Classics Star Wars: Ewoks (1985-1986) discussion, rewatch, information & analysis thread

No worries. As a web developer, I know that people never look at profiles, for whatever reason (and this is where JKF is wrong).

Meanwhile, while I'm moving furniture around, these guys reviewed all the episodes:
http://www.republicforces.com/archives.htm

 

I loved watching the ewoks anime series! I liked to see the backstories of Kneesa and wicket and all the other ewoks! I did not find out until after I watched it that Logray is banished because he was practicing dark magic! This really suprised me! I liked the story with the guplings and the grass treckers but my favorite stories were the ones with Morag in them with the shadow and sun star stones! The walking Jindas were funny as well! The duloks were pests they were the only thing that in my opinion let the series down but every show has to have villains!

 

Welcome, Archie Brown

*falls off the stairs, bunch of books land on her head*

 

Now that I've watched the first three and number 9 (Sunstar vs Shadowstone) with my nephew - it does seem that the last was the most popular with both of us.

Probably because of the Logray-Morag showdown.

 

Archie Brown Welcome 41 posts already slow down there.

 

Thanks, there's so many pages on here!

 

Ewok Poet haven't forgotten about this! Still would love to discuss Sunstar vs. Shadowstone!

 

I know I liked it. Morag is an excellent villain.

 

Last week I watched a couple of Season 1 episodes that I don't remember having watched before (The Three Lessons & Blue Harvest); I really enjoyed both, perhaps especially the former which was a very good Kneesaa-centric episode. Shortly thereafter I watched Cries Of The Trees (solid episode) just for good measure.

Having watched those episodes might have opened up my eyes a bit for this series again.

 

I watched the first Jindas episode last night - was fun. Later found myself "Starwarsifying" the Pinocchio song "An Actor's Life For Me" by substituting in "Jinda's" for "Actor's" - while the Jindas aren't nasty the way Foulfellow and Stromboli are - Latara's predicament is a little similar.


Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee. A Jinda's life for me!
A high silk hat, and a silver cane.
A watch of gold, with a diamond chain.
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Day a Jinda's life is gay!
It's great to be a celebrity.
A Jinda's life for me!
(break)
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dum. A Jinda's life is fun!
(break)
A Jinda's life for me!
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, a Jinda's life for me!
A waxed moustache and a beaver coat.
A pony cart and a billy goat.
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dum, a Jinda's life is fun!
You wear your hair in a pompadour!
You ride around in a coach with four!
You stop and buy out a candy store!
A Jinda's life for me!
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee. A Jinda's life for me!
With clothes that come from the finest shop,
And lots of peanuts and soda pop.
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Doo. You sleep 'til after two!
It's great to be a celebrity, a Jinda's life for me!

 

Hi! I'm the uploader of the Droids and Ewoks remastered series. I'm glad you and thousands of others are able to see them in high quality. The restorations are the work of the originaltrilogy.com forum, particularly pittrek for Ewoks (PAL) and retartedted (NTSC) and Video Collector (PAL) for Droids. Pittrek and retartedted each put hundreds of hours into the restorations, so they deserve 99.9% of the credit; I simply downloaded and uploaded them for public preservation. Video Collector's PAL Droids set doesn't have as much time put into it because it's a straight analog-to-digital transfer without any restoration work, but he also deserves credit for providing an excellent straight transfer. Droids 1x09 - "Coby and the Starhunters" and Ewoks 1x11 - "The Three Lessons" and 2x09 - "Prow Beaten / Baga's Rival" are broadcast recordings. "Coby" was released on VHS only in Mexico, and the restoration community still have not found a copy. The broadcast copy of "Coby" is of lower quality than the VHS transfers available for the rest of the episodes on the retartedted set (all of which are Japanese NTSC video with audio mostly from UK PAL tapes, except "The Great Heep," which is sourced from PAL video and audio), but is acceptable and has no logos. The quality of the two missing Ewoks episodes is atrocious, however, and they may never have been released in any region, even Mexico (none of these missing episodes are included on the edited DVD sets, either). Hopefully, better broadcast recordings can be found someday, and maybe even television station tape copies obtained - one poster on originaltrilogy, sennaheu, mentioned that in his country (possibly Germany), one can purchase personal copies of TV station's tapes (but nothing came of that). If anyone lives in or knows someone in a country where this is possible (see sennaheu's post I linked), please contact me. Also, Ewoks 2x12a - "Party Ewok"'s audio desynchronized during upload, so I need to reupload it. I forgot my login details for the Thall Joben account, so I'll have to create a new account for the reupload. You can obtain even higher-quality (no YouTube compression) files by asking walkingdork or another originaltrilogy.com member in one of the threads I linked for an invitation to MySpleen, a private tracker for out-of-print vintage video.

 

It seems like all interest in this thread fizzled out (for one thing, I was enjoying Orman Tagge's watch-and-review of the show and I hope he'll pick up where he left off soon).

By the way, here's something I was thinking about the other day: If nothing else, would you guys like to see the Duloks be brought back into canon? I certainly would but think their depiction in the cartoon does feel a bit too cartoony and goofy so a more serious and sinister version of the species would probably be a much better choice (maybe an incarnation akin to the one from that Adventures Of Teebo storybook would be perfect).

 

Never watched Ewoks as a kid, I wasn't even close to being born yet. I did watch it one time when I was 4 in a daycare were they had a TV. I have watched a bit of Droids however.

 

I've been watching them while babysitting - I'm up to The Land of the Gupins.

 

It's my fault, Orman was expecting me to comment on his review and I got side-tracked beyond proportion. But since I have a couple of minutes...I am trying to catch up now, bear with me (no pun intended, hehe).

Funny that you mention that brilliant book! I've been writing an Ewoks fanfic since November, where I am toying with many ideas and many things that were left uncleared. Among those ideas, there are descendants of Ulgo and Vulgarr (I named them Kaalwar and Patrash, respectively) seeking revenge for their fathers' deaths and they're as blood-thirsty as they are in the book.

The further I go, the more I realise how ground-breaking that little book was. My little fan theory is that Joe Johnston might not have liked how his character, who had a huge part in the original ROTJ drafts and was pretty impressive was reduced to bizarre-looking comic relief in the eventual film; and he opted to write such a book, that does not feature *the* face of the Ewoks as we know them. And boy, am I glad that he wrote it, as it introduced Duloks, it gave us a glimpse of not one but two Force-sensitive Ewoks and a bunch of other stuff that was later established in the cartoon.

OK, back to Duloks. *ahem*

I like the idea of both such Duloks and incompetent hacks like Gorneesh and Umwak. The idea of different tribes having different goals is fun. I can imagine that there are Ewok tribes who would kill any intruder without making a decision, Ewok tribes that would not align with the Rebels and so on.

Watch them now and then come and have fun discussing the show with us here.

THERE IS AN OCCULT SCENE IN THAT ONE, WITH SATANIC CHANTS. SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF CHILDREN.

No, seriously.

I'm regularly monitoring a bunch of furry websites, out of sheer fear that somebody might exploit my stories and make some bloody or pornographic furry art; and while I have seen a lot of things I wish I haven't, some of them involving tentacles (), I stumbled upon a very interesting comment by a respected artist in the said communities, about the censorship the Ewoks cartoon was subjected to after season 1 finished airing. I was...baffled, to say the least.

I used to have an article from an animation magazine that discussed what went on.

What happened was The Reverend Donald Wildmon. He and his bible-waving followers went on a massive attack campaign against practically every cartoon on TV, demanding that the shows be sanitized.

A lot of the things they complained about were outright idiotic too. Care-A-Lot from the care bears was deemed a subversive attempt to supplant heaven. Jeanine from real Ghostbusters also went under the axe, as a bad role model for little girls, because she doesn't speak properly. And those triangular glasses? Well, triangles are "angry shapes."

If I remember correctly, some of the complaints against Ewoks included the regular use of Magic, the ewoks "pagan" tree-worshiping and other occultisms. Oh, and the ever-popular Child Endangerment complaint.

Latara's look was changed for season two, because the brown fur and bright, flesh colored lips of her season one design were felt to resemble a racist caricature (blackface). They also had a problem with her swooning over Teebo, because that was lust, and lust doesn't belong in a children's show.

Malani's chasing of wicket also got toned down for season two, with her being redesigned to appear much younger, to prevent any hint of a relationship between them.

The funniest part of the whole thing though was the nudity complaint. In a couple of episodes, the characters take their hoods off - in one instance to go swimming/take a bath in the river (boys and girls, bathing together naked! frolicking naked in the woods! wickedness!)

That's why Kneesaa is sporting a regulation, off-the-rack J.C. Penny's nightgown in several episodes in season two.

Because once the hood comes off, an Ewok is naked.

So, this makes for an interesting discussion topic for, say, this week. I find most of this ridiculous, based on double standards and moral guardian type of stuff. At the same time, when Ewoks aired in my former country, there was no single complaint of any kind and the show was dubbed by Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox actors...so, maybe I don't get the Anglophone (or, better, North American) mindset. Were any of these things offensive to any of you? The only thing I find remotely offensive is how Shodu basically turns into Mammy Two Shoes with fur in the second season.

 

Interestingly enough, that may have just happened. Duloks are apparently mentioned in the new Ultimate Star Wars book, which is canon. I don't think any details are given as to whether or not they bear any resemblance to the cartoon or storybook versions, though.

 

Interesting. What was said about them in the book?

 

Oddly, TV Tropes suggests that Latara was made "sexier" for Season 2:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/Ewoks

It also mentions that they put a French kiss in Season 2:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/Ewoks

Maybe the artists/writers were as annoyed as you - and decided to see what they could sneak past the Moral Guardians.

 

As far as I know, nothing other than the fact that they exist on Endor (along with Goraxes and other bits of lore). I don't have the book so I'm not 100% certain, however.

 

1. I still owe you a response. It's coming today, I promise.

2. K'vark, you needed some line breaks in that. XD

This is pretty fun.


I might try and come up with an improvement later.

Did you ask him for his opinions on it? I always ask my nieces to tell me how they see it and their views may be extremely different from ours at their age, as well as from the views of current teenagers and youngest adults.

- All five of them were scared of Morag.

- The one born in 2008 is not interested in the cartoon at all, she just sat there, immensely bored.

- The youngest, born in 2010, is impressed by the very same Rock Wizard character who annoyed Orman Tagge and she asked for the scenes featuring him to be replayed numerous times. She also wants to be Kneesaa, I think.

- The oldest two, born in 2005, can't stand Teebo because "he knows everything", but they somehow thought that Wicket and Kneesaa were romantically involved from the start.

- The smartest of the bunch, born in 2009, remembers characters' names by heart and knows every little detail in terms of events, colours, affiliation of specific characters and so on. She is normally the one who remembers everything IRL as well.

Mind telling us where did you see these previews? Just...can't keep up with everything some times and I know you're among the most helpful people on here and err, one of the rare cases where usernames are 100% true.

I wrote the TV tropes article and its subpages, there is no record of anybody else contributing anything to it. And you are reading my mind, as I wonder how much verification I will need to quote that stuff over there. It clearly does have a lot in terms of double standards and I agree with you that it was the creative team's little rebellion; since nothing really outrageous happens in season 1 and in season 2, there's that weird juxtaposition: everything has been dumbed down, yet the stuff they sneaked past the Moral Guardians is far more debatable than anything before that.

For example, there is a moment in Bringing Up Norky where Teebo says: "LARGE HOLES? SUCKING?" and I think it might be a deliberate Easter egg for the said Moral Guardians.

Also, have you seen the Sun King? He appears in The Season Scepter episode and he's an err...surfer-stoner type?! Apparently, his slouchy pattern of speech is OK, while girls chasing boys is lustful and so on.

Ironically enough, one of the things that makes season 2 interesting in its own weird way is the "sexy" voice actress, Sue Murphy. The way she says incredible nonsense is priceless and she is the only good actress out of four lead ones. Denny Delk basically just imitates Jim Henshaw who imitated Warwick Davis, Jeanne Reynolds has nothing on Cree Summer and she sounds like Minnie Mouse and there's no connection, whatsoever, between the voices of Eric Peterson and James M. Cranna.

That kiss that was apparently OK with sensors (or they just threw away their TVs and didn't see that a lustful girl initiated it) is very, very weird (slow the video down and you'll see); but at the same time, nothing compared to the teasing scene in the season opener, The Crystal Cloak, which puts Betty Boop to shame.

 

Gosh, thanks! In this case, though, I deserve no credit whatsoever; I just passed along what I read in this post in the Ultimate Star Wars thread, from someone else who apparently has it. I'm glad Goraxes are recanonized; I've always liked how they provided an explanation for why the Ewoks build their villages in the treetops!

 

Well, then I guess it's time for the corresponding articles on Wookieepedia to be edited and given a canon tab (However, it's too bad the Wisties don't get the recanonization treatment; I think that since they were in both Caravan of Courage and in the cartoon & played a major role both times they kinda deserve it).

 

Although just because they exist does not mean everything we know about them does for all we know in new Canon the fish.

 

Thank you for the link! I was curious about watching these.

Force mages, eh? Similar to TCW's Talzin? Bcs I like magick in Star Wars.

In terms of visual quality, is Ewoks on par with, say, Disney's Gummi Bears?

Did you watch it yet, JKF?

 

Welcome, cwustudent

Gummy Bears were available only as random comics in the local Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck comic books, so I never caught up with them; but basically, yes, for the 1980s and non-restored tapes, the background and details are incredible.

And yes, magick. Unintelligible chants, beastmastery and all that. In the first season, that is. The second season does have some pagan-ish stuff, but most of the magick is Looney Tunes-like slapstick, like in that episode where Bugs Bunny meets Dracula.