The Star Wars Holiday Special

I was first alerted to the existence of this bizarre footnote in the Star Wars cannon by one half of a TV duo whose Star Wars knowledge is a matter of public record. He told me of a legendary Star Wars TV special made by CBS in 1978 and aired around Christmas of that year. Apart from one repeat showing on a French TV station the year after it was never shown again and now exists only on bootleg video tapes furtively sold at sci-fi conventions. Then, ten days ago, I got a call from a friend who had located a copy inviting me to watch it with him for the first time.  
The basis of the Holiday Special is a two hour long drama set on the Wookie homeworld on which Chewbacca's wife Malla, son Lumpy and father Itchy await the return of Chewie in time for Light Day- a sort of Wookie Christmas. This basic plot is used to hold together a motley revue of star turns and musical numbers by performers who one suspects were already past it in 1978. However the real novelty of the Holiday Special -and also its most disturbing facet- is the appearance of the original Star Wars cast in their original roles. These include Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew inside the Chewie suit and Anthony Daniels inside C3PO. The only ones unaccounted for are Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones. Kenny Baker seems to have been spared another stint inside R2D2 by having the role played by a real robot.
 
I don't know what combination of money and contractual obligation led to much of the original cast turning up for this outing but their total combined screen time can't have added up to more than ten minutes, maximum. In fact, much of the show involves long scenes shot in Chewie's tree house involving Malla, Itchy and Lumpy howling at each other in fluent Wookie. The basic sequence of events is as follows:  

The Wookies are getting worried. Chewie is running late due to his unwise decision to hitch a ride home with Han. Some space battles with tie fighters from the original film are shoehorned into the action. The bridge of the Millennium Falcon looks like it is made up of old boxes and a couple of coloured lights. Harrison Ford intones his lines like an embarrassed sleepwalker.

Malla calls Luke on the videophone. Luke and R2 are fixing up an X-wing made of egg cartons and plastic tubing. Luke doesn't know where Chewie is. Something is up with Mark Hamill's face. It may be the new haircut or the layers of makeup following his post Star Wars car accident but he looks disturbingly like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's baby. R2 sets fire to the X-wing.

  

Malla then calls Leia who is hanging out in front of a blue pattern with C3PO. She doesn't know where Chewie is either. Carrie Fisher does a pretty good job of Leia, it must be said, but her face is puffy and her eyes are pointing in different directions. I have it on good authority that she was hitting the old space dust pretty heavily at this point in her career.

Lumpy activates his entertainment console to cheer himself up and a troupe of fluorescent clowns, jugglers and acrobats are holographically created for his, and I assume our, amusement. They do backflips for what feels like fifteen minutes, egged on by a life size clown blowing a horn.

  

The Holiday Special takes a turn for the worse here at the appearance of Sondant. A human trinket merchant and friend of the Wookies, he is played by Art Carney, a character actor who clearly has never seen Star Wars but might have had it described to him by a young relative. With a great deal of unwelcome pantomime mugging and 'funny' mannerisms, he had us reaching for the fast forward button with every one of his frequent appearances.

 

 

  
To take Itchy's mind off his son's late arrival, he gives him a go on a sort of virtual reality Wookie masturbation aid which entertains Itchy with a sexy dance and sultry song by a silver-dreadlocked Dihann Carrol. This also takes about fifteen minutes.  

The linking device of 'things Wookies do for fun while waiting for the plot to start moving' is used pretty much for the next hour, and throws up such treats as:

· A cookery show hosted by a man in blackface dressed as a woman with four arms.

  

· Some kind of young Wookies TV magic show (I'm not sure, we fast forwarded through most of it)

· Jefferson Starship playing on a Wookie laptop to the delight of some imperial soldiers who have happened along

· An extended sequence in the Tatooine cantina where a pre- 'Golden Girls' Bea Arthur sings a song (we fast forwarded through most of this as well)

  
· A Star Wars cartoon watched by Lumpy which contains the first ever appearance of Bobba Fett and is generally more watchable than any of the live action stuff. However it did prompt the question: why are the exploits of the main Star Wars characters being made into cartoons for Wookie TV? Are Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie already celebrities? And if so, can Wookies buy action figures of them? It hurts the brain.
 
Finally the story lurches to an end. Han and Chewie sneak into the treehouse, kill a stormtrooper and are happily reunited with Chewie's family. Chewie gets to spend Life Day with the other Wookies which looks like an early Queen video if Queen were seven foot tall, wore purple robes and had facial hair problems, and Luke, Leia, Han and the droids join the assembled Wookies in a celebration of Christm- sorry- Life Day. And just when it couldn't get more tacky, Leia sings a song of goodwill and love which has been tortuously set to the melody of the Star Wars theme.
 
There is good entertainment, and then there is bad entertainment. Then there is the so-bad-that-it's-good zone, but the Star Wars Holiday Special occupies a hitherto undiscovered region on the spectrum. It is so bad that it saps one's will to live. It is a malignant hydra with the faces of those we know and love and a body of pure evil. Sections of the original film intercut with this lowband video mess serve only to remind you how far removed this TV 'special' is from the film in quality and budget. George Lucas has said he would like to see every copy of this show burned, but I think the original films would be better served if everyone could see this frightening example of what happens when the right characters fall into the wrong hands.  


Ben Slotover