star wars

Much to my surprise, Droids is a legitimately good show. I don’t mean “good for a 1980s kids’ cartoon,” I mean, “I’m enjoying watching this, and look forward to the next episode.” The Nelvana house animation style is in top form – C-3P0 and R2-D2 are animated expressively while remaining within the parameters of their classic designs. Anthony Daniels is having a ball doing 3P0’s voice, and making the most out of being given more to do than he did in the films, which was rarely more than act scared and/or bitchy. The ongoing storyline is interesting and there are even ties to the movies, as in this episode the Droids get pulled into the Rebel alliance for what seems to be the first time.

It’s even touching on a topic mostly ignored by the movies so far – droids’ rights. There are two bad guys, gangster boss Sise Fromm and his son Tig, whom Sise mostly despises and constantly threatens to murder for his incompetence. (They don’t use the word ‘murder,’ because, you know, kids’ cartoon, but the implications are clear.) Tig is presented as the lesser of the two evils, and he’s fiercely pro-droids, whereas dad Sise hates them. The attitude of Sise’s faction – usually represented by various minor characters bullying our two heroes for being droids – is shown as discriminatory and wrong.

Of course, that’s not all that surprising – the show is called Droids, after all, so 3P0 and R2 are obviously going to be presented sympathetically. But then, upon arriving on a new planet, our main cast are asked to wait in line to register their arrival. The humans… wait, are humans in the Star Wars universe called ‘humans,’ or something else? I’m not looking that up. The humans and the droids have to wait in separate lines, and C-3P0 calls it out as discrimination. It’s a quick moment, kind of a throw away line, but it isn’t played as a joke. I doubt the writer really thought much of it, but it’s interesting that the concept of discrimination against droids exists at all, and that 3P0, a pretty servile guy most of the time, is aware of it, and capable of feeling its sting.

Luckily, while the concept of droid free will is a little uncomfortable to think too hard about in relation to the movies, in the context of Droids, you can contemplate it guilt-free: C-3P0 calls Thall Joben his “master,” but he and R2 chose to tag along with him in the first episode. Nobody bought anybody and there aren’t any restraining bolts; the droids got rescued from the desert by Thall and his boyfriend-in-my-head-canon Jord, liked them, and stuck around. They’re part of the team, not possessions. Honestly, being sold to Luke probably felt like a bit of a step-down…

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There’s a surprising amount of lore to keep track of in the Ewoks cartoon, especially considering I’m only on the second episode.

First are the Ewoks themselves, none of whose names I can remember yet except for Wicket’s, even though there are an awful lot of them whose names I am expected to remember. There’s Wicket’s dad and his two brothers. (Pretty sure Wicket had a mom and some sisters in Caravan of Courage, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen them yet.) There’s an old wizard Ewok, a busybody auntie, and some other named adults who I may or may not be confusing with Wicket’s father and brothers. There’s a girl Ewok who is Wicket’s best friend, and her dad who is also the chief. Wicket’s got a couple other male friends around his age, and one of them has a little sister who is a Wokling, which is a very young Ewok – although there’s some ritual where they get their hood, which makes them full members of the tribe, and the little sister got hers in the first episode so maybe she’s not a Wokling anymore. Still a little hazy on Ewok rituals of passage.

Every Ewok has a Soul Tree, which is very important for reasons I’m unclear on but I assume there’s a clue in the name. The Ewoks also protect sunberry trees, because if the Ewoks don’t eat sunberries regularly they get sick. Unclear if this is for nutritional, magical, or withdrawal reasons.

The wizard Ewok has a magic top that can see the future, or possibly just threats, or more likely whatever the writer of that episode needs him to see. This wizard Ewok also makes stuff, like the fire-resistant foam in the last episode or soap that makes you invisible in this one. (Seems like that soap would have been pretty useful in Return of the Jedi, but maybe they didn’t want to waste it on humans.)

Other residents of the forest include the Wisties, also called the firefolk. They’re friendly little flying glowing fairy/insect things ruled by a queen. They first appeared in Caravan of Courage where a whole swarm of them immolated themselves in a candle for no apparent reason. I forgot to mention it in that post, but it was really weird that none of the main characters were bothered by this. I thought it was setting something up for later where they’d fly back out of the candle and save the day, but no, I guess they all died. Although some must have survived because they’re in this cartoon.

Also in the forest are the Duloks, who look sort of like the Grinch’s primitive ancestors. They are enemies of the Ewoks, although their motivations are a little vague. Their first priority is getting rid of the flies that constantly surround them; second to that, they like to scare the Ewoks and take their stuff, but they don’t seem to want to actually harm them. There are several named Duloks I’m supposed to remember, but they all look even more alike than the Ewoks so that’s not happening. There’s the chief, the chief’s girlfriend, the shaman, and a couple of stooges, one with a big X on his chest and one with a big O, which only accentuates the Seussian similarities. Oh, and the Duloks call themselves the Ewoks’ cousins, so I guess they’re related somehow? Maybe the residents of Endor have a more sophisticated understanding of evolution than we’d expect.

The Ewoks’ main enemy is Morag, the Tulgah witch. I do not know what a Tulgah is, nor do I know what species Morag is. She looks a bit like a Dulok but from the way they interacted in the first episode I don’t think she is one. Maybe she’s another cousin. She hates the Ewoks and frequently tries to destroy them with overly complicated plans. Oh, and she has some mysterious past with the wizard Ewok. Or maybe the chief? She used his name but I don’t remember the names yet. Could have been Wicket’s dad. Could have been me, I don’t know. This is such a complicated kids’ cartoon I wouldn’t be half surprised.

Oh, we do get one bit of continuity explained in this episode. One of the Duloks refers to their home as Endor, meaning it is, in fact, the moon that’s named Endor, not the planet it orbits. That’s been bugging me so I’m glad they cleared that up.

I’m poking fun at the amount of material you’re expected to absorb to follow this Saturday morning children’s program, but honestly, child me would have eaten this up. I’d have been diagramming Ewok family trees on the back of my homework. In fact… let’s see… Wicket’s dad is Deej, his oldest brother is Weechee… or is Willy older?

Hold on, I gotta make a spreadsheet…

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I was twelve years old, just starting eighth grade, when the Droids and Ewoks cartoons premiered. Despite being a big Star Wars fan, I skipped them. I wasn’t too old for cartoons quite yet – a quick glance at the Saturday morning cartoon lineup for Fall of 1985 reveals a couple of shows I was still watching, like Dungeons and Dragons, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, and a particular favorite of mine, Kidd Video (not just because pubescent me found the actor who played the live action version of Kidd Video super cute, but mainly because pubescent me found the actor who played the live action version of Kidd Video super cute).

But I did think of myself as too old for cutesy kid cartoons like The Smurfs, Snorks, or, I thought, Droids. I don’t know why, but I assumed Droids was a silly comedy, so I gave it a miss. I was wrong! While there’s certainly plenty of comedy, this first episode was an adventure romp which looks to be setting up a serialized story. That would have been right up my alley in 1985!

The animation is just my thing, too. The show was made by Nelvana, a Canadian animation studio probably better known for Inspector Gadget, the Beetlejuice series, and the cartoon that introduced Boba Fett to the world in the (sigh) Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ve always appreciated Nelvana’s style, even if a lot of their shows didn’t quite attract my interest. Droids is really gorgeous, allowing for the budget and the time period. Much more fluid than, say, Filmation’s stable of shows (no shade to Filmation – I could do a whole series on He-Man). And their character design is top notch – there’s no missing a Nelvana character, with their somehow both realistic and exaggerated looks.

But is it queer? That’s what we want to know, is this Saturday morning cartoon from 1985 queer? No, of course not, don’t be silly. But… but! The two main male characters Thall and Jord, a racing team and best buddies, could certainly be a couple. There’s nothing to contradict it, especially not the complete lack of any hint of romantic overtones between either of them and the main female character, Kea. So until a future episode tells me otherwise, when Thall and Jord’s racing landspeeder The White Witch is a-rocking, don’t come a-knocking.

Oh, also C-3PO gets hit on the head, suffers some sort of robot concussion, and mutters in a daze, “R2-D2, you look lovely!” I can’t begin to understand the complexities of droid gender, but that was pretty gay.

Previous: Ewoks S1E1 – “The Cries of the Trees” (1985)
Next: Ewoks S1E2 – “The Haunted Village” (1985)

Ewoks, could you lighten up a little?

Let me digress for a second – I wrote the next post in this series, on the first episode of Droids, before I wrote this one. Droids and Ewoks aired together on Saturday mornings as part of an hour-long block called The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour. I initially couldn’t figure out which aired first, so I arbitrarily started with Droids, but in writing that post and doing a little research, I found that Ewoks actually aired first in the block. I’m doing this watch-through in release order, and since Ewoks technically was released first, I’m swapping these essays. Does it matter? Probably not to you, but I’m the type of person who agonized over whether the kiddie game show Jedi Temple Challenge should be included in this series because I’m not including non-fiction, but Ahmed Best’s host character Kelleran Beq appeared in The Mandalorian, so does that make it an in-universe show? I ultimately decided yes, I would include it, even though the first episode would be my 457th Nothing But Star Wars post and I am extremely unlikely to ever get that far. So YES whether Droids aired before Ewoks or vice versa is important to me.

What was I saying? Oh, right. In my next post, which I have already written, I’ll talk a bit about why I skipped the Droids and Ewoks cartoons the first time around. This is my first time watching Ewoks, and I was unprepared. Nelvana, the animation company who produced Ewoks, also made Care Bears, and I assumed they would be somewhat similar in tone. But no! Ewoks is surprisingly dark. There’s certainly some kiddie humor at the start, with Wicket constantly getting into trouble with grumpy Aunt Bozzie. But when the evil witch Morag casts a spell on the firefolk (getting a name after their first appearance in Caravan of Courage), transforming them into actual creatures of flame so they’ll burn down the Ewoks’ forest, the queen of the little sprites screams, and it’s kind of horrific. The rest of the episode is the Ewoks’ battling the raging inferno, and of course they triumph thanks to the Chekhov’s fire-fighting foam they conveniently invented in the first act.

I don’t want to oversell it, this is still Ewoks, not Batman: The Animated Adventures, and much of the story is devoted to Wicket learning a Very Important Lesson about lying. But since this first episode was written by Paul Dini, who also developed and wrote some of the best episodes of Batman, I suppose it’s not too big a stretch to draw a comparison.

But is it queer? Well, the boy Ewoks do sneak off to play a game called drop-the-sack, but it’s just one of them running around on the ground with a target on his back while the others sit in the trees and try to hit him with what they say are sacks of mud, but which is probably Ewok dung.

Also, the boys are punished for lying by being given sentry duty at an outpost, and when they burst in on the two adult male Ewoks watching over them, it sure looks like they’re sharing a bedroll. Except now Wookiepedia tells me that they’re Wicket’s two older brothers, so I guess there wasn’t any hanky-panky going on. (At least, I certainly hope not.)

Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Care Bears. Does it go this hard too?

Previous: Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984)
Next: Droids S1E1 – “The White Witch” (1985)

Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure isn’t bad. It’s not good. But it’s not bad.

It’s just not terribly interesting. The plot is a bog-standard A to B to C adventure quest, made up of scenes of almost everything animate or inanimate on the moon of Endor trying to murder two children, interspersed with scenes of Ewoks doing Ewok things. The stop-motion creatures are fun, but the decision to have Burl Ives narrate does undercut the dramatic tension a bit. When he introduces the lair of the dreaded Gorax, it’s about as frightening as Rudolph confronting the Bumble.

The Ewoks are the reason for the season, though, and I’m very happy that the film doesn’t overplay the comedy. I was worried we were in for (shudder) Holiday Special-ish slapstick, but no, these Ewoks are much the same as the ones we met in Return of the Jedi. They’re funny in a (mostly) realistic fashion, and they remain brutal killers when appropriate. Tempered slightly for the younger intended audience, of course – there’s no bashing in of Stormtroopers’ skulls, but they do slaughter a couple of monsters, and I’m pretty sure if the little girl hadn’t been so cute and helpless, they would have happily killed and eaten her older brother.

Also, apparently magic exists in the Star Wars universe? Not the Force, but actual magic? I guess we’re just supposed to roll with that. One of the better scenes involves Mace, the human boy, being teleported under the surface of a lake, which, from the underside, is solid as ice. It’s one of the few moments with some real dramatic tension, as everything the Ewoks do to save him fails (except for the very last thing they try, of course), but that lake is definitely magic. As far as Lucasverse vibes go, Ewoks notwithstanding, Caravan of Courage is more Willow than Wars.

Previous: Return of the Jedi (1983)
Next: Ewoks S1E1 – “The Cries of the Trees” (1985)