All The Tropes

Planetville: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Planetville (view source)

Revision as of 06:10, 8 April 2014

160 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (Mass update links)
m (Mass update links)
Line 7:
[[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 [[Planetville]], the planet that serves the same function in space that towns and countries do in Earth-based stories.
 
If a [[The Wild West|Wild West]] story is about outlaws going from town to town, the [[Wagon Train to Thethe Stars]] will be about outlaws going from planet to planet. If the Nazis conquer a dozen small countries, the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|space Nazis]] will conquer a dozen planets. If a plague broke out in a Third World country, the alien plague will fill an entire planet.
 
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.
Line 59:
* 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 ''[[The Demon Princes (Literature)|The Demon Princes]]'' series, where, for example, one planet is organised around its publishing industry, being the source of the main magazine found throughout a ''star cluster'' in the manner of a dominant regional town paper. However, such immediacy is central: it is hard to see how it could be written more realistically without spoiling the story and its setting. A redeeming justification is the incredibly sparse nature of settlement, where a planet might only have a single town. Or Smade's World: halfway between Smade Mountains and Smade Ocean lies Smade's tavern. All else is wilderness.
** 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 ''[[VattasVatta's War]]'' books, while a single star system frequently has a system-wide government, various lower levels of government seem to exist. Also, [[Planet of Hats|one-Hat planets]] tend to have been originally colonized by racists or religious extremists.
* ''[[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.
Line 73:
** 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 (Literature)]]'' series - the difference in national identities confuses the Lizards, as does the human propensity to keep fighting even after the capitals and major cities have been subjugated. The tropes is in full effect on the Lizards' homeworld, however, and to some extent justified in that it is (mostly) a [[Single Biome Planet]] that has had a single, united monarchy for millenia.
* In [[Star Trek the Battle of Betazed]], Cort Enaran is leading the Betazoid Resistance. Having one group of resistance fighters under one mountain chain referred to as "the Betazoid Resistance" seems to take us into Planetville territory. That said, Enaran and other leaders are former members of the parliament, so their resistance cell (near the capital) might be considered ''the'' resistance. Still, the novel probably runs afoul of this trope.
 
 
== [[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 -1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' are very consistent with this. Nothing of interest happens more than a few kilometres from a Stargate, most planets seem to possess a few thousand people at most, and conquering/purging/eating an entire planet is apparently a very simple affair. The characters even seem to be aware of this, as one episode featured Carter and O'Neill trapped in a frozen cave and ''immediately'' thinking they were on an [[Single Biome Planet|ice planet]] -- but it turned out that they were really {{spoiler|on Earth, in the Antarctic}}. On the few occasions that a planet has more than one state, such as Jonas Quinn's homeworld, they are always at war with each other.
** 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.
Line 87:
** 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)|Firefly]]'', as all the planets there are colonies of varying sizes, usually initially settled by a cohesive group of people in just one area.
 
 
Line 96:
** 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''.
* ''[[Battle TechBattleTech]]'' has entire planets garrisoned by a single regiment of 108 giant robots. Major factory worlds and capitals might get 3 to 5 of them. This is like suggesting you need only one tank division to conquer Earth.
** 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 ''[[Battle TechBattleTech]]''.
*** 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.
Line 106:
== [[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 WarstheWars: The Old Republic]]'' is similar: a planet is roughly equivalent to a zone in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', and the ''largest'' "worlds" are fleets or space stations rather than planets.
* Justified in ''[[Halo (Video Gameseries)|Halo]]''. The Covenant have battles in space above the planet, and usually seem to land on one city/country, ignoring the rest of the planet. However, the only reason the ground assault exists is to recover [[Precursors|Forerunner]] artifacts, which are only on whatever part of the planet they land on. Once finished, they fly back into space and glass the entire planet, assuming they won the space battle. Which they almost always do, given how much more advanced they are compared to humanity. In the third installment, a character specifically noted that Truth could've landed his forces anywhere, but specifically chose the ruins of New Mombasa, Africa.
** 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.
Line 113:
** 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 and& Evil (Videovideo Gamegame)|Beyond Good and Evil]]'' all action (apart from the endgame) takes place in and around a single town (justfied/handwaved using guard towers that drive you back if you attempt to leave "territorial waters"); yet in the beginning of the game you are given a task of completing a full photographic inventory of the species living on the planet. Likewise, there seem to be no pearls on the planet apart from the gameplay area (judging from the message you get after [[Gotta Catch Them All|collecting all of them]]).
* Pretty much any [[Four X4X|4X strategy game]] set in space will treat planets exactly like this. The most obvious sign being the total impossibility of two players, even allied ones, having a settlement on the same planet at the same time.
** The second and third ''[[Master of Orion (Video Game)|Master of Orion]]'' games have buildings for specific purposes, compared to the generic "factories" of the first game that were never shown.<ref>The original game's planetary interface was just a generic planet type picture and a set of sliders to control what the planet put its resources towards.</ref>
** 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.
Line 123:
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The [[Filmation]] series ''[[Bravestarr (Animation)|Bravestarr]]'' is a major offender in this regard. It features New Texas, an entire futuristic western-styled planet with exactly one -1!- village-sized settling by the name of Fort Kerium. Especially mind-blogging considering that the planet is said to be rich with the rare and valuable element Kerium. However, considering that one episode had the local star stolen and buried in the desert, that might be the least of the show's logical problems. Yes, that's "star" as in "celestial body".
** It had a shotgun wielding cyborg horse. [[Refuge in Cool|It was awesome.]]
* ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (Animation)|Galaxy Rangers]]'', being a [[Space Western]] of the same era also rocked this Trope: Tortuna was a [[Wretched Hive]] with a few domed cites that [[God Save Us From the Queen|Her Travesty]] didn't nuke into ashes. Ozark was an isolated [[Lost Colony]] backwater. Granna and Nebraska were farm worlds. The justification for using the Trope was that large-scale human colonization had only been going on for a decade at most, and sleeper ships only launched about 50 years prior to the series.
* In the ''[[Star Wars: theThe Clone Wars]]'' Movie, Mace Windu says Obi Wan Kenobi captured an entire planet by himself. He probably meant "General Kenobi and the clone fleet under his command", but still that seems like a small amount to take a planet. Either that, or an over reliance on those Droid Command ships (or something similar) like in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' means that a conquered friendly planet could be liberated by a commando unit.
** 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 ''[[Loonatics Unleashed (Animation)|Loonatics Unleashed]]'' is Acmetropolis, a city that's literally the size of a planet.
 
{{reflist}}
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/884783"