The Star Wars Holiday Special 1978

While the debates among the Star Wars faithful rage on about the proper ranking of the theatrical films, or the level of canonicity of various events, or who shot whom when, one simple truth remains. However high its highs, a franchise as wide-ranging as Star Wars with tentacles in television, novels, comic books, toys, games, and every spinoff and merchandising opportunity imaginable, is inevitably going to produce a fair amount of utter crap.

Most of that crap can be laughed off or outright forgotten because of how tangential it is to the anchors of the franchise. Ephemeral stories or characters, dreamed up by folks far removed from franchise czar George Lucas, who may or may not have been paying attention to one another’s work, can be easily derided and discarded.

But The Star Wars Holiday Special cannot be. Despite its status as complete and total dreck, despite the minimal involvement from Lucas, and despite its mostly disconnected pieces, the special has become an indelible part of Star Wars lore, the original misstep for the franchise, destined to live in disco ball-tinged infamy as long as the franchise persists.

It is, after all, the first on-screen glimpse of the soon-vaunted “Extended Universe” of the franchise, the first unofficial expansion of the world Lucas crafted outside of the films themselves. It features the original introduction of Boba Fett (who was designed by Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston). And most importantly, it has the imprimatur of legitimacy that comes from having nearly all of the major players from the original cast reprise their roles.

It’s true. That’s part of why it’s so hard to cast aside the holiday special. As tempting as it is to write off the bizarre psychedelic phantasmagoria/comedy throwback, there are Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford in all their phoning-it-in glory to remind you that, no, like or not, this really is Star Wars, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

But given how thoroughly the flaws of The Star Wars Holiday Special have been documented, let’s start out by focusing on what’s good about it, however slim those pickings may be.

The highlight of the piece, to the extent something so dim can be said to cast and bit of illumination at all, is Bea Arthur’s “Goodnight, But Not Goodbye” number. Set at the famous cantina on Tatooine, the song (written by Ken and Mitzie Welch, parents of superb folksinger Gillian Welch) doesn’t exactly fit in with the spirit of A New Hope, but it has a sort of campy-but-sincere quality all its own.

The piece is a Cabaret-meets-Cheers setup that Arthur sells like a champ, wandering around the room and cavorting with any number of rubber mask aliens in a fashion that’s enough to make you believe she has the slightest modicum of affection for them. Again, it doesn’t really work in the context of Star Wars (though the way the song integrates the famous cantina theme deserves some recognition), but Arthur embraces the sweet-ish kitsch and delivers one of the special’s few winning segments.

The other saving grace of the special, and indeed the only part of it that Lucasfilm has ever officially released, is the animated segment at the halfway mark. The short piece was animated by the production company Nelvana, who went on to do the animation for two future Star Wars ventures on television: the Ewoks and Droids series. This segment does feel the most Star Wars of anything in the special, with a space-bound adventure, a shocking reveal, and a new planet bustling with unusual alien life.

But even this piece of the special, entitled “The Faithful Wookiee,” is mostly a dud. The designs and movements of the characters are bizarre, leading the viewer to wonder if the animators had ever actually seen A New Hope. Luke looks like an escaped mental patient who just got back from a makeover. Han’s nose is longer than his blaster. C-3PO bobs along on his coils in a way never seen before or since, and R2-D2 bends and wobbles like he was made via a droid-shaped jello mold. The reveal of Boba Fett’s true allegiance plays well, but the segment comes off as the fever dream of someone who caught the first half of Episode IV in a bar one night rather than the real deal.

There’s other merits to the film. As bizarre as it is to include a scene of Chewbacca’s elderly father watching holographic human pornography, Diahann Carroll sings the hell out of “This Minute Now,” a song that scans more like a forgotten Bond theme than a part of the Star Wars universe. There’s a mildly redeeming sweetness to the way Saun Dann (Art Carney) offers his affections to the wookiee family. And while it gives the special itself no greater credit, the 1970s commercials attached to the bootleg versions of the film floating around are endlessly fascinating as a time capsule of American culture and commerce.

But otherwise, The Star Wars Holiday Special is an onslaught of the predominantly dull, the overwhelmingly chintzy, and the occasionally bizarre. There’s an odd strain of psychedelia to the special, from a parade of Seussian acrobats, to the acid trip background of Carroll’s musical number, to a lite brite-colored performance from Jefferson Starship. The hideous Wookiee costumes look like they were later spray-painted and reused in the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas film, which would match the set’s hideous green carpet.

The broad attempts at comedy (most of them from Harvey Korman in a variety of roles) are tepid and full of awkward and sometimes creepy dead spots. The long stretches of segments that include nothing but Wookiee growls quickly become exhausting. And the ending, which features a series of Wookiees seemingly walking into the sun and emerging on the set of the local community theater’s production of Eyes Wide Shut, where all the main Star Wars cast members are magically present for undefined reasons, is the cherry on the perpetually bewildering cake.

Still, The Star Wars Holiday Special lives on in the hearts and minds of the diehard fans, even if we’re not exactly clamoring for another celebration of Life Day. It’s a reminder that even just a year removed from the film that started it all, Lucas & Co. were ready to put their good name on a steaming pile of bantha fodder. The special is an insane combination of a space opera and a variety show, a monument to the fact that the merchandising and spinoff empire that’s spanned decades and mediums galore, started off with a stumble that makes The Phantom Menace look like The Empire Strikes Back. But it too is Star Wars with all the greatness, terribleness, and downright strangeness that title conjures up.