The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

You hear it all the time: "Man, Star Wars was the greatest thing ever before the prequels came along," or, "The prequels are the worst Star Wars things ever!" It's funny how even the most diehard fans tend forget that, as bad as The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (and, if you hate that entire trilogy, Revenge of the Sith) are, Star Wars, as a cultural franchise and phenomenon, actually received its first and most horrendous blemish in November of 1978, just over a year after the original film's release. It may not be officially available (even though George Lucas is no longer in control of Star Wars, I'll still be amazed if this ever does get any kind of true home video release) but, thanks to VHS recordings of its one and only airing and the bootleg market, it's gone down in history as one of the worst things period due to how excruciatingly unfunny, drawn out, and mind-numbing it is to sit through. It's not only been called the worst piece of television by more than one source but many who were involved with it have either denied its very existence, admit that they've never watched the whole thing, or wish that they could destroy every single copy of it. What makes all of this especially ironic is that I first heard about it in a piece of official Star Wars merchandise: a book about the franchise's various characters that I got for Christmas in 1997, the very year when I first got into the movies. As you can probably guess, it was in the entry on Boba Fett, where his first appearance was listed as being here (and no, none of the other original characters were listed in that book), and the title, The Star Wars Holiday Special, quickly caught my attention. There were plenty of characters in that book that were listed as having first appeared in novels and comic books but I knew that Boba Fett was in the movies, so seeing his first appearance being listed as something other than The Empire Strikes Back really surprising and also knew that this definitely wasn't a piece of printed media. However, all it was a tiny bit of curiosity for many years, and while the first time I saw anything from The Holiday Special was in the special features of the Attack of the Clones DVD, when they talked about Boba Fett's ongoing popularity, I didn't really think much about it until I was in my 20's. That's when I finally saw a lot of material from it in the Nostalgia Critic's video on it and got a sense of just how bad it was.

By that point, I had learned about the special's notorious reputation and how much Lucas himself hated it but I had no idea until I saw that video just how ungodly it really was. I thought the video was hilarious and I still think it's one of the Nostalgia Critic's best, in spite of how it's been revealed that he and his company aren't exactly the best people, but I couldn't imagine having to actually sit through that junk. I did try for the first time late on Christmas night in 2017 but I only made it about halfway in before I gave up completely. This time, given the special's infamous nature, and also that it's the 40th anniversary when I'm writing this (I missed the actual date, since it was aired in November, but better late than never, I suppose), I tried again and I was able to make it. It wasn't easy, as I was again tempted to shut it off, and I'll admit that my mind often drifted off, but I made it, even though I don't feel like I accomplished anything meaningful. I guess my only reward is knowing that, once this is done, I'll never have another reason to watch this thing. Save for the cartoon (which I think is just okay in general) and some other, minute aspects, this thing just sucks from top to bottom. It's not only stupid, with every single attempt at comedy falling flat on its face, it's also an absolute bore to sit through, with sketches, sequences, and scenes that just go on and on and on, and even if you like Chewbacca, by the time it's over, you'll never want to hear a Wookie howl ever again.

The basic story is that Han Solo is trying to get Chewbacca home so he can celebrate "Life Day," a Wookie holiday, with his family, which consists of his wife, Malla, his young son, Lumpy, and his grandfather, Itchy. As they await his arrival, they start to get worried as more time passes and there's still no sign of the Millennium Falcon, especially Malla, who tries to figure out where they are. The delay is due to Han and Chewie having trouble with the Imperials, who have set up something of a blockade at the planet of Kashyyyk. Meanwhile, the Wookies are visited by Saun Dann, a Rebellion-friendly trader and friend who assures Malla that he knows the Falcon is on its way. Unfortunately, a group of Imperial officers and stormtroopers arrive at the house, searching it for any sign of Chewie, whom they know is an ally to the Rebellion. All of this is tied together by a series of sketches and musical numbers that the characters watch over the course of the film, as they wait for Han and Chewie's arrival, and its only purpose is to pad out the running time. Add to that lengthy segments featuring nothing but a Wookie family growling and roaring at each other, an uncomfortably erotic VR program that Itchy watches, a music video that goes on for five full minutes, Harvey Korman playing both an alien version of Julia Child and a malfunctioning robot hosting an instructional video, a Luke Skywalker who looks like a Ken doll, a Han Solo who doesn't look like he loves his extended Wookie family the way he claims he does, and a Princess Leia who's clearly stoned out of her mind and sings an off-key song to close things out, among other elements, and you've got the recipe for a slow and unbearable 97 minutes. (This preempted both Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk that Friday on CBS and I'm sure there was a lot of hell to pay the next day as a result.)

Many fans like to point the finger at George Lucas himself when they talk about the low-points of Star Wars but in the case of The Holiday Special, he had virtually no involvement at all, except in the early planning stages. After the first Star Wars became a massive hit in 1977, Lucas knew he was going to make more, especially given how his original story outline was full of numerous concepts and ideas that had to be discarded, but he feared that, knowing how long it would take to get another movie made, the phenomenon might wane by the time the next film would be released. Feeling that television was a quick and inexpensive way to keep Star Wars in the public eye, Lucas accepted CBS' offer when they came to him with the idea of doing a special. Because he was heading into pre-production on The Empire Strikes Back, as well as trying to build up Lucasfilm, he wasn't able to be completely involved, save for idea meetings and video footage of the special as it was being made. However, the notion of centering the main narrative around a Wookie family was his idea, as it hearkened back to an idea in his original story outline, particularly an alternate opening where the main story is revealed to be something being read to a Wookie child by his mother. Although writer Bruce Vilanch warned him that this could be very problematic, it was the one thing that Lucas wasn't budging on (he's said to have glared at Vilanch when he told him what he thought) but, aside from that, he left it completely in the hands of its producers. By the time he realized how poorly it was going, it was too late to do anything about it and he could do nothing but take his name off of it. It also reinforced his ever-growing need to completely control everything he created. Though you'd think such a failure would have turned Lucas off of television forever, the one fortuitous thing about it for him was being introduced to Nelvana and liking their work on the animated segment that he would later have them produce the Droids and Ewoks cartoons in the 80's.

Dwight Hemion and Gary Smith, the producers whom Lucas ceded all control of The Holiday Special to, were hardly slouches when it came to the job of creating television specials. In fact, during his lifetime, Hemion was nominated for more Emmy Awards than anyone else and had, along with Smith and their production company, Smith-Hemion, produced and directed well-known specials and concert films such as My Name Is Barbra (featured around Barbra Streisand), Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and a musical television version of Peter Pan, which starred Mia Farrow. Therefore, it's even more baffling why the special turned out like it did, making one wonder if it was a case of too many cooks in the kitchen (there were ultimately five writers and eight producers who worked on the thing), if Star Wars didn't gel with what they were used to making, or a little bit of both. In any case, while Hemion and Smith, like Lucas, considered the special to be the absolute nadir of their long careers, it didn't nothing to impede their ongoing success. Hemion continued working in television pretty much until his death from renal failure in 2008 at the age of 81, while Smith has kept working as recently as 2013.

Steve Binder

The special also ran into trouble almost as soon as production officially began, as it lost its initial director, David Acomba. Acomba had been a classmate of George Lucas' at USC and, at this point, had directed PBS' first television rock special in the U.S., Welcome To The Fillmore East and a 1973 Canadian feature called Slipstream, for which he'd won the Canadian Film Award for Best Director. However, after he began working on The Holiday Special, he ran into problems with the multiple-camera setup, which he wasn't used to, and he also clashed with Hemion and Smith, which prompted him to leave the production after shooting only a few scenes. He received no credit for his work on the special (something he's probably not broken up about) and since then, has worked sporadically, mainly in television, although he did also direct the features, Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave, and Night Life, a 1989 horror film starring Scott Grimes and John Astin. Acomba was replaced by Steve Binder who, like Hemion and Smith, had a background in television specials that involved music, most notably Elvis: The Comeback Special in 1968 and The Barry Manilow Special in 1977, and had also done episodes of The New Steve Allen Show, Hullabaloo, The Danny Kaye Show, and Gilligan's Island. Unlike Acomba, Binder had virtually no contact with Lucas, other than a "Wookie Bible" that detailed how they should be portrayed, and like his producers, the special's failure did little to impede his career, as he's continued to work as a producer and director to this very day.

While the special is notable for featuring many of the key actors from Star Wars reprising their roles, they're ultimately very minor side-characters, with only a couple of scenes or so making up their screentime (it's a bit more if you include the cartoon but not by much)... and they all clearly look as if they'd rather be anywhere else. Mark Hamill appears in only one scene before the ending, working on his X-Wing with R2-D2, when Malla contacts him to ask where Han Solo and Chewbacca are. Hamill's performance as Luke is still very much of the "golly gee" variety that he was in the movie, only amped up even more, with his antics and frustration with R2 as they screw up trying to repair the X-Wing bordering on goofy slapstick. His attempts to cheer Malla up, telling her, "Come on, Malla, let's see a little smile," while making a sort of goo-goo face at her, is especially awkward and downright out of character, and it's made even worse by the fact that he looks like a Ken doll, with all that piled-on makeup and his blonde hair seeming brighter than normal. This was right after he got caught up in a really bad car accident that severely damaged his face, so they had to put so much makeup on him in order to hide the aftermath of the reconstructive surgery necessary to fix the scars that were left behind after the accident. It's also possible that he may have also been on painkillers, which is why his acting and expressions are so... off. However, there's no denying that Carrie Fisher was more than a little "chemically fueled" during her appearances here as Princess Leia. Just look at that vacant, wide-eyed expression she has when she and the other actors are introduced during the opening, a look that's still present when she makes her first actual appearance alongside C-3PO when Malla contacts her. Those vacant expressions and empty eyes, combined with her zoned-out manner of speaking (which still involves that sort of British twang she had to her inflections), don't hide her inebriation at all, and it doesn't get any better at the end of the special when she sings a song about Life Day, which is just as unbearable to sit through as anything else in this special. Sadly, that was one of her incentives for doing it, so you'd think she'd try to be at least a little straight when the time came, but nope. She's still as stoned as ever, although I wonder if that's the sole reason why her singing is so bad.

I've always found it especially hilarious that Harrison Ford is also here again as Han Solo, both in the live-action segments and voicing the character in the cartoon, as it's testament as to how he still wasn't big enough at this point to say no to something he wanted nothing to do with. Given both what a star huge star he would become, as well as his genuine disdain for Star Wars in general, with his only stipulation for The Force Awakens being that Han be killed off, which he'd wanted as far back as Return of the Jedi, you know that Ford wouldn't go anywhere something like this nowadays and his displeasure is clearly visible on his face much of the time. At the end, when Leia is singing, Ford has a look on his face that all but says, "Somebody shoot me," and when he tells the Wookie family that they're like family to him as well, there is no affection or genuineness in his voice at all. Ironically, Ford probably has more screentime in the special than the other main actors from the film do, as it tends to cut back to him and Chewie inside the Millennium Falcon's cockpit, trying to outrun the Imperials, and you also see the two of them arrive on Kashyyyk and take care of the loan stormtrooper who's been left at the Wookies' home. Even more interesting is that, when he's sharing banter with Chewie, he does manage to recapture some of the spirit that made Han such a likable character to begin with, making his acting halfway decent. And yeah, Peter Mayhew again plays Chewie here, wearing the same costume as in A New Hope, and he gets just a little more screentime as Han. As cool as he is, that factor is rather diminished when he appears wearing that red robe during the ending, not to mention the notion of him having a seemingly rather domesticated home and family life.

The real main characters of the special are Chewie's family on Kashyyyk: his wife, Malla (Mickey Morton), young son, Lumpy (Patty Maloney), and grandfather, Itchy (Paul Gale). Despite the amount of time spent on them, their characterizations can be summed up very simply. For instance, Malla is a homemaker who's trying to prepare for Life Day but is constantly worried when Chewie is long overdue, often trying to get info on where he is and contacting people like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Saun Dann to learn what she can. Lumpy is just an overly energetic, constantly squealing Wookie child who's often running around, playing with toys, and watching various cartoons and videos to make the time pass, all the while being rather rebellious and sassy towards his mother when she tries to get him to do his chores. The most significant thing he does is put together a translator device that he uses to fool the Imperials into leaving, which works, save for one lone stormtrooper, who catches him in the act. And Itchy just sits around, tolerating Lumpy's energy, while also trying to console Malla as she becomes more and more worried. Sadly, the most memorable thing about him is his apparent fetish for sexy human women and the unsettling scene where he watches an overly sexualized holograph of Diahann Carroll asking him to, "Experience her." However, as many others have commented on, what makes the Wookie family so intolerable isn't that we spend so much time with them, despite the fact that they don't have much to their characters, but that we have to endure such long sequences of nothing but their roaring and howling, with no subtitles to show us what's being said. Not only is that inconvenient, despite there being moments where their body language and the editing makes it clear what's going on, but having to listen to their vocalizations for so long is tiring, to say the least. It's like how I feel about Chewie's howling in The Empire Strikes Back (for some reason, after a while in that movie, it starts to really get to me), only multiplied tenfold. I don't care how much you like Wookies, you can't tell me that it doesn't start to work on your nerves at some point, and again, the idea of Chewie having this domestic home-life and family just doesn't feel right.

An interesting bit of trivia is that Stan Winston, in one of his earliest jobs, created the costumes and masks for the Wookie family, with varying degrees of success. With her face being a refurbished Chewie mask from the original film, Malla looks the most tolerable (though the moment where she smiles when Luke coaxes her feels a tad off and unnerving, for some reason), despite being the only Wookie we've ever seen, and hopefully ever will see, wearing an apron. I can't say the same for Lumpy and Itchy, though. I'm sure they were trying to make Lumpy cute as a small, kind of chubby, young Wookie, who emits high-pitched versions of the familiar growls and howls, but he just looks odd to me, which is to say nothing of his face. I swear, not only does his face go into uncanny valley territory in some, there are a number of moments where he seems like Gary Coleman with hypertrichosis (an excessive hair disorder), particularly in the shots of his pursing his lips, as if he is about to say, "What you talkin' 'bout?" And as for Itchy, he looks more like a senior citizen yeti than he does an old Wookie, walking around all hunched over with that cane and his gray fur. His face is the most bizarre of them all, as he looks like a shar-pei with sunken eyes, a pug nose, and overextended, pouting lower lip that almost curls around to his nose when he closes his mouth in some shots.

As Saun Dann, a trader who operates an outpost near Kashyyyk, Art Carney does his usual shtick, coming off as a fast-talking salesmen who's also a good friend to the Wookies. He's basically like Ed Norton from The Honeymooners, only much more competent and not so dopey in the way he talks. In his first scene at his outpost, as an Imperial guard is roaming through his station, looking for something, and he tries to sell him on some stuff, like a miniaturized aquarium that you can carry in your pocket. He then gets a call from Malla, who's still concerned about Chewie, and he tells her, in a carefully worded message, that he and Han Solo are on their way there. After getting ripped off by the guard, who takes something from his shop without paying or trading something, Saun later arrives at the Wookie home, once again assuring them that Han and Chewie will making, given how he was able to slip by the Imperial patrol, and giving them some Life Day gifts. Later on, when an Imperial officer and some guards show up at the house and begin searching the place for Chewie, whom they suspect has ties to the Rebel Alliance, Saun does what he can to preoccupy and stave them off, putting on a music video featuring Jefferson Starship for one of them, but he's ultimately forced to leave. He twice tries to stick around by pretending like he has something to sell the Imperials but, both times, he's forced back out the door at gunpoint by a stormtrooper. He comes back at the end, after Han and Chewie have arrived and vanquished the stormtrooper that was left there, and when an Imperial officer appears on the house's viewscreen, searching for the trooper in question, Saun tells him that he's stolen supplies and gone AWOL. With the danger now passed, the Wookies can now celebrate Life Day and Saun wishes them well in doing so before departing. All in all, Saun is one of the more tolerable aspects of the special and Carney's presence is always a welcome one in anything, but he, however, can do nothing to salvage it, no matter how charming he is.

When I watched the Nostalgia Critic video and first saw Harvey Korman done up as this alien cooking show host, my jaw did almost hit the floor. The fact that he's dressed up as a woman besides, he looks absolutely insane in that big, purple dress with the white apron over it and those oversized gloves, not to mention that semi-blackface thing he has going on with his makeup and his hair done up in a way that does make him look Cinderella's evil stepmother. The reveal that she has two other arms, which makes her cooking instructions impossible for Malla to follow, is not as off-putting to me than the fact that, even if I had no clue who Korman was, I would have known that's no woman as soon as I first heard her speak. Her look is nutty enough, but then, there's her show, where she very exuberantly demonstrates how to make "Bantha Surprise," explaining that she's working with a Bantha loin (which I thought was a piece of pizza when I first saw it without the context) but suggests going with the rump for the family with a big appetite. After cutting the meat into bite-sized segments, and making a breathy moan that sounds a tad too passionate for my taste, she puts it into a pot and adds some extra ingredients, trying every single one of them before tossing them in. Following that, and explaining that they must also add some liquid into it, she says that they're now ready to stir, and this is when things get absolutely insane. She comes up with a rhythm to the stirring, which is fine enough, but then, she adds stirring to it , instructing at an ever-increasing tempo, "Stir, whip, stir, whip, whip, whip, stir." She gets so energetic that a wisp of hair flies out of do and she says, "Come on, faster, now! Cooking can be fun!", and you can actually hear Malla moan as she desperately tries to keep up with this craziness. Yelling, "Whaa!", and, "Having fun! Having fun! Nicely!", she then adds another motion, beating to it, revealing that she has more than just two arms. As if it wasn't already hard enough, she actually gives the wrong sequence of instructions at one point, before correcting herself and adding a beat to those instructions she already gave (I'm not writing all that stupid bullshit again and I don't feel like pasting it, either). She almost sneezes at this point but, fortunately, she uses her fourth hand to stop herself and then tastes it, quickly adding some more ingredients to it after she does. She lets out an ecstatic, "Ohh, wonderful!" as she continues tasting, before Malla finally gives up and switches the show off... and by this point, when I actually watched this thing myself, I was just about dead and was only a little over 25 minutes into it.

That's not the last time you see Korman, as he appears again as two other characters. About 3/4 of the way into the special, Lumpy decides to put together a translator that Saun Dann gave him as a Life Day present and he watches an instructional video about how to do it. Said video is hosted by Korman, who plays an android called an Amorphian, who speaks in a monotone voice and who's constantly malfunctioning, freezing in his place, slurring his words, and, in the end, ultimately shutting down. This is by far the worst of the segments that involve Korman. As insane and nutty as that cooking show was, at least he had a lot of energy in his performance and seemed to be enjoying himself; this is yet another long, drawn-out, unfunny sketch, as the Amorphian literally does nothing but show Lumpy every step in assembling the translator (and I do mean every step), all while malfunctioning again and again until he finally closes down. Some bits of it may make you smirk but, on the whole, it's as mind-numbing as everything else here. Korman appears one last time during Bea Arthur's segment as Krelman, an alien barfly at the Mos Eisley cantina who looks like a normal human, save for the dome-shaped top of his head, which has a hole in it that that he pours his drinks down, and his six-fingered hands. He has an attraction to Arthur's character, Ackmena, and mistakenly thinks she feels the same way, as the last time they met, she told him, "Come back soon. I'll be waiting." However, he soon finds out that it was a misunderstanding, as she says that to all of her customers, and is crushed by the rejection, as he tells her that the attraction he believed she had for him actually made him happy to be alive. But, when the Empire puts a curfew on Tatooine, forcing Ackmena to do "last call" and get everyone to leave, she finds Krelman waiting for her at the bar, still offering the flower that he came in with earlier. It's actually a kind of charming little moment, believe it or not.

Speaking of Ackmena, Bea Arthur does her usual thing, coming off as a fairly tough-talking woman with a sarcastic wit about her but who, in the end, does appreciate her customers and enjoys serving them (she's a much more likable bartender than the big-nosed guy who was in A New Hope). She also handles Krelman's misguided affections really well, being really nice to him when explaining how he misunderstood things, letting him have another drink on her and telling him he can stay as long as he wants. Unfortunately, things quickly take a turn for the worse for her when she hears of the Empire's curfew and is faced with a bunch of customers, as well as the band, who aren't too keen on going home. Unable to talk them into leaving, she sings, Good Night, But Not Goodbye, and ultimately has to lead them in a conga line out the door to finally get rid of them. Needless to say, Arthur does the singing so much better than Carrie Fisher, and when she's finally having to say good night to the last customers and employees as they head out the door, it's genuine enough in how it's played out to actually be kind of moving. As a result, Arthur comes out of this as one of the special's better aspects and it's good to see that she wasn't half-assing it, despite the quality of the piece as a whole.

He only appears a couple of times in the actual special, as well as in voice form for the cartoon segment, but regardless, Anthony Daniels' appearing here as C-3PO and doing his usual shtick is most definitely a much-needed and welcome addition. Although his line during the last scene, where he tells the Wookies that he and R2-D2 wish that they were really alive so they can share their feelings about Life Day, is rather asinine, given how they're constantly expressing feelings, and with 3PO himself saying right before that line they're "glad" Chewie is able to celebrate with them. Incidentally, while R2 is here as well, appearing in the one scene with Luke Skywalker and in the cartoon before showing up in the ending scene, it's not Kenny Baker playing him. He's 100% remote controlled here, and in fact, the man controlling him is none other than future director Mick Garris, who was George Lucas' receptionist at the time.

Have you figured out the biggest problem with this special yet? It's nothing more than a series of sketches that are held together by a plot that's wafer-thin at best. The main story just middles along, as we either watch the Wookies interact with each other and, anxiously wait for Han and Chewie to arrive, contacting someone to find out where they are now and then, cut back to the Millennium Falcon to see them attempting to escape the Imperials, or see the Wookies' household get searched by a small group of Imperials, when we're suddenly derailed and thrown into something else for three to five minutes or so, as somebody will put on some kind of visual to entertain themselves or fiddle around with something else for an ungodly amount of time. It happens so often that it really does feel like the writers had a severe case of ADD and, what's worse, not only do these digressions wear out their welcome very quickly but they go on for much, much longer than they should. For example, when the special properly begins, we first have to endure over five minutes of the Wookies grunting, roaring, and arguing with each other, as Lumpy annoys Itchy and initially refuses to do his chores, much to Malla's annoyance, she laments that Chewie hasn't shown up yet, and Lumpy goes outside, onto the walkway that stretches around their dwelling in the trees, to take out the trash, climbs up on the railing, and walks across it like a trapeze artist. Then, Itchy puts on something for Lumpy with a small hologram projector and we have to watch him watch these holographic images of circus performers doing their thing (Bruce Vilanch has said that it's Cirque du Soleil in their early days but I don't think they were around yet at that point), with Lumpy pressing a button that makes one of the performers life-sized. This goes on for another two minutes and it serves no purpose whatsoever other than to pad the running time. An even more egregious example, however, is when Saun Dann demonstrates how a small video player works by putting on a Jefferson Starship video that really does last for over five full minutes. I don't care how much you like Jefferson Starship, after a while, you're going to think to yourself, "Well, screw it, I might as well go listen to one of their albums then." I can't even comment on whether or not I liked the song in question because my mind really drifted off during this bit.

Seriously, what is that stuff on her head?

Other segments are just plain bizarre, sometimes as well as overlong and boring. That cooking show bit is definitely an example but the prime one has to be when Dann supplies Itchy with this virtual reality program that he has a hard time explaining, only able to use the word "wow" to do so, and tells him he figured he'd like it, adding, "I do mean Happy Life Day!" Following a couple of kaleidoscope images, the second of which is accompanied by these white, flowing, humanoid figures that move through the space as if they're swimming, Diahann Carroll materializes, wearing a sexy, lacy dress, as well as this white headdress that's made up of white, leaf-like material, and claiming that Itchy has created her out of his own imagination. This is when things go from weird to uncomfortable, as Itchy shows he's really happy to see her and Carroll responds, "Oh! Ohh! We are excited, aren't we?... Now, we can have a good time, can't we? I'll tell you a secret: I find you adorable. (Lumpy feels the need to replay that last part several times, all while he's creepily wrenching his big bottom lip back and forth and breathing a tad too heavily.) I don't need to ask to how you find me. (Obviously not!) You see, I am your fantasy. I am your experience, so experience me. I am your pleasure, so enjoy me. This is our moment together in time. That we might turn this moment into an eternity." She then sings a song called This Minute Now, the weird background and image effects basically making this into a music video in and of itself, and the slow, sensual sound and rhythm to the song makes it feel akin to a James Bond opening number. While the song doesn't sound too bad in my opinion, the notion that this is all something being watched on a VR set by an elderly Wookie who's probably doing something that we, thankfully, can't see makes it hard to enjoy, and as my mind, again, drifts off into its happy place, I do wonder which of the writers thought of this and why they felt it would be a good idea. Bruce Vilanch has admitted that he was quite heavy into cocaine at the time, so maybe that's the answer right there.

There are few things more painful to experience than comedy that doesn't land and, as you've already guessed, this is full of that. Even though you have some pretty talented comedic performers associated with this, the junk they're given to do ultimately sinks them. Harvey Korman, as I've gone into, especially suffers as that malfunctioning android, as that whole bit is more cringe-inducing than funny, and that cooking bit is mind-numbingly bizarre, while Art Carney does what he can in the wraparound and, despite his likability, he can only lift those Wookie scenes so much. Some of the comedy is just plain corny, like the screwball stuff going on between Luke and R2-D2 as they're working on the X-Wing or that horrendous joke that closes out the animated segment, and the attempts at humor during the scenes where the Imperials are searching the Wookies' house is just... ugh. Honestly, Bea Arthur is the only actor comes out of this with her dignity fully intact, as her section is one of the true highlights.

For many, the best thing to come out of this travesty is the animated segment, which Lumpy watches as the Imperials are searching the Wookie household. It's definitely the part of this that feels the most like Star Wars and it's so well liked that, to this day, it's the only section that's ever gotten any kind of official release, as it was put on the 2011 Blu-Ray set of the film saga as an Easter egg. The story is that the rebels are waiting for Han Solo to rendezvous with them after going after a talisman that's said to grant invisibility to its user, when they intercept a video signal from the Millennium Falcon that shows Han hanging upside from his feet in the back, while Chewie seems to be trying to contact them but is unable to do. The Falcon nearly hits their ship and veers off into deep space. Luke Skywalker, along with C-3PO and R2-D2, chase after the Falcon in a Y-Wing, to a moon in the Panna system. Said place turns out to be a water world inhabited by dinosaur-like creatures, one of which attacks the Y-Wing after they've landed. Luke and the droids are saved by Boba Fett, who tells them that he knows where the Falcon is but also warns that there are Imperials on the moon as well. When they arrive, Luke sees Chewie about to destroy the talisman and tries to stop him, only to instantly fall unconscious. It's revealed that the talisman emits a sleeping virus that only affects humans and Fett claims that he knows that the Empire keeps a cure for the virus in a nearby city. Despite insisting he go by himself, Chewie accompanies him to the city. There, Fett separates from Chewie and contacts Darth Vader, a communication that's intercepted by R2 on the Falcon. They hear Vader tell Fett that they may trust him enough to reveal the location of their new base. Having acquired the cure, Fett and Chewie return to the Falcon and quickly use it to help Luke and Han. That's when the droids tell them of Fett's allegiance with the Empire and the bounty hunter promptly escapes, promising that they'll meet again. The cartoon ends with the Falcon blasting off to rejoin the Alliance.

The cartoon is far from mind-blowing, with a very simple story and predictable outcome, but it's the closest thing to what you expect from a Star Wars television special. On a technical level, though, I find it to be a fairly mixed bag. The animation is actually quite good, with a smoothness and fluidity that definitely beats anything Hanna-Barbera ever put out, but its bouncy, squishy texture doesn't feel right when combined with the characters of Star Wars, especially a character as physically rigid as R2. Speaking of the characters, they're the weakest aspects, as they look so odd. R2, Chewie, and Boba Fett all look good, especially the latter, and Princess Leia is passable, but the others look downright weird. Luke's face is really strange, barely looking like Mark Hamill, with no nostrils and eyes that are just dead, while 3PO only vaguely looks like his live-action counterpart, with a face that subtly changes expressions here and there and blinking eyes that serve no purpose. Han Solo, however, really looks off, with a stretched, elongated face and nose that's akin to that moment in Army of Darkness, a chin shaped like a golfball, squinting eyes, and long, spindly arms. And that general during the opening scene looks more like a bald Yosemite Sam than somebody from Star Wars. As for the backgrounds and the environments, while they do have some nice detail to them, the moon where the crux of the action takes place isn't the most imaginative, as it's a water planet with a surface that seems more like lukewarm lava and creatures that are little more than just dinosaurs. The city looks fine for what it is but is pretty typical, and the stormtroopers that you see really look strange in how swollen and malformed their helmets seem.

The only true positive credit that the special has with the Star Wars fandom is that it marks the first appearance of Boba Fett, a couple of years before he would first enter the movies in The Empire Strikes Back. In fact, he's so tied to it that it was through him that I first learned that this was even a thing, as I described in the introduction. However, I've never been that big a fan of Fett and that's simply because, as memorable as his look is, he doesn't do much in the two movies he's in other than just hang around, acting like the strong, silent type. Moreover, his death in Return of the Jedi, where he gets knocked into the Sarlacc pit and eaten, always came off as lame and anticlimactic to me. Here, however, they at least give Fett an active role in the story, in how he gains Luke's trust after saving his life and acts as a friend when he volunteers to go to the city to get the cure for the sleeping virus, only for it to be revealed that he's working for Darth Vader. In fact, had R2 not intercepted their transmission, Fett may well have succeeded in leading the Empire to the Rebels' new hidden base. What's more, I really like his voice in this special, as it sounds much more cool and badass than either of the voices he's ever had in the original trilogy, though whose voice it is isn't all that clear. Some sources claim it was Don Francks (Chief Newby in My Bloody Valentine), who would go on to definitely voice him in the Droids cartoon, while others claim it was Gabriel Dell. Regardless of who voiced him, if Fett had been portrayed like this in the actual movies, I may have ended up liking him just as much as so many others do.

As you'd expect, the special as a whole reeks of cheapness. Granted, it's 70's television, so it'd be insane to expect anything amazing, but given that this is meant as a tie-in to a movie that was revolutionary for its visuals and effects work, it becomes much more notable as a result. In fact, the special will sometimes cut to footage that's from the film, mainly during the scenes where Han and Chewie are trying to escape the Imperials, and those amazing shots of the Star Destroyers and the Millennium Falcon really stand out against other shots like the establishing view of the Wookie household, which is clearly nothing more than a painting, a badly integrated wide matte shot of Lumpy walking along the railing outside the dwelling (if you can't tell, that's what the second image here is supposed to be; that little brown speck near the center is Lumpy), and those shots of the Wookies walking through space to the Life Day celebration (to be fair, though, the matting of Lumpy in with those holographic circus performers doesn't look half bad). Plus, the frame rate of the footage from the movie, which was shot on film, clashes terribly with the shot-on-tape nature of the stuff actually shot for the special. Stock footage is also the only way the special could have certain characters be present in the special, specifically Darth Vader, whom you see a shot of a little over twenty minutes in, with new dialogue from James Earl Jones stating that he wants the Rebels located, even if they have to search every household in the system (that and the three lines he has in the animated segment make up Jones' only involvement with this). I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this was an early sign that on television, Star Wars was best left for animation rather than live-action.

There are only a handful of actual sets here and they're also rather cheap. The one that I cannot get over is the interior of the Wookies' house. Since Chewie is able to act as a copilot for Han, you'd expect the Wookies to be technologically savvy and advanced but seeing them living in a treehouse which has an interior resembling a typical suburban home, with all of the comforts and conveniences like a kitchen, living room, chairs, coffee tables, a child's bedroom, shelves and cabinets, and futuristic stand-ins for TV sets doesn't feel right to me at all. The other environments, like the sparse rooms at the Rebel base where Luke, Leia, and C-3PO speak with Malla, the trading post that Saun Dann operates, and the interior of the Mos Eisley cantina that Ackmena runs, are all fine enough for what they're meant to be but they still convey nothing but the absolute bare bones (the cantina in the film wasn't a large set by any means but here, it feels like they removed half of it). And then, there's the interior of the Tree of Life at the end, but I'll talk about that scene as a whole presently. In any case, one thing the makers of the special were lucky with is that George Lucas allowed them access to the props and costumes that were used in the film. As a result, they were able to feature the Imperial officer, guard, and stormtrooper costumes, the Chewie suit, and, most significantly, the creatures that Stuart Freeborn and Rick Baker created for the cantina scene. In Ackmena's scene, you can see a lot of those same aliens, like the cyclops guy, the white, furry creature with four small eyes and a little tongue sticking out, the creature with the hammerhead-like crown, another member of Greedo's species, and the cantina lounge band (I'm sure all these characters have names but I'll be damned if I know what they are). They don't look as good as they did in the movie, due to the props having aged and the lighting not being as good, but it is impressive to see this crappy TV thing actually featuring those memorable creatures from the movie.

Music-wise, the special would have truly been remissed not to use John Williams' legendary cues from the film, but they also hired Ian Fraser, a frequent musician of TV specials, to create some original music and, not surprisingly, it's very "bleh." It's just so generic and unmemorable, only vaguely hinting at the sound of Star Wars in spots, and is cringe-inducing in how overdone it is in trying to elicit the necessary emotions, be it laughter, warmth, or tension. Fortunately, unlike a lot of this special, this music is very much of the "in one ear and out the other" persuasion. Song-wise, I've mentioned all of them when talking about their individual segments, save for the Life Day song that Carrie Fisher belts out during the finale. Let's get into that last scene now, shall we?

So, after Han and Chewie finally show up and dispense with the lone stormtrooper the Imperials left behind, who got after Lumpy when he discovers that he was using the translator device, which he built from the Amorphian robot's instructions, to trick them into leaving to begin with (I say "dispense with" but he actually trips and sends himself flying over the outside railing during a scuffle), Han bids the Wookies goodbye, as he must head back to the Rebel base. Following yet another overlong Wookie scene, and one last visit from Saun Dann, who manages to get the Imperials to stop spying on them, the family prepares for their Life Day celebration. They pick up and hold some glowing, snowglobe-like objects, come together as the lights in the room dim, hold them up, and then, after a strange transition, we see them wearing red robes against a starry background. We then see a line of Wookies walking through space, disappearing into a bright, glowing light, and after a commercial break, we see that a big crowd of them have gathered around the trunk of a large tree, the Tree of Life. After C-3PO and R2-D2 wish everyone a happy Life Day, Luke, Han, and Leia show up, the latter giving a speech about how they all hope they will one day be able to live in peace and that they all share in the struggle against evil, regardless of their physical differences. Not a bad sentiment, actually, but then, she has to start singing about the ultimate meaning and promise of Life Day, as we see a montage that cuts from one character to the next. It's meant to show how much the song is affecting them and how they hope for what it promises as well but, truthfully, what you're seeing is Harrison Ford considering strangling his agent, Mark Hamill (who's no longer slathered in makeup) looking like he's about to cry and probably not for the right reason, R2 turning his head at 3PO in a manner like, "Is she serious with this?", a bunch of actors in Wookie costumes wishing they could get out of them, and Fisher realizing that she's mangling the song. Not only is she horribly off-key and her voice sounds like it's about to crack wide open on those high notes but it's meant to be sung to the tune of the main Star Wars theme, something that I didn't catch at all until I read up on it. Listening it, I can sort of hear it, but her singing sucks so bad that she just barely makes it. The special then ends with a montage of scenes from A New Hope, mainly those centered around Chewie (we also see shots of Obi-Wan Kenobi, as that was definitely the only way Alec Guiness was to going to seen in this), and one last shot of the Wookies, sitting around the dinner table inside their home.

It will probably always remain a major curiosity piece for diehard Star Wars fans and connoisseurs of odd films and television but, in my opinion, The Star Wars Holiday Special is something that should have been left out in the black void of space. While it isn't completely without its merits, like the fairly enjoyable cartoon, the always welcome presence of Art Carney, and the above average section featuring Bea Arthur, who manages to come out of this with her dignity, the whole thing is an absolute chore to sit through. It's truly remarkable how much it completely fails at: the main actors from the movie are either bored or doped up, the scenes with the constantly screeching Wookies are tiring, many of the sketches and scenes go on far longer than they should, while others are downright bizarre and disturbing, the whole thing is just cheap from top to bottom in the visual department, the original music is forgettable and generic, and the plot that holds all off these skits together is far too flimsy to keep your attention for the duration. It may have a cult status because of how rumors about it spread throughout the fan circles over the years and its continued lack of an official release but I wouldn't recommend checking it out or forcing anyone else to suffer through it, unless they're your most hated enemy whose Christmas deserves to be ruined (and even then, it'd probably be less humane than having bamboo chutes shoved under their fingernails).