A Thinker in Space

Reviewing anything Star Wars related is loaded for me. I have very strong opinions, as I have referenced over the years on this blog. Back in the day, I wrote an article called Star Wars: Taking off the Rose Colored Glasses as I came to terms with my initial anger about the first big Star Wars change in my lifetime – the erasure of the old canon, replaced by Disney’s new content. The thesis of that discussion was simple: I had a bit of nostalgia-blindness when it came to the old canon, and I completely understand Disney’s reasoning for rebooting it. While I did state very clearly my frustrations with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which remain true to this day, I also came to grips with the fact that the canon had been irreparably replaced. I had written that article a few months after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and said “it was the first movie I ever loathed”. This remains true to this day, and I will likely be going into my feelings on the sequel trilogy in another article at some point.

I bring this up at the beginning of this review because my feelings on Star Wars tend to deeply color the content I view, and I will likely be bringing up other Star Wars canon throughout this article. But as with any first season review, I will start off surface level, with a Spoiler-Free review, before I dive into the nitty gritty.

Spoiler-Free Review

Watching the trailers for Skeleton Crew left me with very little interest in the series. As it was presented, it felt more like a live-action kids show than it did a Star Wars show. This one could easily have come and gone without me watching it (I still haven’t watched Andor, which I know I would love) because the marketing did not hit for me, and I have trouble caring about Star Wars content lately. However, my brother-in-law watched it and loved it, and wanted to watch it with us. We binged it together, and it was an absolute blast!

The entire show is only 8 episodes, and tells a complete story from beginning to end. The show is sequential rather than episodic, so episodes will often end on if not a cliffhanger than on a “what will happen next??” moment. There is a solid story here with some great characters and performances, and a storyline that is engaging from beginning to end.

This is a worthwhile viewing for anyone who would enjoy Star Wars with the Spielbergian flare of kids getting over their head in crazy situations. It has gotten well-reviewed, and certainly deserves those accolades, as I think it is the best Star Wars show I have watched since The Mandalorian Season 2 (I did not watch Andor though, so that show is not being counted in this comparison). My fear going into this show was that it was going to be full of young adult literature tropes, and while there is some of that, it takes a back seat to some genuinely great writing.

Spoiler-Filled Review

There’s a lot to break down here in the actual review, so I’m going to tackle this like my Cosmere reviews instead of a normal Season-by-Season model, meaning that I will separate the topics I’m covering into categories rather than highlighting particular standout episodes.

The Story

Let’s start with the basics – the plotline itself. The mystery of At Attin is fascinating and well-built – the idea that there is a fully-functional Old Republic mint in the New Republic is an interesting concept and works well, and the secret unravels in a satisfying way. This show introduces a significant number of elements (more on that later) to Star Wars lore, but one of the big ones is that Old Republic credits have significant value in the current economy. Because of this, At Attin is a planet of legend that pirates search for to try and strike it rich.

The kids are introduced at the beginning of this story, stumbling upon a ship and ending up jumping to hyperspace accidentally, losing their homeland in the process. Their journey takes them to a pirate lair, where they “befriend” a force-using pirate captain named Captain Silvo (and a ton of other things), thinking that he is a Jedi.

The Characters

Our four kids are pretty typical tropes for this type of fiction. You have the obnoxious, hyper kid who charges headfirst into danger without thinking (Wim), the galumphy friend who is innocent and sweet but also a bit naïve (Neel), the jerk who wants to be in charge but then doesn’t know what to do with leadership (Fern) and the quiet and serious friend who doesn’t speak up normally but has a big moment (KB). Despite the ease at which these four fall into their archetypes, this is a tried and true dynamic that works for the show. Wim is consistently annoying but does get some growth, Neel keeps his innocence, Fern learns to listen and to truly lead, and KB learns to take initiative and stand up for herself. They are classic YA character arcs, but they are done well.

The highlights here come from the two other characters in the main cast: Jod/Silvo and SM-33. The kids meet Jod in a pirate prison, and he wows them by using the force (Wim is obsessed with Jedi and immediately assumes that Jod is one due to the fact that he has Jedi powers). Jude Law’s performance as this morally questionable pirate-turned-hero? is excellent, and the scenes where the character shows his true colors are satisfying and well-acted. There is a depth to this character, and an opening to explore that depth in future seasons if the great denizens of Disney give this show a chance at a Season 2.

SM-33 was my favorite character from the start – he is a droid that was owned by a dead pirate captain, complete with a pirate accent and adherence to the Pirate’s Code (which apparently exists in Star Wars now). He has some hilarious dialogue and the actors delivery is constantly and consistently on point. They teased killing him more than once during the show and each time I was slightly devastated, as I was super invested in this character from his first few scenes.

Hidden in Plain Sight

The opening twist to this show comes in episode 2 – we see kids living in the Republic, and because of what we knew about this show in its promotional material, we knew it took place in the Mandalorian era – post-Episode VI but before VII. We haven’t really seen normal life in a Star Wars world, so seeing this planet is a bit odd for the viewer. The twist comes when the kids escape, and we realize over the course of their first interactions at the pirate base that they do not, in fact, come from the New Republic – they are a planet that was somehow kept out of the war, and is a part of the Old Republic. This twist works well, and gives us the appropriate sense that the kids are out of place in the world around them.

Kids Over Their Heads

One of my least favorite Young Adult tropes is kids doing dumb things and then getting rewarded for their “heroism” in the form of those dumb things paying off. Someday I might review Peter and the Starcatchers in Books for Young and Old, but the second book in this series is a perfect example of this trope. Kids do things that are objectively wrong, and then are heralded as heroes for their actions. This is the type of trope that frustrates me, and I often walk away from a book, show, or movie using this pattern annoyed and uninterested in watching it again.

I did not feel this way once in this movie. The kids make mistakes, dumb ones. But they are almost always punished for their mistakes in some shape or form. They are over their head, and you can feel it throughout the show. They learn and grow, but are still just kids. None of them are Mary Sues – most of them are constantly making mistakes and being punished for them, or are inept at what they are trying to do. This was an element that surprised me, and I enjoyed about this show. That’s not to say that this trope is never present – Fern does take a risk in trying to take over the ship that pays off, but it is not a driving trope of the story.

Is This Star Wars?

I have talked a lot about what I liked about this show. But I do want to give a balanced overview, and thus need to break down some of the things that I noticed in this show that either struck me as odd or potentially even problematic.  The first thing that hits right away is a question that would bother me way more if I was fully invested in the Star Wars universe right now: Is this even Star Wars? There are a lot of fun things here, but there are also, as I said earlier, a ton of random things introduced in this series, and as with the motorcyclists in Boba Fett, some of them do not really have that Star Wars feel. This isn’t a problem necessarily, but it can take you out of the immersion occasionally, and if you’re trying to build a cohesive universe, introducing elements in this way can be jarring.

Star Wars is a universe with foreign creatures and beings of all shapes and sizes. The worlds tend to be alien and have a particular Star Wars flair. So seeing At Attin, which is modern-day suburbia down to the houses with garages, the lawns that are being mowed by the droids, and an old lady walking her… “dog”, raises this question. If I am completely honest, this show feels like it was drafted as an original story, and then shoehorned into the Star Wars canon. After we leave the Star Wars suburbs, we then get into the more familiar territory of an alien base with lots of random nasty creatures Mos Eisley-style.

That brings me to another piece of the “Is this Star Wars?” question – the pirate lore. Piracy has always been a thing in Star Wars. However, having pirates with classic pirate accents and a “Pirate’s Code”, both of which we have never seen up until this point but seem to have deep history and ubiquity feels a bit odd. It doesn’t quite fit established Star Wars lore. Why would the “legendary pirate Tak Rennod” have a room that looks like a pirate ship on a ship? It was a bit Easter Egg-esque, but added to this whole odd feeling that I was not watching something in the Star Wars universe.

If I was deeply invested in Star Wars as a franchise right now, these things would bother me a lot more. However, nowadays because of the First Order Problem, I have very, very little investment in the franchise. There is so much hit-or-miss content both in the mainline universe and the expanded universe that I just cannot be bothered caring about it, and thus I can let things like this go way easier than I could have before.

Not Sure About That Math

Alongside my previous comment, there is something off about the math here. Tak Rennod is a “legendary pirate captain” that apparently flew the skies for years. Not only that, but the spaceship was completely covered over by full trees, grass, and other assorted things. Skeleton Crew takes place at around 9 ABY, which is 5 years since the fall of the Empire. The New Republic has only existed for 5 years at this point. It has also only been 28 years since the fall of the Old Republic. So when was Tak Rennod legendary? Where did the legend come from? Also, the Old Republic credits have become incredibly valuable in only 28 years after its fall? Has the currency really been purged that effectively? I guess there is a lot that could have happened during the reign of the Empire, but as it was relatively short, it feels like things have been retroactively inserted into the Star Wars canon. Which, again, bothers me less without deep investment into the series.

The First Order Problem

As with all Star Wars Media since 2015, this series suffers from the “First Order Problem”. There were so many poor choices made in this trilogy, and one of the biggest ones was the destruction of the New Republic at the very beginning of Star Wars VII. The infrastructure which apparently was set up by Luke, Leia and Han is completely devastated and wiped out, and the First Order takes over completely.

The fact that every Star Wars show eventually ends here is incredibly frustrating. All of their new content, all of these interesting stories and characters… they all are meaningless, because it results in one of the least satisfying storylines in cinematic history. This cool planet is just starting to blossom at the end of the story? Too bad – it’s probably a gold mine that The First Order is going to absolutely wipe out. This government is just beginning? Who cares, everyone dies anyway. This is why it is so hard to be invested in this universe. I will write a more thorough article on this eventually, but the anti-climax of the sequel trilogy not only completely wrecks the stakes of Episode VI, but of every following show/movie. I know there are quite a few people who would be angry about a retcon, but in order for Star Wars to regain a consistent viewer base, these stories need to have a satisfying ending. And as of now, they do not. The First Order Problem is, unfortunately, pervasive through Star Wars content in the modern era.

Final Thoughts

I know that was a lot of ragging on both this show and Star Wars as a whole, but I don’t want the message to be lost in the weeds – this was a great show. I really enjoyed it, and I will definitely watch it again. It is charming and has a great storyline, and I would love to see it get a Season Two, even though it tells a complete story. It has not gotten the love it deserves, but I hope it is discovered after the fact and gains viewership numbers that convince Disney of its value. More content like this will go a long way towards repairing Disney’s relationship with long-term fans like me, and getting us reinvested in a universe that we used to love.