Galaxy Quest Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary DVD Review

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Galaxy Quest / Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary – DVD Review

I had an interesting discussion online a month or so ago. We were talking about the reboot Star Trek series and the fact it looks like we might be getting a different re-boot in the not too distant future. So we were talking about our favourite Star Trek movies. I like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the other two like Star Trek II: Wrath Of Khan. But we agreed that the other film was just as good. I mean, they are amongst the best film sequels . I put First Contact, one of the others put Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and the third put Star Trek, the 2009 re-boot. Then he changed his mind and said Galaxy Quest. Well… that was a thing.

Star Trek fandom is a strange beast. These are people who are obsessive about what they love and why they love it. I am not one of those obsessives. I've seen all the films, most of the TV series and read a lot of the books, but I am not even close to a lot of the fandom out there. And when I heard my friend liked Galaxy Quest, I was stunned. See, he is very nerdish, and proudly so, about his fandom.

But, as he sees it, this is Star Trek not only in parody form but in a form that makes sense to the post-grunge age of irony. It makes fun of a film, of its fans, of its actors and of its pretensions, but does so with a definite look of love in its eye.

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Produced by: Mark Johnson, Charles Newirth; Directed by: Dean Parisot; Written by: David Howard (story & screenplay), Robert Gordon (screenplay); Starring: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman.

The story is about a group of aliens who think the TV show Galaxy Quest was real and so they based their technology on it. When they are threatened by a big bad, they kidnap the actors and, with the help of fans back on Earth, the day is saved.

I'd say SPOILERS but it is a film more than twenty years old, and you just know the good guys are going to win. This film has been praised by not only Star Trek fans, but casual moviegoers as a genuine comedy film, and even some of the cast of the various bits of the franchise. George Takei called it a "documentary." It was only a moderate success upon release, but it has become a huge cult favourite since then.

So, why am I writing about this film now? Because that same online friend bought me a documentary. I'll get to that.

To start with, here's the film.

We start at a convention for the TV show Galaxy Quest. The actor playing the commander is late, the convention goes… badly. Genuine fans are blown away, some actors don't want to be there, minor actors try to get themselves back into the big time. And then Nesmith (Allen), the captain, overhears people talking about how disliked he is. He loses it, leaves the convention and goes home to await an extra booking the next day.

Next morning he is confronted by some people he thinks are actors or fans but are actually aliens. He passes out with a hangover and wakes up on a spaceship… but he does not realise it. He provokes a bad guy, then is sent back to Earth… and that's when he realises that things are a little more real than he had at first imagined.

He tries to tell his fellow actors but they think he's drunk. Then the aliens turn up and the others think he's talking about a job, so they agree to go, and then they meet the aliens in their true form before they cover themselves with human-like shells. You know, this is actually a really strong science fiction film as well. Leaving the spaceport still makes me laugh, fingernails down a blackboard.

Things don't go well dealing with the bad guys. They attack, the ship made for the humans goes into a minefield, and things already look grim. Like I said, even without the comedy, this is quite the sci-fi film. They have to go to an alien planet, get the stuff needed to fix the ship after some adventures with nasty mining type creatures. Nesmith is left behind and is faced with a huge rock monster. He is saved, but of course, takes his shirt off. And then the real bad guys take control of the ship.

Through using a ruse based on an episode, they manage to get control of the ship back again, but need to fix it. The only people who can help? The fanboys Nesmith blew off at the start of the film. Rickman's character takes on the ideals of his persona, and Sam Rockwell's "red shirt" Guy is so perfect. Anyway, there's a heap of little story arcs about saving the ship, saving the crew (and a pretty infamous overdub of Sigourney Weaver – it's funny when you know what to look for). One of the humans falls for an alien and… Rockwell says it: "That's not right."

There's some rather poignant deaths and some near misses. Then the humans drag mines into the bad guys and save the day. But the big bad disguises himself… and then the time loop McGuffin comes into play and the day is saved for real this time. The ship separates, the humans (and one alien) crash into the convention for the best entrance ever, and… the bad guy is killed for the final time. The End.


I was recently married when this film came out, but my wife did not want to see it, so I went with a younger friend (I think she was 19). We laughed so hard. The unfortunately half-full cinema laughed so hard it was like it was over-crowded. This was so wonderful on the big screen. And, truth be told, it only loses a little on DVD.

This is such a well-done film. Its 100 minute running time just whizzes by. The science-fiction elements are really good, if not a little clichéd, yet the set-up is really quite unique, the comedy is not over the top and the parody elements don't overwhelm; you can watch and enjoy this without knowing a thing about Star Trek. The special effects are a little of their time, but most still stand up today, and that shows the care with which this film was made.

With the actual story, it is tightly written and non-stop, with something happening all the time, and the character arcs are almost perfect. The redemption arc of Nesmith is wonderful and the ending is feel-good in the right way. There is a reason this film has become a cult classic – it is that damn good.

So…

To celebrate twenty years of Galaxy Quest being awesome, in 2019 the websites Fandom and Screen Junkies put together a documentary about the film, managing to get together many of the cast and behind the scenes people, as well as real Star Trek persons to populate its narrative.

Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)
Produced by: Jack Bennett (executive); Michael Chiang (executive); Roth Cornet; Max Dionne; Jack Herrguth (executive); Katelyn Howes; Dan Murrell (consulting); Warren Tessler (executive)
Directed by: Jack Bennett


The people who put this together do one of my very favourite YouTube channels – 'Honest Trailers'. So incredibly cool. In fact, before we go much further, here's the Honest Trailer for Galaxy Quest!

It includes a plug for this documentary.

Yes, it was bought for me. Yes, it was worth every single cent.

It is a long documentary, and I am not going to do a blow by blow thing here, but I will give a general overview and highlights.

We open with talking heads to prepare us for what is to come, and already the doco feels like it is fun. But fans are also interviewed – I like that. In fact, the fans are portrayed as the heroes of the Star Trek universe. Wil Wheaton says, "Galaxy Quest is, without a doubt, the best Star Trek movie because it's about what makes Star Trek special, about the fans."

The start of the movie is discussed. It blew out of all proportions. They had some of the best special effects guys and they wanted… Kevin Kline for the lead! When he pulled out, they went through a lot of ideas, and some actors even pushed for it. But they got Tim Allen. Allen is a sci-fi nerd!

A new director came on board, and things changed, for the better. The rest of the casting started then. Getting Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman was seen as a coup. They almost cut the octopuses from the movie! No! There was a bit of free-form stuff in the film, improv sort of. The Thermians and the way things evolved to make them the way they were looked like a fun process.

Apparently, the sets caught fire! They had issues with screen aspect ratios that sounds as nerdish as everything else. The cast got along surprisingly well. They talk about the late Alan Rickman, and then that Tim Allen is actually a good actor. We look at more technical stuff. Post-production, the film is reduced to a more family-friendly version. Rugrats: The Movie is to blame for the watered-down version. The studio treated the film badly and marketed it appallingly. I agree. We only went because we thought it was going to make fun of Star Trek. The trailers were not encouraging. In fact, they showed the two Australian critics who convinced us to go through their review!

And now we look at the fans again who carried this film as much as they kept Star Trek alive. And the impact of Galaxy Quest on other films. And Alan Rickman's death stopped ideas of a Galaxy Quest TV series. We remember Rickman now. He is truly loved.

Back to the fans. Music overwhelms a little here to the end. And that's it.


And that's it. A few interesting titbits, but, really, this was a celebration of a film that is rightly recognised as one of the best of the 90s. MVP of the doco, by the way, was Wil Wheaton. His insight into fandom and the people who like this sort of film was amazing. I think a documentary series of fans and/or nerdom by Wheaton would be outstanding.

Okay, so there you have it. The film and the documentary 20 years later. My mouth hurts from smiling so much. This has been fun. And I recommend both of them to you. So very, very cool.

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