Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Disney +

[pengbuzz]

On 1/12/2025 at 2:21 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Nah, Maul was confirmed (and then shown) to be alive way back in the fourth season of The Clone Wars... about six years before Solo: a Star Wars Story, in an episode that aired ~6 months before Disney acquired LucasFilm.  The reason he's a crime lord in the movie also goes back to pre-Disney Filoni material from the show's fifth season.

Creator's pets in Star Wars seem to be pretty death-proof.

It's why I'm so surprised the crew working on Skeleton Crew have been able to restrain themselves from including f*cking Hondo, who often seemed to be the only space pirate in the galaxy in Filoni's work.  (I kinda see why they didn't, though.  Hondo's really not an intimidating man, he couldn't pull off what Jod is pulling off.)

You mean this guy:

 

Well, we could always substitute him with this guy:

 

[jvmacross]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Not buyin' that argument any more than the last time you tried it.  I see way too many Star Wars costumes on the trick-or-treaters every year to believe for one second that the only people watching Star Wars are adults. 😉 My niece and nephews are about the right age to take an interest too, though ours has always been more of a Star Trek family.

Wow...your views are based on Halloween costume data?  Try harder professor....

I'm pretty sure the majority of those kids you saw were likely wearing OT based costumes or at best Mando or baby Yoda.....I must have passed out over 500 pieces of candy and I could count on one hand the number of kids wearing SW costumes.....so yeah....if basing the argument on whether kids make up any significant portion of SW D+ viewership based on Halloween costumes (LMAO).....I'll go with my "circumstantial" evidence over yours.....

 

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

You mean this guy:

Yep!  That guy.  Thanks to Star Wars: the Clone Wars being the longest Star Wars TV series by an enormous margin and Hondo's status as fan favorite character, he's pretty much THE space pirate in Star Wars.  (Search "Star Wars pirate" in Google and five of the first eight image results are him as are almost all the article results.)  He seems to have been one of the few pre-Disney fan favorites that Disney willingly ran with rather than replacing, alongside Saw Gerrera, Ahsoka Tano, and Cham Syndulla.

In comparison, Jod and his crew seem both a lot more threatening and a lot less competent... but a lot of that is probably just Hondo being from a much less dangerous era and having Creator's Pet level plot armor. 🤣

 

It'll be interesting to see what they do with Jod in the end.  Skeleton Crew's finale is about 24 hours away.

[Duke Togo]

The show was a pleasure from start to finish. 

[jvmacross]

On 1/12/2025 at 10:27 PM, jvmacross said:

.......Incidentally, the same "bloodthirsty" bilge rats have managed to get outsmarted by kids from a suburb far, far away  for the last 7 episodes....and odds are they will somehow manage to cripple Jod's crew without any assistance from the New Republic's 2 X-Wing Squadron!

Correction...last 8 episodes!

....ok....so I guess there's more than 2 X-wings at the disposal of the New Republic....

It's too bad Wim and the entire population of newly enlightened At-Atians will see the downfall of the New Republic soon enough and rise of the First Order....wonder how many of them will be so disillusioned by their generations of betrayal from the Old Republic that they readily enlist with the First Order?....lol

[Duke Togo]

3 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

It's too bad Wim and the entire population of newly enlightened At-Atians will see the downfall of the New Republic soon enough and rise of the First Order

Not for years, and that whole First Order episode lasted about a year. So a blip, really.

[jvmacross]

8 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Not for years, and that whole First Order episode lasted about a year. So a blip, really.

So you are saying the First Order just materialized out of nowhere and wreaked havoc for the New Republic for just one year?

[Duke Togo]

1 minute ago, jvmacross said:

So you are saying the First Order just materialized out of nowhere and wreaked havoc for the New Republic for just one year?

Out of nowhere, no. But they weren't engaged in hostilities with the New Republic until that year. Leia's people were the only ones who took them seriously.

[jvmacross]

The one thing I found interesting was the reveal that the supervisor knew that the Jedi were the enemy....yet was not aware of the New Republic being the successor to the Old Republic?...Why?   I guess the Old Republic's AI Supervisor did not have a contingency plan for such a deviation in its protocol that has apparently counted on the Jedi for "generations"? OR.....Did the Empire-Sith-Imperial Remnants-Acolytes on Exegol know and were using it to fund the hidden Fleet on Exegol?  They never explained how Old Republic credits were valid during g the New Republic....so who knows....

[Duke Togo]

It doesn't matter how they're valid. 🙃 You're thinking too hard about this. 

[jvmacross]

1 minute ago, Duke Togo said:

It doesn't matter how they're valid. 🙃 You're thinking too hard about this. 

Of course it's valid...it's yet another typical SW plothole...

[jvmacross]

10 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Out of nowhere, no. But they weren't engaged in hostilities with the New Republic until that year. Leia's people were the only ones who took them seriously.

I'm by no means a SW expert, but a simple Google search shows they had been a "problem" for the New Republic for apparently a decade or more....

Also, I belive they evolved from the Imperial Remnant...so that alone can be used to argue how long they have been a problem for the New Republic....basically since post destruction of Death Star 2....

[Duke Togo]

3 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

I'm by no means a SW expert, but a simple Google search shows they had been a "problem" for the New Republic for apparently a decade or more....

 

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/First_Order
 

A "problem" does not equal open warfare. And really, none of this has anything to do with Skeleton Crew.

As for the validity of the Republic credits being a plot hole, lol, ok. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, the end is here... with "The Real Good Guys".

Spoiler

Jod manages to spin his implicit threat to the kids into an introduction... and actually uses his real/credited name this time: "Jod Na Nawood".  He then attempts to send the kids to their rooms under safety droid escort.  (It really is impressive how Fern's mom seems to be totally oblivious to the villainous subtext Jod is laying down with a trowel.

Wim is try very hard to rules lawyer his way around the instructions Jod gave the safety droid and warn his father that Jod isn't a real Jedi (or a Republic emissary), and his dad is still so completely intent on Wim's standardized test scores that he misses the message.  Wendle completely dismisses it as "that's what the Supervisor's for".

I really have to hand it to whomever in the art department designed the At Attin safety droids.  They look so generic and unthreatening on their own, but jerky way they move and their croaky voices are lend a genuine air of quiet menace to them when they need it.  Their unblinking security camera stare is genuinely unnerving in its presentation.

Spoiler

... the Supervisor's office looks awfully Palpatine's throne room.  The whole place is dimly lit, shades of dark gunmetal, and the room is dominated by a massive dias on one end.  The room, as Jod notices, is visibly caked in dust.

At Attin's ruler - the Supervisor - is a massive droid.  The thing that looked like a dias is a massive R2-D2-like droid head.  Apparently the planet being controlled by a droid is "decreed by the Great Work".  Pretty much the reveal I expected, given how much of At Attin's public services seem to be run by droids and how nobody ever referred to "the Supervisor" with a name... only ever as "the Supervisor".

We do get a statement that suggests that, while At Attin has been isolated from the greater galaxy for a very long time, it hasn't necessarily been out of contact.

Spoiler

After the entire scene makes it seem like the Supervisor is too old and too droid-y to question Jod's story, he reveals that he knows Jod is lying.  The last communication At Attin had from the Republic was the post-Order 66 official declaration that the Jedi were traitors to the Republic.  This buys Fern enough breathing room to shout that Jod is actually a space pirate looking to rob the place.

The Supervisor sics safety droids with rifles on him, but is taken out almost immediately when Jod stabs it in the eye.  

As bosses go, it seems like the Supervisor was load-bearing...

Spoiler

... because when Jod destroys it, it takes out all of the safety droids everywhere as well as the entire public power grid.

It only takes Jod a minute or two of poking around to locate a control to permanently disable the barrier... and Fern's mother negotiates to prevent its destruction by instead clearing his ship to get through.  Jod's frigate conveniently does a dramatic low pass over Wim's house on its way to the mint and starts barraging the street for no reason.

Wendle really is determined to do literally anything except listen to his kid... including trying to start a car he knows won't start, and leave the problem to the safety droids he knows aren't working.  The kids decide to steal the Onyx Cinder one more time, fly out past the barrier, and call the New Republic for help.

So we get a dramatic hoverbike chase through suburban At Attin as the pirates attack.

They actually make it to the Onyx Cinder almost without issue, only to discover the docking clamps can't be disengaged manually... so they have to go to the Supervisor's tower to reroute power.  Neel, who got separated from the group, goes to activate the turbolaser cannon on the roof of the school.  Wim gets to BS Jod for a bid too, so his dad can sneak in and start restoring power.  They even try to BS Jod that the Jedi aren't all gone, and very nearly get one over on him.

I love that Neel gets a Big Damn Heroes moment after so often being The Load in this series.

Spoiler

The Onyx Cinder takes a hit and goes down, and we get a fake-out that KB died.

After eight episodes of dithering, we finally get the answer to one of the bigger questions... Jod's powers.

Spoiler

Jod is not an Order 66 survivor, but he was essentially adopted and briefly trained in the Force by one who (from his implication) was caught and subequently executed by the Inquisitors.  It seems that being poor as a kid and then losing his mentor is what turned Jod into a misanthrope supreme.  

Wendle gets his second go at a Big Damn Heroes moment himself, attacking and disarming Jod and buying enough time for the barrier to be turned off.

There's an absolutely beautiful effects shot as immediately thereafter... followed by the arrival of the New Republic.

Spoiler

There's also an odd moment where it seems the B-Wings in the New Republic forces have the same anti-capital ship gun that first appeared in Rebels.  

There's another beautifully framed sequence where Jod is left standing alone in the Supervisor's powerless tower, watching his fatally wounded ship burning on its way down as the New Republic forces pick it to pieces... followed by some lovingly rendered CGI carnage as the ship finally descends far enough to clip the landscape, keel over, and slide to a landing in an river.

We also see that KB crashed the Onyx Cinder into the dome at the school, and after a second fakeout turns out to be completely fine.  SM-33 then steals the scene by popping up (still decapitated) to point out this was "one of my better landings".  We get one last effects shot of a blockade runner coming in to land and the series ends.

 

 

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with this ending.  It's not the direction I thought they'd go with the ending, but it works pretty well.  They made pretty good use of all the characters, the story wrapped up in a reasonably satisfying way that offered both closure and enough of an opening that they can continue the story in a second season should they decide to.  A very strong ending, on balance.

The only real problem with the story and/or the ending is the previously-discussed "if you think about it at all" one regarding the value of Old Republic credits.

Spoiler

It's never addressed why Old Republic credits are treated as still having value, when they're the fiat money of a government that ceased to exist many years prior.

If you think about it at all, you realize Jod's prize is technically worthless... the mint hasn't been producing legal tender for dozens, if not hundreds, of years.

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:27 AM by Seto Kaiba

[Mog]

Are there annoying little plot contrivances? Oh yes!

Spoiler

* No redundant systems or backups for the Supervisor? That’s kinda dumb.

* Seriously, turn off the damn lights on your hoverbikes!! Stop giving away your positions!! 🤦🏻‍♂️

BUT it was a fun ride that ended nicely.

A few other comments:

Spoiler

* Jod’s hubris and greed really screwed him over. Should have just taken the credits and left. Come back at regular intervals, and just gaslight the kids when they try to say what really happened (“If I’m really that evil, why would I let the kids go?”)

* Wow, that origin story is worse than I thought. Getting found and taught by a Jedi on the run, saying you have potential, and then watching her get killed. That’ll eff a dude up.

* I don’t think Wim wants to take the Assessment anymore, Dad. 😅 He’s got fighters on the brain now!

* B-Wing blasting the super-blaster and a Blockade Runner for the feels!

[jvmacross]

23 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/First_Order
 

A "problem" does not equal open warfare. And really, none of this has anything to do with Skeleton Crew.

It does because the show had no other purpose in the general scope of SW world-building than to demonstrate that, initially, the New Republic seemed like a good thing...but I guess we are supposed to feel bad about how all eventually went bad and lead straight into the events of TROS....other than that the entire series was pointless....

[jvmacross]

The show's ending was so underwhelming that I must have missed the reveal to the last minute mystery from Ep 7 of what the at-atians get privy to once they graduate.... That they are ruled by a robot overlord?  Also what was the "great work"? Again....if the Supervisor knew the Jedi were enemies of the Republic....how would it not know about everything else that has happened after Order 66? Who was supplying this info to the supervisor?  Was the supervisor aware of the destruction of the other At-Planets? Seems like SW is back to portraying folks that learn about the Force at a later age becoming a-holes without the guidance of a Jedi.....broom boy is screwed...

[Roy Focker]

2 hours ago, jvmacross said:

The show's ending was so underwhelming that I must have missed the reveal to the last minute mystery from Ep 7 of what the at-atians get privy to once they graduate.... That they are ruled by a robot overlord?  Also what was the "great work"? Again....if the Supervisor knew the Jedi were enemies of the Republic....how would it not know about everything else that has happened after Order 66? Who was supplying this info to the supervisor?  Was the supervisor aware of the destruction of the other At-Planets? Seems like SW is back to portraying folks that learn about the Force at a later age becoming a-holes without the guidance of a Jedi.....broom boy is screwed...

You realize this was the Star Wars show specifically aimed at kids more than any other show (excluding the Ewok TV movies). No kids in the real world would be able to save the day like that. Kid centered fiction follows a different set of rules. If this was a show featuring adults as the leads, I'd questioned everything. Since this show is for kid and about kids, I'm judging it by a different standard did they tell a good story? Was I entertained? Did I care about the characters?

To that I say yes. I'd put it up there with Andor. Both are good for different reasons. I'd even say it might even be better than season 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian.

[azrael]

I'll be spoiler-free in this.

It was OK. I think the number of bad Star Wars shows has definitely tempered expectations quite a bit. Entertaining, but after a while some things start to wear out their welcome. The naivety of the children started to annoy me before the halfway point (yes I understand they are children...🙄and the target audience are kids) and started to drown out the show. At the same time, the stereotypical characters, the daydreamer Wim, the tough acting Fern, the know-it-all KB, and the 3rd wheel Neel; they were all getting annoying after a while. Jod's backstory...are we going to see more of these types of characters when we want to add Jedi into the mix?

The ending felt lacking. Like...that's it? Are we expecting a Season 2 to explain what happens or we're just stopping right there?

Overall: C+. 78pts.

[Duke Togo]

3 hours ago, azrael said:

Are we expecting a Season 2 to explain what happens or we're just stopping right there?

The show runners are game to do a second season. No word on whether or not we'll get one.

[TangledThorns]

Half-way through this series. It's a cute pirate adventure in the Star Wars galaxy and imho SM-33 is the best new Star Wars character in a long time. Give whoever created SM-33 a promotion and a raise! It's good that Disney took this kind of risk too, it needs more outside the box thinking for Star Wars.

That being said my young children still have no interest in Star Wars, lol.

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:12 PM by TangledThorns

[jvmacross]

5 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

You realize this was the Star Wars show specifically aimed at kids more than any other show (excluding the Ewok TV movies). No kids in the real world would be able to save the day like that. Kid centered fiction follows a different set of rules. If this was a show featuring adults as the leads, I'd questioned everything. Since this show is for kid and about kids, I'm judging it by a different standard did they tell a good story? Was I entertained? Did I care about the characters?

To that I say yes. I'd put it up there with Andor. Both are good for different reasons. I'd even say it might even be better than season 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian.

Perhaps you just deciphered the code for the only type of SW show that can possibly succeed for D+ SW....a cartoon logic show done in live action.....unfortunately, the "target audience" can't afford to pay the ever increasing D+ subscription fees....the reported streaming viewership numbers point to the fact that the true and most important" target audience"....the ones paying the D+ streaming bills....didn't care for this type of show...apparently there were 20% lower folks watching Skellington Crew than The Acolyte....this is not a good thing....

Maybe this should have just been released as a movie instead to give a nod to it's SW Ewok movies roots that were also made "for the kids".....bottomline is that no one wanted this according to the viewership numbers....so D+ is once again forced back the the proverbial drawing board....

[jvmacross]

11 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

That being my young children still have no interest in Star Wars, lol.

 

Exactly....most "kids" interested in D+ SW haven't been "kids" for decades....lol

[the_foul_fowl]

I liked it! One of the more fun and entertaining shows I’ve watched, especially after the acolyte fiasco. Ended well too, and I liked that the season could stand on its own.

I think this is the first time 

Spoiler

we’ve seen B-wings in live-action beyond ROTJ, great to see the super laser from the animation too

 

[Duke Togo]

Something I felt about Jude Law's character in the final episode:

Spoiler

I got the feeling he was REALLY not prepared to hurt those kids. He was threatening, but it seemed to me that was not a direction he wanted to go.

 

[jvmacross]

6 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Something I felt about Jude Law's character in the final episode:

  Hide contents

I got the feeling he was REALLY not prepared to hurt those kids. He was threatening, but it seemed to me that was not a direction he wanted to go.

 

This shocks you from the main character in what supposedly is a show aimed at kids?....it could not have ended for his character any other way....LOL

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Something I felt about Jude Law's character in the final episode:

  Hide contents

I got the feeling he was REALLY not prepared to hurt those kids. He was threatening, but it seemed to me that was not a direction he wanted to go.

 

Hm... I dunno.  At a few points, it almost feels like the writers are either of two minds about Jod or are facing some executive meddling saying "You can't have him do that in a kids show!".

From the start, Jod was shown to have little in the way of qualms about the act of killing as we see in his ordering the freighter captain spaced and his execution of a defenseless Brutus.  He's clearly willing to terrify the kids into compliance with explicit threats of violence towards their loved ones and he has to be aware that his crew were going to hurt and kill a lot of people when they seized the mint and enslaved the local populace to keep it running.  IMO he comes off as reluctant to hurt the kids because of his own baggage... but prepared to do so if he has to as he's done with everything else.

Maybe it was executive meddling, maybe they were just trying to make sure he didn't cross the line into irredeemable territory in case they get a second season and want to bring him back.

[Mog]

As I sorta mentioned before with Jod:  greed, hubris, and not thinking things completely through.

Kinda fits how he acted throughout this series.

[mechaninac]

 

[Duke Togo]

4 hours ago, mechaninac said:

 

I'm not watching whatever toxic, internet fandom nonsense that is.

[jenius]

Watched it with my son, we thought it was fun. As an adult, I had some qualms but all very minor in the grand scheme. First SW I've watched since Mandalorian. 

[Thom]

51 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

I'm not watching whatever toxic, internet fandom nonsense that is.

Same here! Don't need someone else's rants in any way.

For me, it was a good ending to a good show. Not great, but fun and entertaining, which is the best of the two out of three. The third being making sense, so maybe 2 1/5 out of 3.
 

Spoiler

What the credits are made of doesn't bother me too much. As far as I am concerned they are made from a precious metal and that's it.

Jod's backstory is really sad. Thinking about the poor kid being shown he has potential, only for the person saying that to be killed right in front of him. Sadly, he could have gone two ways, but he ended up going the cheaper/darker path. He talked about 'points of light surrounded by darkness' (not a direct quote) and I would have liked to have one of the kids remark that he should have been fighting for those points of light. The show could have used a few more minutes of dialogue like that to help stretch the time.

Of course, KB wasn't going to die, but when you see your best friend get in a car wreck the normal reaction is to shout.

Felt bad that Onyx Cinder crashed! Hopefully it'll get fixed and be the hero ship if they have a season 2. And SM33 is still the best pirate (droid) even with a detached head!

The supervisors room, the first thing I noticed was the architecture. I felt it had a very Imperial feel to it. Don't know if that was intentional or not.

And I loved seeing the New Republic forces soaring in! It was some great visual effect, from the pirate frigate making its entrance to the B-wing using their super guns and its take-down. Awesome visuals.

Do I think the adults were used a little too much as a crutch? Yes. Wim's dad was definitely too dependent on the droids handling things, which I really can't blame him or anyone of them for. They have been raised with the droids controlling everything, so a hesitation to even recognize that they are not going help is believable. I did feel it though when you see the change come over his face and fist clenching. Guy had had enough! Go Wim's dad!

Overall, very good show. Some niggles, but hardly enough to burn the show to the ground. I do wish it was a bit longer. I felt there was a lot happening, which makes time feel faster, so I wish they had stretched it out a bit more.

If I was to rate this, I would give it a B+.

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 11:51 PM by Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, mechaninac said:

 

Hard pass, I don't need to see some toxic fanboy YouTuber whining about a good series because it doesn't fit their narrow worldview.

It's a fun show to watch, and that's all it needs to be.

[mechaninac]

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Hard pass, I don't need to see some toxic fanboy YouTuber whining about a good series because it doesn't fit their narrow worldview.

It's a fun show to watch, and that's all it needs to be.

You, along with others, are myopically falling for a prejudgment fallacy.  He actually mostly praises the series, calling it competent and entertaining, just as he calls Andor a smartly written and overall worthy entry.  His point is that what came before it, the many failures pumped out by Disney-Lucasfilm is what doomed it, with special emphasis on The Acolyte; so yes, Star Wars, the way it's been mishandled and abused, killed it.

Edited Thursday at 12:53 AM by mechaninac

[Hikuro]

From what I just watched, he spent the majority of the film bashing the fact that it didn't get many views, blames a lot of it on Acolyte which even with that show being canceled people STILL wanna talk about it so......yeah. But also pointed out that he thinks people won't give a rats ass about Star Wars unless it has characters everyone is already familiar with or already has a built in fanbase. Which he isn't wrong, you tend to get more enjoyment seeing characters and actors coming back repraising their roles. But I also like new content. 

And now that I'm finished with Skeleton Crew, I sort of liked it, but I'm a bit disappointed in how it ended which was rather meek. It could have used 1 more episode.