It was a really dark time for the Rebellion.
Maxim magazine: Any plans for a Special Edition of the Holiday Special?
George Lucas: (hangs head) Right. That's one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it.
George Lucas: (hangs head) Right. That's one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it.
The Star Wars Holiday Special is a two-hour Star Wars Legends TV "special" that was broadcast on CBS on November 17, 1978.
The main storyline, set in 0 ABY (shortly after the original Star Wars film, A New Hope), takes place on the Wookiee home planet of "Kazook" note . Besides cameos from Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and Luke that appear to have been wrung out of the actors at gunpoint, the special introduces three members of Chewie's family: his father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy (played by Patty Maloney).
The first 10-15 minutes is conducted entirely with no subtitles whatsoever. The first actual English we hear after a while comes from a brief transmission from Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill under layers of foundation.note
The basic idea linking the segments together is that Chewie is trying to get home for the big Wookiee holiday, Life Day. During the course of the film, we get updates from the Millennium Falcon as Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew race for "Kazook" space. The catch is that they may not make it in time, as they're being pursued by agents of the Empire, who are also searching the planet for Rebel agents. A couple of agents show up to search Chewie's house.
For the rest of the running time, there’s various segments:
- A musical number by rock band Jefferson Starship shows up during the agents' search.
- Ackmena (played by Bea Arthur) performs a musical segment from the Mos Eisley Cantina as the Empire imposes a curfew on Kashyyyk, looking for Han and Chewy.
- Itchy gets off on what can only be described as a VR porn disc starring Diahann Carroll. Provided to him by Saun Dann, a trader played by Art Carney!
- Lumpy watches a cartoon. (Despite Lucas' best efforts to disregard the Holiday Special's existence, this segment is among the bonus features on the Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray boxset and The Empire Strikes Back Ultimate Collector's Edition UHD set, and was eventually released on Disney+.)
- Lumpy watches the instruction disc for assembling a transmitter. Every step, from start to finish, is read by a robot-impersonating Harvey Korman. Not a robot impersonating Harvey Korman, mind you.
- Malla watches a cooking show starring a multi-armed and crossdressing Korman.
It all ends with Han and Chewie making it home and defeating the Stormtroopers. Afterwards, the Wookiees all don cult robes and hold glowing orbs as they walk into space and end up at the Tree of Life, where Princess Leia sings a song.
The Holiday Special is important, at least to serious fans, for being the first film-length Star Wars story after the release of A New Hope, as well as showing an expanded look at parts of the established universe. The program is considered Legends Canon with regards to Chewie's family, including the celebration of Life Day. We also get some vague insight into the Imperial occupation of Kashyyyk (not mentioned in the films, but important to Legends) plus a few other locales, such as a water planet known as Panna. It's also the first time the main characters visit Kashyyyk, though this is later disregarded when Leia goes there during The Thrawn Trilogy and acts like it's her first time seeing it note .
The animated segment, which officially introduces Bounty Hunter Boba Fett — and thus served as a mini-preview for The Empire Strikes Back — was likewise considered canon (it was the first big American assignment for Nelvana Studios, who went on to handle the later spinoff shows Droids and Ewoks). The special is also notable for being one of the first efforts by young makeup artist Stan Winston, who later skyrocketed to fame by creating The Terminator and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.
Finding copies on a legal basis is downright impossible, as Lucas will ensure it won't get a home media release as long as he lives... Though he apparently looks the other way when it shows up on certain video sites.
Life Day was brought into the post-Disney buyout Star Wars canon via a brief mention in the first episode of The Mandalorian in November 2019. The animated segment "The Story of the Faithful Wookiee" received an official release as an Easter Egg on The Complete Saga Blu-Rays, and was also made available on Disney+ in April 2021. In December 2022, the Star Wars YouTube channel released a Life Day themed AMSR video as part of a series.
Then in 2020, Disney took it one step further by announcing a new Holiday Special... in animated form. That special, The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, set after the events of the Sequel Trilogy and featuring a much more coherent (and explicitly non-canon) plot involving Rey time-traveling throughout the events of the movies, would premiere on Disney+ on November 17 of that year — the 42nd Anniversary of the original special.
The Star Wars Holiday Special has examples of:
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A-N
- The '70s: A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... the denizens are dressing in pure 1970s fashion.
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: For some reason, the Imperial Guard calls Kashyyyk "Kazook".
- Actor Allusion: Art Carney's excessive noodling with a device in exactly the same way Ed Norton did in The Honeymooners, complete with an Imperial Guard yelling "Will you just get on with it?!" in the same way as Ralph Kramden.
- As You Know: Darth Vader's sole appearance basically serves as exposition explaining why the Empire is chasing Han and Chewie, as if it isn't blatantly clear to anyone with even cursory knowledge of Star Wars.
- Bar Full of Aliens: The Mos Eisley Cantina, and we get to know the owner, too.
- Breather Episode: Could charitably be called this note , as it came between the epic Episode IV note and the Darker and Edgier Episode V note , with this one being mostly Chewie's family preparing for the Life Day holiday and treating the Empire as if it were essentially an invasion of ants... ants who are heavily armed and could kill the entirety of Chewie's family if they looked at them funny, but still...
- Broad Strokes: While Lucas is doing his best to make sure nobody knows it was made, many elements are accepted in canon... with the understanding that they happened during something that wasn't a crappy variety show. (Though see Canon Discontinuity below for what Disney did with it.)
- Broken Record: "Stir whip stir whip whip whip stir." Repeat ad nauseam.
- The Cameo: Vader appears for one scene, via a redubbed
Deleted Scene from A New Hope. James Earl Jones also voices him for one line in the Boba Fett cartoon. - Camp: And not the good kind, sadly, managing to scrape together the absolute worst of the variety show format and none of the good elements.
- Canon Discontinuity:
- Thanks to what's considered canon in the new Star Wars universe under Disney, this special no longer counts to any degree. In spite of this, Malla and the rest of Chewie's family (though not explicitly named beyond the former) are referenced in later canon works meaning that they are still his family, and while concepts and ideas are free for use, it's pretty unlikely to go beyond a few basics.
- As of 2015, the cartoon segment was explicitly de-canonized: in the Marvel Star Wars comic, we get to see Luke and Boba Fett meet, and there's no way it could be described as friendly.
- Life Day is still part of the Disney Canon, since it gets briefly mentioned in the first episode of The Mandalorian, with Mando's weapon similar to Boba Fett's weapon in the animated sequence.
- Canon Immigrant:
- Yes, that's really Chewbacca's family. This said, the old official canon sources — trying desperately to put a positive spin on things — turn the names given here into nicknames along the same lines as "Chewie": "Malla" was lengthened to "Mallatobuck", "Itchy" is short for "Attichitcuk", and "Lumpy" is short for "Lumpawarrump". Not that it helps.
- The EU also had Lumpy changing from Lumpawarrump to Lumpawaroo (part of a Wookiee coming-of-age tradition), specifically so he could change his nickname to Waroo. Lucasfilm had an employee who literally got paid to retcon this stuff seamlessly, but he couldn't save that.
- Ackmena has been used in some Star Wars books, such as helping free slaves in Allies. The Disney continuity expands her personality a bit: apparently she has a wife and is a somewhat harsh "landlady" for Kabe and Muftak (they live in tunnels under the Cantina).
- In Knights of the Old Republic, the Wookiee homes are faithful to Holiday Special, albeit Darker and Edgier.
- None other than Boba Fett himself, appearing in animated form two years before showing up in Empire.
- Life Day itself, as well as Saun Dann, made frequent appearances in Star Wars: Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
- Boba Fett's Amban Phase-pulse Blaster was incorporated into The Mandalorian as the titular character's main armament. The first episode also namedrops Life Day when a character is discussing plans to go visit his family for the holidays.
- Zigzagged by Revenge of the Sith. That film marks Kashyyyk's first officially canon appearance, but its design there only vaguely resembles how it looked in the holiday special. It's also notable that while Chewbacca appears during the Kashyyyk scenes in Sith, his family is nowhere to be seen. Granted, Lumpy would probably not be born yet during the time frame of Sith, but still.
- Captain's Log: The cartoon opens with a voiceover that says, "Starlog 3-24-1 from the bridge of the cruiser RS Revenge, Captain Kazan reporting. We are awaiting the return of Captain Han Solo and his first mate, Chewbacca, who are long overdue on a delicate mission to acquire the mystical talisman which has been sought by our forces and by the Empire." Of course, starlogs are totally nothing at all like stardates!
- Celebrity Paradox: Lumpy watches a cartoon about his father, Chewbacca. What makes it even weirder is that Chewbacca and his friends are all known members of the Rebellion, i.e. the enemies of the current ruling authoritarian regime of the galaxy.
How exactly was this cartoon made and distributed under Imperial rule? - Character as Himself: Though the opening cast call names Chewbacca and C-3PO's actors, R2-D2 is credited as playing himself. Kenny Baker wasn't credited for the simple reason that he wasn't involved — since R2-D2 wasn't scripted to move beyond basic movements, no actor was needed.
- Christmas Special: Technically considered a Christmas special, though the word "Christmas" isn't used in the title and the show focuses around a fictional holiday instead. It actually aired before a week before Thanksgiving.
- Cool Old Lady: Ackmena. There's a reason her segment is considered one of the few high points.
- Covers Always Lie: That poster up there gives the impression that this is going to be an action-packed thrill ride, when the actual special is obviously a different story. Perhaps the most glaring of inaccuracies is the continued presence of the Death Star despite, you know, it being blown up at the end of A New Hope.
- Crossdresser: Harvey Korman while hosting a cooking show.
- Dastardly Whiplash: Luke is the only character who trusts Boba despite this.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ackmena, alone of the cast. Which is saying something when Han Solo is also around.
- Dirty Old Man: Fans might think that Itchy was one for watching the Mind Evaporator sequence (and as some fans note, with his family), but that Mind Evaporator thing originally belonged to Saun Dann, making him definitely this. Production materials for the sequence in the special even explicitly list him as being a "Dirty Old Man".
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: An extremely unfortunate side effect of the makeup job used to conceal Hamill's scars from his then-recent car accident. Did they really need to get mascara involved? In canon, the scars would be explained by the Wampa attack in The Empire Strikes Back, but that doesn't happen until after this special.
- Dull Surprise: During Leia's Life Day song in the final segment, the footage briefly dissolves to Luke and Han. While Mark Hamill at least appears to be appreciating Carrie Fisher's singing, Harrison Ford looks like he didn't know he was on-camera. Ford is staring at nothing in particular, appearing bored and utterly disengaged.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Boba Fett.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Due to being made early in the franchise's history before many ideas and characterizations were set in stone, there's quite a bit:
- The most striking is Boba Fett acting like a cackling Dastardly Whiplash rather than the stoic Noble Demon he's famous for being.
- Like in the original version of A New Hope, in-universe text is written in English rather than Aurebesh. Except in the animated segment, but the alien text there doesn't match later depictions of Aurebesh either.
- Epic Fail: A Stormtrooper fighting Han ends up tripping on his own blaster and falling off a balcony to his own death.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: The animated segment.
- Evil Brit: Averted for once. All the Imperial officers seen in the special have American accents as opposed to the British ones they sport in the actual films.note This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the original trilogy was filmed primarily in England whereas the holiday special was done in California.
- Evil Is Petty: Ripping the head off a toy Bantha? Seriously?
- Lord Helmet (the Imperial guard dressed just like the Spaceballs character) strong-arming a groomer away from Saun Dann.
- Exact Words: "Lord Helmet" to Saun Dann about the groomer:"I'll take it.""And how will you pay?""I said, 'I'll take it.'"
- Eyes Always Shut: Han in the animated short. Only opens them to do a sort of reverse winking and blinking.
- Felony Misdemeanor: The Stormtroopers ransacking Lumpy's room.
- Fictional Holiday: The Wookiees' Life Day. Which was until the Disney takeover considered canon, despite the huge section of the fandom that wished otherwise. And as of The Mandalorian, Life Day is now canon again, and apparently is celebrated by more beings than just the Wookiees.
- Flashback... Back... Back...: Chewbacca at the end.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the animated segment, Boba Fett's attitude toward what he calls "lower life forms" foreshadows that he is not on the up and up, as he tells Luke he is.
- The animated segment also contains some (unintentional?) forshadowing for The Empire Strikes Back; Vader reminds Boba that he wants Luke brought to him alive. Now why would he want that?
- For the Evulz: While searching the house for Chewie, the Stormtroopers make sure to go out of their way to completely trash Lumpy's room for no reason other than to be dicks.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Everyone in the cartoon segment, despite the fact that they obviously all have five fingers when they're in live-action.
- Gonk: Chewie's dad Itchy is just weird-looking, even by the standards of this special. In contrast to every other Wookiee seen before or since, he has a prominent underbite, an extra-wide (and omnipresent) frown, and a snub-nosed pug-like face that makes him look more like an excessively-hairy toad than a regular Wookiee. It gets even more unpleasant when he starts masturbating to VR porn in the middle of the living room.
- Informed Ability: Vader tells Boba Fett he's "the best bounty hunter in the galaxy", but he does nothing in the short to merit such praise, and if Luke hadn't been Too Dumb to Live, he'd have noticed Boba's Dastardly Whiplash behavior.
- Interspecies Romance: Krelman's interest in Ackmena, Itchy's "interest" in Mermeia, and one brief moment where Luke unintentionally appears to be flirting with Malla as he tries to get her to smile.
- Jerkass: The Stormtroopers and Imperial officers here are unusually vicious and mean-spirited. Highlights include threatening to shoot people for being annoying, strong-arming shop owners for grooming products, closing a random bar for no reason, and tearing up a kid's room for shits and giggles.
- Kick the Dog: The Imperial trooper ripping Lumpy's stuffed Bantha's head off.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Fisher went on record several times saying that she had absolutely no memory of ever taking part. Ford claims the same, although he doesn't have a known substance-abuse problem as an excuse, and may in fact be either lying or deliberately repressing the experience. When he claimed to have no memory of it on Conan O'Brien's show, Conan mentioned he had a clip of the special ready to play. Ford, in an entirely uncharacteristic burst of expression, tried to strangle note Conan, but ultimately had to endure it. He could barely bring himself to utter a (probably sarcastic)"thank you" at the end.
- In her book Wishful Drinking, Fisher admits to having had electroshock therapy in the past, which has affected her memory, so that could also be a factor... and a bit closer to laser-guided amnesia than just drugs.
- Lighter and Softer: It still has the lighthearted elements and bits of goofy humor present in the original film, but played up far, far more and with then-contemporary sitcom humor sandwiched in. The special has no pretense of a grandiose epic storyline, and the darker elements of the original film are downplayed.
- Mars Needs Women: There's a very, very, very disturbing sequence where Itchy watches what is essentially a holographic softcore porn tape featuring Diahann Carroll (while his daughter-in-law and grandson are in the room). And if his grotesque gyrating jaw is any indication, he's actively enjoying it. Brain Bleach!
- The Nose Knows: C3PO tells Luke that Chewy didn't trust Boba Fett from the start because he didn't smell right.
- Not Now, Kiddo: When Luke receives a video call from Malla and Itchy, he repeatedly brushes off R2 trying to tell him that the engine they've been working on is giving off smoke.
- Novelization: "The Faithful Wookiee" animated short was adapted into a ''Little Golden Book" in 2022.
O-Z
- Obviously Evil: Boba Fett. He's constantly one step away from breaking out into evil laughter, and yet Luke just blindly trusts him.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: For taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a lot of the tech in the Wookiees' family home looks extremely familiar. The cockpit of the Millennium Falcon would do Ed Wood proud as well.
- Overly-Long Gag: Most of the "sketches" in the special go on for far longer than they need to, including:
- Malla watching an alien cooking show, starring Harvey Korman, in drag, as a chef who instructs the audience to whip and stir their mix ad nauseam.
- Lumpy assembling a transmitter with the aid of an instructional video, which we see in its entirety. The "joke" is that Korman, as an Amorphiian
showing how to assemble the thing, gradually "shuts down" and collapses at its conclusion.
- Poke the Poodle: Apparently, when it's not busy waging wars or blowing up entire planets, the evil Empire uses its time to shut down bars and break children's toys.
- Police State: Kashyyyk is ruled by the Empire as one, which is why every home has a two-way viewscreen. The Wookiees have learned to subvert the tech to their own needs, and have their own hidden screens.
- Porn Stache: "Lord Helmet" sports one◊.
- Punny Name: Gormaanda is the host of a cooking show, with a rotund figure and is heavily implied to be a Big Eater.
- Railing Kill: A Stormtrooper trips and falls through the rail of the Wookiee treehouse — complete with Wilhelm Scream, no less! Appropriate, given that the special's choreographer was none other than David Winters.
- Ransacked Room: Lumpy's room after the Stormtroopers "search" it.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: The first chunk of the special is a family of Wookiees speaking to each other without subtitles nor with an English-speaking character to react to them.
- Kudos to the actors in the Wookiee costumes, though — you can mostly follow the conversation by their body language, though hitting the mute button helps.
- Recycled In Space: The Ackmena segment is Casablanca ON TATOOINE!
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Dear God, yes. Especially in the Cantina.
- Running Gag: Every time Saun Dann starts getting annoying, a Stormtrooper shuts him up by pointing a gun straight in his face. Possibly the only intentional laughs to be had.
- Saloon Owner: Ackmena, in what is generally considered one of the few remotely redeeming live-action scenes of the special.
- "Sesame Street" Cred: Jefferson Starship appears at one point for an impromptu musical number. Like many things in the special, it drags on a lot longer than necessary.
- Show Within a Show: We see the cartoon because Lumpy's watching it. Now, why or how there would be cartoons about Rebels that depict the Empire as the villains, and evidently also depict actual and recent events... ah, screw it — that's probably the least nonsensical thing in the special. That aside, characters watching TV or what have you makes up the meat of the special — Malla watches a cooking show; the Imperial inspector watches a Jefferson Starship video; Lumpy watches a cartoon, a weird Cirque de Soleil-esque dance performance, and an instructional video; Itchy watches porn; and everyone watches Ackmena try to clear out the Cantina.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: In the animated segment, Boba Fett betrays Luke as they rescue Han.
- Space Clothes: Harvey Korman's are particularly notable... and terrifying.
- Stalker with a Crush: Krelman, sort of, in the Cantina scene. He backs off when he realizes Ackmena has no romantic interest in him, but reappears when he realizes that she, too, is lonely.
- Stock Footage: All of the space battles are lifted straight from the first film. Vader's whole appearance in the special is a brief Deleted Scene from A New Hope with his one line of dialogue redubbed. This, along with the different context, "cleverly" changes it so that he and an Imperial officer are talking about locating Han and Chewbacca rather than C-3PO and R2-D2. Also, said officer died on the Death Star, resulting in this. What's even more hilarious is how not-Bast's vocals don't match up with his lip movements.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Chewie's wife Malla is basically identical to him except for having slightly less hair on her snout and wearing what appears to be mascara.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Exhibited by a post-accident Mark Hamill, during the scene where Luke communicates with Malla over the TV screens. While he blinks several times, the way he gazes directly into the camera, wearing heavy makeup to cover his surgery scars, gives him the illusion of being a stoned model.
- Too Dumb to Live: The Stormtroopers are pretty stupid here, even by Stormtrooper standards. Particularly egregious is when Han tricks a Stormtrooper into jumping over a balcony to his death by simply pretending to reach for a gun.
- Uncanny Valley Makeup: Hamill's makeup, which as noted was supposed to cover up scars from a recent motorcycle accident, ends up making him look more like a corpse prepared for the wake.
- The Unintelligible: The script has translations for everything the Wookiees said, but nowhere in the actual special. While the movies had Han helping the audience decipher Chewbacca's growls, the special includes several scenes of the Wookies roaring to each other with no context.
- Unusual Euphemism: The VR machine described by Saun Dann as "Wow!" turns out to be a porn video.
- Verbal Tic: In the animated segment, Boba Fett has the odd habit of ending most of his sentences with "friend".
- Video Phone:
- Chewbacca's family uses one of these hidden in some kind of dresser to contact the other characters associated with the Rebel Alliance (Luke and R2-D2, Leia and C-3PO, etc.) to ask about Chewie and Han's whereabouts. In a separate instance, Malla contacts Saun Dann with a device that doubles as a television, which Saun refers to as a "wall screen".
- In the cartoon segment, Boba Fett contacts Darth Vader by video phone. Amusingly, it appears Boba is using a video pay phone.
- Villains Out Shopping: Hilariously enough, the Jefferson Starship music video is triggered by... one of the Imperial troopers just sitting down and watching it, and looking like he's having a blast.
- Wilhelm Scream: The Stormtrooper who falls over the railing. At least the special keeps one proper Star Wars tradition.
- With Lyrics:
- Leia's Life Day carol, sung by a visibly strung-out Fisher towards the end, is the main Star Wars theme with words shoehorned in.
- The song Ackmena sings is a slowed-down version of the song played by Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, with lyrics.
- Wretched Hive: One of the weirdest cases in which the Trope Namer is averted! No scum. No villainy. Only Bea and Harvey. It's actually a really nice place from what we see of it. Makes it even more inexplicable that the Empire randomly decides to shut it down. (On the other hand, it's noted to be part of a television show, so maybe the Empire closing things down was just a common plot point in in-universe fiction.)
- You Mean "Xmas": Life Day. Although the special aired in mid-November, so it could also be Thanksgiving.
- According to Wookieepedia, even Lucas has referred to The Star Wars Holiday Special as "the Christmas special" even though (as noted above) it aired in mid-November.
- According to Wookieepedia
