First there was Buzz Lightyear and now comes Commander Taggert.

Tim Allen has developed a habit of playing earthbound characters with stars in their eyes.

The difference between Toy Story and Galaxy Quest is that the two characters move in opposite directions.

Buzz comes to realise that he is only a toy while actor Jason Nesmith, aka Taggert, the Captain Kirk-style starship leader from a TV series long past its sell-by date, finds himself sucked into the middle of a real-life alien adventure.

Sci-fi spoofs are hardly original but the premise behind Galaxy Quest is novel enough to sustain it better than most.

Crummy space films or TV shows with wobbly cardboard scenery and unconvincing green monster costumes are an easy target, but although Galaxy Quest gleefully grabs the opportunity to have some fun when the crew land on a mysterious planet it also trains its sights elsewhere.

Principally in the firing line are Questarians, a thinly-disguised equivalent of Trekkies. You know the sort, the obsessive fans who dress in costumes from their favourite show, study salutes and alien languages and generally find it hard to differentiate between Star Trek/Galaxy Quest and reality.

The movie opens at a convention populated with plenty of hardcore Questarians, which provides the film with its plot impetus.

When Nesmith is approached by a group of specimens who seem particularly nerdy, complete with silly eyebrows and black PVC uniforms, he reluctantly accepts what he assumes to be an invitation to make a personal appearance at one of their events.

It transpires these oddballs, who sound uncannily like Bluebottle at times, really are aliens - Thermians whohave intercepted transmissions of Galaxy Quest mistakenly thinking they are historical documents and therefore assume Taggert and crew will be able rescue them from the evil Sarris.

Galaxy Quest gets plenty of mileage from the backbiting among the has-been actors as they struggle to save their skins, with Alan Rickman in terrific form as classically-trained English actor Sir Alexander Dane forced to swallow his pride as the Spock-like Dr Lazarus character and constantly carping at the limelight-hogging Nesmith.

And one of the best running gags is the role of Sam Rockwell who is not a proper actor but goes along for the ride and manages to convince himself he is the expendable crewman who always gets killed.

There is a healthy smattering of visual humour, too. Poor Tommy Weber is the navigator Lieutenant Laredo and finds himself having to try to steer the giant ship which the Thermians have lovingly built from watching old episodes of Galaxy Quest out of its spaceport - and ends up scraping the paintwork like a teenager making a mess of reversing his mum's car out of the garage for the first time.

And it's fun to watch the hapless actors' costumes grow more ragged as they battle to beat Sarris, with Lieutenant Tawney Madison (Sigourney Weaver) displaying more bra and cleavage than uniform by the end and Lazarus's hair eventually showing through his moulded "fin" head.

Simon Ashberry

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.