For as long as people have been writing stories there has been pop culture, and as long as there has been pop culture there has been fandom. However, as long as there has been fandom there has been toxic fandom. As a result of the ubiquity of the Internet, never has a show been more connected with its fans than now. Galaxy Quest is a comedy film that came out in 1999 featuring a plot that lovingly mocks both Star Trek and the particularly devoted fanbase it accrued over the years. Since the film’s release, it itself has gained a sort of cult status, in a large part because the way society has embraced pop culture and the fan movements surrounding it has made the film’s plot ring truer than ever.
In Galaxy Quest, the cast of a short-lived sci-fi show that has achieved cult status find themselves stuck running the fan convention circuit and doing commercials, unable to escape the shadow of their long since canceled show. They’re doing yet another fan gathering when a group of aliens, believing the show to be a historical record instead of pulp sci-fi, recruit the actors to aid them in fighting off a very real interstellar menace. The movie features an ensemble cast with Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, the late Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell. It’s also the film debut of both Rainn Wilson and Justin Long.
Much as the characters in Galaxy Quest do, actors of runaway hits often find difficulty in trying to move on from their breakout role. While some choose to embrace this iconic role in their respective genre, others yearn for bigger and better things. They find themselves stuck, getting hired to play the same type of character in subsequent productions or getting no work at all because they are too intricately linked to a character archetype that studios don’t have a need for. Galaxy Quest’s portrayal closely mirrors what happened with the cast from Star Trek. Leonard Nimoy famously titled his first autobiography I Am Not Spock in 1975, was criticized by fans for it, and followed it up with his second autobiography 20 years later titled I Am Spock.
It’s not just the studios that pigeonhole actors as well. Like the alien race in Galaxy Quest, fans themselves have often confused the choices characters make in fiction with the actors who portray them. There are countless stories of actors who have been harassed or even attacked by “passionate” fans because of the actions their characters did. Stranger Things is a good example of this.
The character Lucas Sinclair is at first wary of the psychokinetic Eleven and treats her as a danger who should be left alone. an understandable position when one is dealing with a girl with magic powers who broke into a friend’s home almost immediately after another of their friends has mysteriously disappeared.
Caleb McLaughlin, the actor who portrays Lucas, has discussed in interviews how people have approached and criticized him for the way his character treats Eleven on the show. It’s a frightening situation to be in, not just because one can never be certain what an angry random stranger on the street might do, but because at the time of the release of the first season of Stranger Things, McLaughlin was only 14.
Galaxy Quest’s portrayal of fandom showcases this toxic nature as a driving force for the plot. When the film was first released, these sorts of fan interactions could only be heard about mostly anecdotally by the actors themselves, but with the Internet’s co-mingling of the creators of shows with the fans who adore the product, this toxic nature has become more apparent. Fan forums often struggle with how to deal with the overly-aggressive members of their userbase. Creators have frequently dealt with severe and harsh reactions, even death threats, for things ranging from particular pairings of characters not becoming romantically involved with each other to a slight delay in production.
Perhaps one of the more edifying moments of fans taking things too far was the infamous “Szechuan sauce” incident. Rick and Morty has been a huge success for its creators and Adult Swim, but a number of people have developed a distaste for it purely as a result of the behavior or some of its more disreputable fans. It became a meme to say that a higher IQ level was necessary to enjoy the show, mirroring the titular Rick’s own egotistical boasting of his intelligence and ignoring that the show makes a point to show that this thinking is a big reason why Rick’s life feels so shallow and lonely.
However, in the season 3 premiere of the show which continued the story from the previous season finale’s huge cliffhanger, the toxic elements of the fandom found a way to be even worse. A central arc to the plot involves Rick’s obsession with a discontinued dipping sauce from McDonald’s that was initially released as a promotional item for the Disney feature Mulan, a Szechuan sauce. The episode received sizeable acclaim because it was a fantastic follow-up, but things grew to a fever pitch when McDonald’s announced that they were doing a limited-time return of its Szechuan sauce as a result of the episode’s success.
While this was a solid ploy on McDonald’s part, demand quickly outpaced supply, and soon after the Internet was full of videos of people treating the chain’s employees horribly because they had run out of Szechuan sauce, a situation the employees were most definitely not compensated appropriately for.
It’s doubtful that Galaxy Quest had ever set out to be anything more than a fun, comedy-filled sci-fi romp, it was inadvertently prescient not just about how pervasive fan attitudes would become, but also how popular sequels and reboots of older intellectual properties would become in vogue. The movie concludes with the show being brought back into production with a new series, an ending that at the time was uplifting, but now just feels like the obvious thing the studio would do.
Since Galaxy Quest’s release, Star Trek has not only launched several more television series set in its universe but several new series of films as well, keeping the show relevant well beyond its creators’ initial expectations. At first, hopes were that the connectivity between fans and creators would help instill a healthy sense of reality in the fans that had become somewhat unaligned with it. While the relationship between a fanbase and the showrunners has certainly grown closer, it has in part been in increasingly unhealthy ways, and it’s hard to see the trajectory altering significantly anytime soon as more productions open up more avenues for its fans to have a direct impact on the way shows are made.
There have been discussions of a Galaxy Quest sequel, and a script has reportedly been written, but nothing has materialized yet. One has to wonder if the new script manages to make any additional statements about the way we interact with our favorite media, intentionally or not, or if it has anything to say about the new age of show business.
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