Explaining why Galaxy Quest has worldbuilding makes an important point about that particular facet of storytelling that it doesn't need to be some ancient lost continent or far-flung alien civilisation to do worldbuilding. Some of the best I've ever seen is in the film
The Outlaw Josey Wales and that covers an historical time period rather than any imagined civilisation.
Thought: the romance plot means she's not just Uhura, she's also a Yeoman Rand who wasn't written out. She even has similar hair!
Also the mention of
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century makes me think there is an influence of Erin Gray in that programme.
The Chen (Kwan [Shalhoub]) aspect is an interesting one because its plain to see that there was some intent to comment on yellowface but winds up not making it.
There's this similarity between
Galaxy Quest and
The Orville that when tasked to come up with "
Star Trek, but different enough that Paramount won't sue" were forced to think creatively in a way those same crews would not had they just been given the exact same job on
Star Trek. I suppose there is more freedom in imitation than there is in continuation. Trying to think of some other examples: Lucas not getting the rights to
Flash Gordon so creating
Star Wars instead; Moore's
Watchmen doing more with its own characters than it would have been able to had the original idea of using Charlton Comics characters been kept;
Minority Report going from being a sequel to
Total Recall to its own film.