Used Future - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Bebop has seen better days...

Some Speculative Fiction Series focus on a Cool Starship or two that's shiny and new and full of all the latest Applied Phlebotinum. The shows are all about idealistic and well-funded explorers or warriors, boldly going where angels fear to tread.

Shows on the other end of the Sliding Scale Of Shiny Versus Gritty treat the future as a place where real people live, and where spaceships look dirty, dingy, and used, like heavy equipment that one might find at a lonely truck stop in the middle of the night right now. The ships are old junk heaps run on a shoestring by hard-bitten characters on the edge, seemingly held together with two pieces of string, chewing gum, and the will of the Holy Spirit — the SF equivalent of the struggling film noir private eye, in other words. This is the Used Future, and it's home to renegades, regular working stiffs, and anyone on the "cynical" end of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism.

Sometimes, there will be Shiny Looking Spaceships alongside dingier ones; usually these new, shiny ships will belong to the Galactic Military which has access to constantly churning shipyards and the newest heights of technology while the heroes must survive on surplus gear and homegrown repairs. These Shiny Looking Spaceships, however, can denote that the crew piloting these uber-ships is formed of completely green recruits with no real combat experience, often led by a pompous noble, while the battered ships are piloted by grizzled veterans who can fly circles around them.

The original Star Wars popularised the concept (although arguably Moon Zero Two (1969), Silent Running (1972), and Dark Star (1974) led the way.) For contrast, the prequels, set in a more civilized time, are correspondingly shinier. (Star Wars is a rare example on the "idealism" end of the above mentioned scale.)

Interestingly, portraying this in CG effects is actually more difficult, but sometimes the audience won't accept things not looking dirty enough. Which can be ironic because spaceship exteriors are actually perpetually shiny in real life (due to the scarcity of dirt, grime and oxidizing agents in space)—unless they have to endure high-velocity atmospheric reentry.

Contrast Shiny Looking Spaceships, Crystal Spires And Togas.

Usually a Hard Science Fiction trope.

Examples

Anime and Manga

The only ships that appear pristine in the Cowboy Bebop world are, cynically, those belonging to the bad guys. The Bebop, as well as the characters' personal ships, are all rendered with realistic levels of rust, grime and plenty of wing dings from their daily usages.
- Not to mention Jet's Hammerhead is just a futuristic tow-truck and Spike's Swordfish is some sort of out-of-date personalized space race car so neither of them are meant to be shot at.
The vehicle in Outlaw Star deteriorates gradually from Shiny Looking Spaceship to Used Future, mainly because the characters do so much traveling in it.
Patlabor, with giant robots replacing spaceships.
Planetes focuses entirely on the blue collar workers whose job it is to clean up space junk that endangers flights.

Comic Books

Graphic novel example: anything drawn by Jean Girard, aka Moebius, will usually incorporate elements of both Used Future and Shiny Looking Spaceships.

Film

Of course Star Wars more or less defines this trope, where every ship is covered with dings and scratches and epitomized by the Millenium Falcon, which looks like it is almost ready to fall apart. This extends to the sound design as well, apparently George Lucas' instructions were that he wanted to hear every loose bolt in the engines.
The Nostromo in Ridley Scott's Alien set the benchmark for all Used Future depictions to come. This extends to the occupation of the protagonists—they're truck drivers, hardly a glamorous job.
Blade Runner is the Trope Codifier. Decorators just overdid their aversion of Shiny Looking Spaceships.
The Terry Gilliam film Brazil takes place in a highly-stylized Used Future — and, while we're at it, more or less a Crapsack World that simultaneously resembles Twenty Minutes Into The Future ("sometime in the 20th century") and Diesel . Everything is so used in this future, in fact, that it rarely functions properly, including but not limited to the entire bureaucracy-based system of government.
The real world in The Matrix, where humans have astounding technology but (having lost the Robot War) must scrounge a living in a cramped, dirty underground city among Absurdly Spacious Sewers and caves.
Outland This underrated 1981 film depicts a mining "colony" on Io that is as dirty, cramped, overcrowded and "used" as the crummiest oil-rig of today. The hero and the leading lady are middle-aged, unattractive (by movie standards) and cynical. The bad guys are not aliens or galactic emperors, but drug-dealers, corrupt cops and venal businessmen. The weapons are shotguns and rifles. It takes a year for spaceships to travel from Earth to Io.
In The American Astronaut, the space is pretty much dominated by roughnecks and manual laborers.
Given the genre it's parodying, it's probably not surprising that this trope gets a lampshade hung on it in Spaceballs.

Dark Helmet: Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!

While the Discovery itself is bright and clean in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the sequel it's decidedly less so, with dust having collected on it thanks to hanging in orbit around Io for 9 years without any humans to maintain it. The Alexi Leonov doesn't look particularly shiny, either.

Literature

The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy: Arthur is taken aback by the squalor of the Vogon ship, and notes that the much shinier Heart of Gold is more in line with what he expects of a space ship — of course, the Heart of Gold is only clean because it's so new that it still has the protective film on.
Before anything listed, Robert Heinlein had already led the way with Used Futures in many books. Here are several books and stories.
- The Man that Sold the Moon, 1951
- Citizen of the Galaxy, 1957
- Farnham's Freehold, 1965
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966
- I Will Fear No Evil, 1970
- Even The Rolling Stones, 1952 (Which inspired Tribbles)
Long before Heinlein, E. M. Forster had written a science fiction short story called The Machine Stops about a future civilization that has grown dependent upon automation. (When the titular machine deteriorates and dies, so does the civilization.) The story itself was published in 1909, making this Older Than Radio.
The Revelation Space universe from Alastair Reynolds. The first ship described is about 3-4 kilometers long and has 5 people running it. Vast swathes of it are described as "flooded with coolant...others were infested with rogue janitor-rats...patrolled by defence drogues which had gone berserk...filled with toxic gas, or vacuum, or too much high-rad." Amazingly, it gets worse.
- A few stories take place during the earlier "Belle Epoch" age when everything was shiny, back when the Rust Belt around Yellowstone was known as the Glitter Belt. Then a nanotech virus called The Melding Plague arrived and ruined everything.
Everything Peter Watts ever wrote. Everything. Well, no, that's not strictly true; some of his stories are set in futures so used they've fallen apart; but the rest of them are just severely used. The ~~shining gem~~ rusted pipe of this trope is, of course, the Rifters Trilogy, particularly Lenie Clarke's cross-country tour-o-death in Maelstrom.
Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep has "kipple" - the junk and litter of society generated en masse, and as one character believes, slowing taking over through "kippleisation" of the world.

Live Action TV

Almost all the ships in Andromeda, except the Andromeda Ascendant herself, which was a time-shifted relic of a bygone era of cleanliness. The series is really about injecting old-fashioned heroics into the Used Future.
Babylon 5 went so far as to prominently feature a station that had acquired Used Future levels of grime before it opened.
- Not to mention homeless people and illegal drugs.
- Somewhat subverted later in the series when shiny new White Star ships captained by kick-ass Rangers become the last hope for defeating the Big Bad's ships. Subverted to a truly unfortunate degree in the spin-off "Crusade."
Battlestar Galactica, both versions. The Galactica is even called "The Old Bucket" by its crew.
- The Battlestar Pegasus is included in the series pretty much just to show how a Battlestar actually fit for battle is supposed to look like.
- Both are averted in that they are set 150,000 years ago
  - That's not really the point, though. And besides, Star Wars was apparently a long time ago etc etc, remember.
In the CSI episode about Star Trek fans — all right, Astral Quest fans — the sample clip of the proposed Darker And Edgier revival of the old scifi program has a definite Used Future look to the set, costumes, and characters.
The new Doctor Who, although it's soft sci fi. In "The Long Game", the worn look is actually the point. Averted by the shiny Mars base in "The Waters of Mars", though that makes sense, since it's a fairly recent outpost with a tiny population.
- The TARDIS is practically the embodiment of this trope. It's a clapped out old relic locked into one appearance, the last of a model which was junked by it's creators centuries ago, and which is in places held together with a wish and a few paper clips. It nevertheless manages to be several millennia ahead of the technology of most of the places it arrives at.
Firefly, though there is a deliberate contrast between the Shiny Looking Spaceships of the Alliance and the used, battered craft on the border regions, as well as the Space Western design of the outer planets compared with the Crystal Spires And Togas look of the Central planets.
Red Dwarf. It got much softer as time went on, due to the remaining crew members moving into the more luxurious officer's sleeping quarters (At least while still on Red Dwarf).
In Star Trek it shows that minor races that lack the Federation's technology and resources are filthy. The interiors of Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion, Ferengi, Hirogen, Vulcans, etc are all quite clean, and neither the Borg nor the Klingons care.
- In an interesting reversal, the further they go into the future it depicts even more streamlined Federation ships. The further into the past shows the Federation ships as being fairly rough looking. The 2009 Star Trek movie redesigns the Enterprise and even shows the rougher USS Kelvin, making it interesting to look at the aesthetics of Star Trek Enterprise, the movie, and Star Trek The Next Generation eras.
The thankfully shortlived Homeboys In Outer Space
The Traveler ships from SG: Atlantis are jury-rigged to hell, the result of having to keep them going for decades on anything that comes to hand. They're still pretty badass though, given that just one of these manages to beat 3 rogue Asgard ships and then save the Daedalus.

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40000 takes this trope and runs away with it. Not only has everything used and abused to destruction and beyond, your average heavy war machine is a ten-thousand-year-old mobile cathedral to battle complete with robotic cherubim, mad priests, enormous tomes and flying skulls, and the Tech-Priests (who have a monopoly on technology, manufacturing and innovation in the Imperium) believe that all knowledge already exists and they should search for its fragments in the form of STC devices, rather than coming up with anything on their own.
- All of the Orks technology and machinery consists of metal plates, gears and what-have-you haphazardly bolted and welded together. Sometimes Grots (space goblins) are involved in the machinery workings; that is, they are a part of the machine.
  - The fact that Orks can only commandeer Imperial vehicles is a testiment to the truth: Imperium is the least technologically advanced race ever.
- Averted by the Eldar, whose equipment and armour are always shiny, and to some extent the Tau - both races definitely look more "high-tech" than the Imperium, but only the Eldar actually are.
  - The Tau, in fact, where specifically designed to be an aversion of this trope, in reaction to it's near-ubiquity within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, while still retaining a strongly technological aesthetic, in contrast with the Elves-in-Space Eldar.
  - The Imperium may have lost more technology than the Tau ever had, but due to the progressive nature of the Tau, and the fact that they actually know how their technology works, they are indeed more advanced in technology than the Imperium. And since they are only a few millenia old, it is all quite new.
  - Eh, no. The tau have nothing to match the Imperium's warp drives, void shields, power armor or any of those relic technologies. The problem is that the Imperium can't mass produce any of it.
  - Meanwhile, the Necrons are impossibly ancient and their technology is ridiculously advanced, bordering on magic. Their aesthetic is decidedly creepy, given that they're essentially an army of T-1000s in the service of Eldritch Abominations. Of course, while it is built to last, that doesn't mean it always does.
  - It's worth saying that calling anything the Imperium of Man has "low tech" is like calling the Death Star a "dinky little gunship". The Imperium—indeed every aforementioned WH 40 K race, including the Tau—are absurdly advanced compared to modern society, to the point of ubiquitous Magitek even amongst the lower rungs of society (on civilized worlds at least). Some worlds are downright medieval or flint-spears-and-loincloths now, but generally by modern-day standards they're Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to a man, even the Imperium.
Battletech also plays this trope straight, especially in the beginning. With the technology for most high tech weaponry lost, the best weapons are also the oldest. And in most cases they have been used all the time. Of course, this was only a plot device to rediscover better technology later on, and to introduce stronger units into the game.
Traveller has both. There are CoolShips which are for instance private yachts or large ships of, The Imperial Navy or a Megacorporation. And then there are Used Ships which are meat and potatoes jobs like Free Traders, the IISS or the Sworld Worlder's Confederation Patrol.

Video Games

The Teladi ships in X3: Terran Conflict are basically flying rust buckets, assembled in sweatshop shipyards. They sure can take a beating, though.. The Pirate and Yaki mafia factions have old, repainted and modified versions of the Commonwealth ships, and capital ships assembled from the rusting (in space) remains of old cargo ships, welded together.
Eve Online the MMORPG features the Minmatar Republic, a race of former slaves who's ships are often mocked for being "Flying Junkyards", and the Minmatar pilots often iterate their sacred adage "In Rust We Trust". The trope is avoided in the game by ships belonging to the other factions, most notably and appropriately those of the Amarr Empire, the Minmatar's former enslavers, who's ships are covered in pristine gold plating.
Freelancer has this in spades. The lawful factions mostly have Shiny Looking Spaceships (with the exception of Bretonia, whose ships are dingy brown and ugly as sin), while the pirates have to get around in filthy junk heaps. The starter ship, the Starflier, is a heap of rubbish whose one advantage is its manoeuvrability, bases are often simply carved out of asteroids, most of the bars on space stations look like dingy, seedy dives, and the Leeds system is so filthy and polluted that it has smog clouds. Smog clouds in space.
- Ironically the best ship the player can have is a powerful custom pirate ship.
Gears Of War pretty much runs rampant with this, especially the "used" part. Anywhere outside of Jacinto, and even a lot of places inside of it, are battered, damaged, run-down, and barely functional.
- Although it should be noted that most of their earth was KillSated by the own government, to attempt to slow down their enemies and rob them of any spoils. Those places also tend not to be inhabited by the only remaining formal government's citizens.
- From the bits seen in Jacinto that were actually in somewhat decent if disheveled shape and the backstory provided in bonus materials it's learned that these locations were at one time exceptionally pretty and opulant but after ninety seven years of total war on a planetary scale first between various human nations and then against the locust shortly after what upkeep there has been where it's been had was obviously only aimed at maintaining function. Scrubbing away the grimeor mowing the grass just isn't as high a priority as fending off the hulking xenocidal alien monsters.
This is basically the Hat of the Quarians from Mass Effect.
- It's stated that they easily could make something as shiny as all the other species have, but nobody'll give them the raw materials needed what with the whole Geth thing hanging over their heads.
Twenty Minutes Into The Future Pokemon Colosseum features Pyrite Town, a dirty, patchwork city full of thugs that uses banged up versions of the technology found in the game.
The Terrans from Starcraft, sometimes portrayed as a futuristic version of the Deep South.
Wing Commander, especially Privateer. Not quite so much with Prophecy, and the TCS Concordia from Winc Commander II. Given that the former is "fresh from spacedock" on its shakedown cruise, and Tolwyn is using the Concordia as his flagship, though, this isn't surprising.
Infinity The Quest For Earth has the Star Fold Confederacy, who are essentially a breakaway faction of industrialists and super-capitalists who don't care about the aesthetics of their ships.
Sinsofa Solar Empire makes use of this trope for many of the TEC's craft, understandable given that the bulk of them are repurposed civilian vessels. They begin to looke a bit neater when the stronger, purpose-built craft are introduced, but still maintain a very mechanical, utilitarian aesthetic.
The Doom-Series makes use of this.
The Jak And Daxter series as of the second game takes place in a Crapsack World Twenty Minutes Into The Future.

Web Comics

Freefall takes place on a colony still undergoing terraforming. The Savage Chicken in particular is rather delapidated, especially before Florence fixes it.
- Rather? More like totally, since the only system actually up and running was emergency power, and the hull leaked like a sieve. It's a lot better now, with most of the systems up and running, but they're still limited to orbital work due to having only one generator.

Western Animation

Titan AE, focusing as it does on the refugee remnants of humanity After The End of an Earth Shattering Kaboom.
WALL-E pretty much embodies this trope, especially when WALL-E is compared to the sleek, shiny, futuristic EVE.
Futurama if taken as its own universe rather than pure parody presents a very lived-in future where things do go wrong and break down.
- Particularly notable is the part of the opening sequence where two Zeerust rocket ships get into a fender-bender.