Since there won’t be a substantial post for a little while longer…
Gwen DeMarco: What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway! No, I mean we shouldn’t have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?!
Jason Nesmith: ‘Cause it’s on the television show.
Gwen DeMarco: Well forget it! I’m not doing it! This episode was badly written!
Open thread, by virtue of being open, is not actually restricted to discussing Galaxy Quest. But who can resist? I missed this movie entirely in theaters and only saw it years later, as part of an Alan Rickman: Beneath His Dignity marathon at my college SF club. (Just an excuse to watch Prince of Thieves, really. Though I also vaguely remember watching a terrible romantic comedy.) At least half the jokes were lost on me at the time.
What I find so striking now, being a much more hardened Trekkie than I was then, is how well Galaxy Quest (as a parody!) captures the sincerity of the original show and honors it. What destroys the Thermians is the idea that these people who embody virtue and all that is noble and good are lying. Star Trek has always been unapologetic in its idealism. It’s nice to see that aspect of it not ridiculed in the least but held up as a virtue–and as more than that, something sort of sacred.
It’s so hard to pick a favorite line. “That was a hell of a thing!” No, wait. “By Grabthar’s hammer… what a savings.” Or maybe it’s the one about Gilligan’s Island…
I unabashedly love this movie, though I too didn’t fully get it when I saw it in theaters (what, I’ve always been more of a TNG kid).
What I also love about this movie is that the cast realizes that what they’ve done is important, not just because it was a job, and not just on the (dubious) merits of the show itself, but because it meant something, really meant something deep and life-changing, to a lot of the fans. For all that Rickman’s character can’t take what he sees as being upstaged and stuck with bad writing, I think there’s a real change when he sees that there are people who filled out the skeleton character from the writing, maybe better than he did himself, and made it into something that could be a source of inspiration and an object of admiration.
I guess what I mean is that, insofar as Galaxy Quest is a good analogue for Star Trek, it’s meaningful in part because of the potential that was there but not always realized — but in larger part because we have given it meaning, by appreciating those things which it could only hint at.
Of course forty years of subsequent canon expansion through shows, movies, and novels kinda helped. : )
Question: the Tony Shalhoub character, Fred Kwan. Is he supposed to be Chinese? That’s a Chinese surname. I’m… pretty sure there’s no other ethnic group that uses it. What’s the deal with that? Also, I still maintain that he’s not just weird, he’s supposed to be basically always stoned. I think they downplayed this, but he is the guy going to the *vending machine* trying to sate his *munchies* when the crew first gets beamed up…
I’m pretty sure the casting is making fun of all the characters in Star Trek that are often playing with highly faked accents or whatever.
I read in a Cinefex article about the movie that the “NTE” in the ship’s registration stood for “Not The Enterprise” – because of all their struggles to get a design that looked like Star Fleet without being anything like the designs used in Star Trek.
Love, love, love this movie. So many hilarious lines and nudge, nudge, wink, wink moments. An affectionate homage to Star Trek and it’s fandom. Gotta love Sam Rockwell as “Guy”, the crewman so disposable he doesn’t even get a last name. Also gotta love Justin Long in his first film appearance as the enthusiastically devoted “Questie”.
Great and quotable lines include:
” Look, I’ve got one job on this lousy ship. It’s stupid, but I’m gonna do it, okay!”
” You broke the ship. You broke the bloody ship!”
“Where ar you going?” “To see if there’s a pub!”
” Have you ever even watched the show?!”
A fun bit of trivia; watch the scene where Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver face the chompers. Although she says “Screw this!” her lips clearly form the words “Fuck this!”. The line was redubbed in order to keep a PG rating.
@ 1 DeepThought
I remember reading somewhere that Nicholas Meyer was surprised that when filming Spock’s death scene in STII, crewmembers on the set were sobbing their eyes out. He had never big a Trek fan and I remember him saying that was the first time he was struck by how much this show meant to people, and how important this movie was, and critical it was to get everything right. Because for you, you’re just doing a job, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that it can be meaningful to people.
@ 3 Ludon
Kind of like trying to come up with elves or orcs that aren’t reminiscent of Tolkien.
@4 Dep1701
I love that Guy is obviously the only one who ever watched the show. He knows exactly what’s going to happen every time!
They should’ve let Sigourney Weaver alone, haha. She’s great, though I resented the “they’ve always been in love with each other” thing. I mean, did that serve any purpose whatsoever?
I love this movie. End to end. Which is kinda shocking, because I genially LOATHE Tim Allen, but he was just right for this movie, the perfect self-important Hollywood never-was.
I think my favourite lines have to be:
Guy: “Oh, that’s not right.”
And:
Teb: “And it exploded.”
I use that last one ALL THE TIME.
Also, Mathasar, after “Gilligan’s Island” is mentioned:
M: “Oh, those poor people.”
@ 6 CatieCat
I take comfort in the knowledge that after GQ, Tim Allen became forever trapped in the genre of unspeakably dreadful Christmas movies.
I love the Gilligan’s Island line.
The villain in this film was named after my college film professor and noted critic, Andrew Sarris, who apparently panned the producer’s first film. True story.
I just skimmed some of the trivia at IMDB, and I hadn’t caught some of these references before, like Sarris’ eye patch being modeled for General Chang’s!
@6 CaitieCait
Those are my favorite lines too! Especially, “Those poor people.” Which you have to repeat in that Thermian voice.
Clearly, I need to rent this film. I seem to vaguely recall having seen it — or bits of it — once, but it doesn’t seem to have stuck with me.
I adore Galaxy Quest, it’s a film thatworks so well on so many different levels. I had the pleasure of meeting the screenwriter at the last Chicon (Worldcon in Chicago) and he was a very approachable fellow who stated that the theme of the film is believers versus cynics. I only wish that they had found a way to keep some of the deleted scenes in the movie. There’s a wondeful one with Fred Kwan being asked to help with tech problems in the engineering and Tony’s is wonderful through the sequence.
@45 Dep1701 Guy does have a last name, it is Fleegman. I love that his character get so rattled that he forgets he has a last name. Man Sam Rockwell just rocks in everything I see him in.
@ 8 Eugene
Oh man, I didn’t catch a lot of those things! I’m also really sad I missed this, since you don’t feel it on DVD:
That’s massively cool.
@ 10 bobsandiego
Is it on the DVD? I should’ve checked out the extras. Re: Guy Fleegman, isn’t that the actor’s name? His character is “Crewman Number Six.”
@ 12 Torie Atkinson
Yes, on the DVD there are a number of deleted scenes. Including a hilarious bit by Ms Weaver. Actor: Sam Rockwell (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Confessions of A Dangerous Mind, Iron Man 2, Moon) , plays actor Guy Fleegman who on the show was crewman number six.
@bobsandiego
No, I know who Sam Rockwell is. I’m saying he’s panicking because Crewman Number Six doesn’t have a last name, not because Guy’s forgotten his own.
@12 Torie
I did see it in the theater–twice–and I don’t think I noticed that! Though it’s possible my theater just didn’t support it? Or I was completely oblivious. Nifty idea though.
@11 bobsandiego
If I recall, Guy’s character doesn’t get a name until the second series.
But of course, plenty of red shirts on Star Trek had names and were killed anyway. I was always impressed when Kirk seemed to know who they were. I would love a scene where he gets a list of names just before the landing party beams down and has to memorize them all, or maybe Spock just whispers them to him, because why bother learning the names of people who won’t be around for long?
@ 14 Torie
I stand by my interpretation. Guy is freaking out as they land, insisting that he now the crewman who is going to die to show the situation is serious, he’s not even important enough for a last name. Jason answers of course he has a last name and Guy asks him what it is and Jason has forgotten Guy’s last name, he looks around for help, but no one else remembers it either. (after all he wasn’t part of their regular gigs) Guy was not saying that crewman six hand no name, he was freaking out over his own name. ( http://youtu.be/I1-Wpq-NOQg)
I’ve always told my friends it that situation I;d either be Guy or Fred nothing in between.
I thought that Fred Kwan’s relaxed, pleasant, laid-back attitude was supposed to represent DeForest Kelley’s. He didn’t seem stoned to me at all.
Anyway, Kwan is certainly a Chinese name and his character’s name, Chen, is also Chinese.
I always thought that the character of Chen, with his overly made up look in the show clips, was a nod to the ’60s and early ’70s tendency to have obviously occidental actors portray asian characters ( or characters written as one race protrayed by actors of another… Khan / Ricardo Montalban, for example ).
@18 Dep1701
I think you are dead on right about that. Isn’t there a line where Fred says his name isn’t even Kwan? (I think it occurse during the beam-up sequence.)
@18 Dep1701
That trend continued well into the 80s with Joel Grey playing an Asian character in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
Guy was not saying that crewman six hand no name, he was freaking out over his own name.
I agree with this. Remember, Guy is the most genre-savvy person on the Protector II. He’s so genre-savvy that he knows (or at least suspects) that he’s a fictional character in a story; therefore, the question of whether the writers bothered to give him a last name is important to him. And of course, at this point the audience also didn’t know his last name, or whether he even had one. It was a very meta joke.
Mind you, in story terms, this makes him insane, because in-story he’s a real person, and not a fictional character.
According to a Peter David Star Trek novel (written after this movie came out in theaters, of course), “Never Give Up; Never Surrender” is pounded into Starfleet Academy cadets. I just like the nod to this great movie showing up in Trek.
There was also a comicbook that came out a few years after the film that continued the story of these actors defending Earth in their spare time between takes on their new TV show — and without the NSEA Protector there to help.