A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened (and Became an Instant Anti-Classic)

By Chris Knight

Rating: A

If there is a surprise character witness in the entertaining sci-fi documentary A Disturbance in the Force — an unlikely commentator on all things Star Wars — it is… wait for it… Donny Osmond.

The wholesome entertainer pops up more than once to discuss the time he and his sister played Luke and Leia — that’s right, siblings playing siblings, before anyone knew they were siblings! — in a 1977 episode of Donny & Marie that included Paul Lynde as Grand Moff Tarkin, Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo, Redd Foxx as the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and a chorus line of singing, dancing stormtroopers. Also, the only time I’ve heard someone take the Force’s name in vain. It was deeply weird.

Ah, but it was nothing compared to The Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired just a few months later and is still regarded as one of the worst things ever to appear on network television. (To think ABC pre-empted Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk that week to show it!)

Ostensibly built around the story of Chewbacca’s family celebrating Life Day — still marked by the fan faithful every November 17, the anniversary of its airing — the show featured Harvey Korman in some very unfunny sketches, Bea Arthur as the crooning bartender of the Mos Eisley Cantina, a song by Jefferson Starship, and a short by Canadian animation pioneers Nelvana that marked the first appearance by bounty hunter Boba Fett in the Star Wars universe.

Oh, and Diahann Carroll as the star of a disturbingly adult-themed virtual-reality program watched by Chewie’s father, Itchy. “Deeply weird” doesn’t even come close.

Airing shortly before the widespread use of VCRs, and almost immediately disavowed by George Lucas, the Star Wars Holiday Special soon entered the realm of myth, its flame kept alive by a cadre of latter-day monks faithfully copying and recopying increasingly degraded recordings.

Nowadays, of course, you can easily call it up on YouTube, and it does make for a fun hate-watch. See it with the original commercials if you can for an authentic prelapsarian experience.

Similarly, A Disturbance in the Force is a fun ramble through how it came to be, featuring some of the minds behind the show, a few scratchy recorded interviews of yore, and a lot of famous fans of the franchise, among them Kevin Smith, Weird Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt and Seth Green. And Donny Osmond.

Two points are worth noting. One is that, in the late 1970s, there was a lot of terrible television in the ether. Someone even notes that there are surely worse things to have aired; it’s just that they were forgettably terrible, instead of memorably so.

The other is that no one knew what Star Wars was or would become back then. It was a megahit to rival Jaws, sure, but we’d only had the briefest of introductions to C-3PO, Darth et al. It was still in flux, backstories not yet ironed out, episodes five through nine, and one through three, and all those other prequels and spinoffs just a dream of the future.

And so, for a variety (show) of reasons, Life Day 1977 was pretty much the only time the stars even could align for something as broadly, bawdily, beautifully bad as the Star Wars Holiday Special. Despite its gloomy name, A Disturbance in the Force is in fact a celebration, one to rival an all-night Ewok rave.

A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened. Directed by Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak. Starring Donny Osmond, Kevin Smith, and Mark Hamill. Now playing at select Cineplex cinemas.