So Alexander Dane plays Dr Lazarus on the show, and he hates that Grabthar line. Galaxy Quest was just supposed to be a stepping stone to a real acting career, only it never materialized. Instead, Alexander is only remember for his one role on an old show. Sure, it paid the bills, but Dr Lazarus is the millstone around Alexander’s neck, the character he doesn’t believe in. Now that he’s washed up, every time he says the line he dies a little inside. Sudddenly he runs into real aliens on a real spaceship who believe in a real Dr Lazarus. Then in the middle of this quirky meta action comedy tragedy strikes. One of those aliens is dying in his arms and tells him that he always thought of Dr Lazarus as his father. So Alexander says the line. And he really means it. He swears on the memory of a fiction, and in that moment Dr Lazarus is real. It’s a powerful message that drives home the theme of the whole movie - that escapism through fantasy is a way to touch what is human. Except this isn’t some art house movie. It’s a blockbuster comedy. And the real beauty of it is that Alexander isn’t Dr Lazarus - he’s Alan Rickman. He really gave it his all in his performance, and I like to think it’s because he related to it. At the time he was probably best known as Hans Gruber from a movie he had made ten years earlier. He probably felt like Alexander. Soon he would become Professor Snape to the masses, his own Dr Lazarus. But Alan Rickman never phoned it in. Not even for a goofy space comedy popcorn flick.