History Main / Planetville

This might work if technology was really advanced -- if travel was so fast that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing a town or Earth country does today. But that almost never happens. Besides, even if Planetville was a global village in terms of travel time, a planet still has thousands of times as many people, thousands of times as many hiding-places, thousands of times as many strategic locations, thousands of times as much of everything as a city has today. The only exception to this is the BabyPlanet which is indeed small enough to be a Planetville, though that has a different set of rules.

This might work if technology was really advanced -- if travel was so fast that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing a town or Earth country does today. But that almost never happens. Besides, even if Planetville was a global village in terms of travel time, a planet still has thousands of times as many people, thousands of times as many hiding-places, thousands of times as many strategic locations, thousands of times as many and as much of everything as a city has today. The only exception to this is the BabyPlanet which is indeed small enough to be a Planetville, though that has a different set of rules.

** ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': Obi-Wan is told that General Grievous is in the Utapau system, and the first place he lands is the city that Grievous has taken as his headquarters. Anakin tells Padme that he's going to Mustafar, then she has no trouble at all finding him later. Granted, a combination of the Force and on-ship guidance systems can be (and in the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', have been) used to HandWave all of those.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' is made of this trope. Luke is supposed to find Yoda, but he's simply told to find him in the Dagobah system (although in that case he only succeeds because Yoda crashes him near his hut). Obi-Wan is told that General Grievous is in the Utapau system, and the first place he lands is the city that Grievous has taken as his headquarters. Anakin tells Padme that he's going to Mustafar, then she has no trouble at all finding him later. Granted, a combination of the Force and on-ship guidance systems can be (and in the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', have been) used to HandWave all of those.
** A HandWave excuse for Planetvilleism in ''Star Wars'' is that because of the nature of the galaxy being centered around space travel, if something isn't within an hour's flight of the nearest space port, it's probably not important.
** In ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'', all that's needed to conquer Naboo is simply taking the capital city, and "blockading" the whole planet from surrounding space with a handful of ships. A small or medium-sized country on Earth probably couldn't keep fighting once the capital was lost, but large nations typically have military districts that are able to operate independently of the capital. Unless the enemy fleet deployed millions of ships, they couldn't possibly cover all of the sky above Naboo, so the protagonists trying to flee the planet could select to go through an open area to leave the gravity well and jump to hyperspace rather than aiming their ship straight at the enemy fleet to "break through the blockage".
** Justified at one point in ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': when Darth Maul traces Queen Amidala's ship to Tatooine, he points out that the planet is very sparsely populated, with only three major cities across the entire thing, which simplifies his search greatly. He is then shown dispatching groups of scout droids to each of the cities rather than trying to search them personally.
** Inverted in ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'', where seemingly the entire Republic except for Palpatine is unaware that Count Dooku is on Coruscant, the Republic's capital, at the end of the film.
** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', 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 finds Echo Base does so after conveniently landing about a mile away. Though extras in the scenes do note that this scout droid strategy is a supreme longshot, and the chances of the droids finding a Rebel base are extremely remote. They only attack the base on Hoth because Vader used the Force to intuit that that droid ''had'' actually succeeded instead of finding a random smuggler's outpost. The book ''Literature/ChoicesOfOne'' also has Vader look at Rebel supply manifests and concludes from that their base is somewhere cold and barren, which at least is a place to ''start''.
** The tradition continues in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'', when Finn repeatedly insists it's a bad idea to go back to Jakku because he's sure the First Order will find them there, never mind that Jakku is, you know, a ''planet''. In this case, at least, they're going back to pick up a droid that was left there the night before by the same character, so they're specifically limiting themselves to one night's roll from its starting point (just as the troopers searching for it would be doing).

Most SpaceOpera stories are lifted from other genres, then transposed into outer space. And the most obvious way to do it is to make your characters travel between planets. Not just any planets, but Planetville, the planet that serves the same function in space that towns and countries do in Earth-based stories. It's basically AdventureTowns [[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE]]!

If terrestrial heroes are WalkingTheEarth from town to town, the WagonTrainToTheStars will be going from planet to planet.

By extension, if a planet represents a country, an alien race represents an ethnic group, and an empire that spanned multiple countries becomes a space empire that spans multiple planets.

The reason behind this trope is that making up 200 countries for each of your 50 planets is [[TheLawOfConservationOfDetail really hard and probably won't be relevant to your story]]. Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, stories about Planetville make no sense in reality. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat-out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' on which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] or [[EasyLogistics left out entirely]] in many stories.

This might work if technology was really advanced -- if transport were so fast that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing a town or Earth country does today. But that almost never happens. Besides, even if Planetville was a global village in terms of travel time, a planet still has thousands of times as many people, thousands of times as many hiding-places, thousands of times as many strategic locations, thousands of times as many and as much of everything as a city has today. The only exception to this is the BabyPlanet which is indeed small enough to be a Planetville, though that has a different set of rules.

Another aspect of this trope is that the writers never seem to realize/care that things can happen in parts of planets. You will never see a planet colonized only in the mineral-rich mountain ranges, or aliens invading just to seize the agricultural regions -- it's all or nothing. This might be justified by saying that advancements in military transportation have made it so that anywhere on the planet can be a staging ground to attack anywhere else on the planet. Therefore, you "have to" control the entire planet for basic defensibility.

* PlanetaryNation: A country has one government except in civil wars. Planetville has only one except in civil wars (they may or may not be ScaryDogmaticAliens).

Sometimes a result of the LawOfConservationOfDetail in stories with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems. The "planet with one small settlement" subtrope can be justified in stories about colonization of planets with no native sapients, because it's plausible that colonization efforts would start with one settlement before spreading out further.

* 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.

* ''{{VideoGame/Starfield}}'': Lopez in the "Failure to Communicate" quest is a farmer who's unhappy with getting some new neighbours. The neighbours in question: other farms on ''different moons in the solar system''. Lopez has only occupied a tiny part of his own moon, and he still complains "This was my system first!"

** In ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar'' an army lands just outside a city, kill all enemy forces in the city and the entire planet is conquered.

* Consistently averted in ''Website/OrionsArm''. For one example, take a look at the planet [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47a67ce4bf7a5 Trip]], which has a population of ''4 trillion'' and has multiple distinct regions and cultures described.

This trope is sometimes extended further still, with each star system only having a single inhabited planet... all other bodies in the system are merely decoration, if considered at all.

* ''{{VideoGame/Starfield}}'': Lopez in the "Failure to Communicate" quest is a farmer who's unhappy with getting some new neighbours. The neighbours in question: other farms on ''different moons in the star system''. Lopez has only occupied a tiny part of his own moon, and he still complains "This was my system first!"

Most SpaceOpera 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. It's basically AdventureTowns [[RecycledINSPACE IN SPACE]]!

If a [[TheWildWest Wild West]] story is about outlaws going from town to town, the WagonTrainToTheStars will be about outlaws going from planet to planet.

Since the Nazis conquered a dozen small countries, the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens space Nazis]] will likewise conquer a dozen planets.

This might work if technology was really advanced -- if transport were so fast that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing a town or Earth country does today. But that almost never happens. Besides, even if Planetville was a global village in terms of travel time, a planet still has thousands of times as many people, thousands of times as many hiding-places, thousands of times as many strategic locations, thousands of times as many and as much of everything as a city on Earth has today. The only exception to this is the BabyPlanet which is indeed small enough to be a Planetville, though that has a different set of rules.

Sometimes a result of the LawOfConservationOfDetail in universes with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems. The "planet with one small settlement" subtrope can be justified in stories about colonization of planets with no native sapients, because it's plausible that colonization efforts would start with one settlement before spreading out further.

* ''Anime/StarTwinklePrettyCure'' takes this approach to their space travel theme, as their standard twenty minute episode length and [[OncePerEpisode requisite battle]] doesn't allow for the world building to go into much detail about every planet. One of the planets they head to, Planet Zeni, is outside of the regulations of the [[TheFederation Starry Sky Galaxy Association]] and is stated to be the home of a lawless metropolis with a high population-density and money as the end-all be-all. Which is the extent of what we learn about Zeni.

** 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 FeudalFuture setting of ''[=BattleTech=]''.

* In ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'' 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 [[GottaCatchThemAll collecting all of them]]).

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'' is an especially [[DrinkingGame/TVTropes egregious]] example, with each planet having an average of 2-3 cities. CasualInterstellarTravel means that a quest to talk to the governor of one SingleBiomePlanet 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.

** In ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar'' a few dozen ground units land just outside a city, kill all enemy forces in the city and the entire planet is conquered.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is a constant offender here, where everybody on a planet is the same and nothing happens on a smaller scale, ever. Possibly the only exception is the depiction of Bajor in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' 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.

* Consistently averted in ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm''. For one example, take a look at the planet [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47a67ce4bf7a5 Trip]], which has a population of ''4 trillion'' and has multiple distinct regions and cultures described.

Unfortunately, because SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, and making up 200 planets with 200 countries each is [[TheLawOfConservationOfDetail hard]], stories about Planetville make no sense in reality. Nobody seems to realize how BIG a planet is -- everything in Planetville takes the same amount of time as stories set in towns or countries. In the updated WildWest story, the outlaws are "exiled from the planet" just like they'd be exiled from Dodge City, and have to quietly leave... instead of flat out challenging the authorities to find them when they have an entire ''planet'' on which to hide. When the space Nazis invade, they seem to need the same number of soldiers and time as the Earth Nazis needed to invade Europe. And when the crew of the CoolStarship finds the cure for the alien plague, the logistical issues of distributing it to an entire planet rarely get mentioned at all. These considerations are [[HandWave minimized]] [[EasyLogistics or left out entirely]] in many stories.

This might work if technology was really advanced -- if transport were so fast that crossing a planet took as much time as crossing a town or Earth country does today. But that almost never happens. Besides, even if Planetville were a global village in terms of travel time, a planet still has thousands of times as many people, thousands of times as many hiding-places, thousands of times as many strategic locations, thousands of times as many and as much of everything as a city on Earth today has. The only exception to this is the BabyPlanet which is indeed small enough to be a Planetville though that has a different set of rules.

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.

Sometimes a result of the LawOfConservationOfDetail in universes with dozens or hundreds of planets/star systems. The "planet with one small settlement" subtrope can be justified in stories about human colonization of planets with no native sentients, because it's plausible that colonies wouldn't leap from a couple of spaceships full of initial settlers to occupying the entire planet in a few short years.

Not to be confused with planets that are ''literally'' covered by a single city--that's CityPlanet (aka ''Ecumenopolis''), a subtype of the aforementioned SingleBiomePlanet (and one of the few that is remotely within the realm of possibility). Supertrope of CreatorProvincialism, where the Planetville is the Earth.

** Kesprytt is an attempt to subvert this trope. The Kes want to join the Federation, but a quarter of one of their planets is controlled by the Pritt, who are the same species but under a different government. Naturally, Picard and Crusher beam down to meet with the Kes, only to be abducted by the Pritt and end up imprisoned within ''walking distance'' of the border. Apparently, beaming the very important prisoners inland a few hundred miles never occurred to the Pritt. It ends with Riker giving a massive ReasonYouSuckSpeech to both the Kes and the Pritt for not achieving planetary unification.

* ''Anime/StarTwinklePrettyCure'' takes this approach to their space travel theme, as their standard twenty minute episode length and [[OncePerEpisode requisite battle]] doesn't allow for much world-building. One of the planets they head to, Planet Zeni, is outside of the regulations of the [[TheFederation Starry Sky Galaxy Association]] and is stated to be the home of a lawless metropolis with a high population-density and money as the end-all be-all. Which is the extent of what we learn about Zeni.

** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', 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 finds Echo Base does so after conveniently landing about a mile away. Though extras in the scenes do note that this scout droid strategy is a supreme longshot, and the chances of the droids finding a Rebel base are extremely remote. They only attack the base on Hoth because Vader used the Force to intuit that that droid ''had'' actually succeeded instead of finding a random smuggler's outpost.

* Averted hard in the third season of ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels''. Early in the season, Maul discovers that his old enemy Obi-Wan Kenobi was on Tatooine. When we catch up to him again towards the ''end'' of the season, he is no closer to finding him, and has to resort to drastic measures to flush Kenobi out.