What The Cleantech Industry Can Learn From The Star Wars Holiday Special – CleanTechnica

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Whenever anyone mentions the Star Wars Holiday Special, they get one of two reactions. The most common one is, “What Star Wars Holiday Special?” because most people have never heard of it. The second most common reaction is one of dismay or disgust, largely because it was pretty awful. In this article, I want to share more information about the special for readers who’ve never heard of it, and then talk about what we can learn from this Christmas blunder that Disney and Lucasfilm are starting to be less ashamed of.

This Isn’t A Story The Jedi Would Tell You

Have you ever heard the tragedy of the Star Wars Christmas Special? I thought not. It’s not a story that Disney+ would tell you. It’s become a bit of an underground nerd legend.

George Lucas created a smash hit with Star Wars in 1977. The story of Star Wars became so powerful that everyone wanted a piece of it. Toy companies, TV networks, and everyone else wanted to capitalize on the success. The genres of science fiction and fantasy, which had been languishing, were even kept from dying.

Star Wars became so powerful that the only thing George Lucas could think about was making sequels, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught some of his apprentices far less than he knew, then his apprentices worked with CBS to make a television special that was based on an idea Lucas had for a sequel about wookiees.

Ironic. He could come up with some great ideas, but when copied by others, he couldn’t save them.

When the musical and comedy variety show, sprinkled with guest appearances by Star Wars main characters, aired, it was widely panned. It was just too goofy and strange, and it was too different from the original film. It was so disliked by the public, critics, and George Lucas himself that it was aired only once on TV. In the decades that followed, Lucasfilm and everyone else involved with Star Wars basically just pretended that the special never existed.

The only way most people have ever seen it is via bootleg copies of VHS recordings that people recorded during its one and only airing. It has never aired in its entirety on any other network nor has it ever been released on VHS, DVD, or via streaming services. The underground nature of the Holiday Special has made it more of a cult classic, and also the butt of a joke in media. For example, Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” music video shows a copy of the Holiday Special being sold in an alley like drugs.

The bootlegs have since made their way online, allowing many more people to see the Holiday Special’s special brand of cringe. None of the versions on YouTube will embed for an article, but you can see an upscaled and reworked version of the special here.

It Had Some Great Moments That Disney Has Begun To Acknowledge

While the special was a flop, it wasn’t all bad. The best thing about it was a cartoon that marked the first appearance of Boba Fett (a Mandalorian) in Star Wars shows and movies. As we all know now, Boba Fett’s character and culture have become hugely popular in recent years. This has led to Disney acknowledging the cartoon segment and sharing it on DVDs and on Disney+, but divorced from its context as part of the Holiday Special, renamed “The Story of the Faithful Wookiee.”

Another recent acknowledgement of the Holiday Special came in the form of some brief easter eggs in the Skeleton Crew series that’s airing now. Just like Chewbacca’s son Lumpy, other kids in the Star Wars universe watch the same holographic circus show.

While not acknowledged in other Star Wars media, fans have loved a few other things about the program. Bea Arthur of Maude and The Golden Girls does a musical number that she apparently didn’t know was related to Star Wars during filming. There’s also this “stir whip” extra arm drag queen gem:

At this point, fans are starting to crave Holiday Special content and references. It still stinks, but it has been long enough and there have been enough great sequels that it doesn’t need to be hidden away like an anti-gay preacher’s browser history. We should acknowledge it for what it is, enjoy it, and have a laugh. We should also take what was great from it and continue those things.

GM, A Sponsor of the Holiday Special, Did The Same Thing With EVs

Early on in versions of the special with commercials, there’s this little gem:

Like Lucas and Disney, GM never tells us that it’s a proud sponsor of the Holiday Special. Like the awful “people building transportation to serve people” slogan, it was a flop. Who wants to be associated with a flop, even if some parts of it were great or led to greater things?

20 years later, GM had its own Holiday Special moment: the EV1. For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick video explaining the history of building a fairly decent commuter vehicle and then crushing most copies of it:

Learning From Mistakes Instead Of Hiding From Them

GM’s effort to strangle EVs in the cradle and resist regulators, followed by pretending it never happened, was clearly a mistake. It’s a mistake that only looks worse with time as it becomes clear that GM gave up its ability to be an industry leader to make a few more bucks in the ’90s and the 2000s.

As the more modern EV emergence unfolds, we’re seeing other companies make mistakes. Nissan made EVs without liquid cooling, leading to rapid degradation and pitiful charging times. Electrify America bought hardware that couldn’t handle increased demand, and that problem caught up to them so badly that Tesla’s Supercharger network took over and resulted in everyone having to switch from CCS to Tesla’s NACS plug.

I’m sure readers can come up with many more examples of bad decisions and bad gear that led to a company really wanting people to forget what happened, but the main point is that instead of burying these errors, we should be embracing the lessons that come from them. In the end, we’re not judged by how many times we fell down as much as how many times we got back up and did better.

Featured image by Jennifer Sensiba.