#galaxy quest

Sigourney Weaver 1972

[All images are owned by DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment. Please don’t sue me]

PREVIOUSLY ON...

At the 18th annual GalaxyCon, a fan convention for the show Galaxy Quest, the show's cast (Jason Nesmith (played by Tim Allen), Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver), Sir Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman), Tommy Webber (played by Daryl Mitchell), Fred Kwan (Played by Tony Schaloub), and Guy Fliegman (played by Sam Rockwell; who wasn't part of the main cast but had a bit part as a Redshirt and happened to be on hand at the time) (I'm not listing the characters' roles. Check out part 1 for that) were recruited by a race of aliens knows as Thermians.

Their leader, Mathesar (played by Enrico Colantoni) explained that they needed the crew's help (thinking the show was real and the crew were their roles) in defending their race against a warlord named Sarris. To that end, the Termians took all data from the show and constructed an operation duplicate of the show's ship, the Protector!

However, there's a big difference in playing a role and leading a space battle, and Jason barely managed to escape with the ship. After obtaining a new Dilithium Crystal Beryllium Sphere and repairing the ship, it's invaded by Sarris!

Sarris learns the truth about the crew, forcing Jason to tell Mathesar the truth, then set the ship to self-destruct (in 9 minutes, and yes I'll be watching the actual runtime to see if they would've actually made it), locked up the Thermians in their quarters and started bleeding the air from it, and ordered Our Heroes to be ejected out an airlock!

Now, on with our story! If you would like to watch the film, it's available on Paramount+ or behind your favorite paywall.

Alex wonders where the happy ending is for everyone.

Jason then starts insulting Alex, much to the shock of the crew.

With that, the pair start brawling as they get escorted into the airlock. Suddenly…

…they start attacking their escorts, shoving them into the airlock and jettisoning them into space! I guess they did a similar ploy in Episode 17.

Then Gwen sees a monitor showing…

…the Thermians being suffocated as the air is bled from their quarters! And only eight minutes until implosion!

…err, seven minutes.

With seven minutes left…

…well, six and a half (close enough), Sarris leaves the ship and Jason has a plan: he and Gwen would get to the Warp Neutron Reactor Core to manually shut down the implosion, Alex will try to get the door open on the Termians’ quarters while the others (with Laliari) try to stop the air bleed…except Tommy.

That’s not as inane as it sounds, since, assuming they get out of this mess, someone’s gonna need to fly the ship. The question is: how is he supposed to learn?

We’ll get back to that, since before Tommy can fly the ship, Jason and Gwen need to save it. Problem is, neither know how to shut down a Warp Core Neutron Reactor. However, Jason might know a guy.

He’d better hurry. He has less than 6 minutes left!

(Thanks again to Fandango)

Let’s check in with Alex, shall we? There’s only six minutes left.

Err, I mean 4 minutes!

Anyway, Alex runs into Quillek, who was cowering against the ceiling. Hopefully, they can get that door open.

Meanwhile, Brandon is using his encyclopedic knowledge of the show (along with a computer-generated map of the ship that he and his friends have compiled from watching the show like a zillion times) to guide Jason and Gwen to the reactor. Brandon then gets into the 90s version of a group chat with the rest of his gang to assist.

Elsewhere, the other half of the rescue team is working their way to environmental controls

…and it looks like Guy is starting to embrace the fact that he’s expendible and wants to go out in as badass a way as possible.

The problem is that Sarris has left men to guard the environmental controls (you think they realize he’s abandoning them to die?)

Meanwhile, Tommy is bingeing the show to remember all the movements he used to pilot the ship back on the show.

Alex and Quellek have reached the barracks and work on opening the door before all the air is bled out.

Eventually, Gwen and Jason reach the chamber housing the Omega 13. Jason asks what it does, but even Brandon isn’t sure, but speculates…

The idea would be an opportunity to correct a major mistake.

But there’s no time for speculation as Sarris’s men have found them and have open fire!

Back at environmental Control, Guy is really playing the expendable badass to the hilt

However, Fred refuses to believe Guy’s assessment of his role in this adventure.

Oh, and the ship should’ve imploded a second ago.

In any event, Guy decides he’d rather live as the Comic Relief than die as a badass.

Back at the crew quarters, Alex and Quellek manage to open the door to let air in (hopefully faster than it’s bleeding out), but only briefly (at least they bought ‘em a couple of more minutes…though they’re already dead on account of the reactor imploding)

Let’s get back to Jason, Gwen, and the Peanut Gallery, shall we?

(Thanks to Ellen Beeman)

[FUN FACT: You may note that Sigourney Weaver's mouth doesn't quite sync up with the audio in the beginning of the above clip. That's due to the fact that the line was rewritten between the time that the scene was shot and when the actors dubbed over their lines. The studio wanted to keep the film family-friendly, and thought dropping an F-bomb during this scene might not be the best idea for that, so the dub was changed to "SCREW that!"]

OK, should be a straight shot to the reactor that was destroyed (along with the ship) just under 2 minutes age.

Meanwhile, Fred executes his plan:

Digitize Gorignak into Environmental control (why not Digitize the guards to the surface so that Gorignak doesn’t crush the controls?)

Laliari is so impressed she she begins making out with Fred. However, if you remember what the Thermians’ true forms are…

Well, I’ve seen enough hentai to know how this ends.

After a quickie, they enter Environmental Control and restore the airflow just as Alex and Quellek get the door open. The crew cheers!

(Thanks to Boxoffice Movie Scenes)

Huh, so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered on the timing.

Sarris is none too happy that the Protector survived, so he engages once again.

With that Jason gathers everyone back to the Command Deck.

(Thanks to Binge Society)

Mathesar is saddened, since withn Jason gone, the ship will no longer have a Commander.

With that, the ship heads into the black hole and back to Earth.

(Thanks again to Binge Society)

So with Brandon’s guidance, Tommy brings the Command Deck in for a landing (sorta)

(Thanks once more to Binge Society)

So…instead of the convention, Jason, and the others being sued into oblivion, they got a new show? Sure, why not?

All in all, one hell of a love letter to Trek, and possibly the best one until Seth McFarlane made his own, but that’s a tale for another review.

[All images are owned by DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment. Please don’t sue me]

PREVIOUSLY ON...

At the 18th annual GalaxyCon, a fan convention for the show Galaxy Quest, the show's cast (Jason Nesmith (played by Tim Allen), Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver), Sir Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman), Tommy Webber (played by Daryl Mitchell), Fred Kwan (Played by Tony Schaloub), and Guy Fliegman (played by Sam Rockwell; who wasn't part of the main cast but had a bit part as a Redshirt and happened to be on hand at the time) (I'm not listing the characters' roles. Check out part 1 for that) were recruited by a race of aliens knows as Thermians.

Their leader, Mathesar (played by Enrico Colantoni) explained that they needed the crew's help (thinking the show was real and the crew were their roles) in defending their race against a warlord named Sarris. To that end, the Termians took all data from the show and constructed a fully operation duplicate of the show's ship, the Protector!

However, there's a big difference in playing a role and leading a space battle, and Jason barely managed to escape with the ship.

It's determined that, in addition to the MASSIVE damage to the ship, it needs a new Dilithium Crystal Beryllium Sphere. Jason and the others head to a nearby planet to obtain one.

That catches us up. Now, on with our story! If you would like to watch the film, it's available on Paramount+ or behind your favorite paywall.

Upon their arrival to the planet, Our Heroes are ready to head down in a shuttle pod…sorts.

(Thanks again to Fandango)

Eventually (after much arguing…geez, did these guys EVER get along?), they encounter what looks like a mining facility with small green aliens the size of children. Gwen wants to go down and hug them until the crew sees what they do to an injured one of their own.

Yeah, they’re probably not gonna just hand over a Beryllium Sphere. Fortunately, Jason has a plan that seems familiar:

Guy immediately hates this plan.

However, while they argue, the aliens disappear. Now’s their chance to get a Sphere! However, as they roll it away…

Somehow, they make it back to the shuttle, but the Sphere is blocking the entrance. Jason stays behind to the shuttle can take off.

Luckily, the aliens don’t eat Jason. Instead, they knock him out.

Jason later wakes up to…

…while surrounded the aliens chanting “Gorignak”.

Meanwhile, the others have arrived at the Protector and try to figure out a way to save Jason.

(Thanks again to JoBlo Movie Clips

While they beamed up Digitized Jason, the Beryllium Shpere was installed, so no everyone can go home. Only…

That kind of changes everything. Jason calls for Mathesar to meet them on the Command Deck, but there’s no response. Suddenly…

Oh, shit!

Sarris drags them to where he’s holding Mathesar.

Sarris offers to spare Mathesar, in exchange for information on the Omega 13.

Sarris doesn’t believe Jason, since a Commander knows everything about his ship.

(Thanks to No Watermark Clips)

OK, once again, I will be matching the timer to the actual time on the film to see if they actually save the ship. According to the film, the Waro Reactor Core will overload in 9 minutes. What’s the current time mark, please?

So, at 1:16:28, the ship implodes. No pressure.

CAN Our Heroes save the ship and the crew?

WILL they defeat Sarris?

WHAT is the penalty for stealing a Beryllium Sphere??

[All images are owned by DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment. Please don’t sue me]

[QUICK NOTE: I had thought I had posted this years ago, but couldn’t find it in my archive. Then I remembered…I had, but thanks to the way I wrote reviews back then (I tried to cram image-heavy reviews of movies over an hour and a half long into one post and watched Tumblr pitch fits when I tried to save it), Tumblr “ate” it and it was gone forever. Even worse, back then I wrote everything into Tumblr instead of my current practice of doing so in Word and copy/pasting it to Tumblr. So….take 2]

If you’ve spent any time on fanfic websites (or, back in the 90s, USENET boards), you’re bound to find any number of Star Trek fanfic. Once you see the first few minutes of Galaxy Quest, you’ll get the idea that this is Trek fanfic with the serial numbers filed off. You would think it was a parody film like Spaceballs, but it’s actually so much more and went beyond its fanfic premise and into arguably a sci-fi classic.

(Thanks to Rotten Tomatoes)

Galaxy Quest, according to the film lore, was a sci-fi series from the late 70s that was unceremoniously cancelled in 1981. Since its cancellation, fan support kept the series alive for (at that point) 18 years thanks to fan conventions. For whatever reason (unlike the TOS cast), the cast had to be booked as a package deal rather than individually. Needless to say, the on-screen tensions had been magnified over the past 2 decades since they can’t get away from each other.

The show starred Jason Nesmith (played by Tim Allen), who played Commander Peter Quincy Taggert. Jason knows he’s the star the fans want to see and plays that card to the hilt, often taking solo gigs behind the others’ back (needless to say, no one among the cast likes him very much)

Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver) played First Officer Lt. Tawney Madison, whose role was essentially eye candy that parroted whatever the computer said. Needless to say, she’s a bit bitter about that.

Sir Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman) is a classically trained Shakespearian actor that played Dr. Lazarus, the ship’s science officer. He hates that he’s known for this role. He hates that Jason continues to hog the spotlight long after he did so during the series.

And he HATES that STUPID! FUCKING! CATCHPHASE!     

Tommy Webber (played by Daryl Mitchell, who would go on to play Paxton Plame in NCIS: New Orleans, and has been a paraplegic since he was involved in an accident in 2001) was a child actor when Galaxy Quest was being filmed and played the ship’s pilot, Laredo.

Fred Kwan (Played by Tony Schaloub) played the ship’s engineer Tech Sgt. Chen. I can’t confirm it, but I’m pretty sure Fred is on some sort of sedative, because, out of the entire crew, he’s the one who’s the most chill about everything that happens in the film.

But enough introductions. On with the show! If you would like to watch the film, it’s available on Paramount+ or behind your favorite paywall.

We open to…

(Thanks to JoBlo Movie Clips)

Before we continue, let’s talk about the announcer for the seminar:

Guy Fliegman (played by Sam Rockwell), who played Crewman #6 (and died a Redshirt’s death) in Episode 81 of the series.

Following the introductions, the crew is escorted to the autograph tables.

Naturally, Jason gets his own table.

Alex is sick of hearing fans (mostly dressed in bad replicas of his “head”) spewing that stupid catchphrase at him after the second time, while Gwen is trying to dissuade rumors that there was ever anything between Tawny Madison and Peter Taggert.

As the crew takes a break, Jason is stopped by four fans who plead for his help.

He tells the fans to make sure to pick him up in a limo, then takes off to the restroom, where he overhears attendees mocking the crew…especially him.

After that, he just wants to leave, but is stopped by another batch of fans who are trying to nitpick details about the show (don’t you just hate those types of fans?)…and he snaps.

With that, he storms out of the convention hall.

That night, he spends his time at home watching old Galaxy Quest reruns and getting totally drunk.

The next morning…

(Thanks to Michael and Stephanie Sandberg)

The leader of the Thermiansis named Mathesar (played by Enrico Colantoni, who played Kieth Mars in Veronica Mars)

So…that happened.

Meanwhile, Jason is missing the legitimate gig he and the others were booked for: advertising the opening of an electronics store.

As you can tell, Alex was THRILLED by this gig.

Jason rushed to the gig, running into the teens he blew off at the convention. Both he and the teens dropped their communicators voxes, and got them mixed up when they were picked up. Jason then rushed to the rest of the crew to tell them about his adventure in deep space

As you can tell, they all think he’s full of it.

Then the Thermians show up, saying Sarris survived the encounter and they need his help yet again.

The crew pretty much brushes him off and walks away. Then they realize he was talking about a job and rush back.

(Thanks to Binge Society)

Mathesar explains that they have modeled their entire society after the Protector’s “Historical Documents.” Jason then explains that they’re on a starport, housing their spaceship:

…the Protector 2. Mathesar takes them on a tour and Jason is pumped about being “Commander Taggert,” while the rest are more than a bit dubious.

(other than Guy, who’s just happy to be on “the show” again)

Eventually, the tour reaches the Bridge Command Deck.

(Thanks to LongShot)

 And so, after a squealy start, Our Heroes are on their way to their negotiation with Sarris.

Mathesar explains why Sarris has been attacking his people: Sarris is after the Omega 13 device (the one in the show clip at the beginning of the film) Since the show was cancelled before the cliffhanger was resolved, none of the crew knows what it does, so they ask Mathesar. Mathesar isn’t exactly sure either.  Jason asks how Sarris knows about the device. Mathesar admits that the former Commander was tortured for the information before he was killed.

Suddenly, the crew doesn’t want to do this any more.

However, Sarris has arrived and would likely destroy anyone who tries to leave. Oh, by the way…Sarris is here and everyone is needed on the Command Deck. Sarris is sympathetic that the last encounter was a misunderstanding (in case you didn’t guess, that was sarcasm)

Jason signals to Gwen to cut the transmission, then comes up with a plan to take Sarris with a surprise attack. Just one problem:

Gwen misinterpreted his signal to cut the transmission and didn’t, so Sarris heard everything. Needless to say, he’s even less happy about that that he was after the first time they met.

(Thanks again to Fandango)

Well, they get through the minefield and somehow evade Sarris, but Tommy has a broken arm. What’s more…

(Thanks about Medbob)

Mathesar then shows up to apologize for their failure (WHAT?! Jason’s the one who broke the fucking ship!) Gwen tries to explain that they’re actors, but Mathesar’s people are incapable of not telling the truth and think anyone who is not honest is the worst types of people. Gwen then asks if they think, say, Gilligan’s Island is real.

Fortunately, Fred chimes in to save an awkward situation.

With that, Jason prepares to pack up his crew so they can retrieve a Dilithium Crystal Beryllium Sphere and Save The Day.

 In the meantime, Alex needs a rest, so his liaison Quellek takes him to his quarters (modeled after his quarters in the Historical Documents) and shows him to his bed.

Homey! Quilek brags that, after 3 years of effort, he was able to comfortably sleep on the spikes.

[NOTE: the above scene was, unfortunately, deleted from the film, but it’s too funny to not share]

In any event...

WILL Our Hereoes find a Beryllium Sphere?

CAN they defeat Sarris?

WHY are the Thermians letting Jason command the ship after he nearly destroyed it?

His two defining traits from The Original Series, is 1. He has a moustache and 2. He's dead.

He was such a non character, he didn't even get his own actor.

He's Shatner in a moustache. Which would have worked if they were twins.... alas they weren't

Do we know who else has the definiting traits of 1. A moustache. 2. Being dead.

Crewman number 6, played by Guy Fleegman, in the original Galaxy Quest

Sam Rockwell and Sigourney Weaver as Guy Fleegman and Gwen DeMarco