12: TV Spinoffs
There's a lot of Star Wars TV in the 70s and 80s. It's mostly bad. But, in an effort to fully appreciate the state of play pre-HttE I watched (some of) it.
What hasn't already been said about this? Yes, it's bad. No, it doesn't make sense. Yes, they ran out of Wookie outfits, leading to this:
(Wookieepedia)
I'm not going to be the 501st person on the internet to rehash all this. What does it do? It gives us the first appearance of Kashyyk (and, honestly, it hasn't changed that much in 45 years), Boba Fett (who is aggressively incompetent pre-1990s), and LIFE DAY!
Beyond that, make sure you watch a version with commercials (AND BUY UNION!).
Honestly, I think they could've cut out an act or two, and come up with a passable hour long special here. The cooking bit is half decent. The cartoon is weird, but not unsalvageable. I read there's ~30 minutes of untranslated Shyriiwook, so that's an easy cut. It's the 70s, variety shows were big. If you look at it as "CBS puts together a variety show, then adds Star Wars" instead of "Why is there a CBS variety show in my Star Wars?" it makes more sense.
I watched one episode each on Disney+. I think my library had a couple of them on VHS that I took out once or twice as a kid.
For Ewoks, it's very much what you'd expect. What if Star Wars did a Smurfs/Carebears? It's a little better (there's a semblance of actual character and overarching plot). I watched "Asha" since it seems to be universally considered the best episode. Paul Dini (of Batman: The Animated Series) wrote it, which was fun. There's a wild Ewok that frees the animals trapped by the Grinches Duloks.
Wookieepedia assures me this is not a grinch
It turns out she's the lost sister of one of the main characters, and she gets added to the cast for the rest of the show. Neat.
Droids isn't necessarily better, but I think it's the more interesting of the two to look at. It copes the art style from the animated segment of the Holiday Special:
Not pictures, R2D2 undulating like he's outside a used car dealership (Wookieepedia)
I selected "A Race to the Finish" for two reasons. First, another Boba Fett appearance (still useless). Second, a Boonta speeder race. While the allure of "Kybo Ren" in other episodes was tempting, I decided to see how much this foreshadowed the later Boonta-Eve Pod Race.
The track (which is mostly tubes) wouldn't have been too out of place in the Racer video game, but isn't super connected to the Episode 1 pod race. Short version: Boonta is the name of the planet, which is named after a Hutt, which the Boonta-Eve race is also named after.
It uses an interesting version of an arc structure. Over the course of the show, R2 and 3PO get bounced between different ships and owners every four episodes. It's not much but, like Ewoks, anything resembling continuity in an 80s cartoon is impressive.
Droids is a little bit more on the action/boys cartoon side than Ewoks, and setting it in the wider galaxy means there's more Star Wars than fits just on Endor. It's still mostly background alien and name drop fodder, but it's something. Ewoks does have a better theme song. Compare below:
Internet consensus is that TBfE is better than Caravan of Courage, so I decided to go with it. Several articles said it was the best Star Wars film I've never seen. As the most traditional, it was the first time I realized there was no opening crawl. That's not unusual for the time period, but compared to today it's more unusual.
The police chief from Die Hard is in it for about 10 minutes. And a lady in boob-armor who is much less sexy than you'd expect from a boob-armored lady. She turns into a bird.
The non-Star Wars music is weird. It's not even Star Wars-esque like you get in some of the other spinoffs.
All the effects are practical, and they're half decent. Was fun to see them.
It's mostly goofy kid sci-fi, but the main kid's family gets murdered partially on screen in the first 10 minutes, so that's pretty dark.
The Ewoks are in maximum drugged-up murder mode. I'm sure that gave some kids nightmares.
This looks like a PSA poster for people not to leave your kids with (https://thejetshowlive.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/340/)
Wilford Brimley is just playing himself, as usual.
Overall, its goofy kid adventure sci-fant. But since about the only adventure sci-fant we get these days is cape-shit, it was almost worth it.
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