn't within walking distance of the gate.
** StargateSG1 did occasionally subvert this trope, however - to an extent. JonasQuinn came from an alien planet of ''three'' entire nations. One episode featured Carter and O'Neill being trapped on a [[SingleBiomePlanet ice planet]] - but it later turned out that they were really [[spoiler:on Earth, in the Antarctic.]] And several storylines revolved around the challenges of getting the many different nations of Earth to work together.
* Though the universe is well developed, Battletech is the epitome of this.
* Justified and Deconstructed in Dan Simmons' 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).
* Justified also in Dan Simmon's ''{{Hyperion}}'' series. Millions of [[{{PortalNetwork}} Farcaster]] portals mean that pretty much anywhere on a world (indeed, a couple of hundred worlds) are rarely more than a few steps away.
* A very literal example is found in the Little Prince, who is the sole inhabitant of a planet about the size of a house.
* Subverted in Larry Niven's ''Ringworld'' series, where the planet in question is so large that the inhabitants have begun to evolve into separate species, not just cultures. Played straight and justified elsewhere in the same book, as teleportation and other technology all but eliminate differing cultures across Earth.
* Various ''PowerRangers'' series portray Earth as Planetville. Apparently, conquering whatever town the Rangers happen to live in is the key to taking the whole thing.
** Subverted in RPM, where the rest of the planet was conquered first.
* Pretty much any [[FourX 4X strategy game]] set in space will treat planets exactly like this. The most obvious sign being the total impossibility of two players, even allied ones, having a settlement on the same planet at the same time.
* Averted, as noted, in ''Out Of The Silent Planet'' by CSLewis. Ransom begins to think he's gotten a fair overview of Malacandra's (Mars') culture, then encounters a member of an entire sentient species he hasn't met yet. Then, as he leaves, gets a good look as the relatively small area he's visited recedes.
* Jack Vance's science fiction abounds with Planetvilles. Typical is the Demon Princess series, where, for example, one planet is organised 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.
* Spectacularly averted in all versions of ''FlashGordon,'' The planet Mongo is, if anything, unrealistic in how wildly ''diverse'' it is. Of course, Mongo is the main setting for most of the stories.
* In ''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]]).
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