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A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away
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Star Wars takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," if you are slow and didn't quite get that the first time I mentioned it. Yes, George Lucas was such a mastermind, he didn't have to set his story in the future, which is clearly a Sci-Fi cliché. Instead, Star Wars takes place in the past, completely ignoring every law of science and common sense about technology there is to ignore. The movie also takes place in an alternate galaxy, because it seems like it should. Really, look at the Milky Way. BORING! Unless you throw in an extra dimension or two, you just can't make our humble galaxy interesting.
A long time ago, but somehow in the future...
Somewhere in space, this may all be happening right now.
Outer Space. The word "Earth" never comes up. Applied Phlebotinum is a way of life.
Surprisingly rare in live action television series, although a fair number of animated series have used it.
Sometimes contains references to the "theoretical ancestor planet", explaining why the galaxy is populated by humans.
The perfect example, and the origin of the term, is, of course, Star Wars.
See also: Insignificant Little Blue Planet, Earth That Was.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Soukou No Strain.
- Mamoru Nagano & Yoshiyuki Tomino's Heavy Metal L-Gaim & Nagano's later Spiritual Successor The Five Star Stories do this with the Pentagona Solar System & the Joker Star Cluster (or galaxy, or multiple star system depending on the translator) respectively. In addition to being populated entirely by humans or genetically engineered variants thereof, nearly all the plants & wildlife appear to be ordinary things like cranes, anteloupes, lillies of the valley, etc. (with a few dinosaurs & fantasy creatures like dragons & fairies & the occaisional god thrown in). And yet Earth is never mentioned. In FSS the human race is believed to have originated on one of two planets, but of course it's not confirmed. Further complicating things is the fact that a planned future storyline involves a major character travelling through time & space to the last days of WWII.
- Weirdly enough, Dragon Ball Z may qualify. The heroes' home is "Earth" In Name Only.
- This actually has the potential to hold weight. All it takes is time and effort to find the info. Various supplemental materials put out by Akira Toriyama, as well as things throughout the run of the manga/anime, suggest that at the very least it's an alternate universe or timeline. Games such as Budokai 3 and Lo G 2/Buu's Fury based the world map off of his official map and it looks NOTHING like our Earth. The advanced technology of the world, as well as other planets, humanoid animals, several humans living hundreds of years, ect. lean the series deeply in this area. The final kicker? DB/DBZ takes place in the mid to late 8th CENTURY according to offical timelines!
Film
Comic Books
- Even though most of the action in the Marvel Universe happens in the Big Applesauce, sometimes the setting shifts to the vast empires of the Kree, Skrulls, or Shi'Ar, all of whom have empires that span the greater part of a whole galaxy each (the Kree in particular often state that they control a "thousand, thousand stars"— but then, they are Space Nazis, and prone to bombastic claims of glory.)
- Admittedly, if they count red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, a million stars (1000 squared) isn't really that much compared to 200-400 billion. Guess how many stars are estimated to be in our galaxy?
Literature
- Iain M. Banks's Culture novels mainly concern the spacefaring non-empire "The Culture". The appendix of the first novel states that the interstellar war described ended in the 13th Century AD. In the short story State Of The Art, a Culture ship visits Earth in 1977, stays to study us for a while and leaves without being noticed.
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is actually the inverse of this trope, being set in the far future in the Milky Way Galaxy, but the fact that Earth has been lost to human knowledge leads to effectively the same result.
- However, this trope is thrown out the window later in the series when the protagonists embark on a search to find Earth, and eventually succeed.
- The Pearl Saga by Eric van Lustbader, which is set on the planet Kundala after a century of V'ornn occupation. Both the Kundalan and the V'ornn are called "human", despite sharing no evolutionary ancestry, and the Kundalan are identical to what we call human (the V'ornn really not, being hairless humanoids with two hearts each and turquoise blood), but Kundala is decidedly not Earth and neither is the V'ornn homeworld. There is no Earth mentioned at any time and Kundala is not a colony of anywhere.
Live Action TV
- This is the setting in Farscape for all practical purposes. While protagonist John Crichton is from Earth, no-one else in the universe has ever heard of his species or planet, and the location of the show's setting, the "Uncharted Territories", in relation to Earth is never really established; the closest it gets is near the end of the third season, when Scorpius reveals that he has discovered the location of Earth, and says that if John doesn't cooperate, he'll destroy it even though, going as fast as they can, it will take sixty years to reach it. Of course, "as fast as they can" is never really specified beyond Faster Than Light.
- the Peacekeepers and possibly a few other "races" are exported humans, though they don't know it themselves.
- Battlestar Galactica. In both versions, the characters are human spacefarers, but not from Earth even ancestrally. They are from the 12 colonies that were settled by humans from Kobol and are looking for Earth, which is mentioned in their sacred scrolls as the 13th colony of Kobol. The remake series finale shows that (major spoiler) This is literally a long time ago, for it takes place 150,000 years before our era.
Video Games
- The Jak And Daxter series takes place on a planet unrelated to Earth, populated by elf-like humanoids with long pointy ears.
- Ratchet And Clank up the ante, spanning three whole "galaxies far, far away" over the course of the series: Bogon, Solana, and Polaris.
- Most Square-Enix RPGs occur on planets with no visible relationship to Earth, or each other.
- Though, bizarrely enough, there's almost always humans, or just really Human Aliens.
- Freelancer plays this trope to some degree. The opening movie makes it clear that Humanity emigrated from Earth towards the Sirius sector, and the places are named after actual locations in the Earth, yet nobody in the entire game makes even a single reference to Earth.
- "We have grown. We have prospered. We have flourished. But we will never forget." My ass.
- Likewise, in the Homeworld series, the player's faction appears to come from Planet Hiigara; the Earth is never mentioned in the entire storyline. The player, however, is eagerly invited to draw the conclusion that Hiigara is Earth. The final mission of the first game takes place near Hiigara and it has a very familiar looking moon orbiting it.
- Due to the essential nature of the Homeworld games (the gameplay is 3D ship-to-ship combat), presenting actual beings that the user could care about was problematic. They hit upon the solution of simply not showing anyone; the only real character, Karan Sjet, is in possession of the Mothership, so you hear her voice a lot. With no real drawings of the people in the game, the player is invited to draw whatever conclusions they wish as to what the actual species is. The last mission is meant as something of a reveal, "they were human all along" kind of thing. For those who didn't get the clues in the first game, Homeworld 2 clarified things by actually showing Karan Sjet as being human (or exceedingly human-like).
- Of course, Karan also got bigger boobs, and shed the whole 'ripped open nerve trunks/crippling cybernetics' bit, too.
- Though Hiigara shares many similarities with Earth, and the Hiigarans are eventually revealed to be humanoid, it is also made very clear that Hiigara cannot be Earth. This is because (1) Hiigara is located near the center of its galaxy, while Earth is in a completely different location in the Milky Way, and (2) we get a closer look at Hiigara in Homeworld 2 and the continents look nothing like Earth's continents.
- Also, if you're an astronomy geek, you'll notice the galaxy Homeworld appears to be set in is M51 (aka the Whirlpool Galaxy). Which is about 23 million light years away from Earth.
- Retconned away (or never happened, depending on who you ask) in the Sonic The Hedgehog series- in the West, the series took place on the planet Mobius, with no mention of Earth. However, in Japan, the series was always set on Earth. Beginning with Sonic Adventure, the series officially took place on Earth in all regions (though Mobius survives in the Archie Comic, itself plagued by retcons to make everything fit).
- Sonic Underground and Sonic the Comic still took place on Mobius even at the time of Sonic Adventure. Sonic The Comic even mentioned Earth as being a different planet with a similar evolution, thus explaining the talking animals. The other two Dic cartoons, Adventures of Sonic and Sat AM also took place on Mobius, Sat AM had planned to make the reveal of it being Earth in the third season, but it was Cut Short. So there are some more Sonic examples.
- Though in the Archie comics, it was revealed - and thus the trope inverted with - that Earth and Mobius are one and the same. Turned out humanity's paranoia towards aliens was their downfall, as when the Xorda emissary that had actually come in peace, was captured, and subsequently dissected by humans, the Xorda got rightfully pissed and unleashed Gene Bombs (basically bombs that destroy DNA) on the planet. However some people and animals survived, with the latter's DNA mixing with shredded bits of human DNA, thus turning them into the anphromorphic creatures they are today.
- In the online Turn Based Strategy game Ultracorps, there are no references to Earth or humans except for one line about "that legendary creature of ancient Terra, the cockroach" in one race description.
- The perpetually medieval Hyrule in The Legend Of Zelda is apparently on another planet. Interestingly, however, later games of the series — Twilight Princess in particular — sees the native Hylian race being slowly outnumbered by humans.
- The Phantasy Star games take place on planets orbiting the star Algol, where humans apparently evolved independently from humans on Earth.
- Tyrian 2000 has Trent Hawkins jump into hyperspace, set for an unheard-of planet 100 light years away. The planet in question is Earth.
- Thunder Force I through IV are set in a distant galaxy known as the Galaxy Federation. V, on the other hand, changes the focus from the Galaxy Federation to Earth.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- According to the opening narration, The Herculoids is set "somewhere out in space."
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command also belongs here.
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