Star Wars Holiday Special Discussion Thread

I caught it on TV. I was 6, and really excited about it, and made the whole family watch it.
My dad made fun of it the whole time, and I remember being confused about what I was watching, and embarrassed that I was making everybody watch it.
I knew who Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman were, but even at 6 I didn't understand what they were doing in Star Wars.
For years the only thing I remembered was the Boba Fett cartoon.

On a slightly related note, around the same time Bing Crosby sang a Christmas duet with David Bowie, and I was excited about that, too, because I loved Bowie, but I'd only ever heard him on the radio, never seen him, and my dad made fun of him, too, called him a fruitcake, and made me feel embarrassed for liking Bowie and making the family watch a "fruitcake" sing.
Yah, my dad's a judgemental jerk...
 
On a slightly related note, around the same time Bing Crosby sang a Christmas duet with David Bowie, and I was excited about that, too, because I loved Bowie, but I'd only ever heard him on the radio, never seen him, and my dad made fun of him, too, called him a fruitcake, and made me feel embarrassed for liking Bowie and making the family watch a "fruitcake" sing.
Yah, my dad's a judgemental jerk...

That song is dope. Haha
 
I wasn’t born yet.. the closet thing I have to a first experience is learning about this in a 90s AOL chat room, and going to a website with 2 or 3 screen captures if it

I remember seeing lumpy. It wasn’t until later on in life where I found it on YouTube is when I got to actually see this master piece
 
I wasn’t born yet.. the closet thing I have to a first experience is learning about this in a 90s AOL chat room, and going to a website with 2 or 3 screen captures if it

I remember seeing lumpy. It wasn’t until later on in life where I found it on YouTube is when I got to actually see this master piece

This is similar to my story. Wasn't around for original broadcast and only ever heard of it but never saw a physical copy. It wasn't until Youtube did I see it in all its glory. Yes! Glory!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but the Holiday Special is an odd treasure. When shifting cultural zeitgeists clashed, old-fashioned variety shows with the last crop of celebrity personalities met with this odd but successful space movie to ride its success, it created one of the most embarrassing and befuddling things to ever make it past TV censors. Somewhere between prime-time Christmas special, Saturday morning children's entertainment, and softcore porno---that is where the Star Wars Holiday Special lies and I wholly embrace it.
 
The only part of the special I could bear to watch was the Nelvana cartoon that introduced Boba Fett. I genuinely love it as a cartoon. I dig the animation style. I enjoyed the story. Other than that I have no interest or desire to see the rest of the special. Even my morbid curiosity isn't piqued by any knowledge of it. I understand it's significance back when it aired for historical purposes, meaning fans had less than zero Star Wars content available to them for another few years so they were starved for material, but after that point it really should have faded into obscurity. The fan's fascination with it other than the cartoon has always perplexed me. Even jokes and references to it never really struck me funny as the special was painful enough to experience, so I never wanted the reminder.

That cartoon though still is pretty damn cool and I'll stand by that. I always said if I ever went down the rabbit hole of Fett costumes I would do that version. I just love the color scheme. It's an oddity that suits my tastes and to this day it eludes any explanation of why it just works for me.
 
At ten, I remember looking forward to the Star Wars Holiday Special like nothing else. But somewhere right after the cartoon, I fell fast asleep. Ugh, it was like a Charlie Brown moment... I couldn't believe that I had missed the rest of the show!

The childhood pain stayed with me until 40 years later with Youtube, when I could finally finish watching it. And now I understand why the kids on my school bus in 1978 were so disappointed on the next morning.
 
Even though I was around when it first aired, I didn't actually see it until the late 80s or early 90s when I bought a bootleg VHS copy at a comic book convention. I had only ever heard that it had the first appearance of Boba Fett. I enjoyed that, but thought the rest of it was hot garbage. It doesn't merit a 4K restoration and I don't understand people's fascination with it.
 
There couldn’t possibly be enough people out there that would want The Star Wars Holiday Special: 4K Edition.

Star Wars
fans are a very discerning group, with impeccable taste. They would never throw their money down and support any version that is lacking in overall quality. They will not accept just any type of media with a Star Wars label slapped on it.

I mean, there’s just no audience for embarrassingly bad Star Wars, right?

Right?????

 
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There couldn’t possibly be enough people out there who would want The Star Wars Holiday Special: 4K Edition.

I mean, Star Wars fans are a very discerning group, with impeccable taste. They would never throw their money down and support any version that is lacking in overall quality. They will not accept just any type of media with a Star Wars label on it.

I mean, there’s just no audience for embarrassingly bad Star Wars, right?

Right?????


I've technically watched the Holiday Special more than TROS....

And I couldn't tell you which was worse.

Though only one of the two destroyed an entire trilogy... (for me anyway, heh)
 
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There couldn’t possibly be enough people out there that would want The Star Wars Holiday Special: 4K Edition.

Star Wars
fans are a very discerning group, with impeccable taste. They would never throw their money down and support any version that is lacking in overall quality. They will not accept just any type of media with a Star Wars label slapped on it.

I mean, there’s just no audience for embarrassingly bad Star Wars, right?

Right?????

...and this, my friends, is why we get crappy Star Wars movies.
 
I would have been 4 when this originally aired. For the longest time I had this weird, unmapped memory of seeing Han Solo fighting stormtroopers on a raised tree platform, but I had nothing to point to and say "Oh, that was from this media". So I assumed I had imagined it or mis-remembered something from ROTJ. I did recall very vividly a children's book about Chewie and Lumpy and exploring the bottom of the Kashyyyk forest, so I knew that was real- but children's books of licensed properties could be pretty off-brand then, so I didn't think anything of it. And there's been concept art of Kashyyyk from the special floating about- but I'd forgotten the special even existed so I never tied it all together. That is, until my college roommate found a VHS copy in the 90s at a flea market and we watched it. And suddenly all those memories came back and made sense again.

It's amazing how I don't remember seeing ANH at all in the theater, but I clearly remembered aspects of the holiday special- because that was the one and only time it would have ever aired.
 

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