In the pantheon of alien-oriented sci-fi movies, a qualifier for true greatness is the caliber of the extraterrestrial. The more unique and strange they are, the more likely audiences will still be talking about them decades later.

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Case in point: Galaxy Quest . Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the beloved satire of low-fi, space-exploration television shows and their egocentric human casts works for many reasons, including a brilliant script and pitch-perfect performances. But one of Galaxy Quest’s secret weapons is its wholly original alien species: the Thermians. Bi-pedal cephalopods in their true form, they spend the majority of the movie in human guise, trying to awkwardly pull off a natural human gait and speech patterns. As led by the sweetly naïve Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni), the Thermians laugh, smile and unabashedly “fan-boy” around the original cast of the historical document they know as Galaxy Quest.To this day, all you need to do to identify a true Galaxy Quest fan is audibly replicate the Thermians’ weird attempt at laughing, and the connection is made. It’s the universal language of the fandom.With a new steel-book Blu-ray and 4K release of Galaxy Quest out for the anniversary, as well as the recent Never Surrender, a documentary celebrating the movie’s enduring popularity, IGN spoke to director Dean Parisot and Lahnk the Thermian, Rainn Wilson (in his first film role), about why the aliens in the film remain so unique to this day.For Parisot, who joined the film deep into pre-production after Harold Ramis had left, Galaxy Quest’s success came from the casting. “The trick is to put the right group of people together,” he assesses. “As we were casting, I was really trying to find a great collection of seriously talented people. A lot of whom, at that moment, they didn't have a star meter.”Parisot remembers Colantoni’s audition inventiveness setting the tone for the Thermians. After a solid read, the direct says he could tell the actor was holding back on his way out the door.“For some reason I said, ‘Rico, it seems like you've got something on your mind,’” recalls the director. “He goes, ‘Well, I have this voice. I don't know if it works.’ I said, ‘What is it? Try it.’ He did it and I just went, ‘Oh my God, that's it!’“The Thermians came out of that voice,” Parisot continues. As more actors were added to the Thermian ranks, that voice became the reference point with every addition, including Missi Pyle (Laliari), Jed Rees (Teb), and Patrick Breen (Quellek).“We had alien school and we would come up with things like the walk,” Parisot remembers. “Rather than swinging in the direction most people do, we went the opposite direction with the arms, and the posture because they're basically giant calamari hiding in human shape.“During alien school, we all threw out all kinds of ideas,” he continues. “I'm basically the conductor, but they're coming up with the performance. I have no idea where everything came from, nor do I remember it, but it was fun.”However, one of the cast’s Thermians actually missed that boot camp. Actor Rainn Wilson was newly relocated to Los Angeles from New York and found himself double-booked on an NBC pilot and in his first movie role as Galaxy Quest’s Lahnk. “They wanted me for the entire run of the film and to be there more, but I could only do a couple of scenes because of that NBC situation,” Wilson explains.He leaned on his fellow Thermian thespians to teach him their new moves: “I got a crash course from Missi Pyle, Jed Rees and Enrico Colantoni. And I do remember that the way the suits were constructed, you had to walk that way. If you lifted up your arm, it would make your leg lift up because they were kind of connected in that really tight jumpsuit.”As Lahnk, Wilson was tasked with remembering a lot of “technological gobbledygook” that ended up often getting the best of him. “I kept forgetting my line,” Wilson laughs. “I couldn't get it right, especially because there were all these A-list movie stars behind me. There's Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Sam Rockwell and Tony Shalhoub. I just kept blanking. I got so nervous, I remember my tinfoil suit was filled with sweat. It was just terrifying!”As it turns out, Wilson’s big scene was cut from the final film but is part of the deleted scenes on the home video releases. Unfortunately, the actor didn’t find out about the cut until he saw the completed film. “I don't think anyone ever even told me,” Wilson muses. “I think I saw the film and I was like, ‘Wait a minute…’”In hindsight, he thinks the cut was for the best. “If you look at the deleted scene, you can kind of see on my face how terrified I am,” he jokes. “There's kind of a stutter in how I'm talking, and you can tell, ‘Oh, he's searching for the next line.’”But being cut from his first booking made a lasting impression on Wilson: “I learned a couple of things. One was that if you have a monologue with a bunch of technological gobbledygook, you've got to really stone-cold learn it. There's no winging it. And the other thing I learned was if I'm just myself, and I'm loose, I'll get jobs and I'll do a good job. That was a very good learning experience for that.”While Parisot and Wilson have both gone on to have incredibly successful and varied careers, both agree that Galaxy Quest remains as beloved an experience behind-the-scenes as it is for audiences watching to this day.“I compare Galaxy Quest a lot to Shaun of the Dead because it's very hard for a movie to both work as a comedy and as a genre piece,” says the actor. “Shaun of the Dead works perfectly as a horror film and as a comedy, and Galaxy Quest does the same thing [as sci-fi]. I don't know that any movie has ever matched it. And Dean Parisot is the unsung hero of the film because it was his taste, his choices, his amazing sense of humor. His humor is so subtle and specific. No one else could have directed that film. He did an amazing job.”Parisot is just happy that, after a less than stellar marketing campaign at release, Galaxy Quest has gone on to continue to please audiences. “It's always a surprise when you make a movie,” he muses. “You've sort of finished it and you move on hopefully to the next thing. This started to just create this train of people that seemed to very much like it. And it is a love letter to the fans, and to fandom in general. I loved movies as a kid. To me, the most endearing aspects of it are the Thermians, because they're the hugest, most naive fans in the galaxy.”As those fans -- and Thermians -- might say, "Never give up, never surrender!”