Star Wars on my TV

On this blog site I have covered everything Star Wars: Movies, Books, Comics, Toys, and Television. I admit that some critics of this blog note that I haven’t covered television in too much detail so far. These critics want to me to acknowledge the existence of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (the 3D animated one) since it is so beloved in the Star Wars community. Don't worry it's coming.

So far, I have reviewed the ill-conceived “Star Wars Holiday Special” and I praised the Emmy-winning classically animated 2D “Clone Wars” produced by Genndy Tartakovsky. But neither of those really count as TV.

Clone Wars by Genndy Tartakovsky

I admit that TV is the least appealing form of Star Wars to me. Maybe Star Wars simply doesn’t work in this medium or perhaps no one has done it right yet. But with the upcoming “Star Wars: Rebels” I’d like to take another look at what I like and what I hate about the television shows that we have been subjected to thus far.

1985 was the year that Star Wars struck back. But instead of a new movie, fans got two ABC television shows. The first was “Droids” that focused on droids and the second was “Ewoks” which focused on… well you know.

I was fortunate enough (or unlucky enough) to catch reruns of both of these shows at six in the morning before school when I was a kid. I don’t remember much, so I did some quick youtube searches before writing this article.

Droids features the voice talents of Anthony Daniels as C3-P0 (because what else has that guy have to do?) and some kind of computer synthesizer as R2-D2. The synthesizer is also present in the soundtrack of the show, as was typical of cartoons of the time.

Over the 13 episodes and one made-for-TV-movie of the show was produced. The two droids find themselves on back-world planets and acquire new masters, who stick around for about four or five episodes before the droids “move along”. 

There is something very “Star Wars” about this show. The universe is not the flashy-clean sci-fi place that we see so-often in the Prequel-era. It is run-down. Characters wear 80s-style hairdos and race landspeeders in Podunk areas of the galaxy. There’s a little bit of nostalgia of an age-gone-by. My childhood perhaps.

The drawbacks of droids is that it’s not very exciting. There are no epic spacebattles or duels between good and evil. There aren’t any stormtroopers or tie-fighters, which is something one would expect from an animated Star Wars cartoon. Overall "Droids" just feels pointless. R2-D2 and Threepio work fine as background characters, but when you push them into the foreground you just have… well, Scooby and Shaggy- always getting into danger and trying to find a way out- but without the mystery being solved at the end.

Ewoks was launched the same year, but it a very different show than "Droids". Ewoks is obviously Lucas-Film’s response to Disney’s "Gummi Bears". The opening song is not as good, but there are definite similarities.

As a cartoon, Ewoks actually works better than droids. Much like The Smurfs, it features small forest folk being pitted against strange evil magic users. Ewoks feels like a kids show, but it feels nothing like Star Wars. Overall two seasons of 35 episodes were produced.

It feels strange that Lucas chose to focus his cartoons on Droids and Ewoks. In the hay-day of Saturday morning cartoons, competing against shows like GI Joe and Transformers, why hold back? Why not just give us the further adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. Why did fans have to wait so long (my entire life time) to finally get these characters back on a screen (large or small) ?

Simply put, for the millionth time, what the fuck was Lucas thinking?

*Star Wars Rebels premiers on October 3^rd