Aired live only once in 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special has been widely regarded as one of the worst things ever broadcast in both the history of Star Wars and in all of television. Now, in light of the recent presidential pardons, politically minded Star Wars star Mark Hamill has tweeted a joke daring the president to pardon the show.Does The Star Wars Holiday Special really need to be pardoned at all? George Lucas supposedly said that he âwould track down every copy of that show and smash itâ if he could, but are this specialâs alleged crimes really so great?
Widely ignored by those involved in its production and commonly mocked by the few fans that had actually seen it, the Star Wars Holiday Special has surprisingly managed to limp its way back into the spotlight as a sort of cult classic. Widely panned upon release, the special managed to survive its initial decades of obscurity through the efforts of the dedicated fans who recorded its only broadcast, copied it to sell at conventions, and eventually shared it online for all to see.
The special has also acquired a recent influx of support due to the popularity of The Mandalorian, which has lovingly paid homage to the special since its first episode. The first bounty the audience sees the showâs titular character collect mentions the specialâs fictitious holiday âLife Dayâ in a vain attempt to get the Mandalorian to spare him, and the bounty hunterâs trademark disintegrating rifle is directly and obviously modeled after the rifle Boba Fett uses in the showâs one popular segment: a short cartoon which contains Fettâs first official appearance.
Though this might not be what Favreau meant when he said he wanted to evoke the âfreakier side of Star Wars,â these references and the many articles written about them have brought the show to the attention of a multitude of fans who had either never heard of the special or had never gotten around to seeing it. Now they have born witness to this bizarre product of the late 70s variety special and a misguided attempt to capitalize on the extreme and unexpected popularity of Star Wars.
While viewers have discovered that the special is really, really bad, hopefully they have also found that most of its horror is also the source of its charm. The first scene of the film is re-purposed footage of the Empire chasing the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope that cuts between exposition that Han and Chewie deliver in a cockpit that looks like it was made out of paper. The following twenty minutes are spent watching three disturbing-looking Wookies grunt in their native language without subtitles of any kind, and the special doesnât exactly improve from there.
Even those who can manage to enjoy its loosely stitched-together plot will struggle to get through all of the specialâs increasingly bizarre and perplexing variety segments. Though commonly seen on television at the time, the variety special has largely disappeared from modern screens and the Holiday Specialâs attempts to replicate it, which would have aged poorly regardless, can be extremely hard to finish as a result. From an Imperial officer creepily gazing at a holographic display of a Jefferson Starship single to an outlandish look into an old Wookieâs aged mind, fans wouldnât be judged for skipping to the end of many of these plot excursions.
However, this special is also a unique time-capsule of a by-gone era of both television and Star Wars. Though many are quick to reference it as Boba Fettâs first appearance, it is easy to forget that this special was also the first appearance of the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk and its famously gargantuan trees that make redwoods look like bonsais in comparison. The special gave fans their first look at everyday life in the Star Wars universe, showing them what it was like to live under Imperial rule, what normal people could do for fun, and what was apparently the best way for bartenders to get unruly patrons to adhere to mandatory Imperial curfews.
Though itâs unlikely that the publicity from its Mandalorian references will rehabilitate its image like the Clone Wars cartoon has for the Prequel Trilogy, this weird and poorly-made-for-tv special can still be enjoyed for what it is: a snapshot of a time-gone-by that can, at worst, lift viewers' hearts in laughter at its expense and, at best, take them back to when Star Wars was new and fresh and unexplored. The Star Wars Holiday Special occupies a very special and bizarre place in Star Wars history, but it is one that should not be forgotten and has no need to be pardoned.