Star Wars Holiday Special



In 1978, when Star Wars was new, George Lucas let some TV people have a go at a single TV episode which was aired once and went on to become notorious as a particularly awful example of TV entertainment, and terrible Star Wars. And now, because of people who recorded and kept it, and transferred it, it can be seen on YouTube. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher look out of place in a story that is: after the events of Star Wars, Han Solo is taking Chewbacca back to his homeward of Kashyyk, but he gets waylaid by the Empire. The bad guys also send an Allo Allo style baddie to the the Wookiee’s settlement, searching for any rebel activity.


Yes, it's Mark Hamill
The story has weird sequences including Broadway legend Bea Arthur singing and starring as a bar keeper at the Mos Eisley cantina. And she has to pour a drink into the top of an alien man’s head after going through some weird talk about how lovelorn this alien man is. And he does look human in all ways other than the mouth opening… in the top of his head. This is the weirdest sequence in a TV show that opens with some Wookiee dialogue which is presented without subtitles or any notion of what’s been said, although it is Wookiee party preparation. There is also a subplot involving a human trader


The best sequence is when one of the Wookiees watches an animation which is an adventure which Luke and the other have, and marks the debut of none other than Boba Fett. This part is the most enjoyable and has survived well as it’s not unlike an episode of Clone Wars.




If there’s good in this—and I do sense it—it is the evocation of an alien culture enjoying family and celebrating their culture in a shameless way. That’s the sort of thing that could be more front-and-centre in these more enlightened days where it’s good to believe that Star Wars fans are likely to be more accepting of such things… And if there’s a song based on the Max Rebo number from the Cantina scene in Star Wars, and if Carrie Fisher sings a song at the end to the tune of the Star Wars theme, then so be it. It’s not good, but it was 1978 and nobody really knew what they had. Did they?


…Well, in the aftermath of the Holiday Special, George Lucas tried to stop the show ever being seen. He said he would like to destroy every bootleg copy of it…


…Now, imagine a calendar effect with the days flying off and we get to the end of the first trilogy, the special editions, and then the prequels, leading to many fans cancelling George Lucas. In this era, Lego goes from a tiny company on the verge of bankruptcy to a giant with movie tie-ins…





The new Holiday Special on Disney+, takes place after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. If you’ve seen some of the Lego Star Wars shorts that affectionally mocks the films and its characters, and really gets into the fun of being a Star Wars fan. The plot involves Rey having problems with confidence as she is trying to get Finn’s Force Sensitivity. She finds a ‘key’ which enables her to travel through Star Wars eras and meet Jedi masters. Obi Wan banging his head against a table is the one laugh-out-loud moment of the entire thing. The Lego Star Wars Emperor Palpatine is the funniest character throughout this and all the other short films, and they have done some fine things with Kylo Ren. The show also leans into the soft ‘Dad’ quality that’s comically applied to Darth Vader: the scary figure whose presence in the early Holiday Special serves only to remind the viewer that the Empire is scary.


Anthony Daniels always voices C3PO and Billy-Dee Williams has a cameo. The voice of Rey wasn’t quite right for me, but Helen Sadler is fine. And Kelly Marie Tran is in it as the voice of Rose! One of the joys of this series, and Droid Tales which is often more funny, is that it has a laugh. Reasonable voices have been raised to criticise the most recent Star Wars films and that’s fine. But Kelly Marie Tran was hounded off social media and there was a lot of fighting over things that didn’t matter at the time and certainly don’t matter now. This new Holiday Special won’t assume the legendary status of the original, but it’s perfectly fun.

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