'Historical Documents' Plot Hole

I only caught that they watched Galaxy Quest, not anything else. You could make a case that they recorded transmissions over a period of a few months, at a certain opportune time for the reception of Galaxy Quest only, on one certain frequency.

In other words, for them to be able to isolate a signal, it might have been a matter of the earth's position in its solar orbit, and its own rotational position at a certain tim of day,

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Remember that this is spoofing the original Star Trek series, which ran in the sixties. Television was quite a bit different back then. Reference was made to Gilligan's Island, to which the Thermians responded "Those poor people."

However, during the sixties there were almost no behind the scenes features, or things that explained the process of making entertainment in general, unless you count a few things like short features that showed how Disney cartoons were made and such. Television in nearly every household was a pretty recent thing, and people just watched it for entertainment. Most people were not interested in how shows were made, they just wanted to see their shows.

Also, remember that while television broadcasts travel at the speed of light, the nearest star to us is over four light years away, and it is unlikely the Thermians would be from anywhere nearly so close. The premise of the movie seems to be that the Thermian home world was many times that distance, so they received programming that was decades old.

Regarding cartoons, I don't recall that being addressed. I suppose you could call that a plot hole, if you like, although since cartoons of the day very rarely involved real people, one might think the Thermians at least savvy enough to discern that they were not historical documents.

They are an extremely advanced civilization but incredibly naive. Perhaps thats why Sarris has been able to singlehandedly destroy their entire civilization with ease.

The Thermians seems to be easily killed, so maybe a few of them died re-enacting 'duck season! rabbit season!'

Maybe the whole group should have been dressed in red shirts and be done with it.

I need three days notice to "Have a wank."

I saw it as a nod to all those TOS episodes where budget constraints meant they visited a REMARKABLY earthlike planet every week.

There's even one (A piece of the action) where a developing world gets hold of a copy of a book detailing 1920s mob wars ... which forms the basis of their society.

I love this movie. Its one of my favorites. And I know its just comedy and not to be taken seriously, but one thing has always bothered me -

They learned all about the ship from the "historical documents" including the fuel source, which was the beryllium spheres. Taggart says in one part of the movie that the show's beryllium sphere is made of wire and plaster.

So, what are the odds that the Thermians can not only duplicate the entire ship including operation, but also locate real beryllium spheres that both look like the models AND can be used as a fuel source?

Just sayin'...

;)

Maybe the cable company cut them off after a month of re-runs because they didn't pay the bill. :-)

My own bet is that the Thermians might have caught a GQ weekend, maybe a Gilligans Island weekend as well, that let them see them in a short period of time.

Or maybe they found a really good torrent and downloaded the whole lot...

The Thermians might have understood the concept of "art" even if they didn't understand "theater". Cartoons are drawn images, "art", and might have been interpreted differently from a sitcom with real actors involved. In other words, they might have easily realized that the animated images of a cartoon were not "real" even though they couldn't comprehend the humor. In fact, this possible lack of comprehension might have caused them to largely ignore cartoons, like us looking at ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.