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| Movies,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F3
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In the thankfully dim and distant past I frequented an public drinking establishment that served a beverage know as Romulan ale, where the clientele came garbed as Klingons and where it was really, REALLY important that you knew your Cochrans from your Cardassians. Oh, and you weren’t allowed to like Quantum Leap. Yup, you guessed, we’re talking about the Star Trek bar here and, judging by the amount of social retards there, it really was not the place that you wanted everyone to know your name.
Amongst the many ‘delights’ present at the bar were a series of short films made by the fans. These ranged from indescribably awful to the just awful. Yet all were suffused with the love of the subject that seemingly only Star Trek could engender.
It is this same spirit that drives Galaxy Quest, a spoof of all things Trek. Galaxy Quest itself is practically Stark Trek in its first incarnation, featuring a cod philosophising, macho cheesemeister of a captain, unemotional science officer, token female and black officers, and an assortment of rubber monster that would put Ultraman to shame. Fast forward to the present, where the show is a cancelled cult classic, whilst the thesbianly challenged cast eech out a living appearing at fan conventions. It is at such an event where they encounter a group of even weirder fans than usual, calling themselves the Thermians. The reason for their odd behaviour becomes apparent very soon – these guys are the real deal, having modelled their culture on received broadcasts of the show from Earth’s past, and now, believing all they’ve seen is real, they want to reunite our intrepid crew to fight a deadly foe.
With such a concept, it should be very hard, nay impossible, to miss the bullseye. Star Trek, both behind and in front of the screen is constantly ripe for plunder and parody, so it’s more than a little odd when, at times, Galaxy Quest loses its way. Taking its time getting to impulse, let alone warp speeds, the film has most fun in the later sections, as the ageing actors attempt to behave as their fictional counterparts. That the Thermians have replicated the Galaxy Quests technology exactly is a nice idea, leading to some very inconvenient crawlspaces designed not for simply transversions, but for blatant action sequences. The expendable, unnamed crewman’s (known as Killoffskis in Trek) fear of being killed off before the commercial break is a nice touch too.
Even if the humour of Quest is somewhat predictable, and the character arcs as inevitable as those on the actual show, it’s very apparent it’s been made by people with a real love and understanding of Trek – and for a spoof such as this, that’s all you need. That and a prosthetic Cornish pasty to affix to your noggin.
UK rating:
PG
US rating:
PG
Dean Parisot and Jerzy Zielinski 2000 USA
Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell
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