What We Want From the Star Wars TV Series (And What We Don't)
by Tom Burns

So, with all that guess work assembled, let’s get to the good stuff:

WHAT WE WANT (AND DON’T WANT) FROM THE STAR WARS TV SHOW:

1. We don’t want "The Young Han Solo or Young Boba Fett Chronicles"

If this series opens with a 100-year-old General Solo tottering around a space museum, chattering away about old times, we’ll turn it off faster than we clicked away from Enterprise the first time we heard that lame-ass theme song. Leave Solo in the movies and Boba Fett - he’s even more problematic. First off, we stand by the opinion that Boba Fett died like a punk as a Sarlac burp in Return of the Jedi, so we’ve never really understood his whole fan mystique. Second, Boba worked best when he was a silent-but-deadly threat in Empire Strikes Back, so if he shows up in the series (and Rick McCallum has pretty much confirmed that he will), we hope he’ll only be making bad-ass sweeps-week cameos, as he works his way into the role of the Keyser Soze of the bounty hunter community. We don’t want the series to be "Boba Begins," we don’t want to see where he skinned his first wookie-pelts - we just want him to remain as the bounty hunter boogeyman and spend the series looming ever-present in the background.

2. We want to see some humor.

Let’s face it - Star Wars has never been particularly funny. (We know some of the dialogue in the prequels is so-bad--it's hilarious, but we mean it's not intentionally funny.) There’s a lot of great Star Wars fan content, and the Robot Chicken and Family Guy tributes were killer, but the force is not with George Lucas when it comes to writing punch lines. It’s pretty sad when you realize that the funniest line from all six movies is probably "Who’s scruffy-looking?" Heck, Harrison Ford’s "we’re all fine" rant in New Hope is the comedic paragon of the whole series. We’re not saying that the series should lapse into self-referential parody, but if this program is supposed to show the day-to-day life in the galaxy far, far away, then we need to see some people laughing occasionally. Star Wars showrunners - take some inspiration from Kevin Rubio’s fantastic Tag and Bink comic book series or, if you’re hiring people from Lost, get the guys who write Sawyer’s wise-cracks. We know this series is set during the "Dark Times," but let’s indulge in some gallows humor then, OK?

3. We don’t want to know what happened to Jar-Jar or anyone who lives on Naboo.

Honestly. Please listen to us on this one. Granted, even Lucas realizes that fans never really took to the Gungans, but we don’t want to see ANYTHING having to do with that back-water planet. All it reminds us of is trade blockades, senate debates, interspecies symbiosis, Anakin and Padme running through fields of... zzzzz.... oh, sorry, we fell asleep out of extreme boredom. Vote NO on Naboo.

4. We want the good guys to be able to shoot first.

If this series is supposed to show the wide spectrum of lifestyles in the Star Wars universe, that means, almost by definition, it needs to be more morally complex than the movie series ever was. Episodes 1 through 6 are epic tales of heroism and evil, but weekly TV shows need conflicts, morality plays, and shades of gray to exist and thrive. We were really, really unhappy with Lucas’ decision to alter the original Star Wars to make Greedo shoot at Han Solo first in the Mos Eisley Cantina - it was a bizarre, flawed retconned attempt to make Solo’s character morally superior that totally and completely failed at what it was trying to accomplish. If the good guys are never allowed to shoot first on the new TV series, then Lucas shouldn’t even bother and should just leave sci-fi TV to people like the producers of Battlestar Galactica, people willing to take risks and create three-dimensional characters full of fears, flaws, and failures.

5. We don’t want lots of Star Wars in-jokes.

Yes, we’re all nerds here, we normally love little hidden inside jokes, and we specifically asked for more humor, but we’re really afraid that Star Wars: The Series will be filled with overly cute references to stuff that happened in the movies. Things like the designers of the Death Star telling their Imperial bosses not to worry about the small thermal exhaust port. Or Boba Fett commenting about how much he hates the Sarlac Pit. Or Jabba the Hutt saying, "Man, one day, you dancing girls are going to be the death of me." It sounds funny on paper, but those are some cheap, cheap laughs. You can do better, George.

6. We want space battles. Big honkin’ space battles.

Yes, yes, it’s great that this show is going to be character-driven and gritty and emotionally... OK, let’s cut the crap. We want some X-wing fighter on TIE Fighter action, and we want it sooner than later. Fine, we realize that the Rebellion will be in its infancy and everything, and that the Empire is almost guaranteed to win, but we don’t care. Star Wars NEVER would’ve been as popular without the Death Star attack dogfights or the Millennium Falcon’s chase through the asteroid field. Yes, the show IS on a limited budget, but shows like Battlestar Galactica have been able to stretch their FX budget to include regular intergalactic firefights. We don’t need a space battle every week, but let’s make sure that we don’t spend our entire budget on Ben Burtt sound design and Wookie costumes and save some cash for some Top Gun space maneuvers every episode or so.

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