"I find your lack of camp disturbing...."

Mandalorian returns in three weeks. That gives me that long to check out the Boba Fett side story now streaming on the Mouse, because apparently they've gone revealing things in unrelated shows that you need to know for Mando's third season.

Selling the Star Wars universe and turning it into a separate subsidiary of Disney was one of many questionable calls that George Lucas made over the years, but by no means the worst one. Witness:

* The entire Episode 1-3 trilogy in general.
* Jar Jar in particular.
* Retconning characters and actors into the "anniversary edition" re-releases of the films.
* Doing the same thing to make Greedo shoot first.

Until yesterday, though, I thought only one decision ranked as the Emperor of the Hill, Top of the Heap in the Death Star Garbage Compactor:

Must say it I? Remind you this of? Five words there are:

The Star Wars Holiday Special.

I'm not going to subject you to even a link to it. You don't need it. That damage to your brain and mine has already been done. I will just hit the lowest of the low points.

Life Day. Chewie’s familiee, including his dad Itchy and his brother Lumpy. A Jefferson Starship single worked in. Harvey Korman. Bea Freaking Arthur. What could possibly go wrong with all of that?

Besides, you know, everything.

----

It came in the year after the sudden unexpected popularity of the first, wait, fourth, Star Wars installment from 1977. The actual sequels and the prequels were just tiny little stars in the back of George’s imagination. But he had the things that mattered. Most of the main characters. The Force. Most importantly, The Moichendise! He cleverly kept all of the exclusive rights to it in the deal with the studio, and there were action figures and lunchboxes and condoms to be sold!

By the arrival of the special in late 1978, the networks had become very aware of the goldmine Lucas had brought to them for showcasing. Their own knockoffs were in production, but as the not yet introduced Yoda would be heard to say in episode two, or is it five?, Nothing real thing baby like the ain’t.

So the Star Wars baby was handed over to CBS, with some notes and more importantly some permissions from Lucas to have at it that holiday season. All of the then-introduced cast was there in person or in voice. The droids, the stormtroopers, the blasters, all authentic. Lucas worked with two writers on the script, one of whom, Pat Proft, would soon join the crew of Police Squad! (in color!), giving us an early clue that surely this can't be serious. It aired in November of 1978, viewed by 13 million Americans whose voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I was not one of them. To this day I've never managed to see it all the way through. I even ordered the online Rifftrax of it with Mike and the bots a few years ago for what I hope was for free or a very low price. Even they couldn't help make it more bearable or funny.

Few pieces of it ever made the hyperspace jump into actual canon. Itchy gets a mention in the script of the Solo side story- which overall I liked but which didn't make enough galumpillions of quatloos enough for Disney stockholders. Chewie's home world was supposed to be featured in the third (sixth) (third, sir!) episode of the series, but Return of the Jedi instead put Death Star II: Electric Boogaloo in orbit over a moon of Endor and some cuuuuute Ewoks. Wookiees would have to waitt for the sixth (third) (whateverr!) Revenge of the Sith for their planet Kashyyyk's first post-Holiday Special appearance in actual canon, and elements of its appearance in the hated one-off worked their way into the real film's description of the planet. Above all surviving legacies of the special, though, was its introduction of Boba Fett the bounty hunter.He's only animated in it, but it led directly to his coming to life and to greater significance in Empire Strikes Back and, unfortunately, in the side series I am now compelled to watch.

Most of that, though, I knew from various mentions of the special over the years. It served as a warning beacon to sci-fi writers and fans about what can go wrong if you let your franchise fall into unfriendly hands.Yet what I just learned is of an even older Jedi legend which should act as a General Order, complete with death penalty, not to approach television network executives to promote your universe. It's from the epic saga's birth year of 1977 and landed on the network that would, years later, become an official Star Wars sibling under the umbrella of Mickey's broad ears.

You thought Bea Arthur was bad? Try Redd Foxx as Obi-Wan, Kris Kristofferson as a near-stoned Han Solo, and in the center of the Death Star,....



----

Credit or blame for all that follows goes to andrewducker, who included an Interesting Link the other day to a piece by John Scalzi. I know that name. He's a Hugo award winning author, best known to me for his spoof-of-Trek-trope novel Redshirts. He mostly writes in his own universes and I don't think he's contributed to Star Wars canon or close, but this piece nailed down an important development in the early monetization of the Force I hadn't known of.

Back we go to the fall of 1977, mere months after the premiere and unexpected success of the original Star Wars (I was told there would be no math), A year before the Holiday Special, George Lucas was out there peddling again, this time to ABC. That network had revived the mostly dying variety show format with the talents of Donny and Marie Osmond. "She's a little bit country, he's a little bit rock'n'roll" was their tag line. If they had been any more wholesome or white, Wonder Bread would have been ripped off the shelves as being too risque and black. Long before the next real sequel or even before Lumpy and Itchy would come to life, Lucas gave his blessing to this weekly show using the actual costumes, props, sound effects and even the voice of C-3PO's still-going Anthony Daniels for almost thirteen full minutes of uninterrupted Dark Side.

This one, yes, watch you must. Or at least try. Here, try will be accepted, because I never made it past the song and dance number with Paul Lynde as Grand Moff Jokin:

Watch on YouTube

NOOOOOOOOOO!

Yet that's not all Scalzi had to say about that. No, he hit upon an amazing fact about this performance: for all its camp, this parody unquestionably marks the first time anyone depicted Luke and Leia being portrayed BY a brother and a sister. He wondered,

The whole thing about Luke and Leia being siblings didn’t come out until Return of the Jedi. It was kinda hinted in Empire but that Yoda utterance about there being another was really open ended. Look, I’m a writer. The whole idea that we have any idea how a whole trilogy is going to while we write the first installment is mostly bullshit. We’re all making it up as we go along. I think George Lucas was thinking about what the hell he was going to do with Luke and Leia in future movies, had no clue, then watched this episode of the Donny & Marie show and was all, like, “oh, siblings, that’s a really good idea,” and then tucked it away for later. Then, bam, Jedi, and suddenly they’re twins.

It gets better. Scalzi's post, that is; the parody is still awful. Somebody in its comments mentioned yet another piece of Star Wars lore from that era: Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. This was a novel written in the early Star Wars universe by Alan Dean Foster, another award winning sci-fi legend who wrote a number of novelizations of the Trek animated episodes and a treatment that got him a screen credit for the original 1979 Trek movie. On the Star Wars side, though, Foster was the ghostwriter of the novelization of the 1977 Star Wars film, which I remember devouring in the summer before I went off to college. It was my first time seeing the droid names spelled out as "Artoo" and "Threepio." Lucas commissioned Splinter as a sequel story to A New Hope that could be turned into a screenplay, quickly and cheaply, if he couldn't get a big-budget deal for something better. It focuses on the Luke and Leia dynamic and, while it doesn't outright say they were or weren't sibs, Scalzi got the question asked of whether Lucas had told Foster what his plans were for those two crazy kids.

Amazingly, into the comment waters jumped none other than Alan Dean Foster himself:

Hi John;
For the record: the only instructions/information I was given prior to writing Splinter was that I should come up with a story that could be filmed on a low budget. That was it. I was then allowed to write whatever I wanted within the strictures delineated by the first film. Certainly nothing was even hinted about Luke & Leia being siblings. Or Vader being Luke’s father, for that matter.

How cool is that? Maybe Scalzi will pop in over here and clear things up. I'm already friends with one of the writers for The Animated Series, and I'm one degree of Kevin Bacon away from Pat Proft, so who knows?