My current project, DEAD METAL, is set on a giant factory spaceship, bereft of all plant and animal life aside from humans and metal-eating worms. What films and TV shows feature such exclusively manmade environments?

The only ones coming to mind are the ALIEN films (minus the cat). I'm not a big movie and TV watcher, so perhaps there are more, if not many more. Anyone?

How about Red Dwarf?

Matrix?

Silent Running: inside a starship
Cube: inside a 3d techno maze
The Werewolf Game series: inside a building
An old one called Laboratory: inside a building
Starlost: might count. Inside a huge generation starship carrying sozens of large habitat domes. Each one a different society or environment.

Theres more if branch into anime. Lilly CAT, Megaroad, etc

Space Mutiny.
Space Cop

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets comes to mind first.

Logan's Run, too

A really weird one is the anime/manga Blame! Set in "The City", an endless set of buildings and machinery the result of an automated Dyson Sphere project gone out of control.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 14, 2025, 04:18:33 PMValerian and the City of a Thousand Planets comes to mind first.

Logan's Run, too

Logan's Run ends up outside the domes in the final act before getting back to said domes. Till that point it is indeed all self contained.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 15, 2025, 12:58:55 AMA really weird one is the anime/manga Blame! Set in "The City", an endless set of buildings and machinery the result of an automated Dyson Sphere project gone out of control.

I was going to suggest this as well. Dami Lee has done a video on the architecture of Blame! (as well as other fictional settings) and gives some wonderful insights that could help you in setting creation.


Other sources you may want to check out are the anime/manga Knights of Sidonia (also done by Blame!  creator Tsutomu Nihei) and available on Crunchyroll. The YouTube channel Science and Futurism with Issac Arthur is also great for harder science fiction ideas of human-only interstellar futures (it helps that he is a gamer as well). The Expanse (both TV series and the books by James S.A. Corey) deal with a humanocentric future and the Belter segments may be of particular interest to you. Finally, I'll suggest the book House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds which deals with a humanocentric STL interstellar civilization.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for all the ideas, folks!

Lots of space flicks are all inside stations or ships; Event Horizon, Outland, Saturn V, etc.

There are a ton of  low budget sci-fi movies that are shot entirely in rooms because it's cheaper.  That's why The Asylum loves submarines so much.