GALAXY QUEST

GALAXY QUEST (Captain Starshine original script title). Dean Parisot, dir. USA: DreamWorks, 1999. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, Daryl Mitchell, Alan Rickman, featured players.

Affectionate parody of Star Trek, relevant here for one brief scene and some Modernist vs. postmodernist imagery. Running through the NSEA Protector to stop the ship from exploding, Allen and Weaver come to an area they must pass through that is a kind of gantlet of what look like chrome pistons that clang together, and which would crush anything or anyone that was between them as they move into contact. The dialog makes clear that this area is on this "real," operational Protector simply because it was on the ship in the Galaxy Quest TV show; this gantlets only function on the ship is precisely as a gantlet for characters to run through on their way to save the ship. Such an implausible menace does not appear on Star Trek's Enterprise, but the plot device (to use the word "plot" generously) is a staple of the action/adventure serials of the 1930s following. Note the gleaming chrome here and generally contrast the Modern(ist) Protector and crew with the po-mo mise en scène of the enemy aliens: the Protector and crew are in Star Trek style; the enemy ship looks like a punk-industrial chimera of a lobster, alligator, and spaceship. The lead alien is reptilian with scorpion suggestions, and his underlings look like punk versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For production stills and interviews, see Cinefantastique 31.10 (Feb. 2000): 8-11 (and while there cf. and contrast the esthetics of the Protector with those of the Nightingale 229 of SUPERNOVA [41, 43]). (RDE, 28/12/99)