The Death Star Human Resources Department: November 17th, 2023
Skeleton Crew, shameless pandering, Taika Waititi, Spaceballs, and a lot more
Hello there
Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department newsletter. We’re in a little bit of a Star Wars dead period, so we just have a bunch of random things to touch on. A quick Skeleton Crew update. The clickbait economy sucks me in with a Spaceballs article. Another entry in the Death Star HR book club. I need a new movie or show to come out quick so my life has some direction.
Quick programming note. With Thanksgiving next week, there’s either not going to be a newsletter or it will be much shorter than usual. Some of you may think this is a good thing. Maybe even thankful.
As always, if you enjoy the Death Star HR newsletter, please forward to any Star Wars enjoying friends or enemies of yours. Now, let’s get to it.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
I would absolutely watch an entire movie of Empire reenacted by cats. It could be Darth Taco’s big break.
Even with the low production values, it’s still better than Rise of Skywalker.
Start the Year With the Skeleton Crew
It’s all but official, we’re not getting any more new Star Wars shows the rest of the year. There’s always a chance Disney is going to release the Special Edition Holiday Special. But that seems about as likely as hitting the Death Star thermal exhaust port when you’re not a Jedi. Or at least a Jedi in training.
Also, I am 99.9% positive there was something in the sale contract from Lucas to Disney that the Mouse couldn’t release the Holiday Special.
Anyway, we were supposed to get Skeleton Crew sometime this fall. That clearly isn’t happening. The writers and actors strike pushed a lot of things back. Even if the show was ready or almost ready, Disney is still going to want the stars out there doing promos. We haven’t heard a peep out of any of the Skeleton Crew lately.
I missed this last month, but it looks like we have confirmation Skeleton Crew is pushed back until next year:
Disney and Lucasfilm recently registered upcoming Star Wars TV series Skeleton Crew with the U.S. Copyright Office and we now have a projected premiere date for the Disney+ series. The hope had been that the show might be with us before the end of 2023 but it's currently listed for a January 2024 debut.
Even if they are still shooting for a January 2024 debut, that’s not that far off. There was a teaser trailer released at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year. It leaked but it looks like Disney’s lawyers have had it scrubbed from the internet as I didn’t see it in a quick search. Stay tuned, if there’s any updates you’ll see them here first. Well, maybe not first. But you won’t see them here last.
The Year of Shooting Your Shot
It seems lately everyone is just going for it. I’ve been making fantasy football trades. Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift. I saw someone make a completely outrageous demand in court the other day and I almost audibly laughed. The through line on all of these things is sometimes you just have to go for it and see what happens. Sometimes it works, like when you get another 2nd round pick next year. Sometimes it doesn’t and people are laughing in court. But the point is you might as well try.
Add Ke Huy Quan to the list. He’s already in the Disney family, playing O.B. in season 2 of Loki. And he really wants to be in Star Wars.
“I love the MCU. You know, I was able to connect with my Indiana Jones family during the award season. And, as you know, Kathleen Kennedy was the producer,” Quan said. “And she’s the head of Lucasfilm now. I did go up to her and I said, ‘Kathy, I would love to join the Star Wars family.’ That’s another wish list of mine. But honestly, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been very lucky.”
“I was shameless when I saw Kathy!” he added. “I went up to give her a big hug. And I said, ‘Kathy, Kathy, please put me in the Star Wars universe!’ And what’s so great about it, if you think about it, it’s all under the Disney family, you know? So, I was lucky to be Short Round, which is also Disney. And, now MCU, and, you know, I want to stay in the family. It’s great.”
If only it was that easy. But we’re going to try.
Dear Ms. Kennedy…Kathleen…Kathy…Kathinator…
I too would like to be in the Star Wars family. As an official family member. Right now as writer and editor1 of Death Star HR, I feel like I’m an unofficial part of the family. The garbage pail cousin you only see at a funeral and you do your best to avoid. But I could be so much more. I could bring my dry wit and questionable grammar to the Mando season 4 writers room. Or better yet, if you need a short Stormtrooper so Bo-Katan could say “that’s a short Stormtrooper, the Imperial Remnant doesn’t have any standards,” I could be your guy for that!
OK, I’ve put it out in the world. Now just sit back and wait for Disney to call…
What We Do in the Shadows of Tatooine’s Twin Suns Can Still Happen
Way back when in the very first edition of Death Star HR I wrote about Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie and suggested he do a Star Wars/What We Do in the Shadows crossover. That seems unlikely to happen, but I stand by it, and honestly it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve written here. Since then, we haven’t heard anything about Waititi’s Star Wars movie. I’ve assumed it was because he was re-writing the script to include Nandor and Laszlo and Nadja and Colin but not you Guillermo in the Star Wars universe. His involvement was announced back in 2020, and he’s still writing the script. Honestly, given that Disney just seems to announce and then cancel projects at random, he’s probably lucky he hasn’t received the Justin Simien treatment.
Even thought his movie hasn’t been cancelled…yet…it still might be a while before he see his brand of weirdness in the galaxy far far away. As Waititi told Entertainment Tonight:
"At the moment, I'm still developing something with them. Like me, they have a lot of projects going on. I think they're gonna push it until I finish these other projects," Waititi told ET. "I've got about four other scripts that I'm trying to finish. My thing is I want to take my time with that and get it right. I don't want to rush this movie."
Trust me, Taika. Nobody is saying you’re rushing it.
He also might be trolling us a bit:
When asked if his addition to the popular franchise would still show fans the same "Star Wars" they know and love, the "Thor: love and thunder" director animatedly told Variety on the red carpet of his "Next Goal Wins" premiere, "It will be ... dramatic pause... a Taika Waititi film."
"It's gonna piss people off," he added with a laugh.
On the one hand, pissing Star Wars fans is not exactly difficult. Heck, I’m a pretty level headed one but you tell me you think making Palpatine the big bad for Rise of Skywalker and announcing it via Fortnite was a great idea, my blood pressure will go through the roof. Even if I know you’re just trolling me. So he might just be messing with us. No matter what, I’m looking forward to when we finally get his movie in six more years.
There Goes the Planet
As I was casting about the internet for any Star Wars news I could write about, I realized we’re in a bit of a lull for Star Wars news. Ahsoka is done. We have new stuff coming, as I’ve written about a lot, but we have no idea when. A lot of the Star Wars news sites have to write something, so we get increasingly off the wall articles like “Fan Theory Suggests that Grogu is the Love Child of Shimi Skywalker and Qui-Gon Jinn.” I mean, it’s solid clickbait, I’d read that article.
That’s how I ended up reading an article entitled Is Spaceballs 2 Happening, Or Is The Schwartz No Longer With Us?. Much like an article about Grogu’s parentage, I’m going to click on that.
Now, there hasn’t been any new information about a Spaceballs sequel since 2015 when Mel Brooks told Adam Corolla he would like to release Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money right after The Force Awakens. That didn’t happen. Since then there hasn’t been anything new as far as I can tell. Really, if there was going to be a Spaceballs sequel, it should have been years ago. Brooks is 97. John Candy, Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise, and Dick Van Patten have all passed away. We haven’t had a new Star Wars movie in four years. It feels weird to type that as if not getting a new movie every year is a strange thing.
I actually remember seeing Spaceballs in the theater when I was a kid. There were definitely some jokes I didn’t get at the time, the yawning Prince Valium, the bits about a Druish Princess. Even if you’re seven years old and don’t get the more adult jokes, it’s still just a funny movie on the surface. Pizza the Hutt, a Mog named Barf, and of course Yogurt and Dark Helmet. The whole fantasic scene where they meet Yogurt and we get “Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.”
Spaceballs the Flame-Thrower left an impression on me. I still want one.
Really, with Disney churning out as much content as they can, knowing they have a whole fanbase of suckers like me who will watch it, the time might actually be right for a new Spaceballs movie. They could get meta with it. President Scroob and Dark Helmet have given up trying to take over Druidia, and instead they took over Yogurt’s merchandising empire and became media moguls. All their Spaceballs movies and TV shows contain subliminal messaging so anyone who watches it immediately runs out and buys as much Spaceballs the merchandise as they can afford. Meanwhile Lone Star is feeling lost without Barf and becomes hooked on a Spaceballs TV series and spends all their money on boxes of Spaceballs the breakfast cereal. Princess Vespa has to fire up the Winnebago to go rescue Yogurt and stop President Skroob and Dark Helmet.
That’s actually a pretty good movie for coming up with the idea in about five minutes. Not bad, self. Not bad.
The Death Star Human Resources Book Club
I think this is going to be the last Death Star HR Book Club of the year. I suppose that’s either good or bad news, depending on how you feel about the Star Wars Legends books. Don’t worry though, I have a big Death Star HR Book Club project coming next week. This week though we’re going to once again take a look at one of the “Tales” books from Legends. Specially Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina.
Title: Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina.
Author: Kevin J. Anderson, editor
Year published: 1995
Pages: 387
Status: Legends
Summary in less than 20 words: The first Star Wars book I can think of that discusses alien…copulation, for lack of a better word.
Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina (TFMEC) is one of the Star Wars Legends book I absolutely remember owning when it came out back in the day. I know for sure I had the OG Thrawn Trilogy, the Jedi Academy Trilogy, and a handful of others I can’t remember. But I know TFMEC was on my bookshelf. Like we discussed in some of the other Death Star HR Book Club entries on Tales From the Empire and Tales from the New Republic, the idea behind the books were to take characters in the background or even new characters that weren’t in the movies and give them a backstory. It’s probably unsaid that if you can give characters with 2 seconds of screen time a backstory and make people care about them, they’re more likely to say buy an action figure of Ponda Baba or watch an 8 episode series on Momaw Nadon. A long game to turn Normies into Sickos.
It had been quite a while since I had read TFMEC. There were a few stories I had vaguely remembered before I started the book or that came back to me after the first page or two. Side note, I’m not sure what it says that after the first few pages I remembered that Greedo trains to be a bounty hunter but his mentor in the Bounty Hunters Guild Big Brothers Big Sisters program sets him up to get whacked at the behest of some other Rodians but at the same time I have no clue what I did three weeks ago. I guess you just remember the important things.
One thing that really struck me when I reread TFMEC was just how adult a lot of the themes were. No, I’m not talking Star Wars: After Dark, if you know what I mean although there are some hints that that we’ll get to. But just heavier2 stuff than you normally see3. The book stars with Jizz Wailer Figrin D’an, who is also a degenerate gambler. The book ends with Lak Sivrak crashing his X-Wings in the Battle of Endor and reflecting on life and love. In the pages character scheme, steal, and murder. It really does reflect Mos Eisley being a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
What works:
Unlike the last two Tales books I looked at which were a collection of stories from other sources, everything here was written for the book which largely gives it cohesive structure. Characters from one story pop up in the next one. In a couple cases one story flows into another, just the focus of the character changes. To some degree, that’s fairly obvious. As readers, our knowledge of the Mos Eisley Cantina is one scene and we see all the characters together.
Greedo calling Reegesk the Ranat a “womp” as a derogatory term made me laugh.
A drawing of most of the characters to start the chapter was nice. Just so you knew who the story was about.
What doesn’t:
The ending story is a little all over the place and feels like a downer. It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s a reflection on the choices we make and love and what would you do if you could make those choices again. If you’re at the moment where you’re becoming one with the Force, what do you do? It’s good, don’t get me wrong. Maybe you’re meant to end the book on a reflective note. I don’t know, I would have put it in the middle.
The stories that take place away from the cantina and/or Mos Eisley aren’t as good. I get the idea is give the characters a backstory and maybe expand on it from just one moment in time. They’re just less interesting to me.
Wildcard:
It’s a far more “adult” book than I remembered. Characters get drunk. Lots of scheming. But there are two things that absolutely take the cake.
In “Be Still My Heart: The Bartender’s Tale", Whuer, the surly, droid hating bartender uses the corpse of Greedo as the missing ingredient in cocktail he was making for Jabba the Hutt.
But what really stands out is Feltipern Trevagg’s tale. He’s the dude who looks like a goat. His species are called Gotal. So it works. He’s a corrupt Imperial tax collector. First issue here is Palpatine was a known Space Racist and didn’t hire aliens. Thrawn being the exception. Feltipern also fancies himself a ladies man. So when M'iiyoom Onith, aka Nightlily, a H'nemthe who is stranded in Mos Eisley approaches him to help, he decides he’s just going to seduce her instead. And we’re treated to this:
And this:
And lets end with this one:
I mean, that’s pretty NSFW by Star Wars standards.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
Hungry? Then how about we have a nice dinner at the Coronet Nova Steakhouse. Located in Core District of Cinnager, the Coronet Nova Steakhouse specializes in Corellian cuisine.
Food isn’t something that really gets discussed in Star Wars a whole lot, at least in the movies. How often do you even see someone eat or drink? Not very often.
News From the HoloNet
Did George Lucas Photobomb This Family's Disney Vacation Photos?
If that’s not George, the Imperial Cloning operation has upped its game.
The best Star Wars game ever made is free for Black Friday
Free KOTOR is the best KOTOR. Of course, there’s no bad KOTOR.
How Darth Vader Being Luke's Father Was Spoiled 2 Years Before ESB
Spoiler alerts weren’t a thing in the 70’s.
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
View draft history
Yes, this newsletter occasionally gets edited. And by edited I mean a quick pass through on Thursday night before
There’s a great Calvin & Hobbes where Calvin notes the tv show has adult situations and wonders what that means, and Hobbies replies “things like going to work, paying bills and taxes, etc.” So true.
The first Star Wars movie does start out with Tarkin committing war crimes and the genocide of the Alderaanian people. So it some respects it’s tough to get heavier than ethnic cleansing.