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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"When you live on a planet the size of a town''
''You can't get your kicks by getting around"''|'''Richard Hell and the Voidoids''', "The Kid With the Replaceable Head"}}
[[Adventure Towns]] [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]! Most [[Space Opera]] stories are lifted from other genres, then transposed into outer space. And the most obvious way to do it is to make everything take place on a planet. Not just any planet, but
If a [[The Wild West|Wild West]] story is about outlaws going from town to town, the [[Wagon Train to
By extension, if a planet represents a country, an alien race represents an ethnic group, and an empire that spans Earth becomes a multi-planet empire.
Unfortunately, because [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]], stories about
This might work if technology was really
A side effect of this is that the characters never realize that things can happen in parts of planets. You will never see aliens trying to capture a planet's equator, or its polar
* [[Ditto Aliens]]: To outsiders, most any human ethnic group looks alike.
* [[It's a Small World After All]]:
* [[One World Order]]: A country has one government except in civil wars.
* [[Planet of Hats]]: It's just like the wacky [[Adventure Towns]] of Earth.
* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]]: Nazis... [[Recycled in Space|In Spaaaaaace]]!
* [[Single
This trope is sometimes extended further still, with each star system apparently only having a single planet in it... every body in the system aside from Planetville itself is merely decoration if it is considered at all.
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Sometimes a result of the [[Law of Conservation of Detail]] in universes with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems.
Not to be confused with planets that are ''literally'' covered by a single
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* The Moon Kingdom from the [[Backstory]] of ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' seems to consist of a single city, most of which is the palace of Queen Serenity.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Lucifer (
** That's just where all the interesting stuff happens (following in daddy's footsteps). Twenty six pages showing the inky blackness of space in order to demonstrate scale does not make for a fun story.
* Oddly inverted in a [[Marvel Comics]] miniseries, ''Captain Universe''. Gladiator, a [[Flying Brick]] alien, flies to Earth from across the galaxy. That sort of travel is usually hand waved in comics as those characters being just that darn powerful. It gets odd when Gladiator has to fly from one part of the globe to another once he gets there and uses the Captain Universe [[Power-Up]] in order to grant himself enough speed to make the flight in time. So essentially, space is smaller than the planet Earth, according to this story.
== [[Film]] ==
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** In ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'', the Empire finds the Rebel base simply by launching scouting droids at various planets. Sure, it apparently took a few years but that would be an insanely short amount of time for even one planet, to say nothing of an entire galaxy's worth. Keep in mind the scouting droid that eventually found the base did so after conveniently landing about a mile away.
*** In the same movie, some rebels find Luke in the wilderness by just flying over the surface the morning after he went missing. Those sort of rescue missions last days or even weeks in real life. Granted, they did know where he went missing, since he was on a scouting patrol for them.
== [[Literature]] ==
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* Played straight and justified in Larry Niven's ''Ringworld'' series, as teleportation and other technology all but eliminate differing cultures across Earth.
** Mostly averted however, with the Ringworld itself — an artificial ring-shaped structure, surrounding a sun at about the Earth's distance from our sun, which is also 1,000,000 miles or so wide. Let's put it this way... the first ''Ringworld'' novel chronicles a months-long journey by the main characters, across a wildly diverse area of the Ring, from one edge. They only explore about a fifth of the way across ''from that edge'' and back. That's the sort of scale we're dealing with.
* Jack Vance's science fiction abounds with Planetvilles. Typical is ''[[
** Completely averted though with those worlds Vance wrote complete novels or even series about. These are diverse and rich in detail. Except Pao, the Planetville nature of which caused the crisis that gets the plot started.
* Murray Leinster several times used this trope, [[Justified Trope|justified]] strongly by the worlds in question being new, young colonies with only one settlement established, or exotic worlds with very little human-habitable land.
* In [[Elizabeth Moon]]'s ''[[
* ''[[The Pendragon Adventure]]'' features ten territories, essentially different dimensions or time periods of other dimensions (such as Earth in three time periods). Almost all of the action takes place in very small areas, generally very close to the flumes (inter-territory portals). [[Justified Trope|Justified]] because the antagonist, Saint Dane, is using the flumes to target very specific turning points on each territory, singular events that can turn the territory towards chaos if influenced the "right" way.
** On Denduron, everything important is within walking distance, such as the arena, the Bedoowan castle, the Milago village, and the mines.
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** The action on Zadaa is mostly in the city of Xhaxu, a thinly-veiled Africa. Indeed, the entire conflict in ''The Rivers of Zadaa'' is similar to the South African apartheid.
* Fantasy fiction can make similar errors, but with ''Plane''villes instead of Planetvilles. It's particularly egregious when other planes/realities are considered infinite, yet are ruled over by a single archdemon, fey lord, or the like.
* Avoided in regards to Earth in Harry Turtledove's ''[[Worldwar
* In [[Star Trek:
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' is a constant offender here, where everybody on a planet is the same and nothing happens on a smaller scale, ever. When a low-tech planet isn't united, Starfleet considers it in civil war. Earth in 2000 BC was presumably in civil war, and (except for some arguable periods of peace) continued to be at least into the nineteenth century. Possibly the only exception is the depiction of Bajor in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' as its proximity to the show's main setting meant that the writers were able to focus on the planet in greater depth than any other planet depicted in Star Trek's history before or since.▼
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
▲* ''[[Star Trek]]'' is a constant offender here, where everybody on a planet is the same and nothing happens on a smaller scale, ever. When a low-tech planet isn't united, Starfleet considers it in civil war. Earth in 2000 BC was presumably in civil war, and (except for some arguable periods of peace) continued to be at least into the nineteenth century. Possibly the only exception is the depiction of Bajor in ''[[Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'' as its proximity to the show's main setting meant that the writers were able to focus on the planet in greater depth than any other planet depicted in Star Trek's history before or since.
** Particularly conspicuous in ''The Next Generation'' episode "Reunification", in which the Romulans planned to seize control of the entire planet Vulcan with [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|just a few thousand ground troops]].
** At least two separate stories have featured autonomous colonies with populations given as being in the ''hundreds'', acting (and recognised) as planetary governments. Several others come close.
* Both ''[[Stargate SG
** At least for SG-1, they're walking through the gate, which severely limits the amount of the planet that they're capable of exploring. So, while each destination is essentially a "planet", the area of relevance to the SGC is only a few dozen square miles. But the excuse hardly works for their enemies, who are kind enough to place all their facilities within walking distance despite having spaceships and teleporters.
*** The teleporters are limited, and if the only methods of travel you had were by magic doorway, lear-jet and massive space-ship you'd probably spend a lot of time walking too, and you'd ensure that said magic doorways were as near to your current resource pile as possible.
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** Are you sure they're targeting the city to conquer it and not to draw the Rangers in the open to kill them?
** Subverted in RPM, where the rest of the planet was conquered first.
* Justified in ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'', as all the planets there are colonies of varying sizes, usually initially settled by a cohesive group of people in just one area.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Both averted and played straight in ''[[Warhammer
** Justified in the cases of Hive Worlds, where pollution forces the inhabitants into a few gigantic cities surrounded by endless ash wastes, and [[Death World
** Played straight with the Space Marines, as less than a thousand of them can crush entire rebellions and purge whole worlds. Than again, aside from being extremely powerful [[Super Soldier
** Also justified in some locations, such as Holy Terra, which is indeed a planet-wide city.
*** ...with the Emperor's palace complex taking up ''most of Europe''.
* ''[[
** Well arguably, if your tank is a ''bolo'', you wouldn't even need a whole tank division. A ''single'' bolo would do the job in fact. But, that's crossing the streams.
** There's another aspect involved in the numbers used, too : The populace is, in general, rather fatalistic about accepting their fate as serfs in the [[Feudal Future]] setting of ''[[
*** These numbers only hold true for late Succession Wars if even that. Prior to 3028 twelve mechs was considered an huge amount of resources to commit to anything.
* Averted and played straight in ''[[Traveller]]''. It is made clear that there is more to most planets but that is all PCs often see because they are interested in intersteller stuff.
** Many planets in ''Traveller'' are colonies with populations of 1,000,000 or less. All the interesting people are likely to be in the same city as the starport.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' features this. In order to find the Star Maps, all the group need to learn is what planet it's on. They're even within walking distance of the starport (Manaan excepted, maybe). The sequel averts this however, you land on Telos, which is a planet recovering from war. The main first part you land on is forest and tropical, and then you fly to the polar ice caps.
** ''[[Star
* Justified in ''[[Halo (
** They also do ground assaults to destroy the ground-based generators which power the planet's [[Kill Sat|orbital]] [[Magnetic Weapons|MAC]] [[Wave Motion Gun|cannons]] which are pretty much the only weapon humans have which can reliably destroy Covenant ships.
** This trope is thoroughly averted however when on the eponymous Halo rings. They're about the size of Earth, and they have a very diverse ecosystem.
* ''[[Freelancer]]'' is a major offender: every single planet is a Planetville. Without exception. Pittsburgh, for example, appears to be an entire planet with just one little mining site. And on top of that, planets usually offer the same services as a "tiny little" battleship. This is rather justified, though, because due to [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]], ''Freelancer'' has hundreds of planets and space stations within its own world.
** Somewhat justified in that you are a freelance trader, you only ever go as far as the single spaceport on each planet. You buy/sell resources in the port, and visit the port bar to get contracts. The rest of the planet is irrelevant to you.
** You don't need to see anything on the planets because nothing happens there. Any planet-side parts of the story are limited to chats in the local bar.
* In ''[[Beyond Good
* Pretty much any [[
** The second and third ''[[
** The ''[[Galactic Civilisations]]'' games also feature this, with the manual explicitly invoking [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]]; managing an interstellar government is difficult enough without the intricacies of entire planets as well.
* ''Outpost 2'' (by Sierra) features a distant planet called New Terra, with only two cities (Eden and Plymouth). And both cities ''still'' fight over the land's resources, especially when a plague (called the Blight) slowly takes over the planet.
* ''[[Phantasy Star]]'' is an especially [[TV Tropes Drinking Game|egregious]] example, with each planet having an average of 2-3 cities. [[Casual Interstellar Travel]] means that a quest to talk to the governor of one [[Single Biome Planet]] will involve buying a cake from the only bakery in the star system, located at the bottom of a dungeon on another planet. Alis even has the Fly spell, designed to take you back to the last church you visited, which works without regard to whether or not it is on the same planet you are currently visiting.
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' averts this, somewhat. In the Codex, it is mentioned that planetary invasions are common. However, thanks to the way colonization works in most cases, there are rarely any planets with more than a dozen settlements. The exceptions are mainly the species of the galaxy's homeworlds (Earth, Pavalen, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, etc.)
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The [[Filmation]] series ''[[
** It had a shotgun wielding cyborg horse. [[Refuge in Cool|It was awesome.]]
* ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
* In the ''[[Star Wars:
** During the invasion of Kamino, General Grievous boasted that Kamino had fallen. This is despite much of his fleet getting shot down in orbit without doing similar damage to the Republic fleet, and his crashed troop transports (which was part of the plan) only really managing to get a foothold in Tipoca City. Grievous might have simply been trying to psyche out Kenobi though.
* The main setting for ''[[
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Tropes in Space]]
[[Category:Otherworld Tropes]]
[[Category:Index of the Week]]
▲[[Category:Planetville]]
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