Galaxy Quest TV show writer Paul Scheer says that the series will acknowledge the changes in sci-fi fandom over the years, and will provide a clever mixture of the old and the new.
Galaxy Quest started with the beloved sci-fi comedy film of the same name, which was released back in 1999 and directed by Dean Parisot (Red 2). The plot was a canny satire of Star Trek and other classic shows, which managed to combine thrills and laughs without actually mocking its subject matter. Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and the late Alan Rickman, it revolves around the aging cast of a cancelled space show getting drawn into a real interplanetary war and learning some life lessons. The film has garnered a big cult following over the years, and a TV series for Amazon Studios was announced back in 2015. Development on the show has been slow with little further news since then, but it kicked back into life with the announcement earlier this year that actor/writer Scheer had signed on to write the scripts.
Related: Galaxy Quest TV Series is Moving Forward Again
Since then Scheer has been steadily working on the show – and has now provided Slashfilm with an update on his progress. Happily for longtime fans of the film, he says that the show will indeed carry forward the story of the characters from the movie. In addition to that, it will reportedly include two separate casts whose adventures merge as the season progresses, one ‘Classic’ and one ‘Next Generation’. It’s all part of Scheer’s plan to address the way that fandom has changed since the 1999 film, whilst staying true to the tone of the original plot. Speaking about the show, he says:
“I just handed in my first script to Amazon… it was really important to do service to a Galaxy Quest story that gives you everything that you want and indoctrinates people who have never seen Galaxy Quest into what the fun of that world is… And also to continue the story of our original characters and have consequences from the first film… So it is mixing two casts. It’s separate kind of adventures that kind of merge, and I’m looking at this first season not as episodic, but as a serialized story.”
The other important thing for the writer was to show how being a fan of shows like this has now changed, and the way in which popular culture has evolved:
“I love that in 1999, as a fan of Star Trek and going to these conventions since I was a kid: sci-fi, fantasy, those worlds have changed so drastically. I really wanted to capture the difference between the original cast of Star Trek and the J.J. Abrams cast of Star Trek. I think that, to me, is my entry point. Sci-fi heroes are rock stars now.”
The show is a very long way from actually broadcasting yet, but that concept does sound very promising indeed. There’s still no word as to whether any of the original cast will be directly involved, but given the recent TV work from Allen (Last Man Standing) and Weaver (The Defenders), it does seem feasible. Scheer’s work on The League won a lot of fans, so hopefully he can channel the charm of the original film into a cool revival series for Galaxy Quest.
