Tim Allen will never give up, and never surrender on the long-discussed Galaxy Quest sequel, even after the project was supposedly put to bed after the untimely and tragic death of co-star Alan Rickman. But five years after Galaxy Quest 2 was reportedly scrapped, Allen is holding out hope for the sequel to get off the ground, especially with its “fabulous script.”

Tim Allen, who starred in the 1999 cult classic sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest, gave an update on the status of the sequel, which is currently in a “holding pattern,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

“I haven’t reached out to anybody in the last week, but we talk about it all the time,” Allen said. “There is constantly a little flicker of a butane torch that we could reboot it with. Without giving too much away, a member of Alan [Rickman]’s Galaxy Quest family could step in and the idea would still work.”

The project first started kicking around back in early 2015, when it was conceived as a television show. Later that year, Amazon picked up the project and original director Dean Parisot and co-writer Robert Gordon were set to return. But Rickman’s death in 2016 brought things to a halt, and the sequel was supposedly scrapped. After all, how do you make Galaxy Quest 2 without one of its central, and most beloved, characters, Alexander Dane, AKA Dr. Lazarus?

The Spock-inspired character was also supposed to play a central part in Gordon’s script, which Allen also teased. The film would revolve around the relationship of Allen’s egotistic actor Jason Nesmith (aka the Kirk-esque Commander Peter Quincy Taggart) and Rickman’s Alexander Dane. Allen teased:

“It’s a fabulous script. But it had a hiccup because the wonderful Alan Rickman passed. So it all got very sad and dark because [the script] was all about [Lazarus] and Taggart. It was all about their story. It doesn’t mean they can’t reboot the idea, and the underlying story was hysterical and fun.”

Rickman’s death is a little more than a hiccup — it arguably squashes any desire for a sequel at all. Galaxy Quest, a good-hearted spoof on Star Trek, would not be the same without its entire crew, nor without the scene-stealing Rickman, whose eyerolls and Shakespearean ambitions were a huge part of the original film’s success. But Parisot has also recently chimed in on the idea of a sequel, and is clearly not against bringing back long-dead series, with his recent hit Bill & Ted Face the Music.

Regardless, Allen seems optimistic that the draft script can be updated for the current situation, especially since the plot revolves around light-speed space travel, which would find the NSEA Protector crew out-of-sync with the rest of the planet:

“[The sequel] could happen now or in five years and it doesn’t matter at all because when you travel at light speed, when you come back it can be like only 20 minutes, but 20 years have passed, right? That part is wonderful for the sci-fi freak in me. But right now it’s in a holding pattern.”

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