Given that it's intended as a spoof of Star Trek, there are several different directions they can take this: * Maybe they could spoof the 2009 Abrams Trek reboot? (Have the OG cast act alongside millennial versions of their characters.) * Or maybe spoof "Star Trek: Generations"? (Have Allen & Co. "pass the torch" to another cast entirely.) *There's also the "prequel" avenue (Enterprise, Disco S1-2). https://ew.com/movies/galaxy-quest-...7671a90330001f1ac3e&__twitter_impression=true
Alan Rickman was a huge part of the original, with him passed away I dunno how I feel about a sequel.
Galaxy Quest is not exclusively a spoof of Star Trek. It's a spoof of a lot of '70s and '80s sci-fi as well, most notably Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, particularly its starship-based second season. (Dr. Lazarus is almost exactly the same character as Hawk from Buck, the last survivor of an alien warrior race and the best friend of the swaggering male lead, with a skullcap-based makeup. And both Buck and the in-universe Galaxy Quest series premiered in 1979.) There are also nods to Irwin Allen shows from the '60s (the boy-genius crew member, the cheesy wirework effects), Space: 1999 (a distinguished British actor embarrassed by the sci-fi show he was in), and probably others. Plus generic tropes like the countdown stopping at the last second, a Western actor playing a fake-Asian character, and a corridor of gratuitous deathtraps. The problem is that Trek is the only one of the shows being parodied that most modern viewers are familiar with, so they recognize the Trek references but miss the others. But generally the best parodies are the ones that aren't a note-for-note pastiche of a single movie or show, but poke fun more broadly at an entire genre. If you're just copying something, that's not really parody, just mockery. You want to tell a story that works on its own merits, that has something to say beyond just imitation. (Young Frankenstein is probably the main exception to the above rule, being a parody specifically of a single movie series, but it works because it is a genuinely good story on its own terms.) The original GQ achieved that. It built a world of its own, something that homaged Trek and Buck and the rest but wasn't limited to the homage. The way to do a good sequel to it would be to build organically on that world, to evolve the characters and their situations in a way that generates a worthwhile story, with the parody elements being there to support that story rather than being the sole purpose.
Trek had its own boy genius crew member (Wesley Crusher). Sci-Fi has changed in the past twenty years. There's the rise of the various interconnected "universes" -- in order to understand a scene from movie "D", you have to have watched S3E9 of TV series "B" (yes, I'm looking at you, Marvel). There's also the Internet and streaming shows like The Mandalorian, The Orville, and The Expanse (to say nothing of Trek's own streaming series -- Picard, Disco, and Lower Decks). That said, for all intents and purposes, GQ is to Trek what the Austin Powers films are to James Bond (After thirteen feature films and eleven series, it's difficult to avoid bumping into it. It's such a massive, sprawling franchise.) It's gotten to the point now where Trek is skewering itself (Lower Decks). That's my main complaint about the show -- too much fan service.
Crusher was an adolescent, 14 when the show debuted. GQ's Laredo was a preteen, more in the vein of Lost in Space's Will Robinson or Galactica 1980's Doctor Zee. In particular, Laredo bears a very strong resemblance to Heironymous Fox, the boy genius that Gary Coleman played in two season-1 Buck Rogers episodes. This isn't a competition. Every time I try to point out that GQ referenced things besides Trek, people think I'm somehow denying the Trek parallels and start arguing against me. But there's nothing to argue about. The Trek parallels are obvious and can be stipulated to. They're just not the only SFTV references in the movie. As I said, a good parody doesn't limit itself to referencing only one thing. (Look at Spaceballs. It's mainly a Star Wars parody, but it also contains nods to other sci-fi like Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Alien, etc. It's not either/or.) The only time a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie has referenced something that originated on TV was in Avengers: Endgame when Agent Carter's Edwin Jarvis made a cameo as Howard Stark's valet/chauffeur. But to a viewer who hadn't seen Agent Carter, there would have been nothing confusing about the scene. Movie viewers would remember Tony Stark's JARVIS AI, and if they noticed the name Jarvis at all, they'd just think "Ohhh, that must be who Tony named his AI after" and have no trouble following it. It's the TV series that follow the movies' lead, not the other way around. After all, the movies are immensely more profitable to the company, so of course they're in the lead. Also, it takes far longer to shoot and post-produce a movie than a TV episode, so it's logistically impossible for the movies to keep up with the TV references; it only really works in the other direction. Any TV references in movie franchises are just Easter eggs, not necessary for understanding the story. A lot of people who saw Rogue One never realized that Saw Gererra was a returning character from The Clone Wars, because that connection was irrelevant to the story. And the brief glimpses of Chopper and the Ghost from Rebels were incidental and easily overlooked. These references are not meant to create barriers to comprehension, merely to be a bonus for those who happen to catch them.
I think an idea that would work for something like Galaxy Quest or Austin Powers is to make commentary on the gritty reboots. Like, have the old characters that parodied the campy, antiseptic versions suddenly be thrown into a gritty reboot like situation. Then they have to learn to work together with the gritty reboot heroes, but still using their own old school style of doing things. Just like I think it'd be hilarious for Austin Powers to have to work together with a Daniel Craig style Austin Powers, I think it'd be hilarious for a TOS style parody to work together with a DISCO style parody.
I was thinking, the Enterprise (Abrams cast would be great) discover a strange anomaly and pick up a signal from it. Uhura manages to decode it and put it on screen. It's a broadcast of Galaxy Quest from some strange dimension. Fascinated, they stick around a couple hours to watch the movie. Que opening credits. At the end someone says, "Weird, did those people seem strangely familiar.?"
I can see Mike Myers working alongside someone hardcore like Jason Statham. "What's that?" "Oh, it's nothing. It's just lens flare." Maybe they could land on some post-apocalyptic world where everyone is sporting bad haircuts and torn leather. That's pretty much what TOS fans said when TNG first came out in '87 ("There can BE no Trek without Kirk and Spock!") Maybe have a woman play the Doctor. (Swapping genders is trendy now. We have a female Dr. Who. Queen Latifah is starring in the Equalizer reboot. We've had an all-female "Ghostbusters".) Who can do acid-tongued and ballsy? Nicole Kidman? We need someone who can hold their own against Tim Allen. There's nothing to be gained by hiding the fact that Alan has passed away (TNG swapped out Dr. Crusher for Dr. Pulaski).
What made Galaxy Quest work was not that it parodied Star Trek and other SFTV. There are plenty of movie parodies that were totally forgettable because they weren't about anything but making fun of other movies/shows. (Who were those filmmakers that infamously put out a whole spate of such unfunny, shallow parody movies a few years back? Selzer and Friedman?) What made GQ work was the story it told about its characters going through a journey. The parody was just the setting for that. So the way to generate a worthwhile GQ sequel (as opposed to the kind of sequel that's just a lazy copy of the original) is not to ask "What other sci-fi thing can we parody?" but "What interesting thing would happen next with these characters and this world?" Extrapolate the story forward and figure out how the people in it would react. How are the actors affected by their renewed fame? How has contact with actual aliens reshaped science fiction TV in the intervening years? How has Thermian civilization adjusted to the discovery of the concepts of fiction and deception? Maybe it's led to major upheavals in Thermian society. Maybe the Thermians have become bitter and disillusioned and they come to Earth to take revenge on us for teaching them about lies, and the surviving GQ cast members have to teach them that fiction and myth can have a positive impact. Once you have a solid story, then you can figure out what SFTV parodies or references can serve that story. If the story serves the parody instead, you'll have an unfunny flop.
I'm not writing the script. (Rest of the Board: "Thank God!" ) The article mentioned time travel. I'm just thinking out loud. As for what impact the Thermians had, the government might well want to keep it a secret (Room for Men in Black references?) There's all manner of pastiche parody films ("Scary Movie", "Epic Movie", "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood".) Films where the references come flying rapid fire. Anything has to be better than this bloody Covid-19.
Ugh, I'm so sick of "keep the aliens secret" stories. Not only is it a cliche, but it wastes the real potential of science fiction concepts, which is to explore how the world is changed by them. Besides, the ship crash in the finale was very, very public. I don't believe it could be successfully covered up. That's the other thing I hate about secrecy-driven stories -- the implausible ease with which overt alien incidents can be covered up by the government or forgotten about by the public. Yes, those are the kind of cheap, disposable, superficial, critically derided excuses for parodies I was talking about, the kind where the filmmakers lazily assume that merely referencing something familiar is funny in and of itself. If GQ had been that shallow, it would be forgotten by now along with all those others. Reference alone is not enough. It has to serve the story, not merely substitute for a story.
That in itself opens up possibilities (Alien Nation? X-Men? Back to the Future?) We're just coming out of Donald Trump and his anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner policies. Even today, there are certain elements of society who want to take things back to "the way they were before". One nasty group/person with a stolen time machine could wipe the Thermians out of existence.
Thermian civil war? That would be a twist. A dissatisfied Thermian could grab a time machine and try to take things back to "the way they used to be".
Right, because that would be a laugh riot... If the story were Earthbound, I'd be more interested in the world the characters occupy, which is television and entertainment. What would happen to science fiction if we made regular contact with aliens who had FTL travel? It would pretty much render every fictional portrayal of outer space obsolete, because we'd know what was actually out there. Or -- ohh, yeah -- turn it around. In the original film, the Thermians thought a fictional TV show was historical documents. So in the post-contact world, once imaginary sci-fi universes are obsolete, the logical place for TV producers to go is to base their shows on actual alien history -- so the successor shows to Galaxy Quest actually would be historical documents (or re-enactments, at least).
People aren't always rational. They aren't always logical. People can be racist. They see what they want to see. They see what's profitable. They don't always appreciate being told that everything they know is false -- is a lie. There is such a thing as "cognitive dissonance".