The recent Star Wars animated series Star Wars: Rebels which is currently airing on Disney X-D brought another animated series back into my memory: Star Wars Detours, an unreleased American computer-animated comic science fiction television series produced by Lucasfilm Animation in collaboration with Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich.  When asked if the series would have any action in it, Seth Green responded with “No more than the average Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry!” I like that response. Star Wars Detours was announced at Star Wars Celebration VI in summer 2012. In March 2013, Lucasfilm postponed Detours while they reconsidered whether releasing a comedy series prior to the sequels “makes sense”. That September, Green said 39 episodes had been completed, with 62 additional scripts finished.

I should be covering this show on “Peeks” since it hasn’t made it’s debut yet. However, the series was produced prior to Disney’s purchasing LucasFilm in 2012, which postponed Detours’ premiere back until ??? All that we have of Star Wars Detours are previews and trailers which have been floating around on YouTube. Here’s one of them:

Naturally, because Detours was created and produced by Seth Green and Matt Senreich, I got a serious Robot Chicken vibe from watching this, even though this series was CG animated rather than being stop motion animated. It would have been interesting to see just how long this series could have milked the comedic take on Star Wars, especially since Detours was G-rated, unlike the TV-MA rated Robot Chicken. Naturally, upon learning of Detours creation, there came the usual whining and rating by hardcore Star Wars fans that a comedic take on Star Wars “Will ruin my memories of the original!!!!” Uh, no it won’t because that’s not how memories work. The original Star Wars movies aren’t going to disappear just because new ones are being made. The new ones will still be on DVD and on television. You’ll still be able to see them whenever you want to.

“This comedy series ruined my childhood!”

No it hasn’t. If you cease to love the original and it’s now not as special to you just because of a reboot that you don’t have to see anyway, then it can’t have mattered that much to you in the first place.

As for the query of how much sense a Star Wars comedy series before the sequels would have made, I must ask; How much sense did it make for Star Wars: The Clone Wars to have 3 seasons of events between Episodes 2 and 3? And I honestly have no idea when in the franchise’s timeline that Star Wars: Rebels is supposed to take place in. And it’s not like Detours would have been canon anyway. Just because a show is on, that doesn’t mean that you have to watch it.

It’s too bad that Star Wars Detours may never see the light of day now that Disney owns LucasFilm. While nothing that I saw on the trailers made me laugh out loud, I still would welcome a comedic take on the franchise, if it’s funny and well written, but then, I’m not a huge Star Wars fan to begin with, so I’m easy.

May the farce be with you.