It’s about time for another Sunday Night Movie recommendation. My prescribed cure for the Smondays, that time on a Sunday when the weekend stops being the weekend and starts being the night before Monday and you have to start thinking about that work or school week. A Sunday night movie is just the thing to put on, settle in, unwind, decompress and hit the reset button before that dreaded Monday morning. The Sunday Night Movie is a curated selection for exactly that purpose. This week’s selection is the forgotten classic sci fi comedy adventure Galaxy Quest.
Galaxy Quest is centered around the actors who portray the crew of the fictional NSEA Protector on a Star Trek like series, Galaxy Quest, that was cancelled some twenty odd years prior. The movie begins with a clip from the penultimate cliffhanger finale of Galaxy Quest, before jumping to present day (circa 1999-2000 when the movie was originally released) where they are appearing at a Galaxy Quest convention celebrating the old show. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of popular culture will recognize how the convention is directly based on Star Trek conventions. From there we meet some aliens who have seen Galaxy Quest on their home planet, but have mistaken the show for “historical documents” and built the NSEA Protector for real. When they are unable to deal with an intergalactic foe, they come to recruit the crew of the original Protector to help them and command the real life ship, unaware that they are only actors. The brilliance of this premise is that it allows the movie to play in 2 different sandboxes, to have it’s cake and eat it too. We get to explore the characters of the actors who portray the crew, how they have grappled with being typecast and really only known for their roles on Galaxy Quest. We get to see them at the convention, interacting with their fans, some of them reveling in it, some of them despising it. But when the aliens show up with their own version of the Protector, the movie gets to enter the genuine science fiction arena, space battles and all. The movie at once is a send up of and a love letter to Star Trek culture, all the while being a proper sci fi adventure in it’s own right.
The premise of Galaxy Quest is exceedingly fun and unique, but without the right cast and crew to execute it deftly, it could easily have played the wrong way. Tim Allen plays Jason Nesmith, the actor who plays commander of the Protector who revels in the spotlight and is pretty full of himself. His performance within the performance is shaded in by hints of William Shatner’s James T. Kirk, while never devolving into a schtick or a ripoff, but is instead a character of his own played by a fully formed character. Alan Rickman plays Alexander Dane, a classically trained theater actor who is only remembered for his role as the alien doctor on galaxy quest and has grown to despise the character and his catchphrase. Dane thinks the role is beneath his acting abilities and laments that Nesmith stole scenes and lines during the shows run. Signourney Weaver plays Gwen DeMarco, the actress who plays the female lead on the show, whose main job on the ship is to talk to the computer. She is the sex symbol of the show and it is an open acknowledgement that womens jobs on ships were often ridiculous in science fiction. Tony Shalhoub and Daryl Mitchell round out the crew of the protector. The actors all have great chemistry together and seem like a family who have spent far too much time together over the years and squabble amongst themselves, with genuine friendship underneath it all. The characters are the key to what makes Galaxy Quest work so well. They aren’t playing it for laughs or telling jokes or making light of situations. They are playing real, fully formed characters who are reacting to the situations they find themselves in. One of things that makes Galaxy Quest so satisfying is the arc of the characters throughout the movie. They start out as a cynical group of actors who find themselves in an extreme fish out of water situation where they are expected to perform the jobs they portrayed on Galaxy Quest, and are eventually able to rise to the challenges of the situation and perform those jobs.
Galaxy Quest is just a wonderfully fun science fiction movie that was well aware of the tropes of its genre and played with them wonderfully. The characters are well aware of the cliches of Galaxy Quest and make note of and apply them as those situations arise on their real space adventure. For example, the unnamed crewman always dies, there’s always some form of monster to fight, or the self destruct timer always stops 3 seconds before the destruction of the ship. Galaxy Quest was self referential back in 1999 before meta was popular culture phenomena.
I really can’t recommend Galaxy Quest enough, whether you are a fan of Star Trek and science fiction, or not. It plays with the collective consciousness of Star Trek, but you hardly need a passing familiarity to find enjoyment in the movie. The premise is so refreshingly original, allowing the story to take place in our own world with science fiction television shows, fan conventions and pop culture, and then suddenly transport us to a world where all of the science fiction is real. We get to experience the awe of being caught up in that world with the crew of actors and go on this wonderful adventure with them. So next time you need to chase away those Smondays, I encourage you to watch Galaxy Quest for your next Sunday Night Movie.