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A quick shout out before today's video: Since over on Space Doc's Patreon, we've made some wallpapers featuring the main spaceships from our reference books. You can download these by pledging at the lowest tier, and there may be a tiny hint for the next reference book in one of them. Check out the link in the description or pinned comments below if you're interested; it supports us a lot. Thanks.
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On with the main video, and today we're looking at the idea of the lost planet; particularly the relationship they form between science fiction and other media and mythology. With Lost Islands and other hidden places on Earth being a very common idea, from Atlantis to Indiana Jones, there's just something so evocative and endlessly fascinating about rediscovering something that was lost. And a lot of the time, finding treasure beyond one's wildest dreams, or of gaining great power that allows one to conquer their enemies. The question is, does this translate well to sci-fi? Uh, yes, of course it does.
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Hang on, hang on—we're not there yet. Sure, the idea of lost places fits right in on a plot level, but I mean, can you actually lose a whole planet? The idea of lost locations works well in historical fiction because maps were handmade, inaccurate, and didn't cover the whole globe. It's very easy for knowledge of a place somewhere over the horizon to be lost in that context. In the modern age, it becomes more difficult due to how powerful technology is. The entire planet has been photographed from space, and you can look it up on your phone. But that doesn't help with finding something underground, does it? Losing a whole world in the science fiction setting, with even more capable technology and star maps and the like, seems much more difficult. Surely you'd just be able to look for it, since there's no horizon in space. Even now, we can look out and see planets around stars. The real challenge here is knowing where to look, which also applies to looking for lost islands and the like across the surface of an entire planet. It might be possible to survey an entire planetary surface from space, but searching through an entire galaxy with trillions of stars to find one special planet is like searching for a needle in a pile of needles. You need to narrow down the search area, but it also helps to know exactly what you're looking for: an ocean world, a desert, a distinctive moon. If it's a barren rock you're after, then there's a lot more options.
Found anything yet? We ain't found nothin'. But there are other ways to have a planet be lost. Isos in Mass Effect is actually a known location that's normally just really far away in a dangerous region of space and is thus inaccessible. Due to that, what makes the planet lost is that the mass relay normally used to fast travel there got flacked by a supernova, pushing it away and cloaking it in hot gas. As a little side note, I find this particularly interesting because it ties right back into how the makers of the relays, the Reapers, use them to control the denizens of the galaxy. Perhaps if tech developed along different routes, Isos and the key to stopping the Reaper invasion in the first game would have been easily accessible.
Another different example of the way a planet can be lost is seen in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which also goes down the route of giving the planet treasure. This planet is Atin, a place that was deliberately kept hidden because of what it produced. Due to this and its concealed nature, it gained a sort of mythical status among the vagabonds of the galaxy, which only heightened after the fall of the Republic. It produced coins. For what kept it shrouded from hungry eyes was a fake gas giant created by lightning-spewing defense satellites. So even if you knew what sort of planet you were looking for, you wouldn't be able to spot it from a distance, and then you'd be zapped if you tried to look closer with any unauthorized ship. There's other kinds of lost planets hidden throughout Star Wars. Thanks to the size and age of the franchise, the Ahsoka show made a whole trip to another galaxy, making the lost part the route to get there, sort of similar to Isos in Mass Effect.
Overall, the Lost Planet here goes all in on the fantasy vibes. The puzzle box map artifact is unlocked with a magic spell at an ancient monument, and the lost land itself is surrounded by bones and filled with monolithic stone structures. The reasons the characters have for going there are also very different, since only for Skull is the location itself important, and for reasons we don't yet know.
Speaking of Star Wars: Lost Planet, we sadly have to talk about Exagol, because this is an example of a bad way to do one. In theory, this hidden, dark, and evil Sith planet sounds intriguing, but in practice, it just ends up being kind of silly. The treasure map is an absurd set of contrivances that's contrasted by the ease Kylo Ren has getting there, and the payoff of a bunch of copypasted doomsday devices at the other end isn't very satisfying at all. Which also applies to Necroto in Borderlands 3. This is the home world of the Iridians, the mysterious aliens whose robots and artifacts we've had hints of throughout the whole series, and whose vaults all of the games' plots have revolved around in some way. This makes Necroto fail like El Dorado, the treasure trove of treasure troves. It was considered lost since it was cloaked by strange interference that no one could see through. Oh wait, you just get sent there by a guy who was inside content, and he found it by accident, and there's other people there already. Oh okay. At least the environment itself fits the vibes. Borderlands 4 also looks like it's going to take place on its own hidden planet, judging by whatever that sky-shattering thing is in the trailer, but who knows if this is going to feel like a lost world or somewhere cut off from the galaxy. Atin in Skeleton Crew was similar, but it did at least feel different and strange compared to what was going on outside. Kind of important for lost places to feel lost and disconnected, which was very much the case with Earth in Battlestar Galactica. That whole series was about finding the lost tribe of Earth after the 12 colonies were wiped out by the Cylons. While the story of Earth started out just being used to give people hope, it did turn into a real search for that lost world. There's all sorts of clues along the way, acting as the map, with a little bit of nudging from the hand of God, but there was no treasure at the end. Instead, they found total devastation. Hell of a way to do our lost planet, especially one that had been built up from the very start.
A similar long buildup came with Stargate Atlantis. This felt like it took a couple of seasons for the various hints and breadcrumbs and storylines to all coalesce in the SG-1 season 7 finale, which led into an entire spin-off show. And yes, this was presented as being a search for a lost city rather than a planet, but I'm going to stretch the definition a little bit because of the blatant mythological inspiration from the real fictional Atlantis. This ancient, advanced civilization ruled the world before being lost beneath the waves and has been a massive source of fuel for the imagination for literally thousands of years. It's so embedded in Western culture and fiction and pseudocience that it's probably the root of many of the things I spoke about earlier, even if unconsciously or indirectly. Sometimes we see greed get tied in with Atlantis, but it's more often linked with mournful longing for the past or just wondering about the mystery behind it. It's what makes it such an interesting idea. In contrast, a lot of the lost planets we see in sci-fi revolve around hunts for treasure or power. These very much stem from the romanticized version of pirates seen in Treasure Island, sometimes very literally, which is what makes Stargate's version of Atlantis a bit different, since the goal behind finding it was more about using it to defend themselves against Anubis. It ends up feeling like a bit of a hybrid in that degree, stuck between being a literal interpretation of the Lost City and a hidden source of power.
As we can see, there's lots of variation in how you can lose an entire planet in the first place, and there's also just as many different reasons for people to be searching for one, and how important it can be that this reason and the way to find it mesh together in a satisfying manner. And finally, the way that the Lost Land trope has been used and changed by sci-fi is a brilliant example of how sci-fi can be used as a sort of genre modifier on top of being a genre by itself.
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