History Main / ConvenientlyClosePlanet

* It apparently only takes three or-so seconds of lightspeed to reach the Green Planet in ''Ride/ETAdventure''. Of course, the fact that it takes that ''long'' means you're not really at lightspeed; to a hypothetical particle traveling at the speed of light, it takes exactly zero time to go any distance, no matter how long.
* Subverted in ''Mission: SPACE''. It is a five minute simulator ride that takes you to Mars, but this is justified when the ride puts you into a pretend "hyper-sleep".

If characters not only find a planet but land next to what they're looking for see ItsASmallWorldAfterAll. Keep in mind that having FasterThanLightTravel would make things conveniently closer, but carries a laundry list of issues of its own. When asteroids are frustratingly close to each other, it's an AsteroidThicket. Compare RoadTripAcrossTheStreet. Conveniently close planets may be located in one of many StockStarSystems.

If characters not only find a planet but land next to what they're looking for see ItsASmallWorldAfterAll. Keep in mind that having FasterThanLightTravel would make things conveniently closer, but carries a laundry list of issues of its own. When asteroids are frustratingly close to each other, it's an AsteroidThicket. Compare RoadTripAcrossThStreet. Conveniently close planets may be in one of many StockStarSystems.

If characters not only find a planet but land next to what they're looking for see ItsASmallWorldAfterAll. Keep in mind that having FasterThanLightTravel would make things conveniently closer, but carries a laundry list of issues of its own. When asteroids are frustratingly close to each other, it's an AsteroidThicket. Compare RoadTripAcrossTheStreet.

* After bailing from Earth in the prologue of ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'', you will always, without exception, drift to a stop above a peaceful, inhabitable ad unpopulated planet. Also, once your ship is repaired, you can travel to another planet or another ''system'' in under a minute. The FTL drives are just that good.

** In ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', the confrontation with the Enterprise and a BigBad vessel is out near the moon ~250,000 miles out. In pretty much no time at all they are caught in Earth's gravity and end up in Earth's atmosphere. Now it is possible if the Enterprise was drifting fast it could get to earth that quickly, [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale but at the speed it would go through the (only ~200-mile-thick) atmosphere of Earth and smack into the surface in no time at all, barely having a chance to slow down in the atmosphere and think about their situation.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Earth and the Moon to scale.[[note]]How far apart are they? You could put ''every single planet'' in the space between them. Yeah.[[/note]]]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': On a whole, the show is able to avoid this trope thanks to having a ship which teleports and time-travel.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** The Millennium Falcon is supposed to be the fastest ship in the galaxy... at only 1.5x the speed of light. And yet, somehow, slower ships routinely travel from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter of hours. The "galaxy" in Star Wars is apparently no bigger than our own Solar system.[[note]]The line is "She'll make point five past lightspeed". We don't know what the scale is - it may be exponential and therefore a far greater speed than "1.5x the speed of light".[[/note]]
** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive is out of commission, meaning they're limited to sublight speeds. No problem, though! Bespin happens to be nearby, apparently a light ''day'' away.[[note]]That would make it roughly 2.590×10^10 km or 1.609×10^10 mi away - they would essentially have to be in the Bespin System's outskirts already to get to Bespin that quickly.[[/note]]
** Pops up in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' with the [[spoiler: Super weapon. It is stated that the weapon fires into hyperspace - so it's okay that the weapon can fire so far away. It's also okay that Kylo Ren can watch the beam from his Star Destroyer - he was probably sent to observe anyway. It is a Conveniently Close Planet in the ContrivedCoincidence that the planet where Maz's bar is in full view of the destruction and the planet is even facing the correct way at the right time so it's visible high in the sky.]]
** Also in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', the Millennium Falcon is captured within a few small minutes of popping out of hyperdrive. Then that freighter itself is docked simultaneously by two other ships.
* In ''Film/GalaxyQuest'', the NSEA ''Protector'' is badly damaged, but no worries - there's a conveniently close planet! Considering it's a Franchise/StarTrek parody, definitely intentional.
-->'''Fred Kwan:''' Hey, Commander. Listen, we found some beryllium on a nearby planet, and we might be able to get there if we reconfigure the solar matrix in parallel for endothermic propulsion. What'd'ya think?

* In ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' the Winnebago comes out of Hyperspeed and promptly runs out of gas. Cue nearby desert planet to land on.

* At the end of ''Film/SpaceCowboys'', [[spoiler: the satellite's boosters fire on a trajectory that conveniently gets to the moon - and quickly enough that Hawk's air doesn't run out on the way - and then reverse-fire to soft-land Hawk on the Moon...]]
* In ''Film/Sharknado3OhHellNo'' (Weren't expecting to find ''that'' film here, were ya?) a character is left in orbit with a satellite and is last seen on the Moon, in a ShoutOut to ''Space Cowboys''.
* In ''Film/AnotherEarth'' a twin of earth appears near Earth.

* ''Film/{{Gravity}}'' is wonderful on a lot of things, but it has to bow to this trope for its heroine. The Space Shuttle is working on the Hubble Space Telescope not too far from the International Space Station (close enough to get there using only a jet backpack), which is "only 100 miles" from the Chinese Space Station.
** In reality, not only does the Hubble sit on an entirely different orbit than the ISS, but at a much, much higher altitude. To the point where even the space shuttle cannot visit both on the same mission. The last Hubble servising mission, STS-125, involved having a second space shuttle fueled and on the pad in case a rescue was needed, because getting to the ISS from the Hubble was a complete impossibility.
* ''Film/TheMartian'' averts this trope; the distance between Mars and Earth only adds to the drama, and [[spoiler:the ''Hermes'' has to get a slingshot from Earth in order to rescue Watney.]]
* ''Film/KaenaTheProphecy'' features two planets, the smaller of which is about the size of the Earth, which are distant about 6000 miles tops. Useless to say those planets should by all means collide.

* In ''Collective Hindsight'', a tale of the Literature/StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers, a runaway ship is on a collision course with a planet, despite how unlikely that would be in reality. The ship even passes through several star systems ''en route'', apparently threading the needle several times.
* In ''Literature/StarTrekVulcansSoul'', the first Watraii escape Romulus and Remus by diving down a wormhole. They emerge within range of a habitable planet, despite their ship's limited supplies.
* Surprisingly for ''Franchise/StarWars'', averted in ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy''. When Luke's broken hyperdrive gives up during an escape, he's stranded in interstellar space. Of course, it ''still'' strands him conveniently near enough for Talon Karrde and Mara Jade to find him shortly thereafter, although this was explicitly supernatural (she could feel him with the Force and piloted straight to him).

* E.E. Smith got around this problem by making his ships very, VERY fast (ninety parsecs, or about 300 light years, per hour). He lampshades this trope on one occasion when the hero's ship (stolen from the enemy) has a dodgy FTL drive. His engineer urges him to find the nearest base capable of effecting repairs, since "...you don't want to be fifty years away from the nearest repair shop instead of fifty miles." The conveniently close planet turns out to be infamous for the lethality of its environment, which routinely kills entities from both sides.
* Played cautiously straight and lampshaded in ''The Eternal Flame'', the second book in Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'' trilogy. Considering that the entire book takes place on (and around) a GenerationShip in AnotherDimension whose dimension of time is [[ItMakesSenseInContext analogous to the main cast's perception of space]], the scientific importance of capturing a nearby Conveniently Close Asteroid is compounded by the knowledge that they will probably never come close enough to another one to get any use out of it. However, it's also partially subverted by the fact that it ''does'' take the crew of the ''Gnat'' several days to reach it.
* ''CiaphasCain'': Cain's ship is dragged out of the Warp too early and starts exploding. Since they're still on the fringes of the system, it takes him several very long weeks cramped up in the small survivor pod to get to the planet, where he then faces the comparatively easier issue of finding his way out of an ork-infested desert to civilization.
* ''Literature/TheMartian'': Completely and beautifully Averted (TruthInTelevision) in the case of Mars. Half of the drama of the novel centers around the fact that there aren't many resources that can get to Mark Watney before he runs out of food and supplies. [[spoiler: Even Hermes, the spacecraft that just left Mars, can't just make a U-turn — it has to go all the way to Earth and back.]]
* ''TheWarOfTheWorlds'' uses Mars as a thematic example. Wells' novel derives from (and deconstructs) earlier "invasion stories," in which Germany, France, etc. invaded Britain and were soundly defeated by the story's end. The idea of Mars invading Earth is a holdover from that (Earth = England; Mars = Europe).
* In a 1324 Christian epic called ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', the seven planets in {{Heaven}} are so close the narrator doesn't realize he's left the Sun and been flown to Mars until he sees the planet's blood red beneath a MindHive crucifix. Medieval astronomy and ArtisticLicense are a strange mix.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'':
** The human-built starship ''Prometheus'' breaks down on her maiden voyage. Fortunately for the crew, there is a planet within a few second hop of their overloaded hyperdrive. It's worth noting, however, that the voyage by sublight engine would have taken longer than the ship had resources left for.
** In season 4, Teal'c and O'Neill are dragged away from earth, set to drift to Apophis's homeworld the slow way. Lucky thing Jupiter just happened to be on the way, making it both conveniently close and in TwoDSpace. However slightly mitigated in this case as the glider's navigational computer plausibly could have plotted a course out of the solar system that included at least one slingshot in order to reduce the fuel cost (like NASA and others do when launching probes to the outer planets and beyond).
** At the season four finale, the [[spoiler:destruction of a sun]] speeds up their spacecraft, sending it four million light years, where it stops ''inside another galaxy''. The odds of taking a random trajectory out of your solar system and ending up in another solar system are already stated above as huge - the odds of getting to another ''galaxy'' at a set distance on a random trajectory are just astronomical.
* In ''Series/StargateAtlantis'', in the season 4 opener their spacecraft drops out of hyperspace early, right in a solar system and on a course for an AsteroidThicket.
* ''Series/StargateUniverse'': Played with in the episode "Light"; the ship runs out of fuel in the middle of deep space and all hope is thought to be lost, because how unlikely it is for them just to wander across a solar system with a habitable planet. But the (seemingly) intelligent ship they're on used the last of its resources to plot a desperate course to a system with three "habitable" (the most survivable one rarely gets above freezing) planets. One character even gives a monologue on [[LampshadeHanging just what the chances are]]. Then it's subverted at the end when a slingshot around another planet has altered their course, avoiding the planets and causing them to head straight towards the sun. [[spoiler: Unbeknownst to them at the time, the ship ''[[ExactlyWhatIAimedAt intended]]'' this to happen, as it refuels via diving into stars and scooping up stellar material]].
* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' takes place in multiple close-together solar systems that, [[AllThereIntheManual according to the official materials]] orbit a massive red giant, but it makes a big deal out of how far apart things are. In the episode "Out of Gas", the eponymous ship breaks down in the back of beyond, and the crew is well aware that they are out of range of anything habitable by shuttle.
* In ''Series/{{Space 1999}}'', the moon is thrown out of the solar system on an uncontrolled trajectory. Nonetheless, it passes close to a different alien planet each week.

** This trope is averted in the episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E7AmysChoice "Amy's Choice"]]. The TARDIS breaks down, and Rory asks why they can't just send a call for help; "Of course, because the universe is really just a small place, and somebody's sure to be near by," is the Doctor's snarky reply.
* All five ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series are guilty of this, though it's forgivable because, as stated here and at SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, a centuries-long journey between any two given inhabited places [[TropesAreNotBad doesn't make a very]] [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality interesting show]]. Anyway, many are the times something happens to a shuttlecraft. Not only is there almost always a planet nearby, it's almost always habitable enough for its occupants to survive for the time being.
** This is subverted in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' when Reed and Trip are stranded in a shuttle that's running out of energy (needed to regenerate oxygen) and lacks a working warp (FTL) engine. Trip suggests that they may encounter another spacecraft or a planet, to which Reed responds that at impulse, they won't be encountering any planets until months after their energy runs out, and that an encounter with another spacecraft is very unlikely given the sheer size of interstellar space and the fact that they don't have working sensors or communications equipment.
** In ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', given the speeds at which starships are canonically stated to cruise, every planet in the galaxy is conveniently close. Kirk routinely flies the Enterprise away from the PlanetOfTheWeek at warp 1 (i.e. ''at,'' not faster than, the speed of light). Its maximum safe cruising speed is warp 6, which is either 216x the speed of light or 392x the speed of light depending on whom you talk to -- but even assuming the faster of these two speeds, it should still take four days ''just'' to get from the Solar system to Alpha Centauri (our closest neighbor in interstellar space). Getting from Earth to the edge of the (8000 light-year-wide) Federation should take a decade. Instead, Star Fleet routinely sends them on assignments to the Neutral Zone and back home to Earth again in a matter of weeks or even just a few days.
** Also, the number of times they will just randomly encounter another ship, some space dwelling creature, or space/time phenomena truly staggers the mind. When you take into account the number that actually have threatened the galaxy, one wonders what happens when ships not staffed by Starfleet's best and brightest encounter such things.
** At the end of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'''s 'A Time to Stand', the crew are marooned without warp drive, 17 years from a Federation base. Nevertheless in the next episode, ''Rock and Shoals'', they manage at short notice to hide in a conveniently close [[SpaceClouds nebula]] where they find an uncharted planet.
* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'':
** Mostly averted, particularly in season 1, episode 2, "Water."
-->'''Tigh to Roslin:''' "The galaxy's a pretty barren and desolate place when you get right down to it."
** In season one episode "Act of Contrition" Starbuck is incredibly lucky to have been right next to a planet when she had to punch out.
** Although they did encounter a lot of planets[[note]](Kobol and New Caprica, to name two)[[/note]] in the series the "jump" method of travel obscured the distances; many of the hops were described as requiring several jumps.
** At one point, a trio of Basestars discovered [[spoiler: the blast of a nuclear warhead]] from a lightyear away - and warp over instantly to check it out.
** The planets Caprica and Gemenon are part of a double-planet system, orbiting ''extremely'' close to each other (about the distance from Earth to the Moon). This makes their mutual views of each other rather spectacular.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie'', all planets in the universe seem to be only a few minutes away from each other ''at sublight speeds''.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfSuperman'' episode "Rain of Iron". A {{villain}} fires iron balls out of a cannon in a specific direction. . They fly through space, hit an asteroid and bounce back to Earth at a specific location. Asteroids (a) aren't close enough to Earth for this to work and (b) travel in orbits around the Sun, so firing the balls in a specific direction would only work once.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' in general is a pretty big [[{{Pun}} (heh)]] offender, but ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' deserves a special mention: ''every'' time something goes wrong with a starship, it is able to land on a Conveniently Close Planet with breathable atmosphere in just a few minutes.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'': George and Elroy's cub scouts go to the moon via spaceship which is just like a bus trip.
* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': The plot of "Look Who's Purging Now" is kicked off by a large alien bug hitting the windshield of Rick's spacecraft, and Rick heading for a nearby planet to get more windshield wiper fluid.

[[folder:Pinballs]]

* Deliberately invoked AND {{Justified}} in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank'': Chairman Drek wants [[spoiler:his new planet]] to be [[spoiler:exactly where Veldin is.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:The Earth and the Moon to scale.]]

*** Creator/JJAbrams does it again in ''Film/TheForceAwakens''.

* In ''Film/StarTrek2009'', the planet Delta Vega is an apparently Class M planet (terrestrial, breathable atmosphere, earthlike gravity) that's far enough away from Vulcan that Kirk is exiled there ''after'' the Enterprise has already sped away from the [[spoiler:ex-]]planet and Kirk and Spock have had a long fight about what to do next; it's far enough away from Vulcan not to be pulled into the black hole created by [[spoiler:the destruction of Vulcan]]; and yet it's close enough to Vulcan for Ambassador Spock to be able to see it unaided in the daytime sky, as big as the Moon from Earth, [[spoiler:as it implodes]]. ''Star Trek'' does at least have the excuse of the fact that the Enterprise has FTL travel, which would make a brief stop to drop off Kirk much more likely.
** Creator/JJAbrams does it again in ''Film/TheForceAwakens''.

* In ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'', the confrontation with the Enterprise and a BigBad vessel is out near the moon ~250,000 miles out. In pretty much no time at all they are caught in Earth's gravity and end up in Earth's atmosphere. Now it is possible if the Enterprise was drifting fast it could get to earth that quickly, [[ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale but at the speed it would go through the (only ~200-mile-thick) atmosphere of Earth and smack into the surface in no time at all, barely having a chance to slow down in the atmosphere and think about their situation.]]

* In ''Film/StarTrek'', the planet Delta Vega is an apparently Class M planet (terrestrial, breathable atmosphere, earthlike gravity) that's far enough away from Vulcan that Kirk is exiled there ''after'' the Enterprise has already sped away from the [[spoiler:ex-]]planet and Kirk and Spock have had a long fight about what to do next; it's far enough away from Vulcan not to be pulled into the black hole created by [[spoiler:the destruction of Vulcan]]; and yet it's close enough to Vulcan for Ambassador Spock to be able to see it unaided in the daytime sky, as big as the Moon from Earth, [[spoiler:as it implodes]]. ''Star Trek'' does at least have the excuse of the fact that the Enterprise has FTL travel, which would make a brief stop to drop off Kirk much more likely.

* ''Film/{{Gravity}}'' is wonderful on a lot of things, but it has to bow to this trope for its heroine. The Space Shuttle is working on the Hubble Space Telescope not too far from the International Space Station (close enough to get there using only a jet backpack), which is "otrnly 100 miles" from the Chinese Space Station.

* Avoided in the French MP3 saga "Adoprixtoxis". After leaving the planet about to be destroyed on an escape pod, the characters ask the spacecraft computer to search for close worlds to land. The computer retrieve only 1 hit: the planet they just left

* It apparently only takes three or-so seconds of lightspeed to reach the Green Planet in ''Ride/ETAdventure''.

* ''Film/{{Gravity}}'' is wonderful on a lot of things, but it has to bow to this trope for its heroine. The Space Shuttle is working on the Hubble Space Telescope not too far from the International Space Station (close enough to get there using only a jet backpack), which is "Only 100 miles" from the Chinese Space Station.

* ''Literature/TheMartian'': Completely and beautifully Averted (TruthinTelevision) in the case of Mars. Half of the drama of the novel centers around the fact that there aren't many resources that can get to Mark Watney before he runs out of food and supplies. [[spoiler: Even Hermes, the spacecraft that just left Mars, can't just make a U-turn — it has to go all the way to Earth and back.]]

* ''Red Dwarf'': The titular mining ship explicitly doesn't have a faster-than-light engine, and yet it seems to have no trouble getting from one planetary system to another between episodes.

* ''Series/Red Dwarf'': The titular mining ship explicitly doesn't have a faster-than-light engine, and yet it seems to have no trouble getting from one planetary system to another between episodes.

* In ''[[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion The End of Evangelion]]'', the moon is close enough to get splashed with blood upon Lilith's death. As big as she is, and as powerful as the jet of HighPressureBlood is, that's still conspicuously close.

* Surprisingly for ''Franchise/StarWars'', averted in ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy''. When Luke's broken hyperdrive gives up during an escape, he's stranded in interstellar space. Of course, it ''still'' strands him conveniently near enough for Talon Karrde and Mara Jade to find him shortly thereafter.

* Many comics -some of ''Franchise/StarWars'' or ''{{Transformers}}'' for example-, where scientific accuracy takes a long break, feature outer space as a place where planets are seen as big, brightly, and ofter overlapping colored spheres.

* ''VideoGame/WingCommander Privateer'' features planets within a star system that never move, and are infrequently more than 100,000 meters from one another, and all are capable of supporting humans comfortably.