Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest is a thinly-veiled parody of Star Trek. No wait, that’s not quite right. Galaxy Quest is a hardly-veiled-at-all parody of Star Trek. Don’t know your phasers from your transporter room? Hmm, well although you don’t need an encyclopaedic knowledge and the open-minded might be able to enjoy it as a straightforward action-comedy, a passing familiarity of Trek and its trademarks is a must to properly ‘get’ the lampooning humour…

Despite being cancelled years ago, cult sci-fi show Galaxy Quest still has a dedicated following. Appearing at a convention with his fellow has-been co-stars, egotistical lead Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) is approached by what appears to be a bunch of dressed-up fans ready for a gig. When it turns out they are, in fact, real aliens who believe the show to be "historical documents" of a genuine space team, they bring the cast onboard to help deal with a vicious tyrant.

Truth be told, close-minded science-fiction naysayers will see this as silly and predictable – but they’re missing the point. For this is a spoof (and that’s a loose term here) which both mocks and celebrates Gene Roddenberry’s seminal Sixties series. Frequently funny, often inventive and never dull, director Dean Parisot lampoons Trek lore in both obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Of course, there have been many spin-off shows and a host of follow-up movies, but it’s the original series (or TOS to the geek hardcore) which serves as the comedy dart board.

Indeed, no cliché goes untouched. We’ve got the ship, main deck and teleportation room, which are all very Enterprise-esque. We briefly see the ‘away mission’ on a red-sky planet with obviously fake scenery (via Galaxy Quest clips), which was a weekly staple for Shat and co. Effects’ giants ILM and design guru Stan Winston (Alien, Predator, basically any good creature you’ve ever seen) take credibility boldly where no Mickey-take has gone, but it’s the cast who really sell it, each echoing one of Roddenberry’s recognisable V-neck elite.

There’s Allen having a whale of a time as the vain, spotlight-hogging Nesmith, who loved playing the Kirk-like heroic captain. There’s Alan Rickman, delightful as the bitter British thesp who resents being typecast as the prosthetic-clad, half-alien number two, a la Spock. Then there’s Sigourney Weaver filling the Uhura ‘communications’ type, as a shapely blonde miles from Ripley and whose clothing (thankfully) gets more revealing as the action progresses. Special kudos to Sam Rockwell also, stealing scenes a plenty as fanboy Guy, who once played an expendable crewman on the show – known by Trekkies as ‘redshirts’ – and now fears the same fate.

Mind you, as much as Galaxy Quest sends up Star Trek, its also a mockery-come-celebration (mockebration?) of fandom, giving those devoted forum-dwellers their moment to shine. If you wanted to nit-pick, the logic occasionally suffers from contrived conveniences (such as things actually existing that were on the programme), but the characters are too likeable for any of that to matter. As we progress, its fun to see the insecure actors slowly growing into the roles they long grew tired of, yet there are also punctuations of poignancy along the way, such as the surprisingly moving moment Nesmith overhears what people really think of him.

Not for everyone perhaps, but Galaxy Quest is a well-observed and giggle-worthy riff on Star Trek-style sci-fi. Set phasers to funny.