This review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Season 1, Episode 3.
In its third episode, Skeleton Crew settles into what the meat of the show is probably going to look like: The kids follow a lead to get them closer to their homeworld of At Attin, and the adults – their parents and their ship’s newest crew member, played by Jude Law – toss out some breadcrumbs to the larger mysteries. And if this episode in particular is anything to go by, that format might actually work out just fine. It’s easy to imagine a world where Skeleton Crew was a traditional TV show with a 20-episode season, with the kids encountering new wacky characters on a new wacky planet every week until the young actors started to awkwardly age out of their roles.
But enough about the kids (who, as we learn here, somehow don’t even know that the Star Wars happened), the hero of “Very Interesting, As An Astrogration Problem” is the aforementioned Jude Law, who makes a proper debut here as Jod Na Nawood. Or is he disgraced pirate Captain Silvo? Or is he the feared criminal known as Crimson Jack? Whatever his real name is (smart money is on none of those), we definitely know he’s a Jedi… ah, except he never actually told the kids he’s a Jedi, he just let them believe it because he evidently has Force powers.
The mystery of At Attin is driving the plot of Skeleton Crew, and we get some answers in this episode (the planet was a “jewel” of the Old Republic era and has been purposefully erased from all modern space-maps), but the more intriguing questions are the ones surrounding Nawood’s true identity. Skeleton Crew deserves some credit for not treating us like we’re stupid (or, indeed, stupid children), with half of the kids immediately clocking that he’s probably lying about being a Jedi. SM-33 can hardly contain his hatred for this man who seems to believe that a droid’s place is in the kitchen.
The show is opening the door for viewers to realize that it would be silly to just trust that he’s a Jedi, and we already get an apparent confirmation of that by the end of the episode, paired with an elegant sidestep of the question about why he seemingly has Force powers. This is clearly a kid-friendly, kid-centric show, and a series with less confidence in itself and its ostensibly younger viewers would’ve dragged that question out as long as possible.
Establishing that no, he’s probably not a Jedi, leaves you with “Why does he have Force powers?” and “Why does he have three names?”, which are better mysteries. Also, he could still be a Jedi! And that would be a great twist!
As for Law’s performance, he needs to be the one carrying this show since the majority of his co-stars are either children or special effects, and after this one episode he seems to be on the positive side of serviceable. He’s not doing anything particularly interesting, but he is doing his job of acting like a dirtbag/reluctant babysitter as well as he needs to. The kids are entertaining, for the most part, and watching Law play off of them more as the show goes on will be a better test of what he’s bringing to the crew.
Captain Crimson Jod Na Silvo (or whatever) aside, you can’t talk about “Astrogration” without talking about the woman who delivers the title line. Skeleton Crew drags out the reveal of Kh’ymm (guest star Alia Shawkat), but hoo boy is it worth it when you discover that she’s some kind of fun owl-cat wearing a cape. A lot of Star Wars leans on familiarity for its alien designs, with Disney knowing that old fans enjoy seeing the same dozen or so weirdo creatures that were in the Mos Eisley cantina again and again, but Kh’ymm—and her environment, which was obviously designed for a small thing that can fly—suggests that this franchise still has the juice.
Kh’ymm’s design is also a reflection of the wacky sense of humor that Skeleton Crew is embracing, though it could stand to embrace it a little harder (don’t forget that Goonies, Skeleton Crew’s most obvious point of inspiration, had a ton of silly humor alongside its wide-eyed enchantment). The joke of SM-33’s name is still bad, but the running gag of the white rat thing scurrying out of his eyehole in almost every scene and then, crucially, never going back inside (even though it inevitably comes scurrying out again later), is solid. If Skeleton Crew finds room to do that bit maybe 10 more times, it will be genuinely hilarious by the end.
