Remembering Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and The Star Wars Holiday Special

It’s May the 4th, and I wish all the Star Wars fans an awesome day of celebrating a great cinematic franchise which has really worked at transforming science fiction. It is not traditional science fiction — as it mostly removes scientific topics from character dialogue (except on those rare occasions in the prequels), but it certainly presents a thrilling adventure among the stars and amid many wonderful and bizarre societies.

One of the more bizarre, not so wonderful societies presented in the Star Wars universe, however, is seen in the 1978 televised program The Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s a random TV production, and for the seventies, this means the audience’s expectations should automatically be less than their expectations for the actual feature films. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel that the acting could have been better, especially seeing as how half the cast of the holiday special were borrowed from the films themselves.

Among the stars are Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford — all of whom refurbished their…