History Main / SingleBiomePlanet

* Taken to ridiculous extremes by the ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' fanfic ''Fanfic/{{PRIMARCHS}}'' to the point that the eponymous Primarchs cannot even fathom the concept of a planet having more than a single biome, proclaiming any such planet they encounter to be an abomination which must be destroyed.

** In ''Film/PitchBlack'', the planet the plot takes place on starts as a desert planet, then turns into a night planet due to an eclipse.

** And finally averted in ''Film/{{Riddick}}'', in which Riddick finds himself on what appears to be a rocky desert world. It turns out that there's reasonably fertile grasslands just a few miles away, on the other side of the mountains.
* All films adapting ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' feature the eponymous desert planet roamed by gigantic {{sand worm}}s (the [[Film/Dune1984 1984 film]] and the [[Film/Dune2021 2021]]-[[Film/DunePartTwo 2023]] film duology, that is).
* In ''Film/StarshipTroopers'', there is an entirely single biome ''solar system''. Even the ''moons'' are deserts. Apparently, they all look like Wyoming's Hell's Half Acre or the Badlands of South Dakota. Rasczak mentions that the Fleet [[OrbitalBombardment glasses each planet]] before the Mobile Infantry is sent in so it explains why they all look like a wasteland.

* [[AlwaysNight Dark Planets]] -- Like the Desert, but owe their lack of plant life to perpetual night; usually due to constant opaque cloud cover or spooky ominous fog. If inhabited, this might be the product of [[GaiasLament industrialization run amok]], with the clouds being clouds of pollution. Home of the BigBad, look for the EvilTowerOfOminousness with the perpetual lightning storm. It's like Planet {{Mordor}}. This is kind of like the real-life Venus, which even comes with the lightning. However, such planets in fiction are invariably described as "barely habitable", whereas the real version is of course ''completely uninhabitable''. Dark Planets could also be {{Rogue Planet}}s that do not orbit any star, although then there is the issue of what is keeping the atmosphere warm enough and replenishing the oxygen[[note]]Theoretically this could happen with a combination of internal AKA geothermal heat and a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.[[/note]]. Some of these planets could be [[TidallyLockedPlanet tidally locked]] to their star with one side permanently facing it, rendering the facing side uninhabitable due to temperature and the dark side extremely cold, usually with a small habitable strip on the divide. These worlds also generate extreme weather, which can add to this atmosphere. A dark planet can also orbit a brown dwarf star, which radiates infrared heating radiation but barely any visible light, and the entirety of the latter is deep red. The appearance of the planet's sun, namely an ominous, huge black and red stripy circle in the sky, adds bonus points to the gloominess and doominess of the planet, as does the local flora, colored pitch black in a desperate attempt to catch any and all scarce photons available for photosynthesis.

Earth is a wonderfully varied place with an amazingly diverse biosphere. On this single planet, you can find jungles, mountains, forests, deserts, prairies... we must be the most varied planet in the universe. Or you'd think so after seeing so many alien worlds trapped in solitary, homogeneous landscapes.

Many other planets and natural satellites will often be defined by a single setting. It doesn't matter if the events of the story only take place on a small portion of the planet -- we are still told the entire planet has one climate; specifically, the same climate as where the story takes place. Very rarely does any planet have the same level of environmental diversity as Earth, despite being as large and having a normal orbit. In addition, beyond having simply uniform surface biomes, these planets often have a single ecological community over their entire surfaces -- a swamp planet, for instance, isn't just covered by swamps, it's covered by the exact same swamp everywhere, with precisely the same native plants and creatures. For this reason, alien creatures are often simply described as being native to Planet Such-and-Such, rather than to any specific location on it, with the assumption that you'd find them regardless of what spot you landed on.

* [[SolidClouds Cloud Planets]] -- The land is not where Newton wants it. If something or someone lives here, either the ground [[WorldInTheSky floats through the sky in chunks]], or there are hover-cities -- unless the natives are {{Living Gasbag}}s. Either way, watch that first step. Sometimes explained by by making them Jovian planets: although no known gas giants are anywhere near habitable, there is nothing theoretically preventing the possibility of a gas giant having a layer (gas giants tend to be highly stratified) with Earth-normal atmosphere, pressure and temperature -- it's ''unlikely'', but so is finding a habitable Earth-like world. Venus, again, is another prime example; some levels of its upper atmosphere would be pretty nice and potentially habitable -- if not for those pesky [[DeathWorld sulfuric acid clouds]] around -- and there is serious research into the possibility of floating missions or even colonies to Venus where Earth atmosphere would be used as the lifting gas and therefore settle at the layer of the Venusian atmosphere that matches Earth-normal temperature and pressure..

* [[AlwaysNight Dark Planets]] -- Like the Desert, but owe their lack of plant life to perpetual night; usually due to constant opaque cloud cover or spooky ominous fog. If inhabited, this might be the product of [[GaiasLament industrialization run amok]], with the clouds being clouds of pollution. Home of the BigBad, look for the EvilTowerOfOminousness with the perpetual lightning storm. It's like Planet {{Mordor}}. This is kind of like the real-life Venus, which even comes complete with the lightning storms. However, such planets in fiction are invariably described as "barely habitable", whereas the real version is of course ''completely uninhabitable''. Dark Planets could also be {{Rogue Planet}}s that do not orbit any star, although then there is the issue of what is keeping the atmosphere warm enough and replenishing the oxygen[[note]]Theoretically this could happen with a combination of internal AKA geothermal heat and a lot of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.[[/note]]. Some of these planets could be [[TidallyLockedPlanet tidally locked]] to their star with one side permanently facing it, rendering the facing side uninhabitable due to temperature and the dark side extremely cold, usually with a small habitable strip on the divide. These worlds also generate extreme weather, which can add to this atmosphere. A dark planet can also orbit a brown dwarf star, which radiates infrared heating radiation but barely any visible light, and the entirety of the latter is deep red. The appearance of the planet's sun, namely an ominous, huge black and red stripy circle in the sky, adds bonus points to the gloominess and doominess of the planet, as does the local flora, colored pitch black in a desperate attempt to catch any and all scarce photons available for photosynthesis.

* Desert Planets -- These [[CaliforniaDoubling look like the cheaper parts of California]] or [[BBCQuarry gravel quarries in]] UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}, and are thus very common. May have aliens that act like Bedouin or Touareg, and a thriving black market on water. [[BinarySuns Multiple suns are common]]. Mars is sort of a desert planet, but with no breathable atmosphere, although recent discoveries pretty reliably show that it's an Ice Planet as well -- it's just that all that ice is ''under'' the desert. Desert Planets are fairly realistic as these sorts of planets go, as long as there is ''some'' water. Any place that is sufficiently arid becomes a desert, but some ocean (say, 20% of the planet's surface), or underground water would be needed to support the plant life needed to create a breathable atmosphere.

* Forest Planets -- A planet whose land surface is mostly or entirely covered by forest. While Jungle Planets tend to be tropical in nature, a Forest Planet tends to have a more temperate climate with trees similar to oak, birch, redwoods and so on. Sometimes found in the form of a Forest Moon orbiting a large planet. Earth several million years ago could be considered a Forest Planet, since the warmer atmosphere and higher atmospheric humidity levels meant much more of the planet was covered in lush, tropical landscape.
* [[LandfillBeyondTheStars Garbage Planets]] -- The entire planet is being used as a dumping ground for useless waste. Likely to act as home for scavengers looking to make a quick buck, treasure hunters seeking some long-lost treasure, and large numbers of mercenaries and criminals. The actual surface conditions can range from desert-like to incredibly hostile if the Phlebotinum is leaking out of ships.
* Ice Planets -- Planets whose entire surfaces look like Greenland glaciers. This is a fairly plausible kind, as there actually are frozen-over planets and moons (for example, several moons of Jupiter and Saturn). Planets that normally have large oceans (like Earth) can look like this during a ''[[GlacialApocalypse really deep]]'' [[GlacialApocalypse Ice Age]], and paleontologists believe that this may have happened to Earth in the past in a controversial scenario known as "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth Snowball Earth]]". The obvious question on an Ice planet is how it sustains life if there are so few plants to provide oxygen and a food chain; this paradox can be somewhat solved by allowing for a narrow equatorial band warm enough to support plant life, or by limiting life to the sea and having the food chain be based on geothermal energy/chemosynthesis (i.e. how we think life on Europa would work). It's interesting to note that the Saturn's Moon Titan, while being an "Ice Planet" of −179.2 °C, seems to be in every way just as dynamic and varied a planet as the Earth[[note]]Just with liquid hydrocarbons instead of water and ice as solid as rock instead of water[[/note]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Shortpacked}}'' shows us how theme planets [[http://www.shortpacked.com/2006/comic/book-4/03-whoremongering/bees/ sometimes don't work.]]

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", V9-Gamma is a desert planet because its [[BinarySuns two suns]] [[EndlessDaytime shine perpetually]].

* In ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' there is an entirely single biome ''solar system''. Even the ''moons'' are desert.

* [[http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200924.html GJ 1214b]] appears to be a prime candidate for an ocean planet. It's estimated that the ocean on its surface would be roughly three to four ''thousand'' miles deep. Yes, the ocean depth is a large percentage of the total radius of the planet. Additionally, because the planet is definitely hotter than boiling point, the ocean doesn't have a defined surface. Instead the atmosphere just gets thicker and thicker as you go down until it becomes as dense as water, which can't compress anymore, meaning the ocean and atmosphere just blend together.

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' includes many types of these in its [[https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/491c78b89879b Non-Luminary World Classification Scheme]]: Pelagic (Ocean Planets), Xeric (Desert Planets), Europan, Titanian and Ymirian (all variants of Ice Planets), Hephaestian (Volcano Planets), Vesperian (Twilight/Tidally Locked Planets), Stevensonian (Dark Planets, due to being in interstellar space) and various Ice Giants and Gas Giants (Cloud Planets).

* [[CityPlanet City Planets (Ecumenopolis)]] -- Urban sprawl has taken over the entire surface of a world. Theoretically possible, but only with extreme technology and/or a constant inflow of resources from off-world. May serve as home base to a culture of PlanetLooters. Often has a population in the trillions. The concept supposedly first appeared in the writings of 19th century spiritualist Thomas Lake Harris. The first recognized usage in science fiction would be Trantor in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''{{Franchise/Foundation}}''. The planet Coruscant in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' movies would probably be the most familiar to modern audiences. The logistics of such worlds -- how they get food, dissipate excess heat and so forth -- can be a subject of geeky speculation, as shown in multiple ''Webcomic/{{Irregular Webcomic}}s''.[[note]]Both the [[Franchise/StarWarsLegends old]] and [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse new]] versions of the ''Star Wars'' Expanded Universe specify that Coruscant relies heavily on importing food from outside sources, both from other planets and from its own habitable moons.[[/note]] May also be a machine planet (Cybertron from {{''Franchise/Transformers''}}) where a single biome is plausible due to the planet possibly being programmed as such. Conversely, such a planet may not be bothered with having an atmosphere hospitable to organic life anyway. See also {{Planetville}}.

* [[CityPlanet City Planets (Ecumenopolis)]] -- Urban sprawl has taken over the entire surface of a world. Theoretically possible, but only with extreme technology and/or a constant inflow of resources from off-world. May serve as home base to a culture of PlanetLooters. Often has a population in the trillions. The concept supposedly first appeared in the writings of 19th century spiritualist Thomas Lake Harris. The first recognized usage in science fiction would be Trantor in Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''{{Franchise/Foundation}}''. The planet Coruscant in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' movies would probably be the most familiar to modern audiences. The logistics of such worlds -- how they get food, dissipate excess heat and so forth -- can be a subject of geeky speculation, as shown in multiple ''Webcomic/{{Irregular Webcomic}}s''.[[note]]Both the [[Franchise/StarWarsLegends old]] and [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse new]] versions of the ''Star Wars'' Expanded Universe specify that Coruscant relies heavily on importing food from outside sources, both from other planets and from its own habitable moons.[[/note]] See also {{Planetville}}.

* The racetrack for the space race in GO-GO ''Anime/{{Tamagotchi}}!'' episode 34 goes through a few single-biome planets. The biomes represented by the planets are, in order of appearance, a desert, a snow/ice world, and a forest.

* The racetrack for the space race in GO-GO ''Anime/{{Tamagotchi}}''! episode 34 goes through a few single-biome planets. The biomes represented by the planets are, in order of appearance, a desert, a snow/ice world, and a forest.

[[quoteright:350:[[http://www.gamesradar.com/f/facts-about-the-ice-world/a-20090617125947154057 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/singlebiomeplanet3.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Earth and a SlippySlideyIceWorld have quite the differences.]]

** ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'': Averted. Jack has to wear a spacesuit in order to breathe on the planet. [[spoiler:Megatron later captures him along with Raph and Miko and forces Optimus to give up the Omega Keys and surrender, [[SadisticChoice or he'd release them from their airtight capsules and let them die on the planet's surface]]. He later planned to use the Omega Lock to terraform Earth into a second Cybertron, despite knowing that doing so would kill everyone on the planet as well]].
** Some series have partially subverted this and made it surprisingly diverse for a planet made of metal. It often has its own mountains, canyons, and even a sea of rust somehow. It's still made entirely of metal, though.

* Averted in ''Film/{{Avatar}}''. Although most scenes take place in a jungle region, far away shots show that Pandora has vast oceans as well as polar ice caps. When gathering allies they visit one Na'vi clan that's living along some sea-side cliffs and another dwelling in an area of large, open grasslands. Most of the plot just focuses on the jungle region. [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/AvatarTheWayOfWater The sequel]] shows the oceans in detail.

* Today, Earth is the ''only'' aversion in the solar system. In the very early stages of formation, Earth was a lava planet, and if the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis Giant Impact Hypothesis]] of the Moon's origin is correct, the Earth and the Moon were balls of magma for a while after the impact. It was probably a kind of ice planet at various points in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenian Cryogenian]] era (850-625 million years ago), particularly during the Marinoan Glaciation.[[note]]There is also evidence for a longer, far earlier global glaciation from about 2400-2100 million years ago called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huronian_glaciation Huronian Glaciation]], as a result of massive amounts of oxygen being released into the atmosphere for the first time by cyanobacteria, which played havoc with the Earth's existing greenhouse gases.[[/note]] This hypothesis is called ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin fittingly]]) "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth Snowball Earth]]". During Earth's Pangaea period, it was largely one huge desert surrounded with one gigantic ocean. Later, there was a period when the entire planet was a warm, moist planet covered with jungles -- ''even Antarctica''. This is how most of our coal reserves were created, by the way. Even later, the supercontinent Pangaea was almost completely made up of deserts; while Pangaea broke up between the Triassic and the Jurassic, a hypothesis claims that the entire Earth may have had the exact same climate during this period due to unusual composition of the atmosphere at the time. Possibly the closest fit to the above archetypes today would be an Ocean World, as the surface is over 70% water.\\

** ''Franchise/GreenLantern'': The planet Oa (headquarters of the GL Corps) is a Desert Planet.
** The presence of The Entity, a massive WingedHumanoid that is the manifestation of the White light that creates life, within Earth is the reason that Earth is NOT a Single Biome Planet, but rather has such a diverse array of life and environments.

*** In ''Franchise/TheFlash'' Annual #9, Bryan and Tristan Mallory's planet is a frozen wasteland. However, it was a lush and green planet before the devastation resulting from the destruction of a planet in a nearby solar system (presumably Earth) caused numerous volcanoes to erupt, sending tons of ash into the atmosphere and blocking out the planet's BinarySuns.

** ''Franchise/WonderWoman''

** ComicBook/NewKrypton is the planet where [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Post-Crisis Kryptonians]] relocated his capital city Kandor to. The ''ComicBook/WhoIsSuperwoman'' storyline reveals it's a frozen world, which is justified because it's an artificial planet made from ice.

** ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick'' starts on an ice planet, heads to a desert-ish planet, and winds up on the heat-scoured Crematoria. The latter at least has the justification of being so close to the sun that the facing side actually melts every day, but the air is still somehow breathable.

* Kevin Costner's film ''Film/WaterWorld'' is set in a future where global warming has turned our earth into an ocean planet, with dry land as nothing but a legend (and science be damned!).
* ''Film/{{Flash Gordon|1980}}'': Two of the moons of Mongo fit this trope. Arboria is a Jungle/Swamp Planet and Frigia is described as an Ice Planet. And all of these and Mongo appear to be Island Planets floating inside a weird, glowing nebula-like thing with a vortex as an entryway. It's not a conventional solar system as we would know it. Its implied that these are what is left of planets that have been attacked by Ming to prevent them from becoming a threat.
* ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}''. The afterlife (ghost) version of Saturn is a Desert Planet (complete with SandWorm) instead of a gas giant. In the early script, it was specifically the moon Titan. Though in the film, the giant planet seen in the sky could be Saturn.
* ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}''. The protagonists crash-land on the "desert moon of Vega", which bears a startling resemblance to Tatooine in ''Film/ANewHope''.
* In ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' series the Earth is a dark planet, courtesy of eternal clouds of self-replicating nanomachines that people spread into atmosphere before the events of the movie in order to stop solar-powered robots.

* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'''s standard planetside-setting is the Vancouver Pine Forest Planet. This is somewhat {{lampshaded}} when the trees are once referred to as "terraforming Pines".
* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica1978''. In "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero", the surface of the planet Arcta is entirely covered by ice and snow, with a constant blizzard blowing overhead.

** It's averted in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E5TheKeysOfMarinus "The Keys of Marinus"]]. Most episodes take place in different environments. This was back in ''1964''.
** Aridus from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E8TheChase "The Chase"]] is a desert planet.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Silence in the Library"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]] has the titular Library, which is [[JustifiedTrope an artificially-constructed planet]].
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E15PlanetOfTheDead "Planet of the Dead"]]: San Helios ''used'' to be a city planet, but was turned into a desert by a HordeOfAlienLocusts.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E10InTheForestOfTheNight "In the Forest of the Night"]] temporarily applies this to ''the Earth''.

* [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] in ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'', which takes place on a Desert Planet. The thing is, three years before the series takes place, it was earthlike -- and the series takes place in a [[{{Expy}} Please Insert New City Name]] version of ''Boston'', most certainly not in a desert region, showing just how much of the planet is sandy wasteland. The cause of the mass desertification is subtly implied to be ''nuclear carpet-bombing''. The background radiation is so high that long-distance communication is all but impossible, and orphans with cancer are prevalent.

** The series featured "ice planets" and "lava moons", and one ocean planet they picked for a fishing holiday.

** Subverted in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Solitudes", wherein Captain Carter manages to get out of the cavern she and Colonel O'Neill are in, revealing the surface is a desolate ice planet. Only, it turns out [[spoiler:they're on Earth, in Antarctica.]]

* ''Franchise/StarTrek''
** The series has a tendency to either have totally Earth-like planets (class M) or single-biome planets. At least in ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries The Original Series]]'', they used so many class M planets in order to keep production costs down. Most planets home to advanced civilizations have some degree of weather control, although the extent this is used to change the biome varies with some simply using them to prevent dangerous weather.

** Risa, the "pleasure planet," uses technology to make the entire planet into a tropical paradise, as long as your idea of paradise is a sunny day in Hawaii (as noted before, the Federation consists of a large number of diverse societies with a large number of diverse homeworlds, so relaxing at the beach may not suit everyone the same). In an episode where the weather control was switched off it immediately began raining for several days.

*** In the episode "The Savage Curtain", the surface of the planet Excalbia is completely covered with molten lava, making it a Volcano Planet.
*** In "The Naked Time", the planet Psi-2000 is described as a frozen wasteland (i.e an Ice Planet).

*** In "Thirty Days", the ship comes across an ocean world with no landmass whatsoever. In its center is a machine created by {{Precursors}} that stops the water from dissipating out into space.

* {{Death World}}s -- Not a biome in and of itself, but can be any of the aforementioned types. This is a world where EverythingIsTryingToKillYou, but you still have compelling reasons to go there. After all, except Earth (and, possibly, Mars) all other Solar System planets are unquestionably those (though Venus takes the cake, as if it's some sort of planetary Australia), and there is thriving research activity around, with a regular expedition and terraforming proposals popping up.

** Klendathu is a barren death world, period.