How Skeleton Crew canonised part of The Star Wars Holiday Special

- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

One of the numerous treats in the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew was the very welcome surprise of seeing the dance troupe from 1978’s The Star Wars Holiday Special make an appearance in Neels home on At-Attin as his twin brothers Jobo and Jorko and sister Tuloo watch the performance on a dejarik table, just like the original dance was shown 46 years ago on Kashyyyk. StarWars.com takes a closer look at the work required to recreate this classic scene and how much Jon Watts and Chris Ford wanted to incorporate the scene.

While Watts and Ford hoped they could simply use the hologram elements from the 1978 original, they quickly discovered that wouldn’t be an option.

“It was shot such a long time ago and the angles were all wrong,” explains Watts. “So we went and got the original wardrobe sketches and rebuilt all of the costumes from scratch.”

“The amazing thing about recreating that moment was how much work it took,” adds Ford.

The costumes, originally created by fashion designer Bob Mackie, were reconstructed down to the finest detail by Skeleton Crew costume designer Louise Mingenbach using reference material found at Skywalker Ranch.

Finally, the music from the original performance needed to be recreated from scratch as well, since no copy of the original recording could be found in a quality high enough or a length long enough. No written records could be located either.

“We couldn’t find a copy of the written score so we had to give it to our composer [Mick Giacchino], who then had to transcribe it, figure out what instruments they were playing, and then re-record that,” explains Watts.

“And then we also did that with a full orchestra,” adds Ford, who found the contrast between Giacchino’s symphonic score and the tinny circus music amusing. “I think the musicians got a kick out of it.”

Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -

One of the numerous treats in the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew was the very welcome surprise of seeing the dance troupe from 1978’s The Star Wars Holiday Special make an appearance in Neels home on At-Attin as his twin brothers Jobo and Jorko and sister Tuloo watch the performance on a dejarik table, just like the original dance was shown 46 years ago on Kashyyyk. StarWars.com takes a closer look at the work required to recreate this classic scene and how much Jon Watts and Chris Ford wanted to incorporate the scene.

While Watts and Ford hoped they could simply use the hologram elements from the 1978 original, they quickly discovered that wouldn’t be an option.

“It was shot such a long time ago and the angles were all wrong,” explains Watts. “So we went and got the original wardrobe sketches and rebuilt all of the costumes from scratch.”

“The amazing thing about recreating that moment was how much work it took,” adds Ford.

The costumes, originally created by fashion designer Bob Mackie, were reconstructed down to the finest detail by Skeleton Crew costume designer Louise Mingenbach using reference material found at Skywalker Ranch.

Finally, the music from the original performance needed to be recreated from scratch as well, since no copy of the original recording could be found in a quality high enough or a length long enough. No written records could be located either.

“We couldn’t find a copy of the written score so we had to give it to our composer [Mick Giacchino], who then had to transcribe it, figure out what instruments they were playing, and then re-record that,” explains Watts.

“And then we also did that with a full orchestra,” adds Ford, who found the contrast between Giacchino’s symphonic score and the tinny circus music amusing. “I think the musicians got a kick out of it.”

Mark Newbold
Mark Newbold
Exploring the galaxy since 1978, Mark wrote his first fan fiction in 1981 and been a presence online since his first webpage Fanta War in 1996. He's contributed to Star Wars Insider (since '06) and Starburst Magazine (since '16) as well as ILM.com, SkywalkerSound.com, StarWars.com, Star Wars Encyclopedia, Build The Millennium Falcon, Geeky Monkey, TV Film Memorabilia, Model and Collectors Mart, Star Trek magazine and StarTrek.com. He is a four-time Star Wars Celebration Stage host, the only podcaster to have appeared on every Celebration podcast stage since the stage began in 2015, the Daily Content Manager of Fantha Tracks and the co-host of Making Tracks, Canon Fodder and Start Your Engines on Fantha Tracks Radio.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
Close Popup
Privacy Settings saved!
Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

Technical Cookies
In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

Google Adsense
We use Google AdSense to show online advertisements on our website.
  • _tlc
  • _tli
  • _tlp
  • _tlv
  • DSID
  • id
  • IDE

One Signal
For performance reasons we use OneSignal as a notification service.  This saves a number of cookies in order to apply notifcation services on a per-client basis. These cookies are strictly necessary for OneSignal's notification features.  It is essential to the service that these are not turned off.
  • _OneSignal_session
  • __cfduid
  • _ga
  • _gid

Affiliate Links
Fantha Tracks is reader-supported.  When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Media Net
We use Media Net to show online advertisements on our website.
  • SESS#

Decline all Services
Save
Accept all Services
Mastodon