Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 4 Review

ign.com:

This review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Season 1, Episode 4.

Who said Skeleton Crew was just Star Wars Goonies? Because this episode offers up another beloved reference point, and – for once – it’s not even from the ‘80s. In this, Skeleton Crew’s best episode so far, the show actually goes for something more akin to Doctor Who, complete with a trip to a planet with one central thematic gimmick (two factions, the Troik and the Hattan, are locked in a self-perpetuating, generation-spanning conflict) and even a lesson that the characters can take home (that real strength is sometimes found in kindness and not in fighting).

It helps that the episode centers on the best member of the Skeleton Crew (though that’s apparently a rare opinion): Neel, the elephant boy. The kids of the Crew remain pretty one-note, and while the young actors are all doing their best with what they’re given, there are one or two who could still stand to be given more. Neel gets more in this episode, spending some time with a warrior girl named Hayna who initially takes his reluctance to join his friends in playing around with guns as a snobbish attitude toward weapons that aren’t as big as a bus.

Hayna’s intrigued when she learns that Neel’s actually just nice and doesn’t like fighting, even with his tiny siblings. Learning about him and his homeworld at least plants the idea in Hayna’s head that fighting a meaningless war forever is kind of stupid – a particularly poignant lesson for Neel to impart, considering that, as we learned last week, these kids don’t even know that the Galactic Civil War happened. It took something like eight movies before anyone else in Star Wars questioned whether or not the whole thing was a mistake (and the conclusion that time was “no, it wasn’t”).

This all happens on a planet called At Achrann, which is where the coordinates the crew got last week actually sent them instead of their homeworld of At Attin. At Achrann, it turns out, is