Crystal Spires and Togas: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

It's kinda like the civilization-scale equivalent of crossing the [[Bishonen Line]].

 

 

 

While there's a definite trend towards giant and architecturally impressive glass towers in the modern era, the trope hasn't quite made it to the status of [[Truth in Television]] yet -- aside from a conspicuous lack of togas, robes, or unisuits, these shiny new buildings aren't part of the sort of sweeping social movement this Trope describes but individual corporations jockeying to display their wealth<ref>Of course, this trope WOULD apply if all the individual corporations and members of the population were sufficiently wealthy to live in a [[Crystal Spires and Togas]] world; for example in a post-scarcity civilization.</ref>. Utopian cities they are not; very real slums crowd their feet.

* Olympus from ''[[Appleseed]]'' is a classic example. At least to the outside.

* [[Macross]] sort of shows this.

** Though they don't appear anywhere else, the girls are shown wearing togas during the Silver Millennium in the footage that goes along with Tuxedo Mirage, the first ending theme of the Super season.

* The aliens in ''[[Fantastic Children]]''.

* In the anime adaptation of ''[[Bokurano]]'', {{spoiler|it is implied that one of these is responsible for the robot combats that are destroying universes, gathering the energy gained from them or something-the anime isn't exactly as deep as the manga...}}

 

 

* ''[[Elf Quest]]'' pretty much starts out this way, and much of the main storyline involves getting back to the [[Time Machine]] (which has a similar atmosphere). Notably, the spires and togas are a present day invention by an advanced alien race, but become the future when everyone is sent back 10,000 years in time halfway through the opening narration.

* When [[Robot War|Skynet]] is erased from history at the end of ''[[Robocop vs. Terminator]]'', the new future heavily resembles this trope.

* In [[Silver Surfer]]'s past, when he was still just Norrinn Radd living on Zenn-La, his planet was very much like this. Their world was so nearly perfect, with beautiful and exotic architecture and clothing, that everyone was bored, and Norrinn most of all.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]'', with [[Totally Radical|totally excellent]] music to boot.

* Discussed and parodied in the narration of [[Idiocracy]] with some accompanying images of a futuristic world showing bearded guys in togas among the crystal spires of their city. The camera pulls back to reveal that these images are all part of a mural at a carnival, in front of which a bunch of not-too-bright and decidedly non-futuristic-looking people are waiting in line to get into some kind of exhibition or maybe carnival ride.

* Subverted in ''[[Logan's Run]]''; while the post-apocalyptic society of the film is at first glance a utopia, its prosperity is maintained by a [[Master Computer]] that ritually executes all citizens on their 30th birthday in order to conserve resources. Those who manage to escape this fate and flee the city {{spoiler|are invariably captured by a deranged robot who freeze-dries them in the belief that they are seafood}}.

** It's also used to demonstrate the changing times. As the prequels progress, technology, for example, shifts from the elegant starships of [[Crystal Spires and Togas|Naboo]] to less aesthetically pleasing but more practical designs as war breaks out, culminating in the [[Used Future]] of the original trilogy.

*** One of the best examples is Taris in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]''. The upper level is neat and clean and happy, the middle level is dim and ruled by warring gangs, and the bottom level is a tent city full of trash heaps and surrounded by fences to keep out the evil mutants.

** Wells actually CREATED this trope. The preface to the published script gives the rationale for the costuming which "cries aloud for cloaks, the most dramatic of garments."

* In ''[[Forbidden Planet|The Forbidden Planet]]'', the Krell civilization is supposed to have been an example of this, with "cloud-piercing towers of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel".

* Some of the upper-crust civilians in ''[[Demolition Man]]'' dress in long ornate robes, in reference to their attempts to re-engineer society to conform to this trope. As the film is set only [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], conventional clothing is also common, and architecture hasn't yet fallen prey to this aesthetic.

* ''[[The Fifth Element]]'', along with other kinds of styles.

 

* Probably a shipload of ancient pulp [[Sci Fi]] that we can't name. Heck, the good aliens wore togas in the 1930s ''[[Lensman]]'' series that started [[Space Opera]]!

** Note that all of the clothing that the good aliens (the Arisians) wore, in fact the bodies and cities and everything else about the Arisians, was a mental projection which was intended to fit whatever made the visitor to Arisia [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|most comfortable]]. This point was made explicitly in chapter 3 of "First Lensman", where all of the people saw different things: aliens in togas, male humans in uniform, professors at large universities, 7 foot tall women, disembodied intelligences, etc. There are references to it in the rest of the books when the fellow aliens (Tregonsee, Worsel, Nadreck, etc) briefly discuss their experience on Arisia. They even use the mental projection trick to fool Kim Kinnison into "seeing" one of the forms of the bad aliens, so when he beats one of them (Gharlane of Eddore) he thinks it was a rogue Arisian. The children of the Lens do realize that the Arisians have no physical form at all.

** The "helicopters decentralise civilization" idea popped up in several Clarke stories during that period. Clarke didn't foresee that flying a helicopter would be harder and more expensive than driving a car, to the point where not everyone can do it.

**** Cars or helicopters, there are still logistics considerations. As [[Larry Niven]] wrote about in ''Flash Crowd'', ''the Final Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club'', and another short(murder mystery) the title of which I can't recall, the most straightforward way to achieve societal decentralization is teleportation tech.

** In "Against the Fall of Night"/''The City and the Stars'', the city of Diaspar is a classic example of this trope.

* The Martians in [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]''. Most of the elements seem like a fantastic version of Egypt, with books written in hieroglyphs that sing when you touch them, houses built of crystal pillars and traveling using flocks of birds, all in the middle of a great desert.

* The homeworld of the Piersons' Puppeteers in [[Larry Niven]]'s ''Known Space'' setting.

** Sort of. The technology is very advanced, what with teleportation that lets you easily "walk" anywhere on the planet, furniture that extrudes itself from walls and floors, and nigh-indestructible building material. Also, because the puppeteers are cowards (and proud of it) almost nothing on the planet can hurt you. However, the planet is extremely crowded (the population is 1 trillion, yes, trillion) and heavily industrialized, with virtually every inch of land covered in one massive city. Breeding requires permission from the government, and their heat management problem is so extreme that {{spoiler|they had to move their planet away from its sun to keep their oceans from boiling in the waste heat of their civilization}}. Despite very efficient biological "recycling" of waste to produce food, they still must constantly import food from four agricultural worlds to prevent mass starvation. Puppeteers, being herd animals, actually enjoy living among many others of their kind, but they have had to adapt and take drastic measures to cope with their population. Their civilization is extremely advanced, but it requires massive, very visible industry and constant upkeep to support it. Also, they appear to be a pacifistic race...{{spoiler|but they mainly avoid fighting because they fear any danger. They have no problem manipulating other species into nearly genocidal wars if it helps protect their own.}}

* The ''[[Vampire Hunter D]]'' novels mention a rare example of a post-Crystal Spires and Togas [[Used Future]]: the capital city, built out of crystal by the Vampires and then fallen into disrepair once they were driven out.

** Indeed, they were [[Crystal Spires and Togas]] with a goth twist. All the major vampire buildings resemble gigantic gothic cathedrals and gloomy castles straight out of Victorian horror novels, while the vampires themselves prefer to dress in elaborate evening suits and long flowing capes, which they enjoy twisting into bat's wings.

** It should be noted that the Pemalites were designed by God, aka The Ellimist, to be that way. The Iskoort have architecture that's more like legos and they have spires because the ground is generally too marshy to build on. The Andalites had cities, but because they're basically herd animals, they hated them.

* ''[[A Tale of Time City]]'' by [[Diana Wynne Jones]]. Statues, glass domes, technology which looks like 'a pipe organ' and the caskets (which are actually some kind of advanced time-battery-thing), amongst others. The people wear jumpsuits most of the time, but robes are donned for official functions.

* The interex in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]: Horus Rising''.

* DJ MacHale's ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'' has the "closer to nature" future version of Earth, Third Earth. {{spoiler|But of course it gets completely and utterly screwed over by our resident [[Magnificent Bastard]] and becomes a [[Crapsack World]].}}

** Actually invented by H. G. Wells in ''Men like Gods''.

* [[Tanith Lee]]'s two-volume ''[[Biting the Sun|Four BEE]]'' series portrays this as a semi-dystopia.

* The Minbari in ''[[Babylon 5]].'' They have the crystal part down pat in their architecture but their social development is stuck in thousand year [[Medieval Stasis]].

** The Utopian and Enlightened bit of this trope gets subverted ''hard'' in the 4th season, {{spoiler|when they fall into [[Civil War]]}}.

** "Last of the Time Lords" has a flashback of a Time Lord in long robes standing on a hill, with the Citadel of the Time Lords behind him, a great city encased in a glass sphere.

** This in turn is a nod to the Eloi and Morlocks in H.G. Wells' ''[[Time Machine]]'' (1895). Only in this case, the bestial Morlocks hunted and ate the childlike and pastoral Eloi, and the Morlocks had all the technology and weapons while the Eloi had degenerated into barely intelligent humanoids who knew no technology at all.

* The [http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Beings_of_Light Beings of Light] and their [http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Ship_of_Lights Ships of Lights] in the original ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic]]'' have this feel to them.

** As did the original colonies. In the pilot, ''Saga of a Star World'', The Quorum of the Twelve on the ''Atlantia'' and its reconstitution afterwards featured togas. And crystalline pyramids are wrecked by the Cylon bombardment of Caprica.

*** This is largely averted in the [[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|new series]], where the Colonies have buildings that are plausible to build today, but simply do not extend to our architectural styles (although looking at Caprica City for too long may sear your retinas, it's that shiny-future...) Same thing for people's appearance, with...well...normal clothes. An exception is the spectral forms of the Final Five Cylons, who appear as glowing robed figures before they're revealed to be {{spoiler|the most ridiculously human of the show's [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]]}}.

** They are not the only one. Almost everyone, the Goa'uld (and the Tok'ra), the Tollans, the Asgard, later even the humans use crystal-based technology. For most civilizations, the crystals are only the guts. The outward appearance varies wildly. The Asgard and ancient stuff looks crystal spire-y, except when it looks paleolithic.

* The Australian kids' TV show ''The Girl From Tomorrow'' featured a future like this.

 

 

*** Eldar do not wear togas. The height of their empire was millennia before togas were invented, after all.

** Prospero's capital Tizca, the pre-Heresy homeworld of the Thousand Sons fits the description practically to a T with its spires of glass and populace dressing in robes. The Sons are universally regarded as [[Warrior Scholars]] and are shown with a collective penchant for the fine arts, Ahriman himself an aspiring vintner. Tizca's libraries are the greatest collective repository of knowledge outside of Terra within the Imperium, and the living standards the population enjoys one of the highest. [[It Got Worse|And then came the Space Wolves...]]

* The elite top two classes live like this in [[Paranoia]]. Everyone else lives in squallor and the top two classes are barely one percent of the population.

* The upper classes of the Third Imperium in [[Traveller]]. Even more the Vilani in the volume ''Intersteller Wars''.

* ''Xenogears'' has Solaris, which fits this to a T in reference to any other land based civilization.

* ''Xenosaga'' bleeds this in all three games. In this tropers OP, this series is the best example seen in any video game.

* ''Galactic Civilizations 2'', in the past. Only one character is shown, but he has a white robe and a staff.

** This might be a faction-related thing; the telepathy/planetmind techs are usually associated with the Gaians, who tend towards a nature-friendly version of aesthetic.

* Atlantis in the ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]: Defender of the Future'' fits this trope (especially the crystal part), existing in a civilization around the year 3500 in which humans and [[Sapient Cetaceans|dolphins]] coexist in harmony.

* The nation of Esthar in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', which is actually a gigantic (and initially ''invisible'') city, is all crystal and glass tubes and antigravity technology. Even the people (save its president) wear ankle-length robes.

* While the entire nation of the D'ni in the ''[[Myst]]'' series was - probably - bereft of togas, their technology and archaeology almost definitely falls into this situation. Plus, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, and whatnot.

* Subverted in ''[[Eve Online]]''. The [http://www.eve-online.com/background/potw/10-03-06.asp Crystal Boulevard] in Caille on Gallente Prime is a region near the nexus of the city where every structure, and even the ground itself, is made out of specially nanofabricated crystal. Its actual purpose? A nigh-invulnerable command bunker in case of orbital bombardment. The only way to disable the planetary government and military command would be to pulverise the entire city so thoroughly that it would constitute an unconscionable war crime and throw galactic opinion overwhelmingly against the attackers.

* This is somewhat present in the elven architecture in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''.

** Night Elves have a lot of Greek-style columns and spires and their racial leader changed from a [[Stripperific]] warrior getup in ''[[Warcraft III]]'' to a toga-ish dress.

** The Draenai seem to have embraced this as well, at least the crystal spires part, their buildings being crystalline inter-dimensional spaceships or something like that. They mostly dress like anyone else but their racial leader appears in a slightly toga-like robe.

** The highborne night elves where a (evil) textbook example of this at their time, excepting the lack of council. Queen Azshara palace even has a runway and a platarform made purely of magic glass

** Well, by the time you visit it, anyway. Zeal was originally run on solar power, but they switched to Lavos power because [[God Save Us From the Queen|Queen]] [[The Dragon|Zeal]] told them they didn't need the Sun Stone anymore. In an optional sidequest, you can obtain the Sun Stone and use it to create Lucca's best weapon. Awesome power source, indeed!

* The ''[[Metroid]]'' universe has the Chozo, an advanced race of terrestrial birds who eventually became so intelligent they developed telepathic abilities. After their technology reached its peak most of them chose to become space hippies, living in harmony with nature where they could seek greater spiritual enlightenment. Most of the ruins they left behind are made stone and what little advanced technology there is seems to be designed to blend in with the surroundings.

 

== Web Comics ==

* Quellar in ''[[Starslip]]''.

* This seems to be the case in ''[[Las Lindas]]'', due to the efficiency of nanotechnology.

** There is also humanity's more advanced descendants in the year 5 million, as opposed to their stupid, vicious counterparts that live underground.

** During the time slip while Fry is frozen in the first episode, we see New York being rebuilt as a more Classical-looking city after being destroyed. Then it is destroyed again.

* The entire planet of Galaluna from ''[[Western Animation/Sym Bionic Titan|Sym Bionic Titan]]'' is a medieval version of this.