Featured Creature: The one where Buzz Lighyear plays Captain Kirk

 

Title: Galaxy Quest

What Year?: 1999

Classification: Parody/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

When I started this feature, I openly acknowledged that it was because I had a movie that didn’t fit anywhere else. This time around, I’m back with another installment because certain other plans required me to retreat and regroup. Fortunately, it happened that I had recently watched another movie that looked good to fill the gap. It isn’t really what I’ve had in mind as the basis for a new feature, but on another level, it’s the epitome of the genre and trends that convinced me I needed something more than my existing features. For this review, I am incidentally adopting the Revenant Review/ Super Movies scale, which I previously held off on while making a few decisions about what this might include. With no further ado, I present Galaxy Quest, a Star Trek parody that managed to be as good as the actual Trek movies.

Our story begins with the credits of a clearly cheap and cheesy science fiction show that looks like it dates from the 1970s or early ‘80s. We then meet the cast of the show at a convention about 20 years on, including a woman insecure about being judged on her looks, a high-brow actor tired of his character’s signature line, an extra killed off before the credits, and the star, who’s still full enough of himself to sail along on pure ego. Things take a turn for the strange when the captain is contacted for what he takes as a new gig negotiating a peace treaty between a race called the Thermians and their enemies. Once he gets over his hangover, he realizes that the aliens are a real race who accept his televised adventures as history, and he has personally torpedoed the flagship of the leader of the bad guys, a sadistic overlord named Sarris. He is soon called on again for a rematch with Sarris, dragging the rest of the old crew along with him on a reconstruction of their ship. Their bonds are put to the test as they try to retrieve vital supplies from a hostile planet, but their greatest trial lies ahead when they find that Sarris has captured their ship!

Galaxy Quest was a production of SKG Dreamworks, several years before the studio’s breakthrough hit Shrek. The movie was developed from a script by David Howard, specifically as a satire of Star Trek, with Harold Ramis at one point selected as director. Ramis reportedly left the project in part over the casting of Tim Allen in the lead role of Jason Nesmith/ Captain Taggert. The cast was filled out by Sigourney Weaver as Gwen, the late Alan Rickman as Alexander Demarco, and Tony Shalhoub as the engineer, with Sam Rockwell as the potentially doomed extra Guy, Enrico Colatoni as the Thermian leader and Robin Sachs (d. 2013) as the overlord Sarris. The film was well-received critically, with a further endorsements from Ramis and William Shatner, but viewed as a financial disappointment with a box office of $90 million against a $45M budget. It went on to greater success as a “cult” movie on home video. In 2019, it was subject of a documentary, Never Give Up, Never Surrender.

For my personal experiences, this is one where I got in on the ground floor. I didn’t quite get to it in theaters, but I remember seeing a good part of it in a local video store and watching it with family not long after. My foremost reaction was that the movie and the posited show don’t really have that much in common with Star Trek. From what I know now, I’d say it’s more like what might have been in an alternate universe where the 1970s-‘80s Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers revivals had taken off (see… Super Train?). In any event, I liked it very much, and for the most part have grown to appreciate it far more over time. The only thing that has really weighed down my appreciation is that, to me, the premise of the movie simply doesn’t work on its own terms. The Thermians are supposed to have no concept of fiction, but they still clearly understand actors and dramatic re-enactment. Given that minimum framework, accepting William Shatner as Captain Kirk makes no more sense than confusing George C. Scott with Patton. What’s far more problematic is that the illogical leap feels like a joke at the aliens’ expense, as if Terran culture is too sophisticated for aliens capable of actual faster-than-light travel, though that is at least balanced out when Sarris gets a look at the “historical documents”.

With that out of the way, I can get straight to what I like about the movie and also why I chose to cover it here. I’ve already been an outspoken purist about what makes a “monster movie”, and my top rule of thumb is that aliens with at least industrial-level civilization and technology rarely if ever qualify. On the other hand, it’s not exactly an “alien invasion” movie either, and there are certainly more conventional “monsters” in the mix, particularly the nasty little cannibals of the middle act. Here, the story actually acknowledges the question of classification, without resolving their status. From what we see and learn of them and their surroundings, they could be settlers gone native or natives that ate the settlers, but it’s never important enough for the story to address it further. I mention this at length in no small part as representative of the quality of worldbuilding in the movie as a whole. Add in Guy’s ominous commentary, and we have an inspired send-up of the genre that quickly starts to work on its own terms.

What truly stands out is that all the conceptual work augments the dynamics of the characters rather than being supported by them. This is certainly helped by the topnotch cast, who get plenty of help from the story and dialogue. The central arc is Allen’s Shatner/ Kirk analog, who goes through his arc without ever being unduly dislikeable. The core irony is that he actually proves to be a good leader in his own right, raising the question whether he is rising to new challenges or just restoring what the crew once had. He’s well-matched by Rickman as a “good” actor who is at least equally arrogant in his own right, while Weaver handles herself impressively just by holding a separate orbit from the men (perhaps more so than her closest counterparts on Trek). One also can’t underestimate the aliens, well-represented by Colatoni and Sachs. It’s worth further note that they only directly interact in one scene, which I strongly considered for the usual “one scene”. The Thermian leader remains naïve yet confident even in defeat, while Sarris wavers between contempt and exasperation as he tries to unravel their tangled relationship with the Earthlings.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and my favorite remains the chase that follows Jason’s second encounter with Sarris. As Jason’s plans break down, a plaintive warning comes from Guy: “There’s a red thingy heading toward the green thingy… and I think we’re the green thingy.” The ship takes off, and we get a view both of the Protector and Sarris’ flagship, the latter surely modeled after the planet-killer from Trek’s “The Doomsday Machine” (in my top 2 favorite original series episodes). The commander orders more speed, aiming for an interstellar cloud that they reach just after the Thermian leader explains that it is a minefield. What follows is better seen than described, accompanied by my pick for the best rendition of the movie/ show theme. As with many things in the movie, it’s a comical parody that still works just as well as any number of “straight” sequences before and since.

In closing, I can only come back to my rating and my central complaint. I can freely allow this movie is as good and flat-out fun as plenty of movies I have given a higher rating. I might further allow that it is a parody whose flaws rise from pushing the limits of its own premise (see Hancock), except that there are just as many points where its problematic concepts aren’t questioned at all. What I can’t get around is that this could have worked just as well in something like a “straight” storyline, perhaps a Van Vogt-style “far future” setting where present-day Earth has slipped as far into myth as King Arthur or the Trojan War. The bottom line remains that those behind the movie made their decision, and still made an excellent movie. That should be more than enough credit, and with that, I can bring this to a close. Never give up, never surrender!

Image credit Horror News.Net.