The Dark Portal: cutting the Outland <-> Azeroth journey down from lightyears to a few hundred yards.
"Rod did not glance at the statue; he looked at the gates. It was late afternoon and heavily overcast at east coast North America, but gate one was open to some planetary spot having glaring noonday sun; Rod could catch glimpses through it of men dressed in shorts and sun hats and nothing else. Gate two had a pressure lock rigged over it; it carried a big skull & crossbones sign and the symbol for chlorine."
Science fiction stories about interplanetary or interstellar travel normally feature spaceships. In these stories, though, there exists some sort of technological device or technique that allows people to simply step (or drive) through some sort of portal or gateway from the surface of one planet to another. This sort of technology can allow for settings with very Casual Interplanetary Travel or even Casual Interstellar Travel; your house may not even be on the same planet as your job, and the restaurant where you eat your lunch may be on yet another planet. In some settings, such technology may also co-exist with more conventional vessels that fly through space (or "jump" through hyperspace).
A form of Teleportation, but in this case the teleportation is not short-ranged, but rather takes place across interplanetary or interstellar space. Also a sub-trope of Cool Gate and Portal Network; unlike some Cool Gates or Portal Networks, in this trope, the "gates" or "portals" are not out in space, and do not require the use of a spacecraft of any sort to travel through them (nor do these doorways take you to "another universe" or "a magical land of talking animals" — these doorways take you to alien planets in our universe, or at the very least, between planets in some Science Fantasy where "planets" as places you can go co-exist with elves and wizards). Doorways Between Planets may not require any sort of receiving device on the far end, with the "door" or "gate" simply projected or opened in some way on the surface of an alien world; alternatively, travel may need an existing apparatus at the far end, necessitating spaceships of some kind as well as the portals themselves. The Trope Maker or Ur-Example seems to have been the 1951 novella The Wind Between the Worlds by Lester del Rey, while the Trope Codifier is likely the 1955 Robert A. Heinlein juvenile novel Tunnel in the Sky.
As is the case with many sorts of Portal Networks, once established, travel through such Doorways Between Planets is usually a form of Faster-Than-Light Travel, with the process of going through the gateway and then stepping out through the other side (potentially light years away) often being instantaneous. Distinguished also from Shipless Faster-Than-Light Travel, which is about characters who can simply fly through space all on their own. If one planet has many Doorways linking it to many other planets, this is a form of Portal Crossroad World.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Martian Manhunter was brought to Earth by an experimental teleporter. The scientist who built it explained that it would take years of reprogramming to send him home before dying of a heart attack. By the time the Martian Manhunter had become powerful enough to just fly home, the teleporter had been retconned to a Time Machine and the Martian civilization was long extinct.
- Silver Surfer: Black: After being pulled 14 billion years into the past, the Silver Surfer ends up on a planet covered in antilife, its only visible structure a massive Gigeresque gateway guarded by three symbiote-possessed gods. After defeating them, the Silver Surfer examines the gateway, only for Knull—god of the symbiotes—to grab him and pull him through—revealing the gateway to be a portal to the Symbiote Throneworld.
- Star Wars Legends: The Kwa of Dathomir used Infinity Gates housed in pyramidal Star Temples that used "the power of the cosmos" (i.e., the Force) to instantaneously transport themselves across the galaxy without the use of starships. These first appeared in Star Wars: Republic, where the Nightsisters, a Dark Side cult that had formed on the Kwa's homeworld, tried to use these gates to channel a Force ritual that would destroy Coruscant. General worldbuilding on the Gates was expanded upon primarily in reference books and fact files after that, but Dawn of the Jedi also depicts that most of them were sealed or destroyed in an attempt to stymie the conquests of the then-nascent Rakatan Infinite Empire.
- Superman:
- Year of the Comet: Superboy-Prime was teleported from Krypton to Earth as a baby, thanks to Jor-El's teleportation tube.
- The Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe version of Superman is a Kryptonian police officer who chased a criminal to a teleportation lab and the two of them get sent on a one-way trip to Earth.
Fan Works
- The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: One example of the Endless Empire's advanced technology is the ability to construct massive portals to allow their soldiers to simply walk through to whatever poor place they're conquering.
- Us and Them: There are portals in the Forgotten Capital that were once connected to an interstellar network. The network still exists, it just turns out that this particular gate was abandoned until Shinra accidentally activates one, much to the consternation of the officials on the other side who send a team to investigate. This results in Ifalna and Professor Gast getting rescued from Shinra custody and brought through the portal. Unfortunately, since it had been inactive so long, the portal malfunctions and they emerge on the other side ten years later, meaning Aeris and Sephiroth grow up not knowing what happened to them.
Films — Animation
- America Chavez's mothers forced her into a teleporter and sent her to Sarth to save her from a Kree invasion in Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors.
- Treasure Planet: The eponymous planet is the hideout of legendary pirate Nathaniel Flint, and where he's stored "the loot of a thousand worlds." Verily, when the RLS Legacy arrives at this planet, they discover that it's actually a giant construct which powers a portal generator that can access anywhere in the galaxy instantly. This explains how Flint was able to appear out of nowhere, raid merchant vessels galore, then disappear without a trace. Somehow, it never occurred to Flint and his band that they could make an honest and wealthy living routing shipping traffic through their portal planet for a fee, switch-gating the ships from Planet A to Planet B in mere minutes.
Films — Live-Action
- The Psychlos in Battlefield Earth have a network of teleporters on all their occupied planets in several galaxies to the point that Terl can nip back to their home planet after work to visit a bar.
- Kin-Dza-Dza! is about two men teleported to a distant galaxy by a stranger with a machine.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Thor: In this Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and its sequels, the rainbow bridge known as the Bifrost is used to move from Asgard to other worlds, including Earth. The concept of Bifrost has its roots in Norse Mythology, where the Bifrost was used to move among the Nine Worlds (including Midgard; that is, Earth) — in Norse mythology, these might be better understood as "realms" rather than planets in our modern sense. In Thor and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is more of a Science Fantasy feel, and the distinction between "supernatural realm" and "alien planet" is blurred.
- Thanos gets the ability to teleport or create portals to anywhere in the universe after acquiring the Space Stone in Avengers: Infinity War.
- In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the Four deal with Galactus by sending him through a portal to a distant part of the universe, separating him from his spaceship.
- In Masters of the Universe (1987), the Cosmic Key can teleport people from the planet Eternia at the center of the universe to Earth and back. It's also a time machine.
- Men in Black: International: One of the methods aliens use to get to and from Earth is a series of hyperspace gates at the MIB headquarters, with the MIB serving as de facto customs agents.
- In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie, Zordon beams the Power Rangers to the planet Phaedos so they can obtain the Great Power and save him.
- The sonic transducer from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a method of Destructive Teleportation that can break down matter and beam it across space and time. At the end of the movie, a castle is sent to a distant galaxy. The unmade The Revenge of the Old Queen sequel would have revealed that the Transylvanians had a Portal Network of teleporters hidden in hotel showers across Earth.
- Stargate: An alien device, the titular Stargate — shaped like a 22-foot-wide ring with nine chevrons and constellations inscribed on the front — is discovered buried in the desert here on Earth. It turns out to be a Precursor artifact which, when activated, allows people to simply step through the swirly surface and come out through a different Stargate on the surface of another planet in another galaxy. The constellations are used as three-dimensional coordinates in space; when six constellations, and a seventh representing the point of origin, are encoded, the gate attempts to form a wormhole to a corresponding gate at the indicated location.
- Star Trek movies:
- Subverted in Star Trek: Generations when Picard is told that when he leaves the Nexus he can reappear in any place or time. He just appears a few minutes before he went in in the same place rather than going to an earlier point in time where he could have stopped Soren more easily.
- In Star Trek (2009) Future Spock helps Scotty develop "transwarp beaming" that allows them to teleport on to the Enterprise that had already left at warp speed. Spock implies it's more commonplace in the future but it's never been mentioned before or will be again after Into Darkness.
- Khan steals the formula for transwarp beaming in Star Trek Into Darkness (Scotty mentions that Starfleet confiscated it off him) and uses it to teleport to the Klingon homeworld. The novelisation says this was a dangerous Multistage Teleport that had a high chance of killing him.
- The people of the planet Pluton in TerrorVision convert mutated pets into energy and beam them to the far reaches of the universe. The plot kicks off when a satellite dish accidentally reforms one of them on Earth. Pluthar teleports to Earth near the end, hoping to stop the creature.
Literature
- "Birth Of A Salesman": In this humorous short story by James Tiptree Jr. (her first published story), a vast network of interstellar commerce ships goods via "transmitters" located on various planets. The transmitter links are between fixed places, and so to get from one planet to another generally requires going through multiple worlds (in one case "fifteen transfer points"). The protagonist is the head of a government agency which advises merchants wanting to ship goods from one world to another on the multitudinous ways in which their seemingly innocuous products may trigger strange (and potentially destructive) reactions on this or that intermediate transfer point due to the Bizarre Alien Biology and religious or other cultural hang-ups of that planet's denizens.
- A Colder War: In Charles Stross's Alternate History story (a Genre Mashup of the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cold War) there are a number of "gates" linking places on Earth with alien worlds (including one leading from the basement of the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., to the alien planet XK-Masada, where the National Reconnaissance Office has built a secret base). These gates were built by the Predecessors; humans don't know how to build (or destroy) them, but have learned how to travel through them.
- Commonwealth Saga: This series of novels by Peter F. Hamilton features wormholes which directly link together the surfaces of many planets. Most interstellar travel is therefore by train — some of the locomotives are nuclear powered. (The setting also features spaceships.)
- Professor Chronotis's time machine in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a doorway that can be linked to any point in time or space. Notably, he was written for a cancelled Doctor Who episode where his apartment was a TARDIS.
- "The Door To Saturn": In this short story by Clark Ashton Smith, the titular artifact is a hinged panel set into the inside wall of the sorcerer Eibon's Mage Tower, opening to allow one-way passage to the (unrealistically habitable) planet Saturn. Eibon's alien Patron God Zhothaqquah awarded it to him so he could escape Earth justice, but complications ensue when Eibon's enemy follows him through.
- Empire from the Ashes: This trilogy by David Weber has "mat-trans" technology alongside its moon-sized (and larger) starships. The mat-trans network not only allows travel between worlds, but also (limited) travel between those moon-sized starships and between worlds and starships. One downside of this network is that it had, in the far past, allowed a lethal plague to spread, wiping out the previous empire.
- The Forgotten Door: In this children's novel by Alexander Key, Jon lives on another planet with a utopian civilization. He accidentally falls through a Door — a device that can send things (and people) to other planets — and ends up on modern-day Earth. Most of the book concerns his attempt to get home before he's caught by the government or killed by superstitious locals.
- George's Secret Key to the Universe: In this children's science fiction series by Lucy Hawking and her father Stephen Hawking, Cosmos is an incredibly advanced computer that can open passageways — shaped like windows and doors — to anywhere in the Universe.
- The Goblin Reservation: In this science fictionnote novel by Clifford Simak, interstellar travel is done directly from planet to planet, with "transmitters" and "receivers" that send wave patterns at FTL speeds across many light years of space from one station to another. This "transmitter network" must be expanded by the "discovery ships" which "slowly and painfully" travel through "the dark of everlasting space".
- The Hyperion Cantos: In these novels by Dan Simmons, most interstellar travel is by way of farcasters, artificial wormholes, since even super-luminal travel can be very slow over interstellar distances. After an expensive and time-consuming sublight construction project around a new planet, a completed Singularity Sphere connects the planet to the rest of the WorldWeb, and literally millions of individual Farcaster gates can be built on the planet below, connecting to every other planet in the Hegemony of Man. While spaceships travel using large orbiting Farcaster portals, most personal travel is done without ever leaving a planet's surface. Farcaster portals eventually became so commonplace that houses were built that have their individual rooms on entirely different planets; with each doorway being a portal. All hell breaks loose when the Farcaster network has to be shut down very abruptly to stop the AI Big Bad. Needless to say, the results are a disaster of truly epic proportions, particularly as some planets have developed into single biome worlds with no food production. It gets better.
- "The Jaunt": This Stephen King short story (collected in Skeleton Crew) has a Portal Network which includes interplanetary portals between Earth and Mars; passengers even depart for Mars from the Port Authority Terminal in New York. The story opens with a father explaining the process to his family, as they are all about to travel to Mars. The gateway must be traversed in one's sleep, because to go through awake is a near certain death sentence: In stark contrast to the way Doorways Between Planets are experienced in most other works — with no sensation of duration for those passing through them — conscious people seem to experience "the Jaunt" as taking some unfathomably long time. A condemned convict was offered a full pardon if he would go through awake and if he survived. He lived for all of a few seconds, long enough to say "It's forever in there." before dying. Another man disposed of his wife by throwing her in and then cutting the connection points from the system; his lawyer argued that he couldn't be tried for murder, as the woman was conceivably still alive in the space between gates. The jury didn't hesitate, on reflecting on that potential fate, to sentence the man to death. The story ends with the family going through, only for it to be revealed the son held his breath during the Jaunt, and became an aged creature jabbering "It's longer than you think" over and over again.
- The Monsters of Morley Manor: In this Bruce Coville children's novel, the Starry Door acts as a Portal Network between worlds with a limitation of no more than ten living members of a species per day. It's traditionally activated by pointing to a star on a map and saying "I want to go there", which opens a portal to the planet in the star system pointed to.
- The Morgaine Cycle: In this tetralogy by C. J. Cherryh, the Qhal built an empire using gates placed on planets they populated with Transplanted Humans, but the gates could be used not only to travel through space but also time, and their empire was eventually brought down by a temporal paradox. For that reason, Morgaine is on a mission to destroy them, moving on to the next planet just before the gate closes for good.
- One Step From Earth: This series of short stories by Harry Harrison doesn't have any overarching plot or characters, and the individual stories are set in some cases thousands of years apart, but all the stories are linked by the presence of the "Matter Transmitter" or MT (in the chronologically later stories these are called "transmatters", or at the end simply as Doors, by which point there is a civilization where someone may live on one planet — in a room deep underground, reachable only by Door — bathe on a beach on another planet, and eat at a restaurant on a third). Although it's referred to as the "Matter Transmitter", the way the MT is described is more like a shortcut through hyperspace than a Star Trek-style transporter using dematerialization/rematerialization. The process does not allow for people or things to simply be "projected" across space — there must already be a receiver at the far end — and so the setting does also feature spaceships (even FTL starships).
- Perry Rhodan features matter transmitters as a fairly commonplace piece of technology. While the everyday model may not quite have the range to act as an example of this over interstellar distances (though dedicated installations can definitely achieve that), connecting places within the same planetary system in this way is fairly routine.
- "Quest of the Starstone" by C. L. Moore is a crossover short story between Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith. A wizard opens a magic doorway from 1500 France to future Mars in order to get Smith to Earth.
- Railhead: In this Young Adult trilogy by Philip Reeve, interstellar travel is by train; in fact, that's the only way to travel through the "K-gates":
"You step aboard a train, and the train goes through a K-gate, and you step off on another planet, where the sun that was shining on you a moment ago is now just one of those tiny stars in the sky."
- Spectrum (2002): In this novel by Sergey Lukyanenko, alien Technical Pacifists calling themselves the Keymasters travel in starships expanding the interplanetary network of Gates. They came to Earth in modern times and asked for permission to build Gates in several cities. The payment for using a Gate is telling an interesting new story.note If the Keymaster enjoys the story, the traveler is allowed to pass. Any aggression inside a gate station results in the aggressor's disappearance (what happens to them is never answered). The only Keymasters' condition for the local governments is not to block passage for anyone. The Gates' interior changes to one familiar to the current traveler's race. Humans see a desk with a regular computer running Microsoft Windows (this part actually becomes a plot point), displaying a catalog of available planets and Gates. The traveler selects the destination with keyboard and/or mouse. There are no special effects. The traveler is simply told to exit the Gate. Several characters speculate that the Gates swap room contents in a several-meter radius. A part of The Reveal is that Keymasters are reactivating and rebuilding an older network.
- Starrigger: In these novels by John deChancie, ground-level portals built by the long-lost "Roadbuilders" are the main form of transportation. Due to the necessity of having to enter the portal at a very high rate of speed, most cargo is transported by gigantic, fusion-powered 18-wheelers. The plot turns on the fact that no one has a complete map of the network, meaning that the known network is ruled by authoritarian governments, and the only way to escape them is to travel through unmapped "potluck" portals, which are so named because no one has yet returned from them. Turns out that the Roadbuilders set the system up like this on purpose; those who are dissatisfied with The Way Things Are can trace a Linked List Clue Methodology all the way to the end of the network — and due to the side effects of FTL travel, travel back in time to the very beginning of the universe, where the Roadbuilders would listen to their ideas to fine-tune all of existence. In this universe, Jack Kerouac could very easily find himself meeting God, who would ask him for advice!
- The Stars Are Cold Toys: In this Sergey Lukyanenko novel, the Star Shadow is a conglomeration of about 200,000 planets linked by Gates that instantly transport people from one world to another. The twist is that individuals cannot control where they end up: instead, the Gates' AI analyzes each traveller's mind and determines which of the Shadow's planets would most suit them and their deepest (and often unconscious) desires and sends them there.
- Tunnel in the Sky: In this Robert A. Heinlein novel, "Ramsbotham gates" can be projected across interstellar distances with no receiver on the far end. While interstellar travel isn't entirely casual — going out to colonize a new planet is still clearly a major life change — people do drive Old West-style wagon trains through the gates, from Earth's surface to some new alien world. There is also very casual intraplanetary travel; the protagonist (Rod Walker) and his family live in an "out-county of Greater New York City", meaning they live on the Grand Canyon Plateau, and Rod commutes every day from Arizona to a school somewhere in the New York City area by way of several permanently-open gates. The book does emphasize that interstellar gates at least are very expensive in terms of the energy required; newly colonized planets can expect to be pretty much on their own until they can develop exports — "food and fissionable metals'' — which justify the expense of regularly opening gates between those planets and Earth.
- Will Save the Galaxy for Food is about a space pilot struggling to make money in a galaxy where interstellar portals have recently become common place.
- The Wind Between The Worlds: In this 1951note Lester del Rey novella, "matter transmitters" are invented before humans even reach the Moon. Then, when the inventor of the matter transmitters is still doing public demonstrations of the new invention, a strange device suddenly appears in one of the machines, followed a week later by the Envoy (a humanoid robot) sent from the Galactic Council, a multi-species interstellar civilization. Earth, still being relatively primitive, is offered provisional membership in the Council, and the Council will build matter transmitter links to a half dozen equally primitive worlds in other parts of the galaxy. Then an accident jams one of the transmitters in the "ON" position and Earth's air starts rushing through to another planet, Ecthinbal, a planet with a lower atmospheric pressure...whose people are chlorine breathers who find our oxygen-rich atmosphere toxic, meaning both planets are doomed if the problem can't be fixed. The human engineers are eventually able to solve the problem by collaborating with engineers from a number of other planets — bypassing the politicians on Earth and every other world — and not only are Earth and Ecthinbal saved, Earth is upgraded to a full member of the Galactic Council.
Live-Action TV
- Andromeda: In the final season, the crew gets stuck in the Seefra system, which consists of eight identical artificial planets orbiting a pair of artificial suns. The crew discovers underground caves which contain portals that allow people to travel between the artificial planets.
- Stargate SG-1: Building on the original 1994 film (and with multiple spin-offs), the shows feature a form of Doorways Between Planets (the titular Stargates) as the central plot driver of the Stargate verse. The Stargates are Precursor devices shaped like 22-foot wide rings with nine chevrons and constellations along the front. The constellations are used as three-dimensional coordinates in space; when six constellations, and a seventh representing the point of origin, are encoded, the gate attempts to form a wormhole to a corresponding gate at the indicated location within the same galaxy; eight chevrons can connect to a different galaxy (with additional power). While the "Stargates" of the title function as Doorways Between Planets, allowing people to travel across interstellar or even intergalactic space just by walking through the shiny ripply thing, the broader franchise does also include more conventional spaceships.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- The episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" features the Guardian of Forever. While the Guardian is a Portal to the Past, since it can send people from its own distant planet to the past of ''Earth'', so it also functions as a Doorway Between Planets.
- There was nearly going to be a fourth season where they would have got rid of the Enterprise for budget reasons and would just have the crew teleport from Earth to other planets.
- Being a near-omnipotent Reality Warper, Q mainly gets around by teleporting anywhere in the universe or his home dimension.
- The episode "Contagion" introduces the long-dead Iconian Empire and their gateways, which allowed them to step through a doorway and instantly appear on any planet in the galaxy.
- Another Iconian gateway appeared on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "To the Death" under the control of a group of rogue Jem'Hadar.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Prime Factors", the crew are taking shore leave on the planet Sikaris. The Sikarians have transporter technology that can send one from a platform on Sikaris to a planet almost 40,000 light-years away. The Sikarians use this technology to just take a casual stroll on such a planet and then come back to their own world.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
Tabletop Games
- The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: One example of the Endless Empire's advanced technology is the ability to construct massive portals to allow their soldiers to simply walk through to whatever poor place they're conquering.
- Eclipse Phase: The Pandora Gates were discovered after the Fall, with the first one on Saturn’s moon Pandora, and with more discovered throughout the Solar System and able to connect to gates in other systems. The gates vary in size from barely wide enough for a transhuman to walk through to big enough to drive a truck through, and alter their size for uncertain reasons. No one knows who built the gates, but a disturbing number of exosolar gates are near the eons-old ruins of extinct civilizations, and the only extant aliens transhumanity has met refuse to use them.
- Godforsaken: Each of the Godforsaken Lands is actually on a different planet, even though the people of Bontherre lack the context to grasp this concept. This doesn't mean that Godforsaken is a science fiction setting; travel to and from the Godforsaken Lands is done via magic, and each world presented is a magical one. Currently, the people of Bontherre know of three doorways to other lands (there is no reason to believe that there aren't more such doorways leading to other Godforsaken Lands):
- To travel to the Firmament, one needs to cross a portal more than 90 metres in the air, almost directly above the town of Setvesous, usually with the aid of a flying craft. The other side of the gate is solid ground, the courtyard of Castle Turion.
- Deep within the heart of Mount Launde lies a glowing doorway that connects Bontherre to Korak-Mar, which also holds hidden gateways to other worlds.
- Numenera: The World Door is a structure on the Moon consisting of a large platform and a complex console. If activated, the Door opens a standing portal in space that allows travelers to step through and enter either the alien world of Perelande or the huge Alderson disk known as the Gloaming. Equivalent devices exist at the output locations, a small desert island on Perelande and the Gloaming city of U-i-Nstor, that permit travel to the other world and to the Moon. This is necessary for visiting the Gloaming in particular because its automated meteor defenses would likely mistake a starship for stellar debris and destroy it.
- Pathfinder: Sovyrian, the ancient refuge of the elves, is actually located on the planet Castrovel; the archway that connects it to the elven capital on Golarion is an interplanetary Portal Door whose origins are lost to history. The Portal Network of "elf gates" on Golarion are lesser imitations.
- RuneScape: The World Gate allows instantaneous travel between the different "worlds" of the setting; in original continuity these worlds were implied to be more fantasy-esque "planes", but post-Sixth Age continuity confirms them to be planets.
- Star Wars: Roleplaying Game: The Graveyard of Alderaan adventure supplement introduces the Gree, who were once rivals to the Kwa and used hypergates placed on planets that could facilitate not only instant travel across a given planet but between them as well, and eventually ceased using starship hyperdrives altogether. A Rebel faction has also created an experimental replica to travel between their frigate and the ruins of Alderaan, although all references to this were removed in the adventure's 1995 reprint. The hypergates are discussed and expanded upon in several other parts in the franchise, most notably Star Wars: The Old Republic, which introduces the Gree gatemasters, a caste charged with tending to and maintaining the hypergates, and where a struggle for control of the gates during the Sith-Republic war results in a number of monsters and ancient terrors being let through long-dormant gates.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- With extra steps involved, the Aeldari control the Webway, an interdimensional tunnel and portal network that they use to travel between planets and Craftworlds. Also called the "Labyrinth Dimension", it's a series of tunnels and nodes that is alternatingly parallel to or running through the Warp. Using it is a viable and much safer alternative to the Warp jumps used for FTL by other species, and many nodes are large enough to build cities that rival an ecumenopolis in size. Webway portals vary in size, either small enough to let a group of people through or large enough to accommodate a spaceship of considerable size. Although the Webway is haunted by strange creatures and phenomena, making it dangerous, and many parts lay abandoned or in disrepair, it still connects many millions of locations throughout the galaxy. Given enough time and survival resources, an Eldar can simply walk from one planetary system to another through the webway.
- A far more straightforward, but less controlled and less common phenomenon is a Regia Occulta.note It's a very rare and poorly understood phenomenon, but occurs in high energy environments, but it is essentially a straightforward and temporary version of this trope.
- Dolmen Gates are a version used by Necrons. These can be treated point-to-point teleporters in space (similar to Stargates) or as improvised entryways to the Webway. While the Necrons enjoy the benefit of inertialess drives as true FTL travel, these are usually found in space as large enough to accommodate ships.
Toys
- Transformers: The Space Bridge(s) from different iterations of the franchise generally function like one of these, allowing Transformers to travel from one planet to another almost instantaneously without the need for interstellar spacecraft.
- The Transformers: The Space Bridge originates from this series, and in its first appearance required a small craft to travel safely from point A on Earth and point B on Cybertron. However, after Megatron accidentally fell into the active Space Bridge and arrived on Cybertron with no ill effects, it was possible to use it to travel from Earth to Cybertron, with human allies Spike and Carly once making the journey while riding Carly's completely ordinary car. An important note is that it appeared that the Space Bridge receiver/transmitter on Earth was a temporary structure that could be moved around, while the one on Cybertron was at a fixed point in Shockwave's tower.
- In the third season of The Transformers (in Japan dubbed as Transformers 2010), the Autobots opt to make use of warp gates which are built at certain points of space. This is apparently more stable and fuel-efficient than the Space Bridge. Unfortunately, this same network also helped the catastrophic spread of the Hate Plague when infected Transformers and other beings travelled through the warp gates to other worlds. This also gives them a major advantage over the Decepticons, who not only no longer have access to the Space Bridge (thanks to the Autobots now having retaken Cybertron) but the warp gates are defended enough that they just can't make use of them.
- The Transformers (Marvel): The comic version of the Space Bridge took the form of a literal bridge, resembling a suspension bridge with the other half materialising on the target world. The Decepticons intended to use it to ship energy from Earth back to Cybertron, but for various reasons, they were never able to properly do so, and eventually it was considered so energy-intensive (especially with the dire energy shortage on Cybertron) that they went back to relying on slower but more efficient interstellar transports.
- Transformers: ★Headmasters: The Autobots built their own Space Bridge network with fixed points at Cybertron, Autobot City on Earth, and their military HQ on the planet Athenia. This allows them to instantly transport reinforcements between the three planets, but actually getting to the battlefield still takes time. In the latter half of the series, the Decepticons target and destroy one of the Space Bridge terminals, resulting in a chain reaction that destroyed the entire network and forced the Autobots to rely on the Battleship Maximus and the Trainbots for interstellar transport. This is used to explain why in the sequel series the Autobots do not respond in force to a resurgence of Decepticon activity on Earth: they simply don't have a way to get to Earth quickly.
- Transformers: Cybertron: In the final series of the Unicron Trilogy, the Space Bridge was part of a colonization plan in ancient times enacted by the Cybertronians to spread the essence of their god, Primus, across the cosmos. Using four starships each carrying a tiny fragment of Primus' essence in the form of a Cyber Planet Key, the goal was to colonize different planets (which would later be Earth, Velocitron, the Jungle Planet, and Gigantion), cyberformnote them into a mirror-image of Cybertron, and then connect the newly-colonized worlds to Cybertron, thus creating an interconnected Space Bridge network. Unfortunately, the plan went south for unknown reasons, the planets were never cyberformed, and the colonies were left isolated from both Cybertron and each other. In the present day, the Space Bridge itself was used very minimally courtesy of different Transformers having the ability to create their own dimensional portals, such as Vector Prime's Dimension Gates and Megatron's Warp Gates. Unlike Vector Prime however, Megatron's Warp Gates only lead to and out of the Fire Dimension where he and his Decepticons operate out of, requiring it to be used as a stopover wherever they go.
- Transformers: Animated: In the backstory, the Space Bridge network was a key factor in the Autobot victory over the Decepticons. A zealously guarded military secret, it allowed the Autobots to instantly transport troops between the various Space Bridge terminals, making it almost impossible for the Decepticons to take territory where a Space Bridge had been built. In the series proper, one of Megatron's major goals is to seize the Space Bridge hub on Cybertron via a deep cover agent while scattered Decepticon forces take various Space Bridge terminals all over space, which would allow him to instantly bring all the disparate Decepticon cells into one unified army right at the Autobot doorstep.
- In the Aligned continuity (i.e. Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Transformers: Prime and Transformers: Rescue Bots), in the distant past the Quintessons posed as benevolent benefactors and got the Cybertronians to build the Space Bridges, intent on selling them as slaves. After the Quintessons were expelled, the Cybertronians used the Space Bridges to build a network of colony planets, each with its own Bridge, thus spreading their influence throughout the galaxy. However, a virulent and unstoppable Rust Plague eventually emerged, and in a desperate attempt to stop the spread (and prevent it from reaching Cybertron proper), the Space Bridges were self-destructed. This led Cybertron into its descent into dystopia which would eventually give rise to the Decepticons.
- In Fall of Cybertron, Shockwave rediscovers a variant of Space Bridge technology that allows him to scout out different worlds hoping to find a source of energy, but also for inspiration such as rebuilding some captured Autobots into reptilian beasts he observed on one such world. In the finale, the Space Bridge is fully opened high above Cybertron, and the Autobots try to reach it aboard their massive starship known as the Ark, while the Decepticons aboard the Nemesis try to stop them.
- In IDW Publishing, the Space Bridges were built into the bodies of the gigantic Titans. By the time of the Autobot-Decepticon war, they are considered Lost Technology and a holy grail: either side getting their hands on a functioning Space Bridge would have an insurmountable advantage, thanks to practically everything being within walking distance.
- Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Ancient Transformers like the Fallen and Jetfire have the ability to open Space Bridges, allowing themselves and those accompanying them to simply step through to their destination. It isn't necessarily safe, though: the decrepit and almost senile Jetfire accidentally opens his Bridge higher than expected, almost injuring the humans accompanying him.
- Transformers: Cyberverse: Scenes set in the pre-war period show that Space Bridges were ubiquitous, and allowed casual travel between Cybertron and its various colony worlds. As the war went on, most of them were shut down or destroyed, thanks to both sides understandably wanting to deny their use to the enemy. At the end of Season Two, a rebuilt Space Bridge over Earth becomes a major contested site, ending with the Bridge's destruction. The Autobots are compelled to use the less efficient method of Transwarp to return to Cybertron. Unknown to them, the Decepticons had faked the Space Bridge's destruction and were able to use it to get a head start on their enemies, launching an ambush when the unwitting Autobots finally arrived.
- The Transformers: The Space Bridge originates from this series, and in its first appearance required a small craft to travel safely from point A on Earth and point B on Cybertron. However, after Megatron accidentally fell into the active Space Bridge and arrived on Cybertron with no ill effects, it was possible to use it to travel from Earth to Cybertron, with human allies Spike and Carly once making the journey while riding Carly's completely ordinary car. An important note is that it appeared that the Space Bridge receiver/transmitter on Earth was a temporary structure that could be moved around, while the one on Cybertron was at a fixed point in Shockwave's tower.
Video Games
- Doom (1993): The last mission (Phobos Anomaly) of the first episode (Knee-Deep in the Dead) has the player encounter a large teleporter pad with the image of Baphomet on it. Walking onto this image transports the player to a closed room where death is a certainty. According to Doom lore, this results in the player awakening on Phobos's sister moon, Deimos, at the start of the second episode, The Shores of Hell. All the other teleporters in the game just move the player around the map; this one flings the space marine onto a whole 'nother moon.
- Lunar: Eternal Blue has crystal teleporters between Lunar and the Blue Star. The one in the Blue Spire is only usable by Lucia, but the one in the Star Dragon Tower can be used by anyone, though it is guarded by the Star Dragon. While the epilogue implies the Star Dragon teleporter is one-way only, the audio dramas confirm that they can be used to go freely back and forth.
- Might and Magic: This trope is a recurring element of the series. It began as a Sequel Hook at the very end of the first game, which was then followed up on in and provided the subtitle to the second game, Gates to Another World, serving as the explanation for allowing importing your player characters from the first game into the new setting. It would next appear in the manual-given backstory of Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest, which explains how Lord Ironfist and his closest followers accidentally fled to Enroth from another world (strongly implied to be Varn, the setting of the first Might and Magic) and then couldn't return as the portal proved to be either unidirectional or have ceased to work after their passage. Then it appeared in Might and Magic VII, with the plot on the good path being about rebuilding the connection portal to the Ancients' network of gates across their old domain, the Gateweb. Finally, the backstory of Heroes of Might and Magic IV had portals to Axeoth mysteriously appear during the Reckoning that destroyed Enroth, allowing many Enrothians to escape to the other planet.
- No Man's Sky: Ancient portals are strewn across many planets in the universe, which will let you access many other portals if you charge up their glyphs with necessary elements. You can also outfit your planetary bases with teleporters to let you quickly travel to other bases anywhere in the universenote . Wherever you teleport, you can always be sure that your spaceship will show up somewhere close to you.
- Omno: The titular character spends the whole game exploring alien worlds, where leaving one world and entering another requires Omno to find a rune-inscribed boulder, use his Magic Staff on it, and disperse him into light particles that shoot across the cosmos to the next stage.
- StarCraft: The Protoss make extensive use of warp gates to teleport everything from infrastructure to personnel wherever they may need them. One stationary warp gate allowed the few survivors of the Zerg invasion of Aiur to make a desperate exodus to the Dark Templar homeworld of Shakuras.
- Star Trek Online: Continuing the plots from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the remnant Tal Shiar has control of a number of Iconian gateways, though they use them in different ways. Then, we have the actual Iconians and their Herald servant races, who use them in lieu of the warp drive.
- Warcraft: One of the Trope Codifiers in High Fantasy is the Dark Portal, a demonic portal unique in that after its creation, it perpetually links the (remnants of the) world of Draenor and the world of Azeroth. You can walk right through it with absolutely no ill effects: one step, you're on Azeroth, the next, you're on Outland, or vice versa, and the demon-corrupted orcs that built it, built it enormous: You can easily march an army through it, and the orcs did just that, setting in motion the entire franchise.
- Warframe: The Mirror Defense mission on Mars uses a portal through the Void to get the Tenno between there and a location on Venus. This portal is maintained by a pair of linked crystals containing the bodies of the Orokin Belric and Rania, who were preserved by the Warframe Citrine in the distant past.
Western Animation
- Steven Universe: Most Warp Pads left on Earth can only travel between locations on-planet, but others can be used for interplanetary travel, which is how Peridot arrives on Earth from Homeworld.