To refresh your memory - the time was 1978. Star Wars was hot. So hot, that it deserved a special holiday special. And apparently, so hot that the special could have a plotline that went beyond ludicrous and into the stratosphere of penultimate stupidity...and people would still watch it.

Calling the Holiday Special bad is just about the textbook definition of an 'understatement'. It's not just bad. It's not even just laughably bad. It makes tv shows like Herman's Head and The Tortellis seem like genius brainstorms.

Today, what we're going to do is take a look at some of the actual media files for the show, to help those of you who don't comprehend how it could be that bad. I'm going to prove it to you..

In the Holiday Special, the Mos Eisley Cantina was run by none other than  Bea Arthur. As if that's not a big enough 'what the f**k?', know that the extent of her duties entailed wearing her hair really poorly and singing. Yes, singing.

To hear a clip of Bea's infamous cantina song, click here.

Luke and Han also appeared in the Holiday Special. Harrison looked about as happy to be involved with this as one would be to get hit by a car. Mark Hamill on the other hand, didn't seem to mind. Prior to taping, Mark was in a car accident which screwed up his face, so he's wearing more make-up during this show than you could dream possible. It was like a Twisted Sister revival.

Anyway, since we're in another galaxy, Christmas doesn't exist. They call it Life Day. Life Day played a big part in the special, with everyone from guest stars like Art Carney to little Wookie idiots wishing everyone a healthy and happy Life Day. To hear Luke and Han's quick thoughts on the subject, click here.

It's been pretty well documented that Carrie Fisher was pretty heavily 'sedated' in her old days. The Star Wars Holiday Special merely serves as the proof. She appears at the end to drone on and on about something or other, and then belt out a song that would even make Bea's classic above seem like one of Casey's top 40.

Leia's purpose, besides awful singing, was to express to us the true meaning of life day, which she does quite beautifully. To hear Leia's touching speech, click here.

I wish we could say we're done, but it gets worse.

In one of the most awful, hideous displays in television history, we get a segment of Chewy's wife watching a cooking show and trying to follow along. This really captures the spirit of the show - unbridled stupidity. The clip is 8 MB, but well worth it for those of you out there who want to know just how far Lucas will actually go.

A little info first...the Wookie segments in the show are absolutely awful. Understand that these segments were the longest on the show, and also understand that mostly all you got were Chewbacca's retarded family walking back and forth in a treehouse spouting nonsense incomprehensible to those of us who don't speak Wookie. It was just terrible.

But just when you're pretty sure things can't get any worse, the cooking segment takes place. It involves a transvestite with four arms and a highly irrated Wookie housewife. To see this unbelievable clip, take a deep break, some sedatives, and click here. It's a Quicktime movie file.

Then there was the Boba Fett cartoon. As I've told you before, Boba Fett made his first appearance in the holiday special in animated form. It's pretty odd when you consider how popular he became - nothing that came from this show should be willfully remembered.

I've uploaded a clip from the actual cartoon. It's not much. Just Boba Fett meeting Luke and the droids. But since I took the time to upload this thing, the least you could do is watch it. The quality isn't that terrific, but it's definitely viewable...and Boba Fett talks!

To view the Quicktime clip, click here..

The program even included a classic Kenner Star Wars toy commercial with R2D2 & C3PO

According to Steve Sansweet, at a convention in Australia, George Lucas said something to the effect "that if he had the time and a sledge hammer, he would track down every bootlegged copy of that program and smash it." I guess we won't see a Special Edition of this program.

An intresting fact about this special is that it featured an alien by the name of Zutton, better known as Snaggletooth. A figure of him was made in the vintage line (for pictures and information on it, check out my old article on vintage Star Wars figures). Even though he appeared in none of the actual films. That sort of makes sense because a lot of the kids who bought the figures, most likely saw this program. But, get this: THEY ACTUALLY MADE A NEW FIGURE OF HIM!

I bet you that about 0.1% of the kids who buy the figures today have seen the Holiday Special, so I guess Hasbro released it just to show that they can make any figure that Kenner made. If they wanted to do that, they should've screwed up and made him tall and quite bluish first.