Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew – Episode 1 Recap & Review

This Could Be A Real Adventure

Episode 1 of Skeleton Crew begins with a look at a bunch of pirates who hop aboard a rival ship, looking to take their plunder from the vault. After ejecting the ship’s captain, they open it up… to find one credit. The others are not happy and immediately turn on their Captain, causing a big fight to break out.

We then cut to take a look at our protagonist, Wim. He’s got his head in the clouds and his father, Wendle, is absent a lot of the time. He drops off lunch money and warns that he’ll be gone for a lot of the week. Wim is a bit of an outsider and hangs with his pal Neel as they head to school.

After discussing what they want to do when they’re older and prepping for an upcoming exam, we cut across to another new character, a kid by the name of Fern. Her bike breaks down and she needs to get a new power converter to take part in the big race with someone called Bonji. She believes she just needs to act tough, but along with this, she’s also amazing at school as she’s the number 1 student too.

In the morning, Wim misses the bus so he gets on a speeder he has stashed in the garage and rides that instead, intending to take a shortcut through the woods. However, as he heads through the trees, the students are already at school, sitting in the exam, despite us having an earlier establishing shot showing how long it takes to get to school?

Anyway, all of this is fodder for Wim to get stuck in a deep ravine, where there appears to be something metallic stuck beneath the vines. Is this a Jedi Temple? Wim is convinced that it is, but he’s distracted when a Safety Droid appears and takes him to school, where Fern is also reprimanded for her antics.

While Wim is on the way of school, instead of studying he speaks to Neel that night and with the tools and a couple of bikes, they head out to the woods.

When they get there, Wim and Neel find themselves confronted by KB and Fern. After a bit of an argument surrounding who’s digging where, they manage to open the vault using KB’s hacking skills. The gang scramble inside, but there’s a problem. Wendle shows up looking for his son. They wind up trapped inside when the door shuts, so they have no choice but to go deeper inside this vault.

KB and Fern get things up and running, as it becomes clear that actually, this isn’t a vault after all. It’s a ship! The four try to scramble out the hatch, but it’s too late. The ship suddenly takes off and they find themselves straight out of orbit and into hyperspace

The Episode Review

So Skeleton Crew is the latest Star Wars series, this time centering on a bunch of kids and very much tailoring content for a young adult crowd. With the four misfits now off on their adventure, admittedly the ride there takes its sweet time to get going. There are some contrivances, including how Wim decided to take a shortcut and just happening to stumble upon this ship that’s somehow been out of commission and not spotted by anybody for years

Furthermore, you get the impression the parents really don’t care much about their kids. Wendle is barely around because he’s working unless the script calls for him to get involved, while Fern’s mum just comes across as completely nonchalant to her daughter’s antics.

Through it all though, the biggest problem here is that this just doesn’t feel like Star Wars. Beyond the little tablets depicting Star Wars content and a few titbits to old series or phrases like Wizard, a suburban world that feels like a futuristic California is not doing this one any favours. It wouldn’t surprise me if the script was written as a standard kids show and then reworked to crowbar Star Wars elements in, rather than a Star Wars universe fit for kids to have an adventure.

However, there’s going to be an audience for this one, especially kids and pre-teens, but whether the show can pick up and deliver a compelling narrative to go alongside that – especially after the disaster of The Acolyte – remains to be seen.