Galaxy Quest

I forgot to mention that at the party last night, my cats were out and mingling with everyone! Much to my complete surprise! Okay, Newton usually comes out and cautiously examines anything new in the apartment, but often Jefferson would just hide under the bed for hours until he finally comes out because he's hungry or something. But from the very start, when Tom arrived, Jeff was finding spots to sit and watch the action, and even walking around checking people out. (And Newton, of course, wanted to check out the cakes, the little piggy.)

The cats were a big hit with everyone (except Subrata, who's allergic, although he likes cats on principle). I think it was perhaps a little too much attention for them at times, but overall I think they enjoyed the company and excitement.

Since Apple gives us Martin Luther King day off (now that we're no longer shutting down for the winter holidays), Ben, Tom and I met at the Century Shoreline megaplex in Mountain View to see Galaxy Quest, which has gotten absolutely rave reviews (of the "You must go see this film" variety) from everyone I know who's seen it. (Tom was calling it the "Let's hit it with a rock" movie.)

It's a very good film. It's not quite the knock-down, drag-out laugh riot I was expecting from what I'd been told, but I laughed quite a bit.

What it is, essentially, is a spoof of the original Star Trek and its actors. Here, Galaxy Quest was a 1970s TV series about the starship USEA Protector and its crew exploring the galaxy. (The scenes of "old episodes" of GQ look like a cross between Star Trek and Quark. Anyone out there remember Quark?) After a few years, it went off the air with the slogan "Never give up, never surrender". 20 years later, the actors of the series are reduced to convention appearances and electronic superstore christenings. While Jason Nesmith, who played Commander Peter Quincy Taggart (Tim Allen) revels in convention appearances, the other cast members don't care for it, and think Nesmith is a self-absorbed twit.

Enter reality, after a fashion: During a GQ convention, aliens from the planet Thermia come to Nesmith and his "crew" under the delusion that they're really great space heroes (the aliens have no concept of fiction vs. truth) and ask them to help them throw off the shackles of the lizard-like race who have been oppressing them. By carefully studying the old series episodes, they've created a perfect duplicate of the fictional Protector for the six humans to man. Faced with the opportunity of a lifetime, Nesmith accepts (deciding not to enlighten the Thermians as to the truth), and finagles his panicked co-stars (and one extra) into coming along. Of course, it all turns out to be much bloodier and exciting than they'd bargained on.

To its credit, Galaxy Quest limits itself to only a couple of scenes denegrating Star Trek fandom. (Such scenes really need to be kept to a minimum, because the bits worth satirizing are so over-the-top anyway that they quickly become tiresome or painful if taken much farther. C.f. Bimbos of the Death Sun for an example of just how bad an idea this is.) What remains is a lively and clever send-up of the unlikely but necessary construction of science fiction television and of Star Trek in particular: There are just too many details to make everything quite perfect, the acting always goes at least a little over-the-top, and, basically, SF television generally tends towards light entertainment more than anything else.

The casting is brilliant. It's hard to imagine a better actor to do a send-up of Captain Kirk than Tim Allen. They even have the same hair style, for crying out loud! And having Sigourney Weaver play a conflicted woman who plays a bubbly blonde (Gwen DeMarco, who plays the amusingly-named Tawny Madison) is an absolute coup. (Her role here has been described as the "anti-Ripley".) She and Nesmith have a confused and strained relationship, and DeMarco is further unbalanced by being a down-to-earth woman in an out-of-this-world predicament, giving her many of the best lines. Alan Rickman has gotten a lot of word-of-mouth praise for his role as Alexander Dane, who plays the alien Dr. Lazarus (the Spock analogue), and it's all deserved. He, too, gets many good lines, and gets to work through his bitterness about how GQ ruined his career as a serious actor. And, special note should be made of the many actors playing the ever-grinning Thermians, with their wooden motions and complete lack of understanding of humans.

The plot mostly only makes marginal sense, but who cares? Long-time Trek fans will enjoy spotting disguised Trekisms (dilithium crystals become a "beryllium sphere", the design of the ship doesn't make a lot of sense, and there's even a Wesley Crusher counterpart!), and Allen has more than one moment in the sun during the final confrontation with the bad guy. The film ends with a hopeful note for our heroes which shows a remarkable attention to detail in how Star Trek changed when it went from TV to the silver screen.

It's a lot of fun. Check it out.

We parted company after the film and I went to the Stanford Shopping Center to check it out. I found myself whisting and generally feeling unusually happy as I was driving there, whistling a jazz song they'd been playing (a cover of Nat Adderley's "Mercy Mercy Mercy", one of my favorite jazz songs) and generally feeling no pain (except in my legs). I wondered while this was happening if maybe I'm finally getting acclimated to living out here. I hope so.

I did find the Hear Music in the shopping center, checked out a candle store called Illuminations, and a couple of other stores, but didn't find the gaming store that Subrata says is in the mall. I'll have to ask him about that. Then I headed to Cafe Borrone and had dinner, read, and wrote a letter to a friend. It's been raining all day, too, which I've liked.

A good day.