Galaxy Quest is a 1999 science-fiction comedy parody about a troupe of human actors who defend a group of aliens against an alien warlord. It was directed by Dean Parisot and written by David Howard and Robert Gordon. Mark Johnson and Charles Newirth produced the film for DreamWorks, and David Newman composed the music score. Portions of the film were shot in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah, USA, and non-humanoid creatures were created by Stan Winston Studio from designs by Jordu Schell.

The film parodies the television series Star Trek and related phenomena. It stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell as the cast of a defunct television series called Galaxy Quest, in which the crew of a spaceship embarked on intergalactic adventures. Enrico Colantoni also stars as the leader of an alien race who ask the actors for help, believing the show's adventures were real. The film's supporting cast features Robin Sachs as the warlord, Patrick Breen as a friendly alien, and Justin Long in his feature-film debut as a human fan of the television show.

The film received critical praise, and reached through the years a cult status, garnering admiration from Star Trek fans, staff, and cast members.^[2] It won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and was also nominated for ten Saturn Awards, winning Best Actor for Allen. The film was included in Reader's Digest's list of The Top 100+ Funniest Movies of All Time.^[3][4] In commentary on the Blu-Ray edition of Star Trek, director J. J. Abrams called Galaxy Quest "one of the best "Star Trek" movies ever made."

Plot[link]

Galaxy Quest is a once-popular television space-drama series starring Jason Nesmith as the commander of a spaceship called the NSEA Protector, Alexander Dane as the ship's alien science officer, Fred Kwan as the chief engineer, Gwen DeMarco as the computer officer, and Tommy Webber as a precocious child pilot. Guy Fleegman played a security officer who was quickly killed off in his only appearance on the show, in Episode 81.

Eighteen years after the show was cancelled, at a Galaxy Quest convention full of costumed fans with Guy as the MC, Jason is approached by a group of people whose leader, Mathesar, says that they are aliens called "Thermians". Jason goes with them to what he assumes will be an amateur filming session, but the Thermians really are aliens, octopoidal creatures using Appearance Generators, a device that makes them appear human. Technologically advanced but having no concept of fiction, they have mistaken broadcasts of Galaxy Quest for historical documentaries and modelled their society on the ethos presented in the episodes. They have invented and built real versions of the technologies portrayed in the show, including the Protector.

The Thermians transport Jason onto the Protector to negotiate a surrender with Sarris, a reptilian humanoid warlord waging a genocidal war against the Thermian people, and Sarris demands the Omega 13, a device used at the very end of Galaxy Quest's final episode. Still believing the situation is fictional, Jason orders the Thermians to attack Sarris and then insists on returning home, but when they send him through space to Earth, he finally realizes the events were real. The Thermians then come back to Earth and ask for more help negotiating a surrender with Sarris. Jason, believing Sarris is the one to surrender, asks his co-stars to join him, and they agree, believing that the mission is just an acting job. Once the actors are onboard the Protector, they finally realize the truth, but Sarris prevents them from leaving, so they assume their television roles in order to save the Thermians, who have very little concept of deception, or the art of acting/theater.

Sarris chases the Protector into a space minefield, which damages the beryllium sphere that powers the ship's reactor. The actors acquire a new sphere from a nearby planet after battling various alien creatures, but when they return to the ship, Sarris has boarded it and taken control. Sarris interrogates Jason about the Omega 13 and forces him to admit the truth about Galaxy Quest to Mathesar, who is heartbroken after learning that Jason and his crew are make-believe. Sarris's men activate the ship's self-destruct sequence, but Jason and Alexander use a gambit from one of the show's episodes to kill the aliens guarding them.

Not knowing how the ship works, Jason contacts an avid Galaxy Quest fan named Brandon in his suburban home on Earth, using a Vox communicator that he accidentally swapped at a promotional store opening, and Brandon and his friends use their extensive knowledge of the ship to help Jason and Gwen abort the self-destruct sequence. When Jason asks Brandon what the Omega 13 does, Brandon says that while some people believe it was a bomb capable of destroying all matter in the universe in 13 seconds, he and others believes it is a time machine that sends its user 13 seconds into the past.

With Jason in command of the Protector, the actors and Thermians destroy Sarris' ship and return to Earth. Sarris sneaks aboard the Protector and starts killing the crew, but Jason activates the Omega 13, is sent back in time 13 seconds, and thwarts his attack. As the Thermians take control of the ship, the actors detach the command deck and land on Earth with Brandon's help, accidentally crashing into the Galaxy Quest convention. They emerge from the wreck to enthusiastic applause from the audience, who assume the crash is part of the entertainment, and when Sarris attacks again, Jason kills him with an Ion Nebulizer (blaster pistol) and receives even greater applause. Later that year Galaxy Quest is revived, starring the original cast, along with Laliari, a female Thermian who chose to stay on Earth as Fred's lover, and with Guy playing the ship's chief of security, "Roc" Ingersoll.

Cast[link]

• Tim Allen as Jason Nesmith, the actor who played Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart, the captain of the Protector, during the original Galaxy Quest television run. Jason remains the putative leader of the Galaxy Quest crew members as they travel to conventions and strip mall dedications. He is prone to removing his shirt at the slightest pretext and is said to have had romantic relations with most of the minor female characters who appeared throughout his television career. (The name of his TV role alludes to Peter Quince, a Shakespeare character who leads a company of bad actors in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Jason's own name recalls a heroic seafarer in Greek mythology who was once voiced by William Shatner. The casting of Tim Allen suggests a wink at his own voice work as space ranger Buzz Lightyear.)
• Sigourney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco, the actress who played Lt. Tawny Madison, the Computer Officer of the Protector, who performed communication duties. As the show's female sex symbol, Tawny's job consists largely of repeating communications to and from the computer. (Gwen and her Thermian counterpart Laliari are the only female members of their respective crews; as such, they spoof countless science-fiction and action-adventure stories in which teams have only one female member. Gwen recalls Lt. Uhura in the original Star Trek series and Emma Peel of the The Avengers. Her eye-candy role, Tawny Madison, contrasts outrageously with the no-nonsense starship captain Ellen Ripley of the Alien series, also played by Weaver.)
• Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane, the actor who portrayed Dr Lazarus of Tev'Meck on the Galaxy Quest TV show. Lazarus is a "Mak'tar", an individual member of an alien species renowned for intellect—and for having fish fins on their heads instead of hair. The character possesses psionic abilities and, if his name is any indication, prodigious powers of healing. His solemn, trademark oath has become a popular catchphrase: "By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!". Alexander Dane is an accomplished British actor whose name—or stage name?--reflects his experience in Shakespearean theatre ("the melancholy Dane" is a well-known description of Hamlet). Alexander resents being identified constantly with his fin-headed Dr Lazarus role and wants nothing to do with the catchphrase that he has heard too many fans repeat. (Alexander's resentments make sly reference to Leonard Nimoy's passing frustration with being constantly identified with Spock and Rickman's with being typecast as a villain. Alexander's background recalls the association of both Nimoy and Patrick Stewart with Shakespeare roles, as well as the film turn by Shakespearean Christopher Plummer as a Klingon.)
• Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan, the actor who played Tech Sgt. Chen. Chen is in charge of the engine room and operates the "digital conveyor", a variant of the Star Trek transporter. Fred is spectacularly calm in the face of almost any danger and completely lacking in prejudice when interacting with aliens. His mellow, possibly stoned, demeanour contrasts hilariously with the intensity of the corresponding character in the original Star Trek series. His seemingly inapt and never-explained Asian names—Kwan, Chen—spoof oddities of casting, as when a very British actor portrays a very British character with an utterly French name like Jean-Luc Picard).
• Sam Rockwell as Guy Fleegman, the actor who played "Crewman #6" in the original series and whose given name is as generic as his role. (Guy's last name is only disclosed at the end.) Guy begins the story as a "Questerian" (Trekkie) who played a small role as a disposable crewman. He greets the actors familiarly although they don't recognize him, yet he also earns their admiration for his entertaining introduction. Guy interprets everything he sees by the formulas of the series - asking his co-stars, "Didn't you guys ever watch the show?" - and fears his own role will entail his early demise. His concerns based on show tropes sometimes prove to be worth regarding (to the point where Gwen says, in a moment of danger, "We'd better get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!"). Ironically, though, Guy is the only character who goes unharmed in the adventure. Guy ultimately finds his courage when Fred suggests that he think of himself as "the plucky comic relief", and at the end of the story he is given a permanent role in the Galaxy Quest cast as the starship's Security Chief "Roc" Ingersoll (a reference to his earlier lament that characters without last names are always killed).
• Daryl Mitchell as Tommy Webber, the actor who played Lt. Laredo on the TV show as a child. Corbin Bleu played the 9-year-old Tommy in the film. The adult Tommy must constantly bear comparisons with his childhood self. His character on Galaxy Quest had been a Wunderkind pilot, but the real-life Tommy has much more difficulty piloting a real starship and only masters the controls after watching video of his work as a child. Laredo is a parody of "boy wonder" characters like Wesley Crusher of Star Trek TNG.
• Enrico Colantoni as Mathesar, the leader of the Thermians. Mathesar is, like all of his people, an upright octopoid who appears as a white-skinned, gray-clad, black-haired human, speaks in stiff tones of voice, smiles warmly even when in sorrow or fear. As Sarris explains to Jason, Mathesar is incredibly naïve to the truth, as are the others of his crew; however, he remains loyal to Nesmith and the other actors and sees them as heroes. In the end he discovers his own courage and even comes to appreciate the value of a good ruse.
• Robin Sachs as Gen. Roth'h'ar Sarris, a warlike humanoid insectoid-reptilian who destroyed the Thermian home planet and most of their race, being bent on their destruction. He's very cruel, unforgiving, deceitful and sadistic, taking pleasure from others' pain. Robin Sachs described Sarris in an interview for the DVD release as "Attila the Crab".
• Justin Long as Brandon, a devoted Galaxy Quest fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of the show.
• Missi Pyle as a Thermian crew member named Laliari (though her real name is unpronounceable by our species). She eventually falls in love with Fred and joins him in the film's epilogue as a cast member on the revived television series. She then plays a character named "Laliari" while wearing the name Jane Doe as an actress.
• Patrick Breen as Quellek, a Thermian who idolizes Alexander Dane's Dr. Lazarus. He assists Alexander but is firmly cut short when he attempts to utter Lazarus' catchphrase oath. Quellek misinterprets the reaction as an indication of the oath's seriousness. Quellek later confides to Alexander that he has always viewed "Dr. Lazarus" as a father.
• Sam Lloyd as Neru, one of the Thermians
• Rainn Wilson as Lahnk, one of the Thermian engineers

Theme[link]

A prominent theme in the film is the importance of stories told to the young. At the beginning of the film, adults and youths view Galaxy Quest very differently. For the actors it is a dated TV show with cheap effects and lame scripts, but still a paycheck; for their young fans it is a world of adventure, meaningful relationships, high ideals, and soaring possibilities in which they firmly believe. The visiting aliens, the Thermians, are the ultimate fans: they believe everything they see on the TV show is literally true.

Over the course of the story, the actors learn to remember and respect the ideals of the young. Tommy, who begins the story weary of being compared to his childhood self, must remember and re-enact actions he invented as a child in order to survive. Jason tells a fan early in the story that 'There is no ship!', yet he must eventually concede to the same fan that a ship indeed exists. Fred, while pretending to mentor a group of young Thermian engineers, must rely on them completely to find solutions. Alexander makes peace with his TV role when he finally sees the character the way a young fan—a dying Thermian—sees him. Above all, the unquestioning faith of the Thermians enables them to make dreams come true: they construct a real functioning starship, and even order a society, according to ideas that began as fiction.

The mercurial Guy has a foot in both worlds—fan and cast—while belonging completely to neither. He worries over, yet eventually finds, his true role.

Childhood is regularly invoked in the film as an image or in dialogue. Alien miners look like children; Jason chastises Laredo for thinking like "an infant"; Sarris expresses contempt for Jason by addressing him as "Sonny"; the Thermians in their natural form are shorter than the actors; Sarris orders Jason to explain the idea of fiction to a Thermian as he would explain it "to a child".

The worlds of adulthood and childhood eventually merge in the final scene.

Reception[link]

Galaxy Quest was a critical success. The film has a 70 percent approval rating on Metacritic from 28 reviews.^[5] On Rotten Tomatoes, it received an 89% "freshness" rating and a 7.2/10 average reviewer rating out of 110 reviews.^[6] The New York Times's Lawrence Van Gelder called it "an amiable comedy that simultaneously manages to spoof these popular futuristic space adventures and replicate the very elements that have made them so durable".^[7] Roger Ebert praised the ability of the film to spoof the "illogic of the TV show".^[8]

The Village Voice offered a lukewarm review, noting that "the many eight-to-11-year-olds in the audience seemed completely enthralled".^[9]

Box office[link]

The film was financially successful. It earned $7,012,630 in its opening weekend, and its total U.S. domestic tally stands at $71,583,916 and it grossed $90,683,916 worldwide.^[10]

[edit] Reaction quotes from Star Trek actors

• I had originally not wanted to see Galaxy Quest because I heard that it was making fun of Star Trek, and then Jonathan Frakes rang me up and said "You must not miss this movie! See it on a Saturday night in a full theatre." And I did, and of course I found it was brilliant. Brilliant. No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie were saved simply by the fact that there were fans who did understand the scientific principles on which the ship worked was absolutely wonderful. And it was both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to the dedication of these fans. — Patrick Stewart^[2][11]
• I thought it was very funny, and I thought the audience that they portrayed was totally real, but the actors that they were pretending to be were totally unrecognizable. Certainly I don't know what Tim Allen was doing. He seemed to be the head of a group of actors, and for the life of me I was trying to understand who he was imitating. The only one I recognized was the girl playing Nichelle Nichols. — William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk^{[citation needed]}
• I've had flashbacks of Galaxy Quest at the many conventions I've gone to since the movie came out. I thought it was an absolute laugh-a-minute. — Tim Russ, who played the Vulcan Lt. Cmdr. Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager^{[citation needed]}
• Yes, I have seen Galaxy Quest and no, Star Trek fandom is not really like that. — Casey Biggs, who played the Cardassian Legate Damar on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine^{[citation needed]}
• I loved Galaxy Quest. I thought it was brilliant satire, not only of Trek, but of fandom in general. The only thing I wish they had done was cast me in it, and have me play a freaky fanboy who keeps screaming at the actor who played "the kid" about how awful it was that there was a kid on the spaceship. Alas. — Wil Wheaton, who played "the kid" Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation^[12]
• I think it's a chillingly realistic documentary. [laughs] The details in it, I recognized every one of them. It is a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking. And I do believe that when we get kidnapped by aliens, it's going to be the genuine, true Star Trek fans who will save the day. ... I was rolling in the aisles. And [star] Tim Allen had that Shatner-esque swagger down pat. And I roared when the shirt came off, and [co-star] Sigourney [Weaver] rolls her eyes and says, 'There goes that shirt again.' ... How often did we hear that on the set? [Laughs.] - George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series^[4]

[edit] Relation to Star Trek

Galaxy Quest is an acknowledged homage to Star Trek; therefore a variety of elements in the former correspond to those of the latter. The television program within the film, Galaxy Quest, is set around the starship NSEA Protector, an instrument of the National Space Exploration Administration, which are obviously parodies of the USS Enterprise and Starfleet respectively. The prefix of the Protector’s registration number NTE-3120 ostensibly alludes to some sort of similar space federation, but in reality stands for "Not The Enterprise", according to visual effects co-supervisor Bill George in a 2000 interview with Cinefex magazine.^[13]

This homage even extended to the original marketing of the movie, including a promotional website^[14] intentionally designed to look like a poorly constructed fan website, with "screen captures" and poor HTML coding.

In other media[link]

• In December 1999 E!, the US entertainment channel, featured a mockumentary entitled Galaxy Quest: 20th Anniversary The Journey Continues, concerning the making of the Galaxy Quest television show.
• Galaxy Quest was novelized by science fiction writer Terry Bisson who stayed very close to the plot of the movie
• In 2008, IDW Publishing released a comic book sequel to the movie entitled Galaxy Quest: Global Warning.
• A Deluxe Edition DVD was released on May 12, 2009
• In Apogee of Fear, the first science-fiction movie made in space, NASA astronaut Michael Fincke refers to the need to "fashion weapons out of a rudimentary lathe." Both Michael Fincke and fellow NASA Astronaut Greg Chamitoff deliver the line "Never give up... never surrender."^{[citation needed]}
• In DVD commentaries on Babylon 5, Bruce Boxleitner similarly comments that he holds a fondness for Galaxy Quest and considers it the funniest take on sci-fi fandom.
• In 2003, Danish rock band Blindstone recorded a song titled "By Grabthar's Hammer" for their album Manifesto.

DVD extras[link]

• There is a feature on the DVD simulating the Omega 13, by reversing the opening sequence to the main menu. If the Omega 13 feature is selected before watching the movie however, it comes up with an "Access Denied" error. Only by watching the movie up to Chapter 19 (or skipping to Chapter 19) will the Omega 13 feature activate. (Chapter 18 of the movie is the chapter in which the Omega 13's power is revealed.)
• Some editions have an alternate audio track in which the dialogue is spoken in the Thermians' language, except for one English word spoken by an alien (shortly after the actors arrive on the ship).
• The 2009 Blu-ray edition of the film includes a tongue-in-cheek trivia commentary called "Galactopedia." Written by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, the Galactopedia purports to be based on Galaxy Quest encyclopedias, technical manuals, and other imaginary books.
• Usually, as in Star Trek, when there's an explosion, the camera would tilt to one side and the actors would fall to the other, creating the visual effect of the set rolling and the actors reacting (an effect often called the "Irwin Allen rock-and-roll" by film buffs). The Protector’s bridge set was built on hydraulic rams (gimbals), so during an explosion, the set would actually (and very suddenly) rock to one side, vibrate wildly and throw the actors out of their seats. According to interviews on the DVD release of the film, the effect was so real that it actually frightened (and injured) several of the main cast.^[15]