Origin

Alexander Dane is a British Shakespearean actor who had found himself hopelessly typecast for nearly 20 years after playing the stock alien science officer in a 1980s sci-fi series called Galaxy Quest and now must sustain himself reliving the experience at various Science-Fiction conventions.

Creation

Alexander Dane is played by Alan Rickman in the 1999 film Galaxy Quest. Dane's character Dr. Lazarus, he played in the in-universe Galaxy Quest series was a parody of both Spock, a highly intelligent alien scientist of the "elder brother" archetype, with unspecified telepathic abilities and Worf, a fierce alien warrior.

Major Story Arcs

On the 1980's TV show Galaxy Quest, Dane had played Dr. Lazarus of Tev'Meck. Years later, during the conventions, Dane was forced to repeat the awkward catchphrase: "By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!". 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.

All the major cast members are recruited by the Thermians, an alien race that had mistaken the TV series for a documentary 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 appalled 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 means it for the very first time in his life.