TV REVIEW: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+, 2024)
It’s very easy to come down on the Star Wars fandom, as many of its members take what’s created for granted. Some of their complaints have merit but most of them come off as petulant children who believe they know best; forever clamoring to be heroes of the Star Wars franchise by “fixing” its creative output. It would take a truly great TV show set in the Star Wars universe for them to back off. I just finished watching a few episodes of the Disney+ series “Skeleton Crew” and I think this may be the one.
The Premise: Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Encanto [2021]), a human boy living on the planet At Attin — a world that closely resembles American Suburbia transplanted to the galaxy far, far away — dreams of adventure and Jedi lightsaber duels. So does his friend Neel (voiced by Robert Timothy Smith, Dear Santa [2024]), a blue-skinned Mykkian boy, but the closest they'll ever get to the stress of adventure is passing tests at school. That changes the day these two boys meet the human Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong, The Tomorrow War [2021], Firestarter [2022]) and the human cyborg KB (Kyriana Kratter), two girls living on the edge. The four of them find a crashed spaceship, and through a collection of mishaps end up accidentally leaving their home world when the ship — the Onyx Cinder — reactivates and immediately goes into hyperdrive without a plotted hyperspace jump point and strands them in deep space.
With help from the droid SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead [2004], “Into the Badlands” [TV-AMC]), they find themselves at a asteroid-based spaceport home to deadly pirates and escape with their lives thanks to the imprisoned human Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law, GATTACA [1997], Alfie [2004]) whom they believe is a Jedi. And just like that, the children are on a real adventure to get back home…or so it seems.
The Show: So much has gone into making this show a wonderful callback to the 80’s films produced by Amblin Entertainment, where movie worlds were full of wonder and child protagonists were in everything. The energy in this show can be found in films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Gremlins, Back to the Future, and most notably The Goonies. The texture of the setting moves from smooth and controlled to rough and chaotic so fast, and you’ll love it. Watching the child actors do their thing was great, as they do things anyone watching would probably do as a child … especially if they remember being a boy. It goes without saying that most of the shenanigans happen due to boys being impatient; I remember those days but never did I have an adventure the likes of which these children will experience.
There are other elements of the show I treasure as an adult: watching the parents and learning more about the children through them, the slow drip of intrigue and mystery, and the significant lack of Jedi foolishness. Yes, I am aware the trappings of the “Skywalker Saga” show up later in the series but nothing so acute as the Millennium Falcon in a flyby shows up in the early episodes— because “Skeleton Crew” is set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens to leave the Jedi as a wish but not a story focus. For that, I am grateful and look forward to seeing the remainder of the series.
The Verdict: You can bet I’ll come back to the completed series and finish up — I just finished episode 6 and I am still pleased with what I saw. The last two episodes should be a blast!
