History Main / AsteroidThicket

* The novelisation of ''Series/DoctorWho and the [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E1TheTimeWarrior Time Warrior]]'' has an ActionPrologue in which Linx is being pursued by a Rutan squadron with no hope of escape until he comes across the asteroid belt in our solar system. The hazard is that his space cruiser is moving so fast that he wouldn't detect anything until he was almost of top of it, and even a single grain of sand striking the hull would have the same effect of a fission shell. He thinks the [[FantasticRacism cowardly Rutans]] [[TryAndFollow won't follow him through it]] but they do. Linx is ready to despair until he notices that one of his pursuers was destroyed in the belt, giving him a chance.

* The novelisation of ''Series/DoctorWho and the Time Warrior'' has an ActionPrologue in which Linx is being pursued by a Rutan squadron with no hope of escape until he comes across the asteroid belt in our solar system. The hazard is that his space cruiser is moving so fast that he wouldn't detect anything until he was almost of top of it, and even a single grain of sand striking the hull would have the same effect of a fission shell. He thinks the [[FantasticRacism cowardly Rutans]] [[TryAndFollow won't follow him through it]] but they do. Linx is ready to despair until he notices that one of his pursuers was destroyed in the belt, giving him a chance.

** ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' has a {{Justified|Trope}} example -- the dense rock field that Obi-Wan chases Jango Fett through is Geonosis' ring, planetary rings actually being that dense in RealLife. It was also done as an echo of the ''Empire'' sequence above.

%%* ''Anime/StarshipGirlYamamotoYohko'' episode 5.

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: The Saturnians are building a road through the solar system using tightly packed asteroids, which Diana points out is impossible and makes no sense. Once she arrives at Saturn she discovers they're doing so anyway and she and ComicBook/SteveTrevor destroy the space road which was being built using conscripted slave labor and was intended to be part of Saturn's invasion of earth.

* ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}''

In science fiction movies and TV, asteroids form a vast, hyperkinetic, obstacle-strewn DeathCourse: Enormous rocks spin like tops and whiz around all over the place, frequently even smashing into each other. Trying to navigate one is like asking a chicken to cross a busy Los Angeles freeway during rush hour: Small nimble spacecraft flown by skillful {{Ace Pilot}}s (i.e, the protagonists) ''may'' be able to slalom through without getting reduced to space dust, but [[AerialCanyonChase any pursuing enemy fighter ships will get picked off one-by-one by giant, malevolent space boulders]]. Any capital ship who can't just blast a path through them with its WaveMotionGun will have to rely on their DeflectorShields to bounce the rocks off. This makes it a good option to escape the guns of a pursuing capital ship.

It's unfortunate that RealLife asteroid fields, while they do exist, don't have such a flair for the dramatic. RealLife asteroids are strewn much farther apart from each other; ''so'' far that the chance of even ''seeing'' one (let alone crashing into one) is pretty much nil. This is because a truly violent asteroid thicket, in RealLife, would simply dash itself to bits in a short period of time. Also, due to gravity, even dust will be attracted to itself; larger rocks would gravitate towards each other even faster, and the whole asteroid field would eventually gather into a few fairly solid clusters — in fact, this is fairly close to the going theory of how planets form from clouds of dust and rocks. Scientists have sent space probes through our solar system's main asteroid belt for decades, including one — ''Dawn'' — that has studied bodies within it — and haven't lost a single one in the process. While obviously no first-hand data is available about asteroid fields in other star systems, everything we know about physics tells us that they'd probably differ little from the ones in our own solar system and would be nothing like typical sci-fi depictions.