Skeleton Crew

Kudos, I guess, to the Star Wars folks for trying something different. And lots of people seem to have enjoyed Skeleton Crew. My take on it is somewhat more ambivalent.

When I see such things (books as well as TV) I tend to wonder who they are intended for. If Skeleton Crew was intended for kids, I think it is probably for quite young kids. Teenagers, even teens the age of the characters in the story, are likely to spend much of the time rolling their eyes and how adult scriptwriters think teenagers behave.

If it is a story intended for parents to watch with their children, some of the parents are going to have a fit when they get to the episode set on a brothel planet.

On the other hand, if the series is intended solely for adults, they may well bail early on because the kids are so annoying. I watched the first episode and hated it. I would not have gone back to it had it not been for the rave reviews the series was getting on social media.

I’m glad I did, though, because Jude Law is magnificent. He’s even more cartoonishly villainous than he is as Yon-Rogg in Captain Marvel. And yet we still end up feeling sorry for the rogue. His character is, of course, based heavily on the character of Long John Silver from Treasure Island, so he has excellent source material to work with. Even so, it is a job very well done.

For those counting the pirate references, the droid, SM-33, is based on Mr. Smee, the boatswain from Peter Pan, though Tak Rennod is more like Captain Flint than Hook. Wim is Jim Hawkins. There are doubtless many more morsels of pirate lore buried in the script if you bother to look for them.

I should note that at times the plot makes no sense whatsoever. But then it is Star Wars, so it doesn’t have to.

One thing the series does do is give further credence to the theory that the quality of a Star Wars product is inversely proportional to the number of Jedi in the story.

Anyway, it was fun. Don’t expect anything more from it.