Actually it still fits the trope - using your Saturn example you'd still have to have Titan right at the right spot in its orbit. However you put out a good in-universe Justification for the use of the trope.
"Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
This trope seems like nonsensical cruft. I can't even figure out what it's applying to. Isn't this just "Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale?" Is it a subtrope? What kind of situation would this apply to? More over, how is this a tool? It looks like it's just complaining.
I think this should be removed.
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It's a subtrope of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
"What kind of situation would this apply to?"
In a nutshell: To have your spacecraft in trouble and to suddenly go "Hey, there's a planet over there!" is ridiculous beyond ridiculous. Space geography is far too complicated and too full of nothing to have that happen.
"More over, how is this a tool? It looks like it's just complaining."
As stated on the main page, A chance to visit a Single-Biome Planet or a planet with a dark secret offers far more story options than a spacecraft silently cruising for eternity, running out of power and with a group of mummifying bodies on board.
"I think this should be removed."
Just because you don't understand it? I suspect you just fell victim to Wall of Text. The reason the trope exists is because so few people understand what true space travel entails, and following reality would make for a boring story. Relax - if your head spins as you try to grasp the concept it doesn't mean you are stupid, it means you're normal.
Edited by pittsburghmuggle "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
I'd actually like to call Pitch Black an aversion: They managed legitimate reasons for why there was a planet nearby when they had trouble (they had trouble because they were in a solar system in the first place; the space-lane they were in crossed it), and how they are likely to be able to pick up help again, despite only having a short-range ship. (They just need to get back to that same space lane, which is inside the solar system.) They pulled the equivalent of flying through the rings of Saturn, getting hit by a part of the ring (unlikely, but if you've got a space lane there it'll happen sooner or later - it's actually an aversion of this trope that this was considered safe, as on average it probably is safe), and then landing on Titan. The only real question is why they can't call from help from the surface, and that's quickly a moot point.
(I didn't want to start an edit war, so I thought I'd check here first.)
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