Since the first “Star Wars” blasted a hole in popular culture we’ve been gifted a few unforgettable (and not in a good way) Christmas-adjacent stories. This refers to calendar placement, not theme. The only true “Star Wars Holiday Special,” bequeathed to Generation X, centered its celebration on Life Day, a tradition of Chewie’s home planet of Kashyyyk. Getting home to his family required special guest star appearances by Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, Diahann Carroll and Jefferson Starship.
You may be picturing something enchantingly weird, like the “Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special.” Regrettably, no. The “Star Wars Holiday Special” was such a legendary misfire that it aired on CBS primetime only once. George Lucas wanted all memories of it erased from our cultural databases. For all of his innovation and forward thinking, in 1978 he did not conceive of such a thing as the internet. No one did. Anyway, almost 50 years later, the whole ugly 90-plus minutes live on YouTube.
Baby Millennials got somewhat luckier with “Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure” and “Ewoks: The Battle for Endor” and their golden-haired moppet Cindel Towani (Aubree Miller), which debuted on ABC in the subsequent Novembers of 1984 and 1985. Whether that’s a good thing depends on how you feel about the franchise’s battle-ready teddy bears. At least it didn’t propose that Chewbacca has a son named Lumpy and a father named Itchy.
Gen Z got spoiled with three dumb prequels, which is why those people are how they are. Take that any way you want. Why couldn’t it be a compliment?
Anyway, now there’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew,” a new series about four pre-teens whose humdrum life on their Spielbergian planet of At Attin is interrupted by a sudden trip into deep space.
“Skeleton Crew” features pre-teen stars but is spiked with hooks meant to capture the attention of Children of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Jaleel White is in it – that’s right, Urkel from “Family Matters.” Jude Law is in it too, playing a more central role he needn’t be ashamed of or defend later in life: a Force user with shades of that scoundrel vibe that made Harrison Ford a sex symbol way back when.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+)But the main hero, the Jedi-obsessed Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) passes the time staging pretend lightsaber battles with his best friend Neel (Robert Timothy Smith). “Skeleton Crew” takes place sometime after the events of “Return of the Jedi,” when the New Republic was still putting the galaxy back together, making it a contemporary of “The Mandalorian.” But its world looks nothing like the dusty outposts Din Djarin and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) haunt.
Surveying the badness of our childhood favorites as adults helps us gauge how far we have come as a culture, and how much wonder we’ve shed in exchange for maturity.
Wim and Neel’s neighborhood resembles the golden-hue fantasy suburbia captured in “E.T.” where kids have an unsupervised life separate from their parents and safety is taken for granted. The planet is surrounded by a barrier that prevents them from seeing the stars at night, but also keeps them isolated so its denizens can contemplate their role in what Wim’s teachers and instructive droids refer to as The Great Work.
All that changes when Wim stumbles on what turns out to be a derelict starship. Strong-armed by the class rebel and ruling queen bee Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and her best friend KB (Kyriana Kratter), who wears a techno-cracking visor like Geordi LaForge in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the kids break in and escalate the situation by pressing the wrong switches. The autopilot kicks on, waking the ship’s broken-down droid SM-33 (Nick Frost) and launching these little numbnuts toward a pirate colony, the only familiar port SM-33 knows.
“Skeleton Crew” is structurally serviceable. Solidly mid. There’s even a twist that channels a touch of M. Night Shyamalan. (Not one of his better movies. Don’t get your hopes up that much.) By rights, this thing should be Gen Alpha’s joy and memory stain, but it’s a work that belongs to both everyone and nobody. Which is a shame.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+)Every age deserves regrettable sci-fi movies and TV blunders that are specific to their era, and that play more magically in our recall than they do once revisited with older eyes and sensibilities. The version of me that was barely out of toddlerhood was probably thrilled to find out Chewbacca had a kid my age, in the same way adult me noticed many years later with both hilarity and horror that Chewie’s dad Itchy looks like a genital wart.
The ABC Ewok adventures are somewhat less embarrassing – at least enough for them to remain discoverable on Disney + — but still a laughable combination of weird writing and nostalgia bait. I mean, “Caravan of Courage” is narrated by beloved Rankin Bass emcee Burl Ives. “The Battle for Endor” proposed that namesake moon in a galaxy far away also had “Flintstone”-style flying creatures and a sexy witch.
What these early “Star Wars” side trips share is a willingness to take chances while playing to a fandom they assumed was in it for the toys.
Surely the writers and producers of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” didn’t think what they were doing was a crime against entertainment. They were simply shoving the stars of a blockbuster space opera into a variety special format that worked well enough in previous decades.
In any case, the fact that we can’t forget it means that it was, in some minor way, a creative swing. “Skeleton Crew” may turn out to be one too, and in the best sense, but there’s not much evidence of that within its first three episodes.
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Instead, it is a reminder of how close to nothing fits that description in the current “Star Wars” universe, which is down to fracking the narrative fumes out of a mythology few have successfully stretched beyond its long-established parameters.
“Skeleton Crew” probably won’t ever be as borderline unwatchable as the other live-action “Star Wars” fever dreams that dropped in holidays long past.
Most people would call that a good thing. But I’m not so sure. Surveying the badness of our childhood favorites as adults helps us gauge how far we have come as a culture, and how much wonder we’ve shed in exchange for maturity. “Skeleton Crew” is a distillation of other generations’ fondness for their childhoods and what they view as better movies and better-loved TV shows. It certainly isn’t terrible, but I wonder if we’ll remember it in a year.
New episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” stream Tuesdays on Disney+.
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