20 Things You Didn’t Know About Galaxy Quest
17. Alan Rickman Had Significant Input Into His Character
The late, lamented Alan Rickman, who played the uptight Shakespearean actor Alexander Dane, had a hand in designing the prosthetic headpiece that Dane’s character Dr. Lazarus wears, which Dane never actually takes off throughout the whole film.
Discussing the piece with the Stan Winston Studio, Rickman specified that it needed to be “good enough to convince the aliens who believe we’re the real thing, but also cheesy enough to imagine that it was something he applied himself.”
The script also called for Dane to have been given a knighthood to be Sir Alexander Dane, but Rickman felt it wouldn’t suit the character’s desperately blunted ambition if he’d been recognised by the Queen for his contribution to acting. Still, the film’s credits list him as ‘Sir Alex Dane’.
Finally, that legendary catchphrase - ‘by Grabthar’s hammer!’ - was a placeholder: Bob Gordon stuck it in there until he thought of something better, but by the time he got around to reconsidering it, it had stuck and the film’s crew were knocking up t-shirts.