Star Wars: Skeleton Crew 1×04 Review: ‘Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin’

Children get to a certain age and begin to ask, “Why can’t I do the adult stuff? I’m old enough.” This begins just as they hit their teenage years when they think they know everything but really they don’t. This week’s episode ‘I Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin’ showed the kids that maybe they aren’t as grownup as they think they are.

When they reached the coordinates they stole from Kh’ymm last week, they arrived on a similar-looking planet as their home of At Attin, but something was wrong. Everything was destroyed, no one was around, and even the statue of some important leader had been decapitated.

They had landed on At Acchran, one of the seven planets of the Great Works of the Old Republic brought up last week. Like home, the houses, buildings, and even the school look the same. But there were no droids and even the home that looked like Neel’s family was in disrepair.

What they had come across was this planet’s version of The Hatfields and McCoys. A generational battle, where no one was sure why they were even fighting each other.

The kids ran into another group of children on patrol for the Troika Clan. When they took them back to their leader, our kids learned that on At Acchran, children are ‘empowered’ and treated as adults, something Wim and Fern both secretly want.

“Empowered” seems like a weird word to use when we know that here on Earth children have been conscripted into wars throughout history. But on At Acchran, it is part of their culture.

When our kids are sent off for training to prepare them for the upcoming assault on the Hattans base after they had taken the Troika’s Eopies, Neel begins to voice how scared he really is and all he wants is to go home. Hayna, the Troika leader’s daughter, decides that he needs to see what he will be fighting for.

As she takes him through their camp showing him what they are fighting for, but Neel is the one to ask the important questions.“Have you negotiated with them?” Or, “Why keep attacking them after they attack you?’, he even gave up his meal to a couple of starving kids.

Hayna is taken by Neel, seeing that he is a kind, caring soul and that he doesn’t want to grow up fast right now. So, when he freezes after our kids are forced to be on the front line of the upcoming attack, Hayna stands with him saying it’s easier with friends.

Luckily for the kids and the Troika clan, Jod brought back the stolen Eopies and freed the kids from their military service. As a thank you, the Troika leader allowed them to go to the tower where the coordinates to At Attin are located.

Before we talk about the tower, I want to talk about Hayna having a French accent, which doesn’t get used in Star Wars. From the beginning, an English accent is used for the Empire and later the First Order. The posh language was used as a way to show their importance over the Rebels who used several different types of accents.

I made the joke, “The young GI (Neel) goes to the front and falls in love with a young French girl.” It was definitely a choice the directors, the Daniels, made to convey that exact feeling. Much of WW2 was about kids being drafted into an army and finding out it’s not nearly as cool as they thought it would be.

Once the kids, Jod, and SM-33 get to the top of the tower, which is the Supervisor’s tower back home, they start to find that all the other planet’s coordinates are there, except At Attin. Come to find out, it was SM-33 that was the one that destroyed the pillar that had them when he and his previous captain were there.

In the first episode, Fern used a backdoor trick to erase her home droid memory. This time, she uses the same idea telling SM-33 she is the captain and to override his memory block and tell them where At Attin is. A secondary program from his former captain kicked in and he begins to advance toward Wim, Fern, and KB saying that he is programmed to kill and “pull anyone from lib to lib” if anyone asked about At Attin.

Just as he’s about to reach them, Neel begins to throw rocks at SM-33, showing his newfound courage. He even throws a couple more when SM-33 turns to attack him. But it’s Jod who saves the day, turning off the droid before he does any harm to the kids.

The entire scene in the tower was a slow build of tension. The Daniels, the Oscar winners for directing Everything Everywhere All At Once, even used a snorricam from SM-33’s view showing how much bigger he is than the children.

Some other observations from the episode. When the kids investigate the abandoned home, Wim continues to be Wim by touching things he probably shouldn’t. He even got called out by Fern for doing it. And later, he’s swinging a stick around like a lightsaber, even making the sounds. But it seems that he learned something on At Acchran. When Fern has a breakdown, he’s the one who goes over to console her. She doesn’t want to hear it, at least then from him. But it shows a moment of growth by Wim.

Fern’s breakdown was also refreshing to see. (That sounds bad.) Seeing her tough facade is just that, a facade. She’s been faking it the whole time, and because she’s the one they all have been looking to for leadership, she struggled with the idea that she almost led them into a war and they could have died.

Jod saving the kids was an unexpected turn. When he and SM-33 stepped out of the fog, it was nice to see that his first worry was to save the kids. Especially after their interaction at the beginning of the episode when Fern told him that only kids were allowed on the bridge and he had to stay back with the ship when they went on their adventure.

Now, Speculation Corner!

First: They now have the coordinates to the other planet in The Great Works. I wonder if they are going to try to triangulate their way home using them or if KB is going to try to reprogram SM-33 since he knows where At Attin truly is.

Second: On the subject of KB, with the hanging idea that she has a medical issue, I wonder if the events of the tower and the ‘going to war’ will trigger whatever it is that she has, forcing them to find another planet to find help. Maybe next week.

Third: The parents are going to pull some kind of stunt to either speak to the Supervisor or they are going to try to find a ship to go find the kids themselves. Wendle, Wim’s father, didn’t seem like he was the type of person to wait around.

Four: Either the kids or the parents or both are going to figure out who or what the Supervisor is. My first thought was he is an Oz-like person, getting rich off the backs of the people of At Attin, keeping them set in their ways. But it could be even worse. What if the Supervisor is just the droids fulfilling the directives? And there is no one in the Supervisor’s tower?

Some Easter Eggs. The place the kids hid away from the Hattans was just like their school bus tram back home. The Eopies are always fun to see. The tank the Hattans had looked like a droid tank from The Clone Wars but the soldiers had helmets that were used by the Mud Troopers in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

It is always interesting to see the young learn that the world, this case the galaxy, is bigger than their little suburban neighborhood. Like many my age, I was raised in a suburban area, a latchkey kid, and I thought that the entire world was just like mine. But with age and more importantly, travel, I’ve learned that there is a multitude of different types of people, places, foods, and ideas. Star Wars is for 12-year-olds, as the maker George Lucas has told us. But the lessons being taught in this show are something everyone needs to learn, no matter the age.

Next episode, Tuesday, December 24th, 6 pm PT.

Author: Sean Miley

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary