History Main / UnnecessarilyLargeVessel

* Lampshaded and called out in ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends''. When a side character gripes that if the Empire were still around, they'd be better able to handle the latest galactic crisis (the [[Literature/NewJediOrder Yuuzhan Vong invasion]]), Han Solo snaps and says no, the Empire would have built some humongous, gaudy superweapon with a ridiculously foreboding name, which would then have been destroyed through some glaring weakpoint. (This is also a TakeThat at the earlier Bantam books, which gained the somewhat undeserved[[note]]It's really only the Creator/KevinJAnderson books that do this[[/note]] FanNickname "the Superweapon-of-the-Month Club".)

* {{Parodied|Trope}} in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' with Dark Helmet's ship, which just goes on and on and on and on [[OverlyLongGag and on....]] [[WordOfGod Mel Brooks said]] that if he could have gotten away with [[UpToEleven making the ship long enough so that the whole movie would have consisted of the first scene of the ship passing by]], he would have.

* The Mammoth Car from ''Anime/SpeedRacer''. Possibly subverted, since its constructed out of stolen gold.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': The Characters/{{Starjammers}} are a band of rebel SpacePirates who travel space using the ''Starjammer'', a hijacked ''Fearless''-class Shi'ar [[TheDreadedDreadnought Dreadnought]]. Said dreadnought is around ''38.2 miles'' in length and weighs a whopping ''1.2 billion'' tons. For a ragtag crew of five to six, they seem to have no trouble piloting around a warship that is longer than the width of ''Rhode Island''.

* ''Eva's Hammer'' from ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'' and ''[[VideoGame/WolfensteinIITheNewColossus The New Colossus]]'' is a gigantic submarine armed with a nuclear cannon. While we only get a glimpse of its size in ''The New Order'', come ''The New Colossus'', we discover it has a huge landing bay for helicopters, a cantina and can house enough crew members that the [[LaResistance Kreisau Circle]] can all live on it and use it as their mobile base. [[RealityEnsues The sheer size of the ship is a problem for the Circle, however]], which they find out when they discover, much to their shock [[spoiler: that there is an entire deck of the ship they didn't discover, which is where the remnants of the old crew are hiding out and transmitting their position to their Nazi comrades.]]

* [[ParodiedTrope Parodied]] in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' with Dark Helmet's ship, which just goes on and on and on and on [[OverlyLongGag and on....]] [[WordOfGod Mel Brooks said]] that if he could have gotten away with [[UpToEleven making the ship long enough so that the whole movie would have consisted of the first scene of the ship passing by]], he would have.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': In "The Corbomite Maneuver", ''Enterprise'' encounters the First Federation ship ''Fesarius'', a spherical craft over a mile in diameter. It turns out to have just one person on board, who is three and a half feet tall.
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Remember Me". As the NegativeSpaceWedgie of the week {{Ret Gone}}s the crew of the ''Enterprise'' one by one, leaving only Beverly with any memory of them, she's eventually left questioning the logic of a starship normally crewed by around 1,000 people now having a crew consisting solely of herself and Picard (then just herself). Neither can give a satisfactory answer to that.
* ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' has the ISS ''Charon'', the flagship/palace of the [[MirrorUniverse Terran Empire]]. The thing is ''enormous'', even accounting for the giant empty space with a star-like object in the middle. In fact, the ship is so big that [[spoiler:they needed a special power source in order to be able to even power the whole thing]]. The ship is also extremely deadly, being able to devastate an entire hemisphere of a planet with a single barrage of torpedoes. [[spoiler:The ship is eventually destroyed, and it's implied that no other such craft will be created by the Empire]].

* The ''Götterdämmerung'' in ''Film/IronSky'' is the monstrous flagship of the Nazi space fleet (ItMakesSenseInContext). Its guns can take out a tenth of the Moon with each shot, however, the ship is too overpowered. Since the Nazi computer technology is so far behind, their ENIAC-sized machine can't hope to run all of the ''Götterdämmerung'''s systems. [[OhCrap Then they get ahold of a smartphone]].

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'': Arsenal Gear appears to be three times the size of your typical real-world nuclear aircraft carrier, and is capable of fielding an army of soldiers and a full complement of Metal Gear RAY [[HumongusMecha mechas]]. However, the ship is so large that as [[BigBad Solidus]] points out, without proper support from an escort fleet, the ship is "nothing more than a giant, floating coffin." [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots Outer Haven,]]]] to a lesser extent, since it's smaller and built for a different purpose, but it is still large enough to include a miniaturized replica of ''Mount Rushmore''. Both can also function as submersibles.

* Some officers in the US Navy believe this to be the case with the modern supercarriers. They claim that TechnologyMarchesOn, and so must military doctrines. The aircraft currently being used by such carriers are outranged by land-based ship-killer missiles already being fielded by such countries as Russia and China, defeating the whole purpose of having a carrier. Basically, a carrier can't get close enough to deploy its own aircraft without being hit by such missiles. A better strategy would be to scrap the ginormous supercarriers and switch to a greater number of smaller carriers that field longer-range aircraft. Naturally, the brass shuts such thinking down, lest the Congress pull funding from the $37 billion ''Gerald R. Ford''-class carriers being built to replace the ''Nimitz''-class carriers. On the practical front, arguments over economic-logistical and tactical economies of scale of large vs small carriers - which still need complex, expensive radar and other electronics that don't necessarily downscale in cost proportionate to size - and whether said missiles live up to the hype under combat conditions have been had for years if not decades and are beyond the scope of this article.

* Some officers in the US Navy believe this to be the case with the modern supercarriers. They claim that TechnologyMarchesOn, and so must military doctrines. The aircraft currently being used by such carriers are outranged by land-based ship-killer missiles already being fielded by such countries as Russia and China, defeating the whole purpose of having a carrier. Basically, a carrier can't get close enough to deploy its own aircraft without being hit by such missiles. A better strategy would be to scrap the ginormous supercarriers and switch to a greater number of smaller carriers that field longer-range aircraft. Naturally, the brass shuts such thinking down, lest the Congress pull funding from the $37 billion ''Gerald R. Ford''-class carriers being built to replace the ''Nimitz''-class carriers. Arguments over economic-logistical and tactical economies of scale of large vs small carriers and whether said missiles live up to the hype under combat conditions have been had for years if not decades and are beyond the scope of this article.

* Some officers in the US Navy believe this to be the case with the modern supercarriers. They claim that TechnologyMarchesOn, and so must military doctrines. The aircraft currently being used by such carriers are outranged by land-based ship-killer missiles already being fielded by such countries as Russia and China, defeating the whole purpose of having a carrier. Basically, a carrier can't get close enough to deploy its own aircraft without being hit by such missiles. A better strategy would be to scrap the ginormous supercarriers and switch to a greater number of smaller carriers that field longer-range aircraft. Naturally, the brass shuts such thinking down, lest the Congress pull funding from the $37 billion ''Gerald R. Ford''-class carriers being built to replace the ''Nimitz''-class carriers.

** The Doctor's TARDIS: It's BiggerOnTheInside. It's designed to be piloted by six people and is only ever really operated by one. It's usually inhabited by only 1-3 people. Although the series has been inconsistent on this point, the most recent on-screen statement regarding its interior proportions (in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E10JourneyToTheCentreOfTheTARDIS Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS]]") is that it's infinitely large on the inside. Expanded universe stories have established it is filled with far more than just one man could realistically make use of, including a zoo.

* Entirely possible in ''Videogame/KerbalSpaceProgram''. You can land on the Mun in a simple one-person lander launched on a modest rocket. Or you can build a ship that's several times the height of the building it's supposedly constructed in. The game performance suffers with large ships though, making them often AwesomeButImpractical.[[note]]This has been mitigated somewhat in the newer versions; previously, ''Kerbal Space Program'' was limited to using 4 GiB of RAM at a time, due to using an older, 32-bit version of the Unity GameEngine. This is exacerbated by the fact that KSP is quite prone to memory leaks, meaning that the game stays slow even once you've switched to a different craft, and, frequently, the only way to retrieve all the leaked memory is to [[HaveYouTriedRebooting shut down the computer and restart it]]. Newer versions use the 64-bit Unity 5, allowing them to make use of as much RAM as the computer has available. This considerably improves performance on beefier computers.[[/note]]

This trope is for when a ship in the story is hugely (and in some cases, comically) oversized for the crew or purpose it currently has. The large size may have had an original use, but in the story it's being vastly underutilized. Though mainly a sci-fi trope usually involving spaceships, it can apply in other situations as well (i.e. boats, hovercrafts, etc).

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In ''FanFic/{{Fractured}}'', a ''Franchise/MassEffect''[=/=]''Franchise/StarWars''[[spoiler:[=/=]''[=Borderlands=]'']] [[MassiveMultiplayerCrossover crossover]], we are introduced to the ''Revenant''-class Star Dreadnaught, a 35-kilometer-long behemoth that can do virtually anything from [[WaveMotionGun cracking small planetoids]] to launching hordes of [[SpaceFighter starfighters]] or [[DeathFromAbove glassing a planet]]. All because the [[InsistentTerminology Spacelane Protection Force]] decided to build big ships for...reasons. It becomes useful later, though still lacks an InUniverse justification--and is even called out as being unnecessarily huge by the more physics-respecting races of ''Mass Effect''. It has, among other things, swimming pools, civilian-grade entertainment centers, and Admiral's quarters that are a ship unto themselves. Why did the Trans-Galactic Republic build ''multiple'' technically-non-military ships that are so heavily armed and so gigantic? ''[[RuleOfCool Because they could]].''

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/{{Alien}}'': Even allowing for lots of cargo room, the ship the movie takes place on has an astonishing number of empty corridors, service passageways, and xenomorph-sized hiding places.
** Well, the Nostromo was more of a cargo tug than a freighter itself. Presumably the service corridors are just easy ways to get to areas in need of servicing.
** Nevertheless, the crew are concerned with finding the alien before they are forced back into the freezers due to ''running out of air''.
* In ''Film/{{Explorers}}'', the kids build a tiny spaceship -- smaller than an Apollo capsule. When they get to space, an alien spaceship takes control of it and sucks it into a docking bay. That ship is depicted with an interior big enough to get seriously lost in. Then a few scenes later, a ''much larger'' alien ship comes around and drags the first alien ship into one of ''its'' docking bays. Each alien ship appears to run just fine with a crew of two.
** The corridors and rooms in the alien ship are depicted as being vastly larger than the aliens themselves. [[spoiler: At the end we learn the reason: The aliens are actually young children. The adults find the large spaces slightly cramped.]]

* In the reboot ''Franchise/StarTrek'' films Starfleet ships from the 23rd Century are as large as, if not larger than, their 24th Century counterparts in the original timeline. The new ''Enterprise'' is of comparable size to the ''Galaxy''-class, although much of it is UnnecessarilyLargeInterior. Main Engineering is a cavernous space and the ship even has what looks like a shopping mall style atrium many stories high.
* In ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** The Imperial Shuttle has very large, folding "wings" and a large dorsal fin. Despite this, the shuttle itself can only carry a few people, and with the technology of the Star Wars universe, the wings are completely unnecessary anyway (it's shown multiple times taking off and landing while the wings are still folded).
*** Kylo Ren's shuttle in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' looks even more [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kylorencommandshuttle_fathead.JPG ridiculous]].

*** A good while back, Starwars.com had a Databank entry which stated that even the regular Star Destroyers were unprecedented in size and absolute overkill for what the Empire needed. This appears to have been retconned however, with the Star Destroyers being treated more as a standard ship size, and with similarly large vessels popping up elsewhere in the Expanded Universe and elsewhere in the galaxy's history. Even in the films, the Trade Federation battleships and Admiral Ackbar's flagship are both significantly larger, while the Mon Calamari cruisers, the Venators, and the Providences are all only marginally smaller. The difference seems to be more in the fact that the Empire tends to just use the Star Destroyer as a baseline ship (it's by far their most commonly-appearing large ship), where a ship of its size would ordinarily be used as a flagship or a heavily-built overkill option.
** The Death Stars are far larger than is strictly necessary, as you could just as easily mount the superlaser directly to the reactor core and have a perfectly operational battlestation without needing to build what amounts to an artificial planetoid around it (this was actually done in the Expanded Universe). As with the Super Star Destroyers, it seems they intentionally made them the size of a small moon just for the symbolism and the [[GunboatDiplomacy intimidation factor]].
*** It is also implied that Death Stars function as the support facilities (repair and refit docks, construction yards, supply/weapons/fuel depots, and so on) for their own support and screening fleet. That still doesn't come close to justifying the sheer ''volume'' of the things. The first one had a volume of more than 2 million cubic kilometers, and the second would have, if completed, had a volume more than 380 million cubic kilometers. The sheer size does, however, make them damn near indestructible to anybody that doesn't have their own superlaser on hand, barring Force-guided torpedoes or destroying the thing while it's only halfway built (which are of course the way they actually ''do'' get taken out).

** The Doctor's TARDIS: It's BiggerOnTheInside. It's designed to be piloted by six people and is only ever really operated by one. It's usually inhabited by only 1-3 people. Although the series has been inconsistent on this point, the most recent on-screen statement regarding its interior proportions (in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E10JourneyToTheCentreOfTheTARDIS "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS"]]) is that it's infinitely large on the inside. Expanded universe stories have established it is filled with far more than just one man could realistically make use of, including a zoo.
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen "Revenge of the Cybermen"]] has a space station that normally has a crew of 50 being run by a crew of three, the rest having died from a plague.
* The ''{{Series/Lexx}}'' is so large that small aircraft are used for internal transport, and has a crew of three, plus a disembodied robot head, and the ship itself. Justified, since the Lexx is a [[LivingShip giant biomechanical insect]] which was designed to serve as the centerpiece of a small fleet. It was to be staffed by an untold number of people, and was so large because that was how large the bug had to be to power its [[WaveMotionGun planet-killing beam]]. The reason it seems unnecessarily big is the reliance on strange biotech instead of just building a ship; the reason it seems woefully understaffed because it was ''stolen'' in the opening miniseries movie by two people and a robot head (with an undead assassin in tow). That said, being a living starship, it actually only needs one crew member (the captain) to run, with nearly all its biomechanical functions are self-maintaining. The Moth shuttles on board do die eventually, but it has [[{{Cyborg}} partially-robotic]] maintenance units to replace those.

* While all Eldar vessels in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' have smaller crews than the Imperial ones (which have comparable crew densities to modern warships), the Wraithships fit this trope. They are several kilometer long capital ships that might only have a single living soul on board. [[note]]Emphasis on ''living'', as the wraithships are piloted by the souls of dead Eldar within the ship's Infinity Circuit, with the one living being on board being the Spiritseer that helps guide the souls.[[/note]]

* Referenced in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'': the ''Normandy SR-2'' is considerably bigger than the first ''Normandy'', and comes equipped with a spacious Captain's cabin. Several characters comment on the fact that, while the Alliance builds its ships for efficiency, Cerberus (being a criminal organisation with no oversight) can build to impress. Also, the ''SR-2'' seemingly has fewer visible crew members than the ''SR-1''.
** Exaggerated when the crew of the ''SR-2'' is [[spoiler: abducted by the Collectors]]. Once unshackled, their tactical AI, EDI, is fully capable of running the entire ship by herself. (She can even fly it, although she isn't as good as [[AcePilot Joker]].) On the other hand, Shepard does put the internal space to good use when collecting their RagtagBunchOfMisfits -- the second game's squad simply would not have ''fit'' in ''SR-1'''s crew spaces, even before their various interpersonal issues came into play.
* The Polaris Raven in ''[[VideoGame/EscapeVelocity EV Nova]]'' is tied with the Auroran carrier for the title of largest starship in the setting at 1,200 meters in length. For all that size, it has a mere 30 crew, making one wonder exactly what it's doing with all that space when the Federation carrier is only 500 meters long but has a crew of 200, and the aforementioned Auroran version carries a crew of 250.
** There are three reasons given for this: one, the Raven's length is exaggerated by the two "prongs" of its Capacitor Pulse Laser system, which account for a good half of its length; two, it has ''black hole generators'' for engines, a technology so advanced the Raven is the only ship ever to use it; and three, most Polaris ships including the Raven are to some extent [[LivingShip living organisms]], and so are probably capable of handling their own internal organs with minimal human intervention, explaining the low crew count.
* In ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Terran Conflict]]'' the DummiedOut ATF Valhalla super-destroyer is easily the biggest ship in the game. In fact it's so big that A) it has serious issues with the firing arcs for its turrets, and B) it's wider than the [[PortalNetwork jumpgates]], meaning that if the player cheats one in and has it pass a gate while he's in the same sector, ''it bangs into the gate rim and DIES''. The {{expansion|Pack}} ''Albion Prelude'' fixed the second behavior but not the first, and that, coupled with the fact that it's not much better of a MightyGlacier than conventional destroyers, means that it's largely AwesomeButImpractical.
** It is, however, the game's only [[TheBattlestar Battlestar]], as it is just as heavily armed as all other heavy-destroyers, and can carry 50 fighters plus up 10 corvettes, bombers or freighters (which solves the potential problem of running out of cargo space for fighter supplies).
* Specifically averted in ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'', where the smallest controllable ships are the destroyers, which are roughly 30 meters in length (for reference, a Space Shuttle is 56 meters long) with each subsequent class being 3 times the size. The only things smaller than destroyers are assault shuttles, boarding pods, and AttackDrones. The sequel plays it straight with the Leviathans, which are triple the size of dreadnoughts and are a ''huge'' investment of resources.
** It still takes a turn (which some people have calculates is equivalent to a year based on Hiver sublight movement) to build a destroyer by a single planet devoting considerable percentage of its industry to it.

* [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty Arsenal Gear]] appears to be three times the size of your typical real-world nuclear aircraft carrier, and is capable of fielding an army of soldiers and a full complement of Metal Gear RAY [[HumongusMecha mechas]]. However, the ship is so large that as [[BigBad Solidus]] points out, without proper support from an escort fleet, the ship is "nothing more than a giant, floating coffin." [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots Outer Haven,]]]] to a lesser extent, since it's smaller and built for a different purpose, but it is still large enough to include a miniaturized replica of ''Mount Rushmore''. Both can also function as submersibles.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* Pretty much every ship Tagon's Toughs of ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' has owned since their first one was meant to house a lot more than the under 100 troops the company comprises. Including an Ob'enn Superfortress, a DropShip from said superfortress that was rated for 25,000 men (needed some sleeping space though), and then a cruiser meant for 6,000. They rely pretty heavily on the ships' AIs to run things. Tagon actually considers this roominess as a downside most of the time, recounting a story from his military service about the grunts [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-01-24 having too much room to spread out.]]
** Most recently, the Toughs who were active in Sol system during Book 15 - a group unlikely to reach triple digits, put it that way - are operating a UNS battleplate, a triangular ship with 8km sides. However, they're only manning it on behalf of their current clients and because their much more reasonably sized ship, the ''Neosynchronity'', was destroyed during the climax of the previous book.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* In ''Machinima/ClearSkies'', the titular ship is a ''Tempest''-class battleship, approximately the same size as a [[Franchise/StarWars Star Destroyer]]. It has a crew of less than five.
[[/folder]]

* The Argo from ''VideoGame/{{Battletech}}'' is a 100,000-ton heavy colonization vessel intended to carry pre-fabricated housing and years' worth of supplies to frontier colonies, alongside the hundreds of colonists and dozens of construction vehicles needed to keep a colony going. By the time it's excavated and put to use again, the Argo becomes the flagship of a mercenary company that numbers around 50-100 people on a good day, and has around six battlemechs. In-game, the humongous amount of superfluous space on the Argo is used to justify your essentially unlimited storage space for 'mechs and equipment not currently in active use -- Yang notes he'll never run out of places to store 'mech parts.

** The unfinished Sovetsky Soyuz (literally Soviet Union) class battleships would have weighed more Yamato but have been less capable than the much smaller American North Carolina class battleship (which the Americans themselves thought was unnecessarily big and switched to the slimmed down South Dakota class). All the extra weight was due to the Soviet Union being utterly unable to make half decent armor of the thickness a battleship required. It instead had to use nearly unfathomably think plates of shoddy brittle steel. This, combined with the lack of Russian experience with large ship building lead to a true titan of a design, that could "only" fit a gun a two inches smaller than Yamato and fired a relatively light shell for a gun of its size. When Stalin pressured the Soviet Navy to finish one of the incomplete hulls after WWII, the navy countered that finishing the project would be one of most embarrassing things the country could do.

* The Japanese battleship ''Yamato'' (yes, [[SpaceBattleshipYamato that one]]) and her twin sister ''Musashi''. The true embodiment of AwesomeButImpractical, their nine [[{{BFG}} 18.1-inch main battery guns]] were the largest ever put to sea, but Japan's poor radar-based targeting systems, meant they would much less effective than Allied battleships. Their anti-aircraft guns were too small and again, the lacked of radar-directed, fire control. Furthermore, the ships were so huge that even at slower speeds used enormous quantities of fuel. It was the fuel consumption that ultimately kept them from earlier battles. ''Yamato'' and ''Musashi'' both ended up fighting in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where ''Musashi'' was sunk in a air attack by 19 torpedo strikes and 17 bombs. ''Yamato'' did get to engage US warships in combat, albeit small escort carriers and their escorting ships, succeeding in crippling destroyer ''USS Johnston'' and escort carriers ''USS Gambier Bay'' and ''USS White Plains'' and sinking destroyer ''USS Hoel''. ''Yamato'' was sunk later in a SuicideAttack, also by aircraft, taking 13 torpedoes and 10 bombs before sinking. The US forces sank her quicker, due to [[CombatPragmatism hitting her mostly on one side]].

* In ''FanFic/{{Fractured}}'', a ''MassEffect''[=/=]''StarWars''[[spoiler:[=/=]''[=Borderlands=]'']] [[MassiveMultiplayerCrossover crossover]], we are introduced to the ''Revenant''-class Star Dreadnaught, a 35-kilometer-long behemoth that can do virtually anything from [[WaveMotionGun cracking small planetoids]] to launching hordes of [[SpaceFighter starfighters]] or [[DeathFromAbove glassing a planet]]. All because the [[InsistentTerminology Spacelane Protection Force]] decided to build big ships for...reasons. It becomes useful later, though still lacks an InUniverse justification--and is even called out as being unnecessarily huge by the more physics-respecting races of ''Mass Effect''. It has, among other things, swimming pools, civilian-grade entertainment centers, and Admiral's quarters that are a ship unto themselves. Why did the Trans-Galactic Republic build ''multiple'' technically-non-military ships that are so heavily armed and so gigantic? ''[[RuleOfCool Because they could]].''

* [[PlayingWithTropes Parodied]] in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' with Dark Helmet's ship, which just goes on and on and on and on [[OverlyLongGag and on....]] [[WordOfGod Mel Brooks said]] that if he could have gotten away with [[UpToEleven making the ship long enough so that the whole movie would have consisted of the first scene of the ship passing by]], he would have.

* [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' with Dark Helmet's ship, which just goes on and on and on and on [[OverlyLongGag and on....]] [[WordOfGod Mel Brooks said]] that if he could have gotten away with [[UpToEleven making the ship long enough so that the whole movie would have consisted of the first scene of the ship passing by]], he would have.

* The Boeing 747 became this for a number of airlines, particularly Braniff International, which was operating flights with the huge planes nearly empty, and was probably a contributor to the airline's eventual collapse.

[[folder:AnimeAndManga]]

[[folder:Film]]

** Suffice to say, the Empire really loves this trope - as it befits to an entity that rules more through terror and disenheartening of the enemy than through practical combat. Imperial Star Destroyers aren't all that efficient as starships, as it's repeatedly shown that two Victory Star Destroyers - about half the size - are more effective, more resource-efficient and an altogether better idea, to say nothing of the Supers and even more massive ships. But they absolutely ''trash'' enemy morale, simply because there's ''so much ship'' to get through before you damage them enough to take them out of the fight. And things like the Eclipse are instant "this planet is now mine" buttons; even if you could win fighting them - and it's pretty damn unlikely - you'd expend so many resources doing it that nobody could possibly afford the cost.
* [[PlayingWithTropes Played with]] in ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' with Dark Helmet's ship, which just goes on and on and on and on [[OverlyLongGag and on....]] [[WordOfGod Mel Brooks said]] that if he could have gotten away with [[UpToEleven making the ship long enough so that the whole movie would have consisted of the first scene of the ship passing by]], he would have.
* In the reboot ''Franchise/StarTrek'' films Starfleet ships from the 23rd Century are as large as, if not larger than, their 24th Century counterparts in the original timeline. The new ''Enterprise'' is of comparable size to the ''Galaxy''-class, although much of it is UnnecessarilyLargeInterior. Main Engineering is a cavernous space and the ship even has what looks like a shopping mall style atrium many stories high.
* In ''Film/{{Alien}}'': Even allowing for lots of cargo room, the ship the movie takes place on has an astonishing number of empty corridors, service passageways, and xenomorph-sized hiding places.
** Well, the Nostromo was more of a cargo tug than a freighter itself. Presumably the service corridors are just easy ways to get to areas in need of servicing.
** Nevertheless, the crew are concerned with finding the alien before they are forced back into the freezers due to ''running out of air''.
* In ''Film/{{Explorers}}'', the kids build a tiny spaceship -- smaller than an Apollo capsule. When they get to space, an alien spaceship takes control of it and sucks it into a docking bay. That ship is depicted with an interior big enough to get seriously lost in. Then a few scenes later, a ''much larger'' alien ship comes around and drags the first alien ship into one of ''its'' docking bays. Each alien ship appears to run just fine with a crew of two.
** The corridors and rooms in the alien ship are depicted as being vastly larger than the aliens themselves. [[spoiler: At the end we learn the reason: The aliens are actually young children. The adults find the large spaces slightly cramped.]]
* The ''Götterdämmerung'' in ''Film/IronSky'' is the monstrous flagship of the Nazi space fleet (ItMakesSenseInContext). Its guns can take out a tenth of the Moon with each shot, however, the ship is too overpowered. Since the Nazi computer technology is so far behind, their ENIAC-sized machine can't hope to run all of the ''Götterdämmerung'''s systems. [[OhCrap Then they get ahold of a smartphone]].

* In Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'' universe: the Xeelee Nightfighter. The cockpit is small, about the size of a room, but it's ''wings'' stretch out for kilometers in either direction, like vast sails. The purpose of these wings are never made evident, as the ship itself travels via teleportation.

* [[BigBad Ellis Billington]] in ''Literature/TheJenniferMorgue'' has a yacht called the ''Mabuse''. For a certain value of "yacht", anyway: the thing is a demilitarized former Russian Navy ''Krivak III''-class missile frigate. She basically exists to say that Billington is richer than Croesus. With the missile tubes and other armament having been removed, she has more than enough space for a luxurious suite of rooms [[spoiler:and a well-equipped occult surveillance operation]].
* The ''Moon'' (as in, Earth's actual moon) turns out to be a giant starship in ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'' by Creator/DavidWeber. It's revealed to have been an [[AdvancedAncientHumans ancient human starship]], and all humans on Earth are the descendants of its crew. David has said that, when designing it, he put in all the engines and weapons and defenses and armor and living space... and discovered he'd used less than half the moon's actual volume. So he added ''more'' armor & weapons, then gave the crew accommodations fit for kings. Rich, ''important'' kings. All this lead to the ship having an UnnecessarilyLargeInterior, which is lampshaded at least once. Not that all the parks and gardens aren't appreciated, of course... For bonus points, the ''Dahak'' is actually just a ''border picket''. Other ships are much larger.
* In Creator/TomHolt's ''Literature/FlyingDutch'', after the Flying Dutchman discovers that he's the richest person in the world, thanks to compound interest, he trades in his old ship for a used aircraft carrier. For his crew of less than a dozen. This was done so that these dozen immortal people who've been stuck together for over four hundred years can finally have some personal space.
* Lampshaded and called out in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' EU. When a side character gripes that if the Empire were still around, they'd be better able to handle the latest galactic crisis (the [[Literature/NewJediOrder Yuuzhan Vong invasion]]), Han Solo snaps and says no, the Empire would have built some humongous, gaudy superweapon with a ridiculously foreboding name, which would then have been destroyed through some glaring weakpoint. (This is also a TakeThat at the earlier Bantam books, which gained the somewhat undeserved[[note]]It's really only the Creator/KevinJAnderson books that do this[[/note]] FanNickname "the Superweapon-of-the-Month Club".)
* The eponymous starship in the ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe is a massive vessel [[PlanetSpaceship larger than Jupiter]] which has hundreds of thousands - or millions - of massive caverns, vacuum tube trains, and with space ports large enough to fit entire worlds inside. Even with billions of paying passengers aboard, most of the ship's space is almost totally unused. Since it was discovered streaking towards the Milky Way with signs of having flown through intergalactic space for at least a ''billion'' years, with no crew or even any records, the [[BigDumbObject original purpose for its size is totally unknown.]]
* May or may not be the case in Creator/AndreiLivadny's ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' series, at least according to the author's website. Flagship-class cruisers are noted as being nearly 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) long with a crew of about ''150'', and can actually run with no crew whatsoever thanks to InstantAIJustAddWater. Nowhere do the books justify ships of such size. One novel mentions that these cruisers carry a WaveMotionGun that takes up a ''fifth'' of its size but that's no justification for the rest of it. Another novel mentions a normal-sized cruiser (still over 5 kilometers) with a crew of 2000. For reference, the RealLife USS ''Nimitz'' is about 330 meters long and has a crew of 3200, and that's not even counting the air wing complement (2480).
* In Cordwainer Smith's short story "Golden the Ship Was, Oh, Oh, Oh!" the Earth's ultimate weapon is a gold spaceship ''nine million miles long'' with a crew of one.
* {{Justified|Trope}} in the ''Literature/MyTeacherIsAnAlien'' series with the starship New Jersey, despite it being the size of its namesake: it's actually almost as ''small'' as a [[SubspaceOrHyperspace warp-capable]] ship can be built.
* In Sergey Lukyanenko's novel ''Literature/{{Genome}}'', the Taii are an ancient galactic superpower whose strength waned after a devastating war with another equally-powerful race. Their colossal ships are still allowed to patrol space that now belongs to younger races, but they are little more than relics of ages past. It is mentioned that a tiny by comparison human destroyer is able to completely incinerate one of these Taii battleships with a single volley.

* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' is a mining ship quoted as being 6 miles long, 5 miles wide and 4 miles high, that originally had a crew of hundreds[[labelnote:specifically]]It was originally stated to have had a pre-disaster crew complement of 169. This was deemed ridicously low early on, and later mentions of the original crew retconned the figure to '''1''',169. Since series 8, the [[BackFromTheDead resurrected]] crew were '''1'''1,169 members.[[/labelnote]]. Three million years later it's crewed by a slacker who was in stasis for bringing a cat on board, a being that evolved from said cat, the ship's somewhat senile computer, a hologram of one of the dead crew, and, from series 3 onward, a robot butler they picked up on a passing asteroid. This is very much PlayedForLaughs, as the express elevators have movie screens in them so you'll have something to watch while you wait a few hours to reach your floor.
* The ''Tulip'' in ''Series/{{Starhunter}}'' is a retired luxury liner repurposed as a {{bounty hunt|er}}ing vessel. Since her crew currently consists of three people and an AI, she has so much unused space that the crew hasn't even bothered to explore the entire ship. Which led to a rather weird turn of events in one episode when a HumanPopsicle in an unexplored corridor thawed out.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': In "The Corbomite Maneuver", ''Enterprise'' encounters the First Federation ship ''Fesarius'', a spherical craft over a mile in diameter. It turns out to have just one person on board, who is three and a half feet tall.
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Remember Me". As the NegativeSpaceWedgie of the week {{Ret Gone}}s the crew of the ''Enterprise'' one by one, leaving only Beverly with any memory of them, she's eventually left questioning the logic of a starship normally crewed by around 1,000 people now having a crew consisting solely of herself and Picard (then just herself). Neither can give a satisfactory answer to that.
* The ''{{Series/Lexx}}'' is so large that small aircraft are used for internal transport, and has a crew of three, plus a disembodied robot head, and the ship itself. Justified, since the Lexx is a [[LivingShip giant biomechanical insect]] which was designed to serve as the centerpiece of a small fleet. It was to be staffed by an untold number of people, and was so large because that was how large the bug had to be to power its [[WaveMotionGun planet-killing beam]]. The reason it seems unnecessarily big is the reliance on strange biotech instead of just building a ship; the reason it seems woefully understaffed because it was ''stolen'' in the opening miniseries movie by two people and a robot head (with an undead assassin in tow). That said, being a living starship, it actually only needs one crew member (the captain) to run, with nearly all its biomechanical functions are self-maintaining. The Moth shuttles on board do die eventually, but it has [[{{Cyborg}} partially-robotic]] maintenance units to replace those.

* In the ''Franchise/StargateVerse'', the Asgard are ''all'' over this trope. Their standard ships are just under a mile long, and each ship has a total crew of ''one''. The Asgard are a dying race, so they don't have a surplus of manpower, but you'd think they would take that into account when they build their warships. Not to mention the ceilings are human-height, even though the Asgard themselves are about three feet tall, making it the equivalent of a human spacecraft with a cathedral roof. Presumably this is a throwback to before the Asgard race's genetic degradation, as millions of years ago they ''were'' [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/stargate/images/1/1d/Asgard_ancestor.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091230201030 of human-like stature]]. It's originally stated that Thor's flagship ''Beliskner'' had a normal crew complement, but Thor evacuated everyone, after the ship was infested with Replicators.

** The Doctor's Tardis: It's BiggerOnTheInside. It's designed to be piloted by six people and is only ever really operated by one. It's usually inhabited by only 1-3 people. Although the series has been inconsistent on this point, the most recent on-screen statement regarding its interior proportions (in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS") is that it's infinitely large on the inside. Expanded universe stories have established it is filled with far more than just one man could realistically make use of, including a zoo.
** "Revenge of the Cyberman" has a space station that normally has a crew of 50 being run by a crew of three, the rest having died from a plague.
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. The Liberator dwarfs the prison transport ship that encounters the alien spacecraft adrift in the second episode (so much so the StockFootage was reused for a later episode [[StockFootageFailure in the hope the audience wouldn't notice the tiny ship docked with it]]). As the title indicates the crew never exceeds seven crewmembers, one of which is its MasterComputer Zen which is perfectly capable of piloting the vessel by itself. It's never revealed what the original crew size and purpose of the vessel is.
* ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'' has the ISS ''Charon'', the flagship/palace of the [[MirrorUniverse Terran Empire]]. The thing is ''enormous'', even accounting for the giant empty space with a star-like object in the middle. In fact, the ship is so big that [[spoiler:they needed a special power source in order to be able to even power the whole thing]]. The ship is also extremely deadly, being able to devastate an entire hemisphere of a planet with a single barrage of torpedoes. [[spoiler:The ship is eventually destroyed, an it's implied that no other such craft will be created by the Empire]].

* In ''Webcomic/NipAndTuck's'' ShowWithinAShow "Rebel Cry" the Federation's new flagship the ''Cygnus'' was referred to as a "grotesque example of government waste". But the rebels found it an ideal long-range colony ship when they hijacked it.
* In ''Webcomic/CommanderKitty'', [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2010/11/28/tour-guides/ Zenith Central is a moon-sized research facility with a crew of one, not counting the handful of android assistants on board.]] [[spoiler: It turns out that [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2012/02/12/sharing-information/ Zenith Central also stores around 45% of the galaxy's population,]] [[http://www.commanderkitty.com/2012/07/22/welcome-to-the-machine-2/ though most are stored as transporter patterns in a hard drive small enough to pick up and carry.]]]]

* In ''Machinima/ClearSkies'', the titular ship is a ''Tempest''-class battleship, approximately the same size as a [[StarWars Star Destroyer]]. It has a crew of less than five.

* The ''Absolution'' from Creator/{{Toonami}} is incredibly huge, but it only has one operator ([=TOM=]), the AI (SARA) and a handful of assistants (the Clydes and/or DOKs). Considering it's only used as a broadcast center, who knows what they need all that space for. The ''Absolution'' 2 and 2.5 ships were a lot more compact, and its' hangars were shown to be far smaller (one on the bottom routinely released swarms of Clyde 53s, while the other one, located at the back, was even smaller and only held TOM's personal fighter craft), but it still likely had a lot of unused space. Averted by the ''Absolution'' 3, which was far more compact, but played straight by the current ship, the ''Vindication'', which is pretty damn big (it was in fact thought to be an abandoned base on the desert planet of Shogo 162, until [[WesternAnimation/TheIntruderII outside circumstances]] revealed it was in fact a massive ship that had been buried in the ground; TOM and SARA then had the ship break free of the now-dying planet).
* The episode "Battle Of The Planets", from ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'', has ''the entire planet of Mars'' being converted into a giant spaceship, piloted by Zim. Later on, Mercury is also revealed to be a spaceship, which Dib promptly uses to fight Zim, leading to a hilarious montage of Zim and Dib bumping the planets into each other and actually ''dogfighting''. With ''planets''.