Vulcan Has No Moon

Space is big. Space is very, very big. Because space is big, objects are usually very far apart. But empty skies and vast lanes of the void of space are not aesthetically pleasing. This trope is in effect when objects in space are visible in locations where they make no sense, either due to the science or due to pre-established canon.

Related Tropes: Asteroid Thicket, Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. Subtrope of Space Does Not Work That Way.

Examples of Vulcan Has No Moon include:

Anime

• In Robotech/Macross the Zentradi destroy an object after the SDF-1 leaves Mars orbit but before reaching Earth. Despite the fact that there aren't even asteroids between Earth and Mars in regular orbits the object is very clearly spherical making it at the very least a Dwarf Planet (and we've certainly accounted for all those). In the dub Lisa refers to it as the planet Palomir ... Okey dokey then.

Comic Books

• In Cry for Justice, Green Lantern and Green Arrow fly through an asteroid thicket, despite the fact that they traveled from Earth orbit to the surface, where logically there should be no asteroids.
• There was once a Donald Duck comic where Earth appeared improbably big in the sky of Mars.

Film

• Despite the Trope Namer, the 2009 reboot shows Delta Vega as close enough for Spock Prime to witness the destruction of Vulcan without a telescope. This either ends up Handwaved as a psychic vision or one of the many Delta Vegas throughout the galaxy.
• In John Carter, Mars's moons are shown as two huge spheres in the sky that are always right next to each other. In reality, Mars's moons are extremely tiny, and their orbital rates are so different — 2.7 days east-to-west for Deimos, 11 hours west-to-east for Phobos — that they hardly ever line up together in the sky.
  • Nevermind the fact that Phobos and Deimos aren't even remotely spherical.

Live-Action TV

• The Trope Namer is an early episode of Star Trek in which Spock tells Uhura the trope name in response to her flirting. In contrast, Star Trek the Motion Picture shows a massive "moon" in the sky.
  • Justified in that it's so big, in fact, that Vulcan does not technically have a moon; Vulcan is a binary planet. This specificity is quite within Vulcan character.

Western Animation

• Frequently mentioned in Rick and Morty. As Rick frequently snipes whenever Morty is bored, space is huge. Their ship is often shown to be the only thing in space.