25 Trivia Tidbits About ‘Galaxy Quest’ on Its 25th Anniversary
For the final Christmas of the 20th century, Santa dropped off an extra special gift to movie lovers: Galaxy Quest, a Star Trek parody that’s also so much more.
In it, Tim Allen plays egotistical actor Jason Nesmith whose claim to fame was portraying the Captain Kirk-like lead, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, in the cheesy 1980s sci-fi show Galaxy Quest. Years after Galaxy Quest has concluded, Nesmith and his co-stars are scraping by with personal appearances at sci-fi conventions. Things take a twist, though, when real-life aliens — who have mistaken Galaxy Quest as real — abduct the actors to help save them from an extraterrestrial warlord.
In the 25 years since its release, the movie has turned into a legitimate cult hit, and so, to mark its 25th anniversary, here are 25 behind-the-scenes tidbits about it…
The Original Title
Galaxy Quest began as a spec script from writer David Howard named Captain Starshine.
Shade on ‘Captain Sunshine’
The Galaxy Quest we know was written by Bob Gordon, who had previously written the romantic comedy Addicted to Love. According to an oral history of the film by MTV News, Gordon didn’t read Captain Sunshine until after Galaxy Quest was released in theaters. Instead, he went off the logline his agent gave him.
Gordon Loved ‘Star Trek’
Or as he’s put it, “I loved the Original Series. I watched it over and over. I’m an old man — so I’ve watched it from the time I was six-years old in 1966. The movie got green-lit basically off my first draft.”
Who Ya Gonna Call?
The original director attached to the film was Harold Ramis.
Why Ramis Left the Project
According to Dean Parisot, who ultimately directed Galaxy Quest, “The studio wanted Tim Allen to do it, but Harold didn’t want to do it with Tim.” Additionally, producer Mark Johnson said, “Harold didn’t do the movie because we couldn’t cast it. The people we went to all turned it down, and by the time we got to Tim Allen, Harold couldn’t see it.”
Ramis’ Pick
Ramis had originally wanted Alec Baldwin for the lead. Other casting choices proposed were Steve Martin and Kevin Kline.
Tool Time
Allen wanted the part to help launch a career in sci-fi. He chose Galaxy Quest over the lead in Bicentennial Man, which ended up starring Robin Williams.
Shatner for Starters
When asked if he based his performance on Shatner, Allen said that Shatner was “a starting point.” He also drew inspiration from Yul Brynner’s character in The Ten Commandments.
A Loving Parody
“The movie needed to begin as a mockery and end as a celebration,” Parisot has explained. “That’s a hard thing to do.” To thread that needle, Parisot said that “part of the mission for me was to make a great Star Trek episode.”
Why They Didn’t Want Sigourney Weaver
Weaver played Gwen DeMarco, an actress who resented always being presented as a sex object on the Galaxy Quest show. Weaver had to fight for the role, saying, “I heard about it from my agent. He said they won’t consider anyone who has done science fiction. I insisted on being seen.”
Gwen vs. Ripley
Comparing Gwen with Ripley from the Alien franchise, Weaver has said, “I felt like I was playing my secret self, that part of myself that I’d repressed for four times playing Ripley whose so courageous and so professional.”
The Film Was ‘Too Close for Comfort’ for Alan Rickman
Rickman, who played trained-thespian-turned-embittered-sci-fi-TV-actor Alexander Dane, once said, “I did grow up, as it were, inside the Royal Shakespeare Company and other, similar environments, so I know what he’s going through on some level. I remember when Sigourney and I were sitting at the autograph table at the convention and saying, ‘This is a bit too close for comfort.’ There were constant images and moments where you just sort of thought, ‘I’ve lived this.’”
Allen and Rickman’s Relationship
When Rickman passed away in 2016, Allen wrote a piece for The Hollywood Reporter about his initially rocky relationship with Rickman, saying, “I don’t think he liked me all that much when we first started shooting Galaxy Quest. I was a stage performer, a concert comic, and I was coming into this group of very polished thespians — Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell and Tony Shalhoub and then Alan adding his English roots. All of them had this process and method — voice stretching and all that kind of prep — and it was so different from mine. I was doing penis jokes right up to action. I went to a very different school, shitty clubs and basements and big arenas. But then, one day on the set, Alan came to me and apologized. He said he mistook my behavior for lack of commitment. And we became very fast friends.”
The Catchphrase
Commander Peter Quincy Taggert’s catchphrase was the hilariously redundant “Never give up, never surrender!” According to Gordon, that “came from Winston Churchill, via a Supertramp song because I was a huge Supertramp fan.” The Supertramp song he was referencing was “Fool’s Overture.”
It Was Re-Edited to Receive a PG Rating
“There’s talk about the so-called R-rated version of the film,” Gordon has explained. “When I originally wrote it, I wasn’t thinking about a family film, just what I wanted to see. So when the ship lands in the convention hall in the original draft, it decapitates a bunch of people. There was also stuff we shot where Sigourney tries to seduce some of the aliens. It was cut — and that’s why her shirt is ripped at the end. Also the worst dubbed ‘F-bomb’ ever. Good for Dean for never shooting coverage on that.”
As for Parisot, he’s said, “To this day I’m sorry we made it PG rather than PG-13. We took out Sigourney Weaver’s ‘F–k,’ one of the best laughs in the movie.”
A Modest Haul
Galaxy Quest made $71 million at the box office. It cost $45 million to make.
Trekkies Love It
While it was a parody of Star Trek, no one embraced the film more than Trekkies. In 2013, attendees of the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas voted it the seventh Star Trek film.
Ramis’ Reaction
According to producer Mark Johnson, when Ramis saw the film, “he kept saying how wrong he’d been” for bailing on it.
George Takei’s Take
He called the film “a chillingly realistic documentary.”
Picard’s Opinion
Patrick Stewart said Galaxy Quest was “brilliant.” “No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie were saved simply by the fact that there were fans who did understand the scientific principles on which the ship worked was absolutely wonderful,” he continued. “And it was both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to the dedication of these fans.”
And, Of Course, Shatner Had An Opinion About It, Too
Shatner was characteristically less gracious, saying, “I thought it was very funny, and I thought the audience that they portrayed was totally real. But the actors that they were pretending to be were totally unrecognizable. Certainly, I don’t know what Tim Allen was doing. He seemed to be the head of a group of actors, and for the life of me, I was trying to understand who he was imitating.”
An Actual ‘Galaxy Quest’ TV Show (Part One)
In 2015, Amazon was developing a TV series of Galaxy Quest as a follow-up to the movie, but it never made it beyond the development stage.
No Rickman, No Sequel
A Galaxy Quest sequel has been in development hell for over a decade. In 2014, Allen said there was a script. Unfortunately, the sequel stalled once Rickman died in 2016, as the initial version would have focused heavily on Alexander Dane.
Never Give Up, Never Surrender
As recently as 2021, Allen was still optimistic about a Galaxy Quest sequel. “We talk about it all the time,” he explained. “There is constantly a little flicker of a butane torch that we could reboot it. Without giving too much away, a member of Alan’s Galaxy Quest family could step in and the idea would still work.”
An Actual ‘Galaxy Quest’ TV Show (Part Two)
In 2023, The Hollywood Reporter announced that a new Galaxy Quest TV show is in the works for Paramount+.
