Shipless Faster-Than-Light Travel

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a beam of light to catch."

— prot, K-PAX

Faster-than-light travel is typically depicted as something only achievable through artificial means, typically exemplified by specialized interstellar vessels. Some characters and beings, however, can freely move between stellar systems under their own power, moving faster than the speed of light without any aid or protection other than what they were born with.

This power is often in the repertoire of Flying Brick superheroes and other winners of the Superpower Lottery. In settings where both magic and space travel exist, it's also possible for powerful wizards to be able to use their sorcery to cross the gulfs of space between distant worlds. This ability also tends to turn up among Space Whales and other monstrous denizens of the void to explain how they're able to move across interstellar space.

Naturally, this trope is related to Batman Can Breathe in Space, since characters of this sort will need to be able to survive exposure to hard vacuum. Depending on the ease of doing this, Casual Interstellar Travel and Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale can also apply.

Note that people that use open-cockpit spacecraft or teleportation to travel across interstellar distances do not count for this trope. Only the explicit ability to physically travel faster than light with no artificial aid counts for examples. Robotic characters are also permitted, provided that they are depicted as robots first and chiefly instead of Sapient Ships or the like.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • Goku learns the Instant Transmission technique from the Yardrat in Dragon Ball Z that lets him lock onto and revisit anyone he's met before, even over interstellar distances. It's usually portrayed as teleportation but some of the movies show him flying through another dimension.
  • Angels in Dragon Ball Super such as Whiss have the Warp technique that lets them fly to distant parts of the universe and other dimensions like the afterlife, rarely taking longer than half an hour.
  • Super also gives us Jiren. When he's really in a hurry, he'll get out of his spaceship and fly faster than it.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • The Flash. Depending on the Writer, Barry and/or Wally are capable of vastly outpacing the speed of light thanks to a connection to the Speed Force. In fact, races with Superman are a recurring theme.
  • Green Lantern: All Lantern Corps members can zip across the vast expanse of the cosmos with only their ring protecting them from the cold vacuum.
  • Superman, naturally, can fly across space to visit distant worlds, although it is worth mentioning that he had to go into special training in order to learn how to hold his breath long enough to make this viable. Pre-Crisis, he could do this naturally.
  • Space Dolphins in Superman: Lost are shown to be capable of accelerating to warp speeds in the vacuum of space.
• Invincible:
  • Viltrumites can hold their breath for months, reach escape velocity with their innate flight powers, and apparently travel between stars.
  • Allen the Alien runs a circuit of Coalition planets, evaluating their champions' ability to defend their plant, with no sign of needing a ship.
• Marvel Universe:
  • All Cosmic Entities and deities can fly across space without need of a ship. Thanks to the Power Cosmic, the mortal Heralds of Galactus can do this as well, notably the Silver Surfer being able to space-surf.
  • This is a standard ability of Phoenix Hosts, though Jean Grey proved capable of this even without the Phoenix.
  • Various superheroes are powerful enough to both survive in a vacuum and travel space faster than light. Captain Marvel and the various Captain Marvels after him are a notable example due to being primarily space-based superheroes.

Films — Live-Action

• The Flash (2023): Barry learns he can travel through time by running faster than the speed of light.
• Galaxy Quest: The setting's equivalent to teleportation technology functions by putting a forcefield around a person and shooting them through space. The FTL portion of this journey is accomplished by shooting them through an Unrealistic Black Hole.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005): Implied. The dolphins are shown flying up into the sky when they finish their song. The book and radio show just say that they leave Earth before it's destroyed but don't specify how, although a later radio series released after the movie has them teleporting.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain Marvel can fly interstellar distances under her own power.
  • Eternals: The Celestials are planet-sized beings that can fly through space under their own power.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Implied with Adam Warlock, as he flies into Knowhere to attack Rocket with no mention of an offscreen spaceship.
• Word of God says that when Superman Spins The Earth Backwards in Superman: The Movie and the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II, he's actually flying faster than light.

Literature

• All Tomorrows: The New Machines were able to holiday on distant planets by growing hyperdrives out of their own bodies.
• "Ask A Foolish Question'': Members of two alien species go to the Answerer in order to ask it questions. One is some kind of giant that goes "leaping from star to star", the other is a group of aliens which wanted to ask, among other things, "Why all places are different, although there is no distance" — their method of travel is teleporting without any motion as they perceive it.
• Cthulhu Mythos: Multiple creatures can travel faster than light from different star systems, planets and dimensions using magic or being invoked including but not limited to Star Vampires, Mi-Gos, Dimensional Shamblers and Yag-Kosha's people.
• The Dark Side of the Sun: The Sundogs are sapient Space Whales who possess a natural ability to travel through Interspace. Some of them will accept payments to carry small spaceships with them.
• Last Son of Krypton, which features the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths version of Superman, has Superman be able to visit an alien solar system without any kind of artificial aids just by flying really fast.
• Micromégas is a near planet-sized giant humanoid who can travel interstellar distances without a spaceship.
• The method of FTL in Stone by Adam Roberts doesn't work on anything much larger than a couple of people. Interstellar travel is accomplished by handheld devices that coat the traveller in a foam that protects them from outer space and propels them at faster than light speeds. Larger spaceships travel through near-lightspeed Time Dilation.
• Superfolks: David Brinkley can fly from Earth to the edge of the universe fairly quickly.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: "Warriors' Gate" describes the Tharils, leonine humanoids who can travel through the space-time Vortex without needing a ship of any kind. An early scene in the story has the Doctor and Romana being shocked when a Tharil casually walks into the TARDIS console room while they are in flight.
• Thermoman and other Ultronians from My Hero can fly interstellar distances in seconds.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek Log 8: On an expedition outside the galaxy, the Enterprise captures a huge creature that can travel at warp speed.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Chimera", the crew encounters a Changeling, Laas, who has transformed into a space creature capable of overtaking their runabout at Warp speed.
• Ultra Series: The various heroes are fully capable of travelling from their homeworld in Nebula M78 to distant planets without the need for starships. They have starships (in the online exclusive Ultra Galaxy Fight: The Absolute Conspiracy series, Princess Yullian is seen travelling in one) and the Ultras have been seen using red orbs to travel (though that seems to be in order to conserve their strength in preparation for a fight), but normally Ultras are shown to easily travel between worlds or even galaxies.

Tabletop Games

• Champions:
  • The Circle and M.E.T.E.: Elt (one of the aliens at M.E.T.E.) can travel through space using faster-than-light travel.
  • A character with Flight, FTL Travel and appropriate Life Support can do this.
• Mutants & Masterminds: Any character with the appropriate powers can fly through space by themselves.
• Pathfinder:
  • "Starflight" is a rare ability possessed by creatures like some Eldritch Abominations and Outer Dragons, allowing them to make faster-than-light journeys through space. As a Required Secondary Power, it also allows them to survive in the void of space, though most are The Needless anyway.
  • The high-tier "Star Walker" ability available to The Archmage Mythic Path allows a character to conjure up a climate-controlled bubble that propels them (and, optionally, passengers) through space at faster-than-light speeds.

Toys

• Transformers: Zigzagged. A few Transformers do have the ability to travel between worlds without ships, mostly those that transform into spaceships or the like. However, it's also made clear this is very energy-consumptive and risky, which is why options like space bridges and warp gates are preferred. A few examples include:
  • Omega Supreme's alternate mode includes a gigantic rocket that has been utilised for transport in the G1 cartoon. However, in both "The God Gambit" (where he transported a team of Autobots from Earth to Saturn's moon Titan) and "The Key to Vector Sigma" (where he brought Autobots to Cybertron, at the time possibly just outside the solar system) the strain left him weakened. In "The God Gambit" he wasn't fully fueled even before departing, and he was left so low on energy he wasn't able to transform. In "The Key to Vector Sigma" he was weakened enough that Shockwave inflicted heavy damage in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, resulting in him exploding when he managed to get the team back to Earth.
  • Cosmos in his flying saucer mode has been shown to travel around space fairly easily. In "Quest For Survival" he, Bumblebee and Spike stop by a different planet to pick up robotic insecticide (to battle the Insecticons), and in "The God Gambit" he's shot down while travelling nearby Saturn.
  • Astrotrain not only can fly through space while he's in space shuttle mode, he can also carry a large number of other Decepticons inside him at the same time. Even massive Combiners such as Devastator are able to fit inside his shuttle mode without issue.
  • Star Saber and Galaxy Shuttle transform into a starship and space shuttle respectively. Star Saber in particular actually leaves Earth in one episode to attend a meeting on Planet V in his role as commander of the Pan-Galactic Defense Force, and during a visit to the Micromaster homeworld of Micro while the accompanying Rescue Squad and Jan Minakaze need Galaxy Shuttle to transport them Star Saber simply flies there himself. Unlike Omega Supreme, there's no indication that this strains him at all, though as a Brainmaster he's explicitly much more powerful than the average Transformer, even one as mighty as Omega Supreme.
  • When they are brought back to life in "The Return of Convoy", both Optimus Prime and Megatron (in their new forms as Star Convoy and Super Megatron respectively) no longer need spaceships to travel between worlds and easily make interplanetary journeys using their alternate modes. Super Megatron being able to do so thanks to his starfighter mode makes a bit more sense than Star Convoy's futuristic truck mode, though.
  • In the first live-action Transformers film, the Autobots are depicted as arriving on Earth in comet-like "entry" modes before scanning nearby vehicles. Related media show that the Decepticons likewise did the same, that being the reason why US soldiers recognised Blackout's markings as those of a helicopter that went down some time ago (the implication of course being that Blackout silenced all witnesses).
  • Unicron has this ability as well, though as a planet-sized Mechanical Abomination God of Evil, it's probably one of his more minor powers.

Video Games

• Escape Velocity Nova: The Vell-os are a psionic subrace of humanity who form their "ships" out of psychic barriers as needed (storywise on a temporary basis — they disembark by dissolving them once they've landed on a planet — though game-mechanics have them as permanent and only exchangeable at shipyards), and in said constructs Vell-os are fully capable of hyperspace travel without any technological assistance.
• EXTRAPOWER: In general, FTL travel exists, as spacecraft can travel across the universe in the matter of hours or days instead of generation, but it still takes time. In Attack of Darkforce, Astral Gate is able to transport Sharkungo the distance from the Shakun Star to Earth almost instantly via the use of his Ghost Gate to warn the Earth of the coming Dark Force invasion before it arrives.
• Megaton Rainfall: The SuperLuminal Flight ability lets you fly at a trillion times the speed of light and reach other galaxies in minutes.
• StarCraft:
  • Zerg Overlords are Giant Flyers that can function both in atmosphere and in deep space, which is explained as being regulated through unknown symbiotic organisms. They can also travel through warp space, but rely on psychics like the Overmind and Kerrigan to get them in and out.
  • StarCraft II introduces the Zerg Leviathan, a creature that doubles as a living capital ship. They have the additional ability to travel through warp space under their own power.

Webcomics

• Star Power: Wielders of the Star Power have the unique ability (for the present galactic civilization) to travel FTL between stars without a gate, much less a ship.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: Two of Ben's aliens are shown have this ability: Jetray and Chromastone. Jetray enters hyperspace in one episode and flies halfway across the galaxy in just a few seconds, while a genetic duplicate of Chromastone can fly to his homeworld from Earth within minutes.
• Men in Black: The Series: The Charnok from "The Irritable Bow-Wow Syndrome" travel through space by latching onto meteors, being able to survive atmospheric entry thanks to very tough skin that they simply shed once they land.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "The Call", the purrgil — a species of tentacled Space Whales — are revealed to be able to naturally enter hyperspace and travel faster than light without the need for mechanical aid, provided that they are able to gather large quantities of a specific gas first to power their organic hyperdrives. It's speculated in the episode that ancient spacefarers witnessing purrgil migrations may have been what inspired the invention of hyperspace travel to begin with.
• Steven Universe: Implied by Lapis who, once freed of her imprisonment, flies back home to Homeworld. She later contacts Steven on Earth saying that Homeworld has become unrecognizable to her, meaning she did reach Homeworld in that short period of time flying through space with her water-wings.

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