Played by Alan Rickman in the 1999 film Galaxy Quest, Alexander Dane begins the film as a British Shakespearean actor who had found himself hopelessly typecast for nearly 20 years after playing the stock alien science officer in a 1980s scifi series called Galaxy Quest and now must sustain himself reliving the experience at various SF conventions (in parody of the original Star Trek series and later Star Trek: Next Generation and the typecasting effect these series had on the careers of most of their actors).
On the 1980’s TV show Galaxy Quest, Dane had played Dr. Lazarus of Tev’Meck, a parody of both Mr. Spock (a highly intelligent alien scientist of the “elder brother” archetype, with unspecified telepathic abilities) and Lt. Worf (Dane was forced to repeat at every convention the awkward catchphrase: “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!” as a parody of the popular SF convention request for Mr. Worf’s actor to repeat the phrase “Captain, I must protest: I am not a merry man!”, a request that occurred so often the actor grew to hate the line). As the film begins, Dane is lamenting to his fellow Galaxy Quest cast members that his once-promising career has been reduced to surviving off the old glories of the very series that had destroyed his career, a lament that only annoys them because all of them can say the same thing — though not all of them regret it as he does.
As the film progresses, all the major cast members are recruited by the Thermians, an alien race that had mistaken the TV series for a documentary (in one of the least believable conceits of this otherwise excellent film, the Thermian race has no understanding of the notions of fiction, storytelling, or suspension of disbelief and has only recently begun to grasp the notion of lying) and had built a working version of the Galaxy Quest set for their heroes — the actors! — to use to rescue them from an invader and his forces.
Unlike the other cast members, Dane is apalled at the idea of pretending to be his Galaxy Quest role Dr. Lazarus, a role he has come to despise because of the way it had ruined his career; part of his reluctance comes from the fact that, as a human being in real life rather than a Mak’tar, he finds the Thermian recreation of Mak’tar food and quarters inedible and uncomfortable. However, when one of the Thermians who adores him is killed right before his eyes, he comforts the dying Thermian by telling him his catchphrase and meaning it for the very first time in his life: “By Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!”