Can''''t Say I Remember No At Attin (Skeleton Crew - S01E04) - Live Action

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I can't say I remember no At Attin! SPOILERS.

Home already?

The latest episode of Skeleton Crew is a weird one. So far I would say Skeleton Crew was a fun romp, thoroughly entertaining. But the fourth episode was decidedly odd and sadly, felt like filler material that wastes your time. Filler material is not as much of an issue on a regular tv show with 26 episodes. The decision to have filler in a super short 4 1/2 hour series with only 8 roughly half our episodes is bizarre though.

Post apocalypse!

The thing is, the beginning and end of the episode are pretty interesting, the problem is the 20 minutes inbetween. To quickly summarize it all... in the opening scene the kids and their adult caretaker Jod arrive at a planet that at first glance appears to be At Attin, you can see the gaseous shield and some satellites supporting the barrier. They land... but everything is wrong. Everything is old and destroyed, the houses look exactly the same but after some zombie apocalypse. This is actually pretty interesting! A mystery worth solving. Unfortunately the episode takes a bizarre turn after that.

Just kill me now...

We quickly find out the kids did not land on At Attin, instead the owl-alien's computer spat out the coordinates for one of the other lost planets with a very, very smilar name. And it is therefore one of the destroyed planets. We never really learn what happened, we only see the outcome. There are two primitive clans or tribes on the planet, they are at war. One clan stole space cattle from the other. But before all that for some weird reason the kids insist Jod stays on the ship (why????) while they explore the destroyed buildings, here they are found by a young girl warrior who first threatens them at gunpoint, then takes them to her camp, which is the post apocalyptical version of the high school on At Attin.

Neel gets some character moments in this

Things become even more bizarre when the kids tell their story and ask for any information the clan may have, a "lost sanctum" is mentioned, but they can't go there, because the adult clan chief insists the kids are trained for war and he wants them to go on some bizarre kind of suicide mission where they are supposed to scout the enemy. They get some training with guns, we get a few jokes, Neel shows his pacifist side and tells the girl warrior that if it was him he just offered peace to the other clan, the usual, meanwhile the other clan finds the ship and Jod immediately surrenders and tells them to just go ahead and kill him. There the episode cuts away.

The inner sanctum, the supervisor's tower really

After a few minutes or maybe hours (the whole story unfolds within maybe half a day) of gun training for the kids the clan ventures out to get their stolen space cattle back. Then the adult leader tells them to go ahead and scout but instead of the enemy they meet Jod who arrives with the cattle... a pretty prompt resolution to the whole weird side story. Turns out Jod simply bought the cattle with Wim's pristine Old Republic credits Jod had found while rummaging through the kids' belongings on the ship.

This is not what it looks like

But as a reward for the peaceful resolution it is agreed that the girl warrior leads the kids and Jod to the inner sanctum, which is nothing but a ruined supervisor tower in the middle of the ruined town. Once inside the kids find out that the names and coordinates of all the jewel planets are engraved on pillars, but the coordinates for At Attin have been blasted away and are indecipherable. SM-33 which has been behaving somewhat erratically throughout the episode, is found to have a memory block, it is Fern who realizes this because SM-33's constant muttering of "Can't say I remember no At Attin" reminds her of what she is doing to her nanny bot (i.e. she tells her not to talk about certain things to cover for her shenanigans). So as the "captain" of the ship Fern orders SM-33 to remember it all. And he reveals that yes, he was on that ruined planet before, that he was, with his captain and crew, in the supervisor tower, that the captain killed his crew and told SM-33 to destroy the glyphs with the coordinates and never to talk about any of that... but now that Fern has removed the block SM-33 also remembers that the captain told him to off anyone who tries to lift the block or to find At Attin... and so he goes into attack mode. Neel shows his courage, after a lot of pacifist talk throughout the episode, by distracting SM-33 with a rock to his head. And Jod saves the day when SM-33 attacks Neel by swiftly operating the droid's off switch. Neel faints. We fade to black.

To be blunt, you only need to watch the first 5 and last 5 minutes of this episode. Anything inbetween is inconsequential nonsense that makes little sense. Sure, we get some character moments with Neel and Fern, more so Neel whose character is explored for a bit more, but all you need to know is that Neel wants folks to get along and that Fern is not as self-assured as she seems and has lots of doubts and feels Wim should have been the captain really, she's vulnerable inside. Which is a nice touch, but it does not really make for a good side story. The entire "ok, we found you, kids, now you work for us, and we demand you become child soldiers and do this thing for us which may as well kill you all" was utterly bizarre. Jod's B plot (if you can call it that) was just as bizarre, since we go from "he's captured" to "hard cut" and then Jod arriving with the cattle, because he simply bought the animals from the bad guys???

This episode is a perfect showcase for padding for padding's sake. It becomes apparent that Skeleton Crew really should have been a fun two hour movie, they clearly do not have enough material to justify even a really short (short for a series) 4 1/2 hour runtime with 8 episodes. This approach to shows on Disney+ is really hurting the projects. Disney and Lucasfilm should try to rediscover the art of tv show making.

There is not much else to say really. 80% of the episode was utterly bizarre filler, the other 20% advanced the plot. Now I am not against filler per se of course, stand alone episodes would be nice to have. But the way Skeleton Crew is set up and given how short the series will be and the pretty low episode count having an episode like this makes no sense. At least it should have been interesting filler. Not this "you are now child soldiers" thing the show went for. Who even does that? So this episode was more disappointing than fun, even if it still had fun moments. I am beginning to think that Skeleton Crew may greatly improve by yet another fan edit where someone creates a 2 or 2 1/2 hour version as a proper movie. We are now halfway through the show already, and we had maybe 60 minutes of essential screentime and with the rest just fluff or, as it was the case this week, bizarre side steps. All this episode needed was for the kids to land on the wrong planet, a destroyed jewel, to explore the ruins, trying to figure out what happened, finding the supervisor tower and SM-33's rampage. They should have elaborated on the mystery of the destroyed planet. Not on this weird Lord of the Flies post apocalyptical nonsense. This was really an odd episode!