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Skeleton Crew Season 1, Episode 1 & 2: "This Could Be A Real Adventure" "Way, Way Out Past The Barrier"

DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! IT COULD ACTIVATE THE SPOILERS!

When I first met Josh, we fought with lightsabers.

It was the early 1980s. My family had just moved from Collegeville, Pennsylvania to Maplewood, New Jersey for my father’s job. Kindergarten was about to begin. I was six years old. As our mothers talked on the sidewalk that connected our lawns, Josh declared “I’m Luke Skywalker!” and I said “I’m Darth Vader!” A lifelong friendship begin with the fizzles and pops of invisible laser swords.

We were next door neighbors. We walked to school together. We had sleepovers. We pretended to be in a band as we lip synced to his uncle’s records in his bedroom. We turned the shady patch of trees between our houses into Dagobah. When we got new action figures (Biker Scouts! Ewoks! Dinobots! Destro!) they were immediately added to jumble of imagination and plastic.

We were suburban kids, in a New York City commuter town. It was diverse and affluent, a fantasy of harmony (that would be shattered when I moved to Pennsylvania Dutch country in the sixth grade and discovered how much racism there still was in the United States). My father would walk in a line of Dads to NJ Transit and then walk in a line home at night. Josh’s father, Joe, was a dentist who loved Godzilla movies and the Three Stooges. Everyone but the kids smoked cigarettes. We drank juice boxes and ate white bread sandwiches and mac & cheese. Swanson’s TV dinner. We’d use playgrounds as playsets and run along the the creek, on a jungle adventure. Storm drains were caverns. Winter was Hoth.

It was a time where I had two handheld video games, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, which ran on batteries and used the same technology that powered a digital watch. My Dad brought home a portable computer from his job and it ran on audio-cassettes. We had Atari 2600 in cartridges you had to keep from getting dusty, and Karate Champ at the pizzeria, and constantly running out of quarters.

It was a bike-based life, where dirt bikes were for racing, and transport, and risk. For going to the top of a hill just so you could ride down that same hill so fast that you were bound to get yourself killed. Bikes were speeders and jets and ways to show off. Most of us were not hurt, because really, the worst rarely happens, that’s the thing, most of the time, everything is okay.

So, it was with a lump in my throat that I watched the first episode of Skeleton Crew, as it held a mirror up to who I was when I first met Star Wars. The generous spirit of the show is not only informed by nostalgia for that time, but also the feeling of the stories we were immersed in then: The NeverEnding Story. The Goonies. E.T. It feels like a show about what Star Wars felt like when it first appeared. It’s not about mythology or canon or the sacrifices of being a revolutionary. It’s about being a kid. How wonderful.

Of course, the show has been heavily marketed as nostalgic, so my telling you it’s making me feel nostalgic may not be all that insightful. But reaching for a feeling doesn’t always mean you get to the goal. (I’ve written a lot of plays that I wish were literary classics, but they are somehow not taught in high school classrooms. I’m a fan of valiant efforts as much as total success.) In my view, Skeleton Crew’s first two episodes work both as an homage to an earlier time (I won’t say simpler time, which I’ll get to), and a wonderfully told story without any other context. I don’t think you need to have lived in the 80s to like these characters or be interested in their story. Kids are kids, and space ships are space ships, and longing for adventure did not end in 1984.

But it is hard, now, to create a sense of wonder on screen. There’s a glut of fantasy to see on TV and film. Digital technology can show us almost anything. How can you make people go “wow” at one of the hundreds of starfields? One way is to limit access to that wonder. It’s worked for decades. Luke Skywalker imagines leaving the farm, but feels tied to it. Han Solo wants to fly away from Corellia, but can’t afford to leave, doesn’t have a ship. Anakin Skywalker was born a slave, and he can’t even take his mother with him when he finally leaves Tatooine. Rey sleeps in the remnants of a war, wearing a Rebel helmet, thinking about where else she could be. When they finally get away (Rey: “I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.”) their response to what we’ve seen before makes us marvel at it anew.

In Skeleton Crew, this principle is understood. Wim is our dreamer, imagining far off places as he gazes at his StoryPad (Star Wars has iPads, just like us) instead of at the sky. Because his sky is some kind of barrier. Whatever is beyond the sky? Is hidden from him. Otherwise, his life at home seems very comfortable (excepting his absent mother and overworked father). At Attin, his home planet, is not a backwater or a junkyard. If Coruscant is a One Big City, this one is One Big Suburb. It looks like a perfectly nice place to live. A very Reagan-era fantasy.

But just like the romanticized affluence of the Reagan era, there is a subtle fascistic undercurrent. The Reagan era was a time of patriotic jingoism, an arms race, the beginnings of the War on Drugs, and an abiding fear of nuclear annihilation. At Attin looks idyllic (just look at the romantic reverie it sparked in me) but it is also not what it seems.

That’s one of the most exciting and surprising pieces of Skeleton Crew’s puzzle. The kids’ home planet isn’t just hard for them to find, it’s hard for anyone to find. Why do they use Old Republic credits? Why isn’t anyone allowed to leave the planet? Why is this society seemingly based on dull jobs determined for you by a test? (I imagine any child watching Skeleton Crew’s first episode will recognize the stress of testing.) What is the Great Work? Why does the whole thing seem largely run by authoritative droids? Why haven’t these kids ever seen the stars? And why, when they do go to a Pirate Cove in episode two, does everyone treat them like they’re saying they live on Atlantis?

Honestly, for all the Amblin-ness of Skeleton Crew, the Goonies-inspired pirate themes, it also feels like a puzzle box mystery in the JJ Abrams/Attack on Titan vein. There’s something bigger at play here that is defining this insulated society. What, exactly, is going on?

I can’t wait to find out. To find out about deposed pirate captain Jod (I mean, obviously) and whether or not he can use the Force. To find out more about Neel (protect him at all costs!) and Fern and KB and SM-33. They’re from At Attin, but they’re now in the stars, and it’s a big galaxy out there. Anything could happen. In today’s current Star Wars climate, which is often filling in backstory or painting between the lines, that’s a very exciting feeling. And it’s only just begun!

When I first met Josh, we were single-digits old. Josh is now 48. He works for a major entertainment company, still playing with all the toys. I am, as I write this, a few days from turning 49. Our friendship is over forty years old. It’s older than many of the readers of this newsletter. He has a wife and a daughter and lives in California. He’s a happy person, an enthusiast and an artist. When his father passed away, at the funeral, Josh talked about how, as difficult as his father was, they shared a love of pop culture. (Which maybe we should just call culture, you know?) It connected them. It connects us. Across the states, and the years, and the stars.

We have not lived in the same state since we were twelve. We see each other when we can. But this morning, after watching the show? Josh texted me:

“Jedi 2 to Jedi 1 - do you read me? Over.”

I read you, buddy.

Let’s go on this adventure together!