
Paramount Pictures
Fans are fond of calling Galaxy Quest the greatest Star Trek movie never made (at a 2013 Vegas con it placed seventh in a poll of greatest Trek films); some go so far as to insist it should be listed as canon.
It probably isn’t, but that does reflect the deep affection the movie has generated among Trekkers. Not only has it aged better than many actual ST films—owing in part to a distinct lack of intelligent whales or androids singing Gilbert & Sullivan—but it’s proved a worthier heir to the legacy of Star Trek: TOS than other fan-service productions like The Orville, Picard, or (my personal favorite) Lower Decks.
It isn’t hard to see why: Galaxy Quest isn’t actually an homage to Star Trek, or even to Star Trek fan culture: it’s an homage to the actors who brought the franchise to life.
An homage but not a parody.
While Tim Allen’s Jason Nesmith (aka Commander Peter Quincy Taggart of the N.S.E.A. Protector) clearly nods to William Shatner’s ego—right down to his petulant sniping at adoring fans—the rest of the cast are harder to peg, in or out of their show characters.
As Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus, the Protector’s resident alien scientist, Alan Rickman combines a hint of Patrick Stewart’s Royal Shakespeare Company archness with a dose of Leonard Nimoy sulkiness in his I Am Not Spock phase.
Sigourney Weaver plays heavily against type as the very blonde and Wonderbra’d Gwen DeMarco/Computer Specialist Tawny Madison: like Yeoman Janice Rand, she’s there to show some skin; like Lt. Uhura, her onscreen job is unworthy of her talents.
Tommy Webber/Laredo (Daryl Mitchell) is equal parts Wesley Crusher and Geordie LaForge. The joke behind Fred Kwan/Tech Sergeant Chen (the always awesome Tony Shalhoub) is a little more obscure: screenwriters David Howard and Robert Gordon said that he’s a reference to the old Hollywood practice of casting white actors as Asian characters (see Kung Fu)—but unless you count Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonien Singh, that’s not something the original Trek ever did.
On the other hand, the reference to Sam Rockwell as Guy Fleegman is plain as a warp-core breach: as a bit player who got killed in his one-and-only appearance on the show, he’s every Red shirt who ever crossed paths with a salt vampire or a tyrannical computer god.
The genius of Galaxy Quest’s script is that it references things that feel like they happened on Star Trek, even though they mostly didn’t.
Uhura didn’t repeat everything the computer said the way Tawny Madison does. Spock had catch phrases, but none were as grating as Dr. Lazarus’s “by Grabthar’s hammer, you shall be avenged.” (although Alan Rickman’s world-weary “By Grabthar’s hammer, what a savings” at a store opening never gets old). It’s more a sense of the show, a deeper vibe, that Galaxy Quest nails time and again. When the crew is about to walk right up to members of an alien race because they look cute, Guy blurts out: “Did you people even watch the show?” Thus echoing the rants of millions of Trekkers across the decades.
The magic of Galaxy Quest is character-driven, animated not by Scary Movie-type inside references, but by our affection for the cast.
Galaxy Quest begins, appropriately enough, at a convention. While fan culture is an easy target for mockery (and the script doesn’t miss the opportunity), it’s worth remembering that it was at Trek conventions that the original cast of Star Trek forged a deep and permanent bond with its audience. To their last days in the Terran system, De Forest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, and James Doohan told fond tales of the fans whose lives they touched. Leonard Nimoy, who for a time ran screaming from his character, later testified that the love was real. Even Shatner was never as peevish as people assumed: he never actually told fans to “Get a life” (except in an SNL sketch) and, through the years, his devotion to his character and the franchise has shone through. The endurance of Star Trek isn’t about parasocial relationships or even our fantasies about the characters (fan fic notwithstanding). It draws life from our recognition that the fans and the cast genuinely need each other, and there’s not a thing wrong with that.
Given that, it seems inevitable that the plot of Galaxy Quest should revolve around an alien race who are unabashed fans.
The Thermians, having watched the show for years from afar, have built their entire culture around what they call “historical records” of what they believe to be an actual space ship and its crew. Facing genocide from Sarris (Robin Sachs), an evil alien overlord of the slimy-reptile variety, the Thermian commander Mathesar (Enrico Colesanti) invites Jason Nesmith and his “crew” to save his people. Thinking he’s been invited to a fan appearance, Nesmith accepts with boyish abandon. Once he realizes he actually is on a by-god real starship, the ham actor in him decides to play his role to the hilt.
If this actors-pretending-to-be-warriors plot seems familiar, it is: also the plot of Three Amigos!, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life and (somewhat more distantly) Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be.
The setup isn’t even original to the Star Trek canon. Two years before Galaxy Quest, the writers of Star Trek:DS9 considered a 25th anniversary episode in which we return to Iotia, aka the Chicago mob planet of TOS’s “A Piece of the Action,” only to find that the entire planet has now slavishly modeled itself on Kirk-era Star Fleet right down to the velour uniforms and fake Vulcan ears (Deciding that this was maybe too much a slap at the fans, the DS9 writers wisely shifted to “Trials and Tribble-ations” instead).
But again, it’s not the plot that matters, but the ensemble.
These six actors are forced to reprise their roles not to save their careers but their lives, with the survival of an entire species at stake. Along the way, they come to embrace the power and the responsibility of roles they once felt trapped in. The simple faith the Thermians have placed in them isn’t treated as pathetic, but genuine and even deeply moving. In one teary moment, a Thermian who idolizes Dr. Lazarus is fatally shot. As his life ebbs away, Lazarus’s portrayer Alexander Dane repeats his stock line and means it: “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the sons of Warvan, you shall be avenged.”
The line works because it’s silly and it’s not, the way that most Trek culture is both silly and not. Yes, we know that the alien landscapes are foam rubber rocks and the “scientific” references are gobbledegook and it’s all too obvious when a stunt performer steps into a fight scene and when Shatner is wearing a corset. We accept the silliness and yet we still believe, because the cast and the writers believe and because what they believe is genuinely inspiring. A world where everyone wears polyester jumpsuits may be laughable, but the idea of a world where decency and courage matter is not.
But Galaxy Quest isn’t a valedictory speech at Eton: it’s fun. The characters say and do the things that real humans would actually say in the Trek universe. When they’re forced to run through a gauntlet of crashing metal hammers, Gwen exclaims, “Well, screw that!” (watch her lips and you’ll see she’s actually saying something a little less PG-13). When Guy watches actual interspecies sex (as opposed to the inevitably humanoid Star Trek variety), he says “That’s—not right.”
Then there’s the fans, chief among them a very young Justin Long, who send their geek wisdom into battle during the film’s most critical scenes. Although it strains credibility a little that these fans are all wide-eyed teenagers instead of middle-aged punters (like myself), it works in the context of the movie. All Trekkers become wide-eyed teenagers when we consider that our knowledge of show trivia might actually be useful to someone.
On its twenty-fifth anniversary, Galaxy Quest has aged like fine Saurian brandy. Part of the reason is the movie itself. Before Galaxy Quest, fans were frequently the butt of jokes, even amongst themselves (watch the 1996 documentary Trekkers for a taste of that). Galaxy Quest inspired fans to enjoy their geekery, and in so doing helped a lot of us come out of the closet (Jeffries tube?).
Today, fan culture is not only ubiquitous in our world, it exists in-universe as well. Strange New Worlds, Picard, Discovery, Prodigy, and Lower Decks all seem to be populated by crew members who grew up learning about TOS– and TNG-era heroes like Spock and Picard with Thermian-level reverence. The crew of Lower Decks’s U.S.S. Cerritos are basically fans in uniform, tossing out deep-cut references with equal parts delight and self-mockery.
Extras include Filmmaker Focus, featurettes, deleted scenes, trailer, and a Thermian audio track.
By Grabthar’s hammer, what a movie.
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