‘Galaxy Quest’ 4K UHD Review: Paramount Home Entertainment

If the mark of good parody is genuine love for the material being spoofed, then Dean Parisot’s Galaxy Quest is as good as they get. A goof on Star Trek and its feverish fandom, the film incorporates elements of every Trek property made up to the point of the film’s release in 1999 but most clearly lampoons the actors and tone of the original ’60s series.

Opening decades after the cancelation of the cult sci-fi TV show Galaxy Quest, the film follows that show’s cast as they constantly relive their old roles via endless appearances at fan conventions and in-character advertisements for small-time retailers. Nearly all of the cast reflect bitterly upon this fate, none more so than Alan Rickman’s defeated thespian Alexander Dane, who laments how his once-promising career as a serious stage actor was horribly derailed. The cast’s weariness is contrasted by the throngs of beaming fans who ask the same questions about Galaxy Quest over and over as if the show were real and the cast were qualified to weigh in on quantum physics and aerospace engineering. Only Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), the swaggering, Shatner-esque leading man of the ensemble, delights in this cycle, feeding his narcissism on the steady drip of fan adulation.

The degree to which fans treat science fiction as quasi-reality is taken to an extreme when the cast of Galaxy Quest is visited by actual extra-terrestrials, the Thermians, who intercepted television broadcasts of the series in space and took it to be factual accounts of a heroic starship crew. Facing a genocide by a tyrannical alien general, Sarris (Robin Sachs), the Thermians recruit the actors into serving on an exact replica of the ship from the show, forcing them to truly think and act like their characters in order to survive in space combat.

In the film’s funniest running joke, the actors can only wrap their heads around their situation by slipping deeper into their old roles, which is affirming for Jason but humiliating for Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver), whose part consisted mainly of repeating computer reports. No one cracks from the pressure of committing to the bit, though, like Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell), a proverbial “red shirt” from the show inadvertently brought along for the ride. As he played a character who existed only to die to establish the threat of an alien world, Guy believes he will suffer the same fate and approaches every scenario with the terror that he’ll be killed.

The cast’s struggles to take their old roles seriously are amusing, but the film also wrings genuine tension from the Thermians’ unfamiliarity with the concept of acting and the possible fallout from discovering that their heroes are fakes. Surprising, too, is just how well Galaxy Quest works as a medium-budget sci-fi blockbuster. It helps that the old Star Trek films were made on limited budgets, which narrows the usually wide discrepancy between a large-scale genre film and a parody of the same. Indeed, some of the film’s standout sequences—a battle between Jason and a colossal rock creature, a space battle involving a clever use of magnetic mines—frankly look better than all but a few action scenes of the original Star Trek movies.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the film’s specificity of parody and eye for detail is its enthusiastic endorsement by actual Star Trek alumni from every series, some of whom have talked about its depictions of convention life as lethally accurate. Even so, those same actors have called attention to one of the film’s best attributes: that it not only avoids the easy route of mocking devoted sci-fi fans but even makes their obsessive knowledge of show lore instrumental to the heroes’ final battle against Sarris. Galaxy Quest is one of the best films of its kind, a devastatingly accurate parody that only deepens one’s appreciation for what it teases.

Image/Sound

Paramount Home Entertainment’s 4K transfer offers a modest upgrade of their 2019 Blu-ray, boasting greater image depth and color separation. The most visible signs of improvement over earlier transfers are in the subtler range of skin tones and costume textures.

The newly created Dolby Atmos mix, though, is a major upgrade from the Blu-ray’s already-robust 5.1 mix. The Foley effects and brassy score flood every channel, while dialogue is centered up front for clarity, but the most impressive elements are the newfound depth of of-screen noise and the faint but omnipresent hum of engines for scenes set on the spaceship. The same care that went into approximating the look of Star Trek shows and movies extended to the audio mixing, and for the first time one can hear the full range of the filmmakers’ efforts.

Extras

Paramount ports over an assortment of brief featurettes from prior home video releases of Galaxy Quest. The most informative of these are the ones highlighting the technical elements, revealing just how seriously the crew took the film’s parodic approach. A new interview with director Dean Parisot offers further insight into the specifics of the film’s detail-rich tributes to the Star Trek universe. Frustratingly, the 2019 fan documentary Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary wasn’t licensed for this release, which is a shame, as the cast interviews conducted for it go into far more detail than the brief recollections in the features here.

Overall

Galaxy Quest is as funny and entertaining today as it was 25 years ago, and Paramount now gives it its best-ever video presentation.