Finally, after all this waiting, Skeleton Crew finally made it to Disney Plus. It promised to be a mashup of Star Wars plus all the Spielbergian and 80’s references we can take, like Goonies, Explorers or E.T., plus some Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean. Neel is the new breakout cute character and everybody else had their Amblin Entertainment roles to play. As I watched these episodes for the first time, I jotted down my first thoughts.
Episode 1 – This Could Be a Real Adventure
• Piracy is a big problem in the galaxy far, far away
• Those tubes that fire out into the ship are awesome!
• I have a feeling the guys in the spacesuits who literally swing in outer space, placing explosives, are the most expendable of the crew
• That alien got shot in the eye and still killed a mess load of people
• Captain Silvio has got to be Jude Law
• All that dialogue is directly from A New Hope
• At-Attin
• WIM. The ultimate Star Wars latchkey kid. Suburbia!
• I love NEEL. “My guts are everywhere!” I also remember fighting with lightsabers at the bus stop
• Whim watching Fern and KB jump over hedges and barriers with the speeder bike is like Chunk from Goonies trying to describe the police chase scene
• The Career Assessment Test determines your ENTIRE future on this planet. Pretty overwhelming for a bunch of kids. However, these kids want to grow up to become accountants and analysts. It’s all they’ve ever known. So far, only Wim and Fern have dreams of something else
• “The Great Work.” That’s out of The High Republic with Starlight Beacon and the Fair!
• From both parents: I’m a very important person with a vague job and it’s very important and I need to be away from my family all the time and you’re lucky I’m here in the first place!
• Neel has a big family and a gigantic bathtub. Cute twins and an elephant St. Paulie Girl
• Fern needs a Power Converter. Where have we heard that one before?
• “Wizard…”
• Holiday Special dancing creatures!
• “Checks out.” Oh, Neel
• Don’t push the button!
• These kids have never seen stars or hyperspace before!
Episode 2 – Way, Way Out Past the Barrier
• SM-33. For Fern, droids are easily fooled
• He never heard of At-Attin! I guess that’s why the shows premise relies on nobody knowing where these kids are from
• “We’re lost.” The way any great 80’s kids adventure starts
• Port Borgo = Tortuga?
• So the assault on the ship in the first episode must have just happened, given the pirate whose eye got shot out is just now having it repaired
• That is one methed-out Teek! I read an interview saying that the Teek was the only real puppet on the set!
• I never saw Captain Eo, but I do recognize some of the puppets
• What, they never seen kids before?
• Old Republic Credits, in mint condition!
• They’re laughing at At-Attin! Lost planet of eternal treasure?
• I love the droid with the tattoos! I would love to see a custom of that!
• Urkel as a cyborg pirate. Did they recognize SM33?
• There’s Jude Law, without the helmet. He has THE FORCE! Why didn’t he get the key ages ago?
Episode 3 – Very Interesting, As an Astrogation Problem
• Are KB’s cybernetics for health reasons?
• JOD NA NAWOOD playing up to kids by pretending to be a Jedi.
• “Silvio escaped!!” Confirmed, Jod is the now-imprisoned Captain, sans helmet
• “The Prince is in danger!” Wonder what that was all about!
• Battle Droid!
• “The Great Work” again. What do they analyze?
• A super cool secret base with an observatory and ancient maps and telescopes. Reminds of the Mr. Universe scene from Joss Whedon’s Serenity movie.
• Crimson Jack is from the old Marvel comics days, a red-headed pirate with a disdain for wearing pants! What a great call back!
• A well-dressed owl with some kind of cybernetics. Seems to have an intellectual connection with KB.
• The kids don’t know about the Civil War, Alderaan or anything from the movies!
• At-Attin was purposefully hidden for their own protection!!
• X-Wings!
• Don’t trust Jod!
Episode 4 – Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin
• Wait, they made it home already? Nope, never mind
• Auto-pilot landing sequence? For a place with no ships?
• Is that a Trade Federation Tank?
• French-sounding kid soldiers
• I love that Wim says “Woah!” everytime the girl soldier does some unnecessary parkour
• That big gun on the building is there for a reason…will Neel use At-Attin’s equivalent gun to defend it from pirates?
• I love his little legs hanging down and expressing how different his life is from the child soldiers
• Jod’s quote: “Just shoot me now” is perfect
• The french leader/Dad sure wants war and get kids killed
• How was Jod able to get the Eopies from “the enemy?” I love how the kids hugged him and he hugged them back.
• Once again, Fern is able to logic out the necessary info from SM-33, despite having a bit of a breakdown earlier
• Jod with the save!
Episode 5 – You Have a Lot to Learn About Pirates
• The Bureaucracy at At-Attin is the same as on Coruscant
• Steal Barrier Access Code – but the kids were able to take off in an ancient ship through the barrier
• I love the hacker-janky looking thing Wendell uses
• Farrah has the same droid skills as her daughter
• We officially find out the name of the ship: The ONYX CINDER and its Captain, Rennod (which is director Richard Donner backwards)
• Skull Ridge Mountain – very piratey
• “What’s a concubine?”
• Jedi teachings: “Your focus determines your reality.” Was Jod a Padawan?
• Skull Ridge Mountain sold out and became Lanupa, the luxury spa planet
• The whole bit with the kids in disguise and Jod drinking and bribing is hilarious
• We get another name for Jod from the bounty hunter Pokkit – Dash Senton (which of course, reminds me of Dash Rendar)
• The Banking Clan is there
• The Hutt in the mud bath. The little attendant (I’m pretty sure his species was also a croupier on Canto Bight) getting grabbed and him saying “no, no please no, not again…” Peak comedy.
• The shots of the spaceship flying through the mountains is a great piece of filmmaking
• The kids are too short for booby traps
• TREASURE!! Reminded me of National Treasure or Smaug’s treasure in The Hobbit
• A High Republic-style Lightsaber!
• Aha! At-Attin was The Old Republic Mint! Makes sense with the Eternal Treasure legend, but why does it still exist now, some 200 years later, in complete secret? They have kids training to be analysts and accountants forever! That’s why I think the mysterious Supervisor is some kind of droid/AI/supercomputer. It just keeps on performing the same tasks over and over again, using different generations.
• Jod turns on the kids, but is not willing to kill them. Curse your sudden and inevitable betrayal! Wim tries to save the day, but doesn’t know how to really use a lightsaber
• I hope that trap door doesn’t go anywhere horrible! Who’s gonna get the Cinder first?
• The end shot, where Jod (who should know how to use a lightsaber) uses the Force to grab the lightsaber from the ground! Epic.
Episode 6 – Zero Friends Again
• Goonies slide!
• Fern really knows KB well!
• X-Wings again!
• KB has the coordinates to At-Attin!
• Junk bugs! At first I thought they were actual metal bugs, but they’re like hermit crabs, putting pieces of junk on them like their shells.
• But they do talk – “friendly.”
• I like the one with the protocol droid leg.
• The scene with Jod and the pirates is very Captain Jack Sparrow and Pirates of the Caribbean. Plus all the pirate politics and rules!
• A Pirate Space Shanty! It won’t be too long before we start seeing this on YouTube!
• Fern helps Neel with climbing with the rope and Wim helps KB by creating a new tubular hard drive for her! I love to see the kids with partners they don’t usually have!
• The bit with Fern and KB hugging and being best friends made my heart swell.
• GAH!! Giant crab with pieces of junk stuck all over it! Once again, waiting for all the toy customizers to jump all over this…
• Typical kid video game quote: “It’s too invincible!!”
• So why put all the junk on the Onyx Cinder? And why have a button that can explode all of the junk off of it? Now it’s a sleeker ship!
• Reminds me of a Nihl ship from the High Republic!
Episode 7 – We’re Gonna Be In So Much Trouble
• Soooo much trouble!
• Another janky homemade communicator
• “I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” They said the thing!
• Did not expect the communicator to float into space!
• Back on the Cinder, they’re playing ball like kids!
• “We’re pirate meat!!”
• Holy cow, Jod straight up killed Brutus! There’s no way he’s a Jedi!
• Republic Emissary! Would the Republic even know about At Attin after all this time? They’re producing and storing a currency that’s not even used anymore!
• Did Jod have his helmet on solely because 33 was going to punch the heck out of him?
• A planet within the planet (illusion).
• Would Jod really share all that treasure with the crew? He’s practically Scrooge McDuck-ing it!
• Woah! Lightsaber head chop off 33! Jod has no lightsaber technique.
• As other reviewers pointed out, Jod had the rage and threatening nature of Anakin performing Order 66.
• Where’s Neel’s huge dad? He was in the hologram with his wife but wasn’t released from work to see what’s going on with his own son?
• Gah! It ended like that?
Episode 8 – The Real Good Guys
• A ‘Surprising end?”
• Who ignites a lightsaber to introduce themselves in a courtly manner? Even the samurai didn’t whip out their swords at every occasion.
• Wim’s Dad still talking about Wim’s freakin’ assessment! Like that even matters anymore!!
• Now the droids are armed!
• Lots of dust in the Supervisor’s control room. I think everybody was correct thinking The Supervisor is a droid…and we were right!
• Voiced by Stephen Fry!
• Fern’s mom knows he’s a droid, doing the same programming for generations/centuries. Do other adults of At-Attin know?
• So the last transmission they received from the Republic was literally the last transmission made by the Republic: Order 66!
• INVASION!
• Neel’s in the bath again!
• YES! This whole section is like an episode of the Goonies or E.T or even Super 8: Hoverbikes (which of course, don’t require any power from the Supervisor)!
• How is it that only our kids know what to do in a situation like this?
• Level 7 Systems Coordinator. Represent.
• Neel shoots the big Chekov’s gun!
• 33 back in action!
• This scene between Jod and parents and kids is so fricking tense!
• Ah, so Jod was just a starving street kid with a little Force talent found by a equally starving Jedi on the run from Order 66. Man, what did the Imperials do to her and a young Jod?
• TENSE!
• Don’t you dare kill KB!
• Best Shot: Wim and Fern with the ignited lightsaber!
• X-Wings! Screw the Jedi, Wim’s becoming an X-Wing pilot!
• I love in the closing credits, we see the stories of Wim’s book, but now the kids are in there too!
Now What?
• Tak Rennod’s face and species still haven’t been established
• Who’s Mayor No-Head?
• Was the New Republic even aware At-Attin even existed? Did that program of Great Works die when the High Republic moved along into just the Old Republic and Empire?
• Jod obviously survived, and with that smirk, he’s moved onto his next plan. I would love to see him in the comics too! Maybe with Doctor Aphra!
• What are they going to do with all those credits?
• I hope we see Jod and the kids again, possibly in Dave Filoni’s movie…
