Troperville
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"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.
Most Space Opera 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 Wild West story is about outlaws going from town to town, the Wagon Train To The Stars will be about outlaws going from planet to planet. If the Nazis conquer a dozen small countries, the 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 Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale, 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 Wild West 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 Speculative Fiction Tropes:
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.
Examples:
- Star Trek 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 Star Trek Deep Space Nine 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 Star Wars films are just as bad. Luke is supposed to find Yoda by being told he's on a certain planet, which turns out to be good directions, not like saying "you can find Bob — he's somewhere on Mars." (Yoda even turns out to live in sight of where Luke's ship crashes.) And several times, we see what looks like a single Earth battle deciding the fate of a whole planet.
- To say nothing of the fact that Ben didn't say "the planet Dagobah", but "the Dagobah system".
- Dagobah can be handwaved with Yoda's guidance.
- This happens in the prequels as well. Where's General Greivous? The Utapau system. These directions are so good, they get near instant results.
- Obi Wan only had trouble finding the Kaminoans because their planet was erased from the archive memory. Aside from the fact that this was probably the easiest mystery to figure out (der Obi Wan, if you can't find it, and you know it exists, what else could've happened to it?), he seems to have very little trouble finding the small cloning facility.
- Somewhat handwaved. The Prime Minister's aide is waiting for him. Presumably he got in contact with whatever flight control the Kaminoans have from orbit and they, hearing he's a Jedi and thinking he must be an envoy of Syfo-Dyas coming to check the clone army, must have pointed him to the proper coordinate. That, or the Kaminoan Prime Minister's aid is better at seeing the future than Yoda and knew exactly what door to stand next to at what time.
- Used literally for Coruscant. "The whole planet is one big city." (a very flawed concept to some people)
- I would say Coruscant is the most plausible. one whole planet with the same ecology is unlikely due to differences in temperature between the poles and the equator, but a city spanning the planet wouldn't have that problem, as a city is and artificial ecology to begin with. Similarly, an ice planet would have ice everywhere. Whats the difference between -40 or -80? Ice is ice!
- The city would, however, hit some problems in the arena of food and oxygen.
- ...which may or may not be solved by liberal application of Techno Babble. After all, the Old Republic is indeed 'old'', in the "several thousand years" sense. One presumes they would have worked it out by then.
- Partially averted in the EU, where Coruscant is at least remarked to have differing climate at different latitudes, even if the scenery is somewhat samey.
- Knights Of The Old Republic 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.
- 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 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.
- The planet Arrakis is a justified example of its trope that later evolves into a subversion: the entire planet is a desert planet, but this is an environmental change specifically caused by the sandworms. Later, Muad'Dib institutes a program of environmental change, and there is specific mention of the differences between the desert areas of the planet, the ice caps, and the more verdant regions.
- 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 SuperSoldiers. 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".
- 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 The Law Of Conservation Of Detail, 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, The Five Star Stories 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 Loonatics Unleashed 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, 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 Elizabeth Moon'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. 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 Sector General, 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 Stargate SG 1 and Stargate Atlantis. 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.
- Stargate SG 1 did occasionally subvert this trope, however - to an extent. Jonas Quinn came from an alien planet of three entire nations. One episode featured Carter and O'Neill being trapped on a ice planet - but it later turned out that they were really 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. Teleportation booths are (apparently) all pervasive and no one has ever walked more than half a mile to get anywhere (no planes, no cars, no boats). As a result they are believe that the entire world is about the size of a single gigantic city.
- 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.
- In the Clone Wars Movie, Mace Windu says Obi Wan Kenobi captured an entire planet by himself.
- The Jedi don't count clone armies and fleets. He was General Kenobi, after all.
- Various Power Rangers 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 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.
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