All of the characters are on a ship that travels through space, a "space" ship, if you like. Exotic locations like Adventure Towns
or the Planet of Hats
are just a "hyperjump
The term comes verbatim from Gene Roddenberry's original pitch for Star Trek: The Original Series
in the middle of the 1960s, and references the early Western show Wagon Train
, which was about a wagon train making its way west
. The original is now less well known than the "...to the stars" phrase, making it an example of the "Weird Al" Effect
Note that these shows need not necessarily take place in outer space. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
, for example, was essentially a Wagon Train to the Stars show, underwater. (so, recycled in the ocean?)
The ship is often enough, as in Wagon Train
, a colonization/settlement
effort that never quite gets to its destination
, at least until the finale. If the ship has no fixed destination (Doctor Who, Firefly
) then this overlaps with Walking the Earth
, sharing most of the same tropes. In either case, it may feature the Bold Explorer
Compare Space Western
, Space Opera
Anime and Manga
- Animorphs: The journey that Marco, Santorelli, Menderash, Jeanette, Tobias and Jake take aboard the Rachel to find the Blade ship was, at least according to Marco. We never get the details of their adventures, though.
- Night on the Galactic Railroad
- Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky has interstellar colonization by means of quite literal wagon trains, using artificial gateways to get to their destination planets. They're not the focus of the book, but twice we see wagon trains preparing to embark.
- Star Wars has an evil version: the Yuuzhan Vong. They're from another galaxy, and had to travel millions of light-years at slower than light speed. They came in a HUGE fleet.
- So huge, in fact, that the novels created a Retcon stating that the primary reason the Empire constructed the Death Star and its other superweapons was to use them against the Yuuzhan Vong. The fact that they could be used to enforce their rule through fear and to fight the Rebellion was merely a bonus.
- In Melanie Rawn's unfinished Exiles trilogy, colonists from Earth find a new home in another solar system. Rawn named their spaceship after the actual wagon one of her ancestors rode out West.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek and spinoffs (except Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was set on a space station) is both the Trope Maker and the Trope Codifier. The trope is the phrase Gene Roddenberry used to pitch the show to network executives.
- Doctor Who
- Red Dwarf
- Battlestar Galactica (Classic) (and its 21st century Continuity Reboot of the same name) took it further by having a small 'ragtag fleet' of ships under the Galactica's protection, forming a literal Wagon Train to the Stars (well, minus the wagons anyway. And they were trying to get to Earth, from the stars, but that's not important right now).
- Space: 1999
- Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
- The second season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
- Stargate SG-1 has often been this, especially in its first seasons. Technically, it doesn't take place on a spaceship, but there's not much practical difference between a base that stays inside a mountain and has a gate to a new world each week, and a ship that actually travels to a new world each week.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. There is a colony ship which is traveling to another planet. Evil aliens keep attacking and damaging it, and some of the damage can't be repaired, so while they started off with 10 engines, by the end they have only one, then zero. But, they did eventually get to their destination, which was covinently the home planet of the alien team member none of them had any way of knowing it was beforehand.
- Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito is a literal Wagon Train Through The Books.
- Kingdom Hearts makes this a prominent (and very convenient) aspect of gameplay.
- Super Mario Galaxy (though without the spaceship).
- While the Galaxy in Mass Effect has a very effective and fast hyperspace highway network and the player never quite goes out of their way to explore new frontiers, the Normandy, her crew and the assorted adventures they have over the course of an overarching plot remain the heart and soul of the series' appeal.
- The Quarian race have been living the life of space nomads for the past 300 years. While most of the spacefaring species are organized in the Citadel Council, the quarians lost their homewold in a Robot War and have been living on spaceships ever since. They travel the stars as scavengers who salvage wrecked ships, until one day they find a way to take back their ancestral home with the protagonist's help.