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Galaxy Quest is a perfect motion picture. Argue with a wall … preferably one of the many chrome walls aboard the NSEA Protector.
Released on Christmas Day 1999, well in advance of geek culture going fully mainstream, the Dean Parisot-directed film feels like it had early access to decades of modern internet debates, takes, and controversies. That’s because, in a way, it did. Even before wide adoption of social media turned fandom into a contact sport, Star Trek die hards were the vanguard of obsessive message board discourse. Galaxy Quest operates as a gentle satirical takedown of this passionate population while being a a rip-roaring space adventure in its own right.
It also may or may not feature a single frame of Tim Allen’s genitalia. Hold that thought while we set things up.
Galaxy Quest is blessed with a simple, yet effective premise. Years after the premiere of their beloved Star Trek-esque TV show, the cast of “Galaxy Quest” struggles to escape its pop culture wake, seemingly condemned to attend fan conventions and parrot popular catchphrases for the rest of their lives. Star Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), who played Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, doesn’t mind this fate. The rest of his crew – Gwen DeMarco as Lieutenant Tawny Madison (Sigourney Weaver), Alexander Dane as Dr. Lazarus (Alan Rickman) Fred Kwan as Tech Sergeant Chen (Tony Shalhoub), Tommy Webber as Lieutenant Laredo (Daryl Mitchell), Guy Fleegman as Crewman #6 (Sam Rockwell) – is significantly less enthused.
In a Three Amigos-sized twist, an alien race misinterprets old broadcasts of Galaxy Quest as historical documents and brings Nesmith and company aboard a recreation of their fictional starship, the NSEA Protector, to help deal with the threat of the villainous Roth’h’ar Sarris (Robin Sachs). Suffice it to say, the Hollywood actors are fairly ill-equipped to do so.
The saga of the fictional crew of the Protector learning to become the real crew of the Protector is as exciting as it is wholesome … as long as you’re not paying close attention to the actors’ mouths. That’s because Galaxy Quest is an R-rated movie that was hastily cut down, not just to a PG-13 rating, but an even more family-friendly and content-restrictive PG. The signs are very clear when you look for them.
“There’s talk about the so-called R-rated version of the film,” writer Robert Gordon told MTV in 2014. “When I originally wrote it, I wasn’t thinking about a family film, just what I wanted to see. So when the ship lands in the convention hall in the original draft it decapitates a bunch of people. There was also stuff we shot where Sigourney tries to seduce some of the aliens. It was cut – and that’s why her shirt is ripped at the end.”
The cuts likely represent an attempt from DreamWorks Pictures’ to find a wider audience and a bigger box office haul. In that, the studio was only somewhat successful, taking in $90.7 million against a $45 million budget (which doesn’t account for promotion). What it was more successful at, however, was creating a major feature film that has some of the most obvious dubbing outside of a ’70s grind house martial arts flick.
The first bad dub arrives only four minutes into the movie when Tommy expresses frustration at Jason arriving late for a gig. The articulated line of “You’re full of shit, man!” becomes “You are so full of it, man!” in the final audio. Near the end of the film, Weaver’s Gwen DeMarco encounters an obstacle that can only be described as a bone-crushing machine. When told she must walk through it, her lips respond with an understandable “Well fuck that!” but the line that reaches the audiences’ ears is “Well screw that!”
“To this day I’m sorry we made it PG rather than PG-13. We took out Sigourney Weaver’s ‘F–k,’ one of the best laughs in the movie,” producer Mark Johnson told MTV.
In addition to the bad dubing, the PG rating took some other prurient elements away from Galaxy Quest. These include a look at Dr. Lazarus’ quarters aboard the Protector, which Tim Allen described as a “proctologist’s dream and nightmare.” It also meant that Shalhoub’s Fred Kwan could never be identified as a stoner despite perpetually having the munchies and bloodshot eyes.
The real story about Galaxy Quest‘s journey down to PG isn’t what was taken out, however, but what was left in. Even without the decapitations, alien orgies, and (God forbid) marijuana cigarettes, Galaxy Quest remains one of the least family-friendly family movies of the 20th century. Throughout the film’s 102-minute run time, there is: a dead reptilian’s head on a bloody spike, an entire colony of bare-assed children who messily eat their wounded, a space boar with its guts turned inside-out that eventually explodes, and of course, Tony Shalhoub and Missi Pyle exploring each other’s bodies with their tongues and tentacles. It’s as though the cuts presented for the PG rating were so extensive that the Motion Picture Association’s eyes glazed over and they just said “eh, the rest is close enough.”
But all of that pales in comparison to the real most R-rated moment in Galaxy Quest. There’s a single frame in this PG film that’s so haunting I’ve kept its existence a secret to myself since I first noticed it in the early 2000s. Now that the movie is more than two decades old, I think it’s finally time to lay it bare.
I am roughly 84% certain that Tim Allen’s penis is visible in this movie.
The unintended money shot begins around 12 minutes into the film. Thermian leader Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni) and the rest of his crew arrive to Jason Nesmith’s lush, heavily-windowed Beverly Hills home to ask for his help once again. Nesmith, recognizing the pale weirdos from the fan convention the day before, thinks they’re there to shuttle him to his next gig and lets them in. While insanely hungover and wearing only a white dress shirt, Nesmith stumbles around looking for clean clothes. It’s during one of these stumble sessions that he leans over, exposing his butt to the curious Thermians.
While the audience doesn’t see the Nesmith toosh, the shot lingers in front of him. Perhaps comfortable in the reality that they’re going for an “R” anyway, the camera doesn’t pull away quickly enough as Nesmith stands back up. That’s how, at precisely 13 minutes and 36 seconds into the film (which I accessed on Amazon Prime Video), viewers catch a brief glimpse of…
Tim Allen’s buzz and lightyears. His Santa and clauses. His tool and times. His “aaggghayuuahhh.”
In defense of Galaxy Quest editor Don Zimmerman, it’s possible that this error was noted and partially airbrushed out. Because the space between Nesmith’s legs isn’t, let’s say, super noticeable. But something is certainly there. Like a beleaguered ship captain whose crew is trying to convince him that that was a manatee, not a mermaid: I know what I saw!
We won’t include a screen grab here in the interest of propriety. But those who want to fact check this claim, or possible delusion, need only to rent a digital copy of the film and fast-forward to 13 minutes and 36 seconds. While you’re there, be certain to give the rest of a movie a watch too. As previously stated, Galaxy Quest is a perfect motion picture. Tim Allen’s shifting gears and all.
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