Skip to main content

Sci-fi satire Galaxy Quest on its way to becoming a TV show

Sci-fi satire Galaxy Quest on its way to becoming a TV show

Share this story

In 1999 a movie called Galaxy Quest satirized sci-fi television shows and the obsessive fans that follow them, and now it's on its way to becoming a TV show itself. Deadline reports that Paramount Television is putting together a series based on the film, which followed the cast of a Star Trek-style show that found themselves confronted with real alien creatures.

Tim Allen played a surrogate Shatner in the film

The gag of the movie was that the otherworldy visitors had picked up Earth's television broadcasts traveling through space and thought the Galaxy Quest show was actually a documentary instead of fiction. Looking for help with an intergalactic problem, the aliens travel to a sci-fi convention to recruit the cast — which included Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Tim Allen as a surrogate Shatner — with varying degrees of hilarity ensuing.

While the show wasn't an enormous hit at the time, it nevertheless became a cult favorite for its spot-on satire of bad sci-fi tropes and fan culture itself. According to the report, director Dean Parisot, writer Robert Gordon, and producer Mark Johnson would all return for the television version should it move forward, joining a crowded slate of movies-turned-TV shows that are in the works, including Minority Report, School of Rock, and Uncle Buck.