Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Difference between revisions

[[File:Pale Blue Dot (uitsnede).png|frame|[[Carl Sagan|Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.]]]]

 

 

Earth? That old dirtball? Who cares about that boring, useless planet crawling with its [[Humans Are Morons|clueless]] lifeforms?

 

 

Double points for throwing in a [[Planet of the Apes Ending]].

[[Speculative Fiction|Sci-Fi]] literature tends to employ this trope more often than television and movies. Also a popular theme in [[Cosmic Horror Story]].

 

 

 

 

Also, no aversions or [[Not a Subversion|kinda-sorta subversions]] here. Take them to [[Earth Is the Center of the Universe]] instead.

{{examples}}

 

** The serial numbers are apparently granted based on classification and order of acceptance (Mid-Childia is also referred to as "Administrated World #1").

* In ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', about half a century before the series, a disaster on the moon left a ring of moon rock orbiting Earth, with pieces regularly plummeting to the surface and causing problems for the inhabitants. Result: Mars is now the center of civilization, while Earth is a ghetto for those who couldn't afford to move off the planet.

** Furthermore, after they fail what little civilization left on Earth is destroyed. The protagonists respond to this with simple apathy.

* In the final season of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', the main villain Sailor Galaxia, regards the earth this way. To the point, it's the last place she has in the Galaxy that she hasn't destroyed yet, which is the only reason she even bothers. Obviously she is proven wrong when the Senshi of earth actually beat her.

 

* Numerous members of the [[Green Lantern]] Corps in [[The DCU]] look down on Earth—partly because of Hal Jordan's actions as Parallax. Many others have never even heard of the planet or of the species that inhabits it.

** However, it has been revealed that {{spoiler|while Oa is the center of the universe, Earth is the center of [[The Multiverse]], destroy Earth and the rest of existence will follow}}.

** They do however like the food.

'''Kilowog:''' (Chomp!) ''"Delicious!"'' }}

{{quote|'''Flash:''' ''"Ahh, check this out, people's exhibit B! [[Old Yeller]]."'' tosses the video cassette to Kilowog

'''Kilowog:''' (Chomp!) ''"Delicious!"'' }}

* Most of the alien races in the [[Marvel]] Universe view Earth in this way.

** Even some humans. Nova rips into Tony Stark for many of Earth's superheroes (some of whom have cosmic-level powers) having been totally wrapped up in what was, at the base, a bureaucratic dispute in the United States while he, entire civilizations, and cosmic entities including Galactus were fighting to save the entire ''universe''.

* Similarly, the universe where most of Marvel's stories take place is numbered Earth #616 by at least one inter-dimensional organization.

** Several stories have subverted this by pointing out that this Earth is the most important one in the Multiverse. The numbering might be an intentional way of disguising its importance.

** See [[Number of the Beast]]. There are conflicting stories about where that number for the "core" universe comes from.

 

* ''[[Flash Gordon (film)|Flash Gordon]]''. Ming and Klytus don't think much of the planet... '''''Earth''''' (stressing the word as the synonym for "dirt".)

* In ''[[Battle Beyond the Stars]]'' [[Space Cowboy]] proudly tells everyone he's from Earth but no one has ever heard of it.

* In ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'', the aliens stationed on our [[After the End|post apocalyptic]] planet hate it because it's boring, small and the gravity's too low. They use any humans they can catch as slave labor but the captain of the settlement says that he would much rather use dogs. At first he saw them as more useful, but they lack the appendages needed for certain jobs. Most of the aliens are convinced that humans have no language and are too stupid to learn whatever the aliens speak in. {{spoiler|[[You Suck]] is softened a little when a man does learn the alien language and the captain enjoys explaining to him how it only took his ancestors 15 minutes to destroy all human civilization after finding Earth. Softened in that even though humanity's last stand was pathetic, he purposely wanted his staff not to know humans had some intelligence}}

** Even the defense wasn't that pathetic; they teleported in a massive number of gas weapons in a move no race had survived in three universes of conquests.

* Summed up nicely by Ron Perlman in [[Alien|Alien: Resurrection]]

{{quote|'''Johner:''' Earth, man. What a shithole. }}

* In ''[[The Last Starfighter]]'', Earth is an underdeveloped backwater notable mainly for being neutral in the war between the Star League and the Kodan Armada and off-limits for mercenary Starfighter recruiters. That is, until Alex Rogan beat a certain video game...

** However, it's not ''that'' neutral.

{{quote|'''Cochrane:''' Is that it? It's...so small...

'''Riker:''' [[The Federation|It's about to get a whole lot bigger]]. }}

 

* The [[Trope Namer]], ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'': Earth's entire entry in the Guide is "Harmless". After 10 years of research, Ford Prefect has a revised entry to submit to the guide: "''Mostly'' harmless." Ford initially submitted a much longer, painstakingly detailed entry—part of which later appears in ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (novel)|So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish]]'', to his considerable surprise—but nobody considered Earth to be important enough to warrant better than two words. Not that it matters, as [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Earth is dust]]. Of course, it turns out the Earth actually ''was'' the most important planet in the universe, but nobody {{spoiler|except the psychiatrists who hired the Vogons to destroy Earth to protect their careers}} knew that until it was too late.

** It's worse than that: not only was the Earth insignificant, but it was located at the "[[Outdated Outfit|unfashionable]] end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy."

* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''Robot Detective'' series, Earth is primitive and backward compared to the Spacer worlds. Later, in his ''Empire'' series, humans have spread through the Galaxy and no longer even remember which planet is the homeworld. Earth is one claimant, but most people don't believe it, as it's become a radioactive ghetto. By the ''Foundation'' series, no one even knows where Earth ''is'' anymore.

* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Under the Dome]]'', the town of Chester's Mill is shown to not be the target of any terrorist attack, supernatural event, or even coordinated alien experiment, but rather {{spoiler|the victim of a few alien children playing with human beings the way that human children might burn ants with a magnifying glass}}.

** [[Canon Discontinuity|If there had been any sequels]], they would have involved {{spoiler|a couple more ships coming specifically to obtain humans. However, these ships contained life forms from other solar systems as well, so Earth still wasn't considered extremely important except for the humans.}}

* ''[[The Sirens of Titan]]'' has the entirety of human existence {{spoiler|as a means to build a part to repair a damaged alien spaceship, or send messages to said alien that help was on the way. For example, the Great Wall of China was a progress report. Just to twist the knife further, a discarded offcut of something else turns out to be that crucial part, and the ship's mission is utterly banal.}}

* In Katherine Kerr's ''Polar City Blues'', Earth [[Earth-That-Was|has been abandoned]] after ecological collapse. Humanity has spread out to across the stars, but the Human Republic is quite insignificant compared to the two main alien power blocs, the Carli Confederation and H'Allevae Alliance.

{{quote|MATTIA: Oh, dear God, and should I care? We are but on an invisible top, that a sun thread makes spin, on a crazed sand crumb which spins and spins and spins, without knowing why, withouth ever reaching its destiny, as if it liked to roll, just to make us feel now just a bit hotter, now just a bit colder, and to make us die, often regretting a string of trivial nonsense -after fifty or sixty spinnings, aren't we?}}

** If someone can provide a professional translation, that would be better, but that's the sense of it.

* In ''[[Alistair Reynolds]]'' Revelation Space series, Earth is only mentioned a handful of times and none of the characters ever go there. Much of the plot takes place around the planet Yellowstone.

* In Walter William's ''[[Dread Empires Fall]]'' planets are important based on the number of wormhole connections in their system. Earth's unimportant enough that a character gets assigned there for ''punishment''. The race who for a time managed to defend themselves against the Empire's expansion is the bird-like Lai-Own, humans got steamrolled over like nearly everybody else. It is mentioned that humanity's only contribution to galactic culture is pottery and [[wikipedia:Equal temperament|the equally tempered tonescale]].

* In Dante's ''Paradisio'', he makes this observation in Canto 22 after entering the Eighth Sphere of Heaven:

* In the ''[[Animorphs]],'' the Andalites basically view Earth this way, as they ''continually'' refuse to send aid against the Yeerk invasion. It's the Yeerks, actually, who realize that [[Humans Are Special]]...in that they make the ''perfect'' race to be conquered.<ref>But that's only because there're so damn many of us. As actual bodies we're preferable to the Taxxons and the Gedds but most Yeerks would sooner have a Hork-Bajir or (far better) an Andalite.</ref>

* Rebecca Ore's ''Being Alien'' trilogy makes Earth this by default because it portrays aliens as "just folks". The main concern for the Federation is that humans are violent xenophobic/philic flip-flops.

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: ''[[The Bible]]'' sometimes invokes this trope, at least in the New Testament. The heavens are the glorious abode of God and His angels, where everyone lives forever, where as Earth is a degenerate realm of dirt and sin where all who trod upon it are destined to die after a handful of miserable decades.

 

* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]''. Death, after Dean tries to snark at him, gives him the speech:

{{quote|'''Death:''' This is one little planet in one tiny solar system in a galaxy that’s barely out of its diapers. I’m old, Dean. Very old. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.}}

* The new ''Battlestar Galactica'' (and the old one for that matter) centers around a journey across the cosmos to find the legendary planet known as "Earth". Earth is built up to almost mythical status over the course of the series partly due to the fact that perfect habitable planets are [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|few and far between in the BSG universe]] (never mind that the series starts out in a set of four solar systems where there are, collectively '''[[Arc Number|12]]''' of 'em) and every almost-Earth-but-not-quite planet turns out to be a [[Crapsack World]]. When they finally find Earth {{spoiler|it turns out to be just another [[Crapsack World]], the original inhabitants having annihilated themselves millennia ago. After a period of much despair, the survivors happen upon a perfectly habitable planet due to angelic intervention seemingly sent by God, when they decide to cut their loses and settle on and dub it "Earth" just for the sake of saying they made it to Earth. That random planet turns out to be our Earth}}.

* Seen many times in the run of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' by a wide variety of alien races. To the Sontarans, Earth is another front to win in their war against the Rutans. To the Cybermen, Earth is another planet to harvest stock from. To the Daleks, Earth has just gotta go. The only reason it's still in existence is because the Doctor happens to be fond of it.

* Clyde [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this in an episode of ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]''. After hearing yet ''another'' alien call earth insignificant, Clyde says, "Y'know, a planet could start to get a complex."

 

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** Though in terms of ''[[Gameplay and Story Segregation|gameplay]]'', the trope is averted. Unless you're doing a [[Self-Imposed Challenge|no-starbase run]] of the game, Earth's space station is the only place to upgrade your ship, buy new ships (though you can find some elsewhere), get a special escape ability that allows you to run from combat. Basically, in a normal playthrough, you will come back there a lot and often.

* In ''[[Colony Wars]]'', Earth is the Insignificant Little Blue Planet that doesn't realize it is. It's nothing more than a meaningless drain on the colonies, but uses its military power to rule them by force and require them to sustain it... thus provoking the namesake Colony Wars.

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'', to an extent—Earth is important to humanity, culturally, but otherwise has little interest and less relevance on the galactic stage—the [[The Federation|Systems Alliance]] capital is a massive [[Space Station]] in the Arcturus system. The player can select the Earthborn origin for Shepard, the protagonist, in which case he/she is an orphan who grew up on the streets of Earth's slums...

** The codex entry states that the planet is still home to the mass of humanity, the biggest human colony is only 4.4 million strong. Earth is heavily overpopulated as well, and humans are looked down on by other Citadel species for still having things like homelessness, especially on the homeworld.

{{quote|'''Durandal''': ''By Pfhor standards, Earth is a poorly defended low technology world, populated by billions of potential slaves.''}}

 

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Although Earth is physically the approximate center of the terragen sphere in ''[[Orion's Arm]]'', since expansion in any direction is limited by light speed, it isn't really very important any more. Ever since the Great Expulsion, only a tiny population of hippy rianths and other modosophonts live there, under the ongoing rule of the caretaker archailect GAIA, as she continues to restore Earth to its pre-human pristinity. Physically and politically, it's nothing more a wildlife reserve and an exclusive tourist destination, though it is remembered with some sentiment by terragens of all kinds as their original homeworld and one of the richest and most biologically diverse natural planets ever known.

 

** This is further highlighted when [[Ensemble Darkhorse|Tak]] tries to conquer the Earth instead of Zim, specifically noting that it has no strategical value. However, since the point is more about retribution against Zim than anything, she just decides to ''make'' the planet valuable, hollowing it out and filling it with snacks the Almighty Tallests would like.

* The general view of Earth in ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' by many of the Autobots and Decepticons is that Earth is a puny, primitive backwater filled with filthy, disgusting organics, and if the All Spark didn't crash here, no Cybertronian would ever admit going there. There are some exceptions (for instance, Jazz thinks any planet that could design his adopted funky vehicle alt-mode couldn't be all bad and Prowl is a [[Friend to All Living Things]], from bugs to cats to tree, and Earth is absolutely ''teeming''). Pretty much every other continuity averts this, with Earth either being a resource powerhouse, a prison for stranded factions, or housing a [[MacGuffin]] worth landing armies on (or sometimes a combination of at least two of the three).

** The "diplomatic coup" portion at the end was a [[Throw It In|last-minute decision]] by the writers when they realized they'd need a good reason for Cobra Bubbles not to be surprised at all the aliens. It also made a neat [[The Men in Black|explanation]] for why a social worker would look like a Secret Service Agent.

* In ''[[Titan A.E.]]'', the aliens don't particularly care that Earth got destroyed. Those that do treat the surviving humanity as scum, teetering at the edge of extinction. {{spoiler|This proves to be a [[Despair Event Horizon]] for Korso, but he gets better.}}

** The aliens didn't care, but the humans sure did. In fact, the entire movie is based around finding a device that can rebuild Earth.

* In the ''[[Battletoads (animation)|Battletoads]]'' cartoon, Professor T. Bird explains that Earth is "so backward and insignificant that the Dark Queen never dared to conquer it."

 

== Other ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:This Index Earth]]