Good news, everyone! Well, maybe. Paramount Television is in the process of putting together a Galaxy Quest TV based on the fantastic 1999 sci-fi comedy of the same name. At once a brilliant riff on Star Trek and also one of the best Star Trek movies ever made, Dean Parisot’s film revolved around the aging stars of a once-popular sci-fi TV series called Galaxy Quest who, after attending yet another sci-fi convention, are beamed up into space by a group of aliens that think the TV series was a collection of “historical documents.”
Per Deadline, Parisot, Galaxy Quest producer Mark Johnson, and Galaxy Quest screenwriter Robert Gordon are executive producing the potential series, with Gordon penning the script. That’s a swell vote of confidence for what could be either a fantastic idea or a terrible one, and it's the next in a line of film-to-TV adaptations that Paramount is working on, including Minority Report and Shutter Island.
What’s unclear is whether any of the film’s stars will return for the potential series, should it be greenlit. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub, Justin Long, and more led the ensemble, but one imagines it’d be difficult to round up all those busy actors for a small screen iteration of the cult film.
I absolutely love Galaxy Quest and will remain hopeful and optimistic about the prospect of a TV series, but it’s all going to come down to casting. Allen, Rickman, and Weaver were pitch perfect in the film, so it’s going to be tough to replace them. The question is, how do you go about doing that? The joke of Allen’s character was that he was essentially William Shatner, so can you deviate from that formula enough to make audiences not care that Allen isn't in the TV show, or will changing the character too much then alter the foundation of Galaxy Quest’s Star Trek connection?
A lot of questions left to answer, but this is all early days so it’s best to think of this as a possible project at best. What do you think about the notion of a Galaxy Quest TV series, readers? Sound off in the comments below.
