‘Skeleton Crew’ Episode 2 Recap: O Captain, My Captain

Aliens, droids, starships, a dangerous spaceport, a Jedi in hiding, and not a lawn in sight. Now that’s more like it! Directed with an eye for both creatures and color by David Lowery, this week’s episode of Skeleton Crew is good harmless Star Wars fun. That’s all I ask! Oh, and it also brings Michael Jackson’s Captain EO firmly into Star Wars continuity, for some reason?

Set far beyond the Barrier that kept the core cast of kids insulated from the galaxy all their lives, episode two is the story of a Star Wars fan who got sucked into Star Wars, pretty much. A great deal of it focuses on just how over his head and out of his element Wim is. Repeatedly and correctly blamed by Fern, KB, and even his buddy Neel for getting them into this mess singlehandedly, he nevertheless continues to try to push buttons when he doesn’t know what they’ll do, take charge when he has no leadership skills, and either whine or stumble his way through every confrontation. This kid does not belong on this adventure. 

Said adventure takes them to Port Borgo, a niftily designed space station with an open maw to which visitors are ferried from their vessels, “parked” in space, by tiny little guys in bubble ships. The gang gets their courtesy of SM-33 (Nick Frost), a hulking, one-eyed pirate droid. (The other eye socket is occupied by a cute little critter.) The droid is preparing to toss Wim out the airlock when Fern perspicaciously claims to have killed and replaced his old captain; now, SM-33 is fanatically devoted to his new “captain,” which comes in handy later.

The main problem facing the kids, now that they have someone capable of operating the ship, is how to get back home. But this is easier said than done, because no one knows where there home is. SM-33 has never heard of it. There’s no sign of it in the ship’s charts. And everyone in Port Borgo, where SM-33 brings them when Fern suggests that maybe someone there will know its location, believes the place is a myth, an El Dorado or a Shangri-La. Every interaction runs basically the same: The hidden planet of eternal treasure? That’s where you kids are from? Go ahead, pull the other one.

Until, that is, Wim starts waving his cash around. His measly few bucks of lunch money turn out to be near-priceless Old Republic credits. At first, the alien tough guys at the greasy spoon where he and Neel go to eat merely try to rip them off, or to thwart one another from doing so. It takes fast action on Wim’s part to escape their clutches. 

But they can’t outrun a gang of pirates for very long. When the thugs corner all four kids, they start wondering if there’s maybe there is an At Attin — if so, the kids are their key to fortune and glory. Fortunately, SM-33 comes to the rescue, mollywhopping the pirates on the kids’ behalf.

Then a familiar face from the premiere takes him out: Brutus, the lupine mutineer from the opening of the first episode. Along with his right-hand cyborg Gunter (Jaleel White), he captures the kids and throws them in his dungeon, hoping to soften them up and get answers out of them. 

It looks like things are hopeless for our heroes. Even back home, it seems likely that Wim’s dad Wendle’s search for him and the other kids will be cut off by the safety droids, who are likely more concerned about covering up the existence of a forbidden starship on At Attin than the welfare of a few kids.

But help comes from a surprising source: the shadows of the kids’ cell in Brutus’s brig. A hooded figure (Jude Law) steps forth and uses the Force to levitate the cell’s key over to them. His only condition for helping them escape is that they take him with them. (No one has a chance to ask why he didn’t escape before if he can use the Force, but I expect Fern will get there sooner rather than later.)

This is rock-solid Star Wars storytelling — nothing groundbreaking, but that’s fine, and nothing insulting to our intelligence, which is good. The establishing shot of the spaceport is inventive and impressive. The cantina’s worth of aliens inside — referred to as “aliens” by both Neel and the human kids, indicating that the multi-species society of At Attin only extends so far — look appropriately tactile and hostile. SM-33 is one of the more amusing droids of recent vintage. Jude Law is a terrific actor and I look forward to seeing him as a rogue Jedi or whatever this character is. That little flying red gerbil with butterfly wings from the old Disney World short film starring Michael Jackson, Captain EO, is in this, which is frankly wild. (Speculation runs rampant that this is, in fact, a Captain EO origin story, which would be extremely wild.)

The weak link is Wim, both as a character and as a screen presence. I don’t think it’s the fault of young actor Ravi Cabot-Conyers that his dialogue is a mix of sub-Spielbergian “wow”s and “whoa”s juxtaposed with completely unearned braggadocio, but the result is an overly broad and frankly annoying character to spend time with. Neel’s dialogue is corny too, but it’s more noticeable when actual human child talks like that than it is when the words are coming from Dumbo Jr., you know?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.