THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL (CBS 11/17/78 )

Chewie (Peter Mayhew) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) are trying to get home to Chewie's family, so they can celebrate Life Day.

Life Day is a holiday that is celebrated on Chewbacca's home planet Kashyyyk. Chewie and Han Solo are trying to get to the planet where Chewie's family is waiting for him, but the empire is out searching for the rebels, giving everyone a hard time.

While we are waiting, we get a look at the everyday life of a Wookiee family. We meet all the familiar characters from Star Wars and we are introduced to Boba Fett during a small cartoon. We also pay a visit to the Cantina and meet all the monsters again.

In the storyline that ties the special together, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca's home world, to celebrate Life Day. Along the way they are pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire, who are searching for members of the Rebel Alliance on the planet. The special introduces three members of Chewbacca's family: his father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy, though these names were later explained to have been nicknames, their full names being Attichitcuk, Mallatobuck, and Lumpawaroo, respectively.

During the special, scenes also take place in outer space and in spacecraft including the Millennium Falcon and an Imperial Star Destroyer. The variety-show segments and cartoon introduce a few other locales, such as a cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine and a gooey, reddish ocean planet known as Panna.

The program also features many other Star Wars characters, including Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) and Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), who sings the film's "theme song", set to the music of John Williams' Star Wars theme, near the end. The special also features guest stars Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Diahaan Carroll, Harvey Korman Patty Maloney.

The Star Wars Holiday Special has never been rebroadcast or officially released on home video. It has therefore become something of a cultural legend, due to the "underground" quality of its existence. One of the first official Star Wars spin-offs, it was broadcast in its entirety only once, in the United States and Canada, on November 17, 1978, on the U.S. television network CBS from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (EST). (97 min)