26 Years Ago Today, A Cult Classic Sci-Fi Instantly Became The Best Love Letter to Star Trek

Many shows have playfully imitated or borrowed from Star Trek, like The Orville and Black Mirror. The most successful ones celebrate the original series rather than trying to tear it apart. It’s funny, because some longtime Star Trek fans have criticized newer shows for not being respectful enough! If you want to see a perfect example of getting that balance right, look no further than Galaxy Quest, a wonderfully clever sci-fi film that first came out 26 years ago today – on December 25, 1999 – and quickly became a beloved classic.







![The reconstructed trajectory of a ground state hole spin reveals coherent precession, characterized by damped oscillatory behavior in its [latex]S_x[/latex], [latex]S_y[/latex], and [latex]S_z[/latex] components, and a precession plane inclined relative to the conventional [latex]y-z[/latex] plane, indicating complex dynamics within the ground state.](https://arxiv.org/html/2512.20870v1/Section_2/figure_4.png)