Two-D Space - Television Tropes & Idioms

His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking. -- Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

"When you devised this strategy, did you take into account that spaceships can move in three dimensions?"

"No Ma'am I did not." --leela/dirty hippie Futurama

As far as most TV writers are concerned, space is flat, like a great big tabletop. A few who have actually seen an airplane fly allow that space may have a third dimension as large as five or ten miles high, but not much more than that. There's just enough up-and-down to allow for dogfights between fightercraft and clever one-time-only attacks from above during battles between space warships. Otherwise, vessels approach each other as if they were floating on the sea and attempt broadside or bow-to-bow shots almost exclusively.

Maneuvering is also shackled to the X-axis most of the time. Very rarely will sci-fi shows and writers take advantage of the lack of "up/down" in real space by having ships attack each other at odd angles or vectors, which would offer something visually and tactically fresh. Even outside of battle, when two ships approach each other, no matter where they come from, they will always be oriented the same way; you never see a ship flying "upside down". (On rare occasions, an exception will be made for derelicts. Then again, upside-down derelicts can be found in the ocean, too.)

Perhaps as a corollary to the above, two (or more) starships, when involved in a standoff situation, will inevitably position themselves literally nose to nose in classic stare-down posture. This can be justified depending on the ships' weapons placements, but as often as not it's just a metaphor for the situation. The flip side of this is that, when two friendly ships are together, they will always be traveling side by side -- that is, shoulder to shoulder. Not unlike escorts, even when they're not escorting.

Needless to say, nobody will ever think of bypassing a planar asteroid belt or similarly hazardous feature by simply going above or below it. It's also possible to wall off part of the universe by placing a barrier that spans the full ten-mile height from top to bottom.

By extension, and by analogy to earth-bound geography, every major location in space is at a fixed position. A planet may turn on its axis (if you're lucky), but its place relative to its sun and other planetary neighbors never changes. Think of a model solar system made of balls on a table. All distances and travel times are static; all positions are permanent and unchanging. Orbits simply don't happen -- if two planets are X units apart on the left side of their sun, they'll always be X units apart and on the left side of the sun.

Now, all of this is bogus, of course, but the kind of hack writer who used to churn out television scripts for SF shows usually had no more clue about physics and astronomy than the family dog does, and sometimes less. As far as they were concerned, space was just like the surface of the earth, only bigger. In recent years, more scientifically-aware writers -- and actual hard-science writers as well -- have taken up the mantle, and space on TV is starting to look more like the real thing. But even they won't often let facts get in the way of the plot.

Note that all of the negative connotations above applies mainly to a television series...put Two-DSpace in a video game and thanks to the Rule Of Fun it becomes one of the Acceptable Breaks From Reality.

Examples:

Both justified and averted in Mobile Suit Gundam and its kin, which primarily take place in the "Earth Sphere", the immediate neighborhood of Earth consisting of the moon and the five Lagrange Points. Lagrange Points are points of zero net gravity relative to any large two-body system, and are often used as the location for colonies. These five points all fall within the plane of rotation of the Moon around the Earth, which provides a natural 2D "landscape" for space. Any movement off this plane would be wasteful, all meaningful paths between important points would fall within the plane. This being said, many battles in space do involve movement perpendicular to this plane, for tactical reasons.
The "barrier at the edge of the galaxy" in the second pilot of Star Trek The Original Series, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", looked to be no more than dozen miles or so tall -- but a starship capable of travelling light years in a day couldn't go over it -- or, for that matter, straight up, which relative to the plane of the ecliptic is one of the two fastest ways to get out of any galaxy. (The other being, of course, straight down.)
Star Trek The Next Generation was extremely fond of the "starship standoff" posture.
Star Trek Voyager has an episode where the Voyager gets trapped in some kind of space anomaly. When asked to try to fly out of the anomaly, the helmsman states he can't, because the anomaly surrounds the ship "like a ring".
- On the other hand, at least the Tholian Web appeared to be spherical.
This troper recalls reading a rather fanwank-y explanation for matching orientations in Star Trek: when ships meet, it's courtesy for them to align to whatever orientation the highest ranking ship is at. Not that this explains being trapped by ring-shaped anomalies, but it does try to reduce the silliness somewhat.
- It's nice to know that aliens who come toward you to kill you and your crew are courtuous ennough to rotate in order to have the same orientation than you, so they'll kill you cleanly.
The entire Milky Way galaxy in Blakes Seven had a ring of mines around it to deter a certain group of aliens from ever invading. A ring. Around a galaxy.
- Also in B7: Travis spots the Liberator and says, "I knew he'd have to return to this galaxy!" Space isn't only flat, it's tiny. See also Babylon 5 where the width of a numbered 'sector' sometimes seems to be a light-second, sometimes several light-years.
An episode of Lost In Space once had the Jupiter II in great danger because a navigation error put the ship on a direct course to earth -- with the sun in the way. And apparently the sun was too large an object for an interstellar craft to go around. 1-D Space?
Movie example, from the Firefly feature film Serenity: as far as can be determined from both expository dialogue and the ship's navigational displays, the "forgotten" planet Miranda is in a permanent location relative to another planet in the 'Verse, and the two are always separated by Reaver-infested space. None of these three things ever drifts away from the others due to the vagaries of orbital mechanics, despite the explicit declaration at the beginning of the film that all the worlds in the 'Verse are planets and moons orbiting a single star. The Reavers could have moved with the planet, but you'd think somebody would notice that.
- Looking at the dialogue and displays, there's no evidence whatsoever that the Reavers and Miranda are always together, just that they were at the time, and have been for a while (unspecified). Given that they're at the outer edges of a star system where orbits are usually centuries long, said proximity could reasonably last quite a while.
- Until the Big Damn Movie's exposition, one could assume that the human worlds orbit many stars in a cluster such as the Pleiades: close enough that sublight travel is marginally plausible, far enough that relative motion within human time-scales is insignificant. Alas.
Parodied by Futurama: A bunch of protesters surround the show's equivalent of an oil tanker. It just goes up and flies over the human barrier.
- Likewise, the producers (several of whom have advanced degrees) explain in commentaries that they would have liked to do things like show the ship flying upside down or at odd angles, but ran out of time/money to do so.
Averted by the Star Trek The Next Generation finale "All Good Things..." where, in a possible future, Captain Riker of the refitted Enterprise-D attacks Klingon ships by roaring out of space "below" them and coming "up" through them.
Lmpshaded and Subverted in Star Trek II, where the page quote comes from, though not as much as it appears at first glance. Kirk and his Enterprise, battling Khan in a sensor-jamming nebula, manage to duck under Khan's Reliant and then rise to deliver the fatal shots. However, for all the implications that his "two-dimensional thinking" was a critical flaw in Khan's strategic prowess, this is one of perhaps two times in the entire franchise history that anyone tries anything like this. Even then, the ship doesn't change orientation; it just "dives" and "surfaces" in the nebula as though it were a submarine. The implication is that nebulae are an exception to the rule -- that somehow, some way, normal empty space (or normal empty subspace) prevents three-dimensional maneuvering -- so it's ultimately a reinforcement of the trope.
In the anime Crest Of The Stars and its sequel Banner Of The Stars, hyperspace is two-dimensional, with important strategic and tactical consequences.
Videogame Example: Star Trek Encounters depicts space as having three discreet "levels": a ship can fly normally, ascend to the "high" position, or descend to the "low" position. Only very large objects such as planets can occupy more than one level at the same time.
- The original 1980's Star Trek arcade game takes place in space, which is completely 2D.
Another videogame example: in Freelancer, everything, that is, everything, lies in the same two-dimensional plane: planets, bases, trade lanes, jump holes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The player, however, can move along the vertical axis, allowing for some really intense space battles. Since gameplay would certainly be harder if the game followed the actual three-dimensional structure of the space, this is part of the many Acceptable Breaks From Reality that can be seen on videogames.
By comparison, space is very 3D in the video game Allegiance; rolling you ship to present the narrowest profile (and most weapons) is critical, enemies will fly at you from any direction, asteroids, stations, alephs, and valuable items may be vastly above or below you. The tutorial specifically advises dropping scanner probes above and below the plane of the ecliptic, since pilots are less likely to look for them there.
In the Galaxy Angel Gameverse, you can't plan your attacks in three dimensions, but at least when they're executed they work that way.
In UchuuSenkanYamato, Captain Okita (Captain Avatar in the English dub) shocks the bridge crew by commanding the helmsman to maneuver safely through a cluster of space mines by tilting the ship five degrees, a concept which shouldn't surprise anyone trained to fly in three-dimensional space.
A counter-example is in Flight Of The Navigator where the young accidental pilot of a spaceship commands the ship's computer to take him 21 miles away, and the ship moves that distance straight up, away from the surface of the Earth.
Averted repeatedly in the webcomic Crimson Dark. For example, early on, the crew find a derelict vessel, but realize something's wrong when they find that it's aligned precisely with the galactic plane, despite supposedly having been blown around in a firefight.
In Spongebob Squarepants, curiously only a few creatures actually swim. Which is treated like flying. SpongeBob once built an airplane-- indeed, the episode where he does so is entirely oriented aroung him trying to "fly".
- This makes some sense, as all the main characters (with the exception of Squidward) are bottom-dwelling invertebrates.
Averted at least once in Timothy Zahn's novels in the Star Wars EU. Galactic-class poseur/military genius Grand Admiral Thrawn has been studying the artwork of the planet they're about to attack. He notices that they don't have any sculpture, or indeed anything 3-D, and concludes that a multi-level attack by his fighters will rip them to shreds. He's right.
- Played straight in almost all other instances, however. This is especially apparent when anyone wants to invade Coruscant (at the centre of the galaxy); be it General Grievous, the Rebels, Thrawn or the Yuuzhan Vong, no-one ever considers the possibility of approaching it from above or below the galactic plane.
Played with in Homeworld: The environment is three-dimensional, but everything orients along an invisible horizontal plane and capital ships tilt to move 'up' or 'down,' like submarines. This has less to do with technical limitations, and more with looking cool.
Can be an example of Truth In Television: all the major bodies in the solar system, and most of the minor ones, are in nearly the same orbital plane. Leaving the plane of the ecliptic takes far more fuel than maneuvering within it, so for large-scale non-combat movement, space can be treated as two-dimensional.
Ships move and attack three-dimensionally in space MMORPG EVE Online, but stationary ships pitch parallel to the ecliptic plane for no explained reason.
Kind of justified in Warhammer40000 spin-off game Battle Fleet Gothic which, naturally, is fought across a flat table top (literally). In the designer's notes, the game's author acknowledges that space is 3D, but it would be logistically difficult to actually make a game that worked that way and also, because there's no gravity in space, making things 3D would just amount to being a range-modifier. Instead, the movement of the ships (much like their size compared to celestial phenomena) is assumed to be an abstraction for the sake of playability.
- The Star-Trek-based Star Fleet Battles tabletop game also has 2D space. The designers always felt the quote above was a dig at their game. However, attempts to add 3D maneuvering when they were first designing the game greatly increased complexity for little improvement in gameplay.
  - Conversely, the makers of Attack Vector: Tactical defended the extra complexity of 3D by claiming that it does add depth (No Pun Intended) to the gameplay. For example, an extra dimension gives more room to dodge a Macross Missile Massacre, and if some weapons are damaged by enemy fire, rolling allows a ship to bring a different set of weapons to bear without changing the direction of thrust.
Aversion of this trope is largely the point of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.
Averted in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, where ships, if left unattended, will rotate along their axis.
Subverted in Colony Wars series; the battleships seem to travel in a same axis, but all of its weapons are usually rotating along its body to protect from all axes, plus every craft is equipped with boosters that point to more directions than just forward (including your own small spacecraft). Also, every enemy and ally rarely comes with the same axis with yours, most of the time, you can't tell which side is up. The radar system is also very 3D that amateurs would have problems with it. When you do fight inside atmospheric stages, the "up" and down" quickly gets defined, so much so that players at that point who have been accustomed to the pure 3D space needs some finesse in said stages.
Averted casually in Lensman - as the first serious Space Opera, there was nobody to imitate, and E. E. "Doc" Smith knew what he was doing. A larger fleet will see to "englobe" the foe rather than surround it, and all fleet actions are very thoroughly three-dimensional.
The Elite remake Oolite both averts this (you can maneuver three-dimensionally) and takes it to an extreme: the large-scale structure of space is one-dimensional, with everything of interest lying roughly on a line connecting a solar system's jumpgate with its space station.
Stargate SG 1 averts the "fixed position" extension; in fact, a plot point in the early episodes is that the systems connected by the Stargate network have shifted, so that the coordinates are no longer quite accurate.
Kinda justified in The Lost Fleet, where they divided space between above the planets' orbit and below, so that they have some semblance of up and down. It's mentioned that ships almost always pull "up" instead of diving "down," even though in space there's no difference.
Star Flight and Star Control both have this but as they were initally games made back when 3d graphics were basically really bad wireframe and trying something on the scope or scale of Eve Online was simply impossible at the time.
Completely averted in Andromeda, where ships routinely utilize all three dimensions of space, fly off in random directions, and the like. Not uncommon is a shot of some collection of fighters flying "upwards" around other ships in pursuit of one another.
Honor Harrington books have their Space Navy battleships described as "Ships of the Wall" rather than "...of the Line". Single ship actions often involve a great deal of rolling and pitching up and down, too.
In the boardgame Battlefleet Mars they went to some effort to develop a system of representing three-dimensional movement for the ships...wasted effort. There was simply no tactical advantage to manuevering in more than two dimensions.
Freelancer manages to have full free range of movement, yet strangely you will rarely find use of this as 98% of the nebula spanning drama never remembers that your z-axis exists save for the occasional obstacle.

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