Viking Night: Galaxy Quest
By Bruce Hall
December 8, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Is that a bold statement? Have I already forgotten JJ Abrams’ reclamation of the once proud franchise from the Gre’thor of sci-fi purgatory? Oh, crap. I went and dropped a reference to Klingon hell. I guess I should go full disclosure here, and drop any pretense of objectivity.
I am (feel free to skip this paragraph if I’ve mentioned this before) what you might call a Reformed Orthodox Trekkie. I’ve seen all three seasons of the original series about three dozen times, and at one point could tell you stories about everyone, from the actors to the writers to the guy who held the boom mic in episode 36 (that would be “Wolf in the Fold”- not a high point for the show). I endured the horrible first two seasons of The Next Generation, enjoyed the terrific middle three, and stuck it out for the last two.
I tolerated Deep Space nine for a while, and even hung on until about two seasons into Voyager. Then I abandoned ship, embracing the sweet release of death rather than watch something I loved struggle and die, a miserable shell of what it once was. Watching my grandfather die of cancer was less traumatic for me than watching Star Trek commit franchise suicide. At least my granddad was strong and lucid and proud all the way to the end.
And by the way - if you think that’s a reprehensible sentiment, I invite you to make it through three episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise without wanting to drink a gallon of bleach and set yourself on fire. And don’t even get me started on the Next Generation films. Years of painful electro shock therapy were utterly wasted when I accidentally ran across them on Amazon a few years ago. They’re not just bad - they’re “I’d rather sit through an Al Qaeda recruitment video” bad.
So yes, I was once a Star Trek superfan. But I was also smart enough to give up and move on once it started to suck.
But then, not long after drinking my way through Star Trek: Insurrection (my assumption that the fantastic new technology of DVD might make it a good movie was so very, horribly wrong), I saw Galaxy Quest. I’d heard it was a good-natured send up of Star Trek. And while my feelings toward my former Favorite Thing Ever were anything but good-natured, I dove in. And by the bat’leth of Kahless (sorry...it’s a habit), it was a movie made completely, specifically for people like me. It was like watching your house burn down to the foundation, only to discover that someone you didn’t know had built you an inferior, but lovingly crafted copy right down the street.
Someone who, like you, remembered the good old days.
But even better than that, what makes Galaxy Quest so much fun is that it plays around with the well-publicized fact that there was significant tension between the original Star Trek cast. At one point Spock hated being Spock, Uhura bitched about not getting enough lines, and William Shatner was the biggest ham in Hollywood before David Hasselhoff ever stepped in front of a camera. So can you imagine what would happen if someone built an actual starship Enterprise and put these people in charge of saving the universe - for real?
Yes, of course they would die. We would die. Everyone would die.
Fortunately, Galaxy Quest is rated PG, so it doesn’t quite go down like that. You might remember a guy called Tim Allen, who was really popular in the ‘90s. You might also remember Sigourney Weaver, from a little movie called Alien. And of course there's Alan Rickman, a respected Shakespearean actor whom I affectionately like to call “Hans Gruber”. They are ideally cast as the crew of the Protector, the fictional starship at the center of the fictional TV show Galaxy Quest.
Two decades after cancellation, the cast of Galaxy Quest eke out a living appearing at sci-fi conventions. Gwen Demarco (Weaver), still laments being viewed as the “token female” on the show, Alexander Dane (Rickman) struggles with being a classically trained actor best known for being a fleshy headed alien, and secondary actors Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub), Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell) and Tommy Weber (Daryl Mitchell) are just happy to be collecting a paycheck. Meanwhile, lead actor Jason Nesmith (Allen) still relishes being the ship’s captain, and tends to buy into his own hype. He drinks hard, plays hard, shows up late to events, and subconsciously looks down his nose at his costars, who universally resent him.
For the most part, the actors treat their fans kindly, and Galaxy Quest has a pretty good time gently lampooning the cosplay culture of sci-fi conventions, where rabid fans tend to take the mythology of their favorite characters a little too seriously. But at one point, Nesmith - after overhearing himself described as a “laughingstock” - blows his fuse at an obsessive fan (an almost unrecognizably young Justin Long, who plays a part in the story later), angrily reminding the kid that the show he loves is nothing more than a fantasy. It’s a somewhat darker callback to a gag on Saturday Night Live some years back, where William Shatner more or less did the same thing.
But, our gang of washed up sad-sacks are given another shot at history when a group of fans show up at Nesmith’s home the next day, all looking like Eddie Munster clones in neoprene body suits. They turn out to be actual aliens who have picked up transmissions of Galaxy Quest from deep space, and modeled their entire civilization on the show’s principles of cultural tolerance and peaceful exploration. Now, they’re threatened by a warlike enemy, and have built a functional replica of the Protector, hoping to recruit Nesmith and his crew - who they believe to be actual space explorers - to save them from the menace.
The great part about this development is that it happens early in the film, and it gets us to the meat of the story quickly. One thing that might have killed Galaxy Quest before the end of the first act would have been excessive rumination on character backstories. We know all we need to about these people within 10 minutes, and the rest of the film is almost wall-to-wall fun and adventure. The aliens (from the Klaatu nebula - get it?) are sweet, naive people who feel powerless to save themselves, and their arc to maturity mirrors those of the Galaxy Quest class. While navigating the pitfalls of operating a real starship and battling a real galactic threat, Nesmith and his cast mates begin to grow into the family they’d only pretended to be for the sake of their fans. It’s actually a pretty tight, well written script by Robert Gordon, whose short list of credits includes the unpleasant Men in Black II, and the underrated Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
I have no doubt that part of the reason Galaxy Quest is so much damn fun is because it was written by someone with great familiarity and deep affection for Star Trek. So not only do parts of it feel familiar, but the satirical aspects of the story are presented benignly. It feels more like fond reminiscence than mean spirited mockery. And don’t let my frequent mention of Star Trek put you off this movie if you haven’t seen it. Even if you’re not familiar with Star Trek or even if you hate it, you’ll probably get the jokes. And Galaxy Quest is capable of standing on its own as an engaging, amusing - and very meta - adventure/comedy in its own right. It’s well cast, full of spot on performances, and almost impossible not to enjoy - unless you’re just determined to be in a bad mood.
Or maybe if you’re William Shatner, who swears he has no idea who Tim Allen was supposed to be.
Don’t you ever change, Bill. EVER.
It’s worth mentioning that unlike most films from the late ‘90s, the digital effects still hold up incredibly well. In fact I’ll go out on a limb and say that if I didn’t know when it was made (and if I didn’t know what Tim Allen looks like today), this might have been made in the last few years. And speaking of films made in the last few years, I’ll go out on a limb and say that if you want to watch a Star Trek film that’s 90 percent fan service and franchise retcon, you’re better off taking Galaxy Quest for a spin than you are wasting time wandering around in the Darkness.
As the Klingons say, “glory comes from unexpected sources.”