It could’ve made a great movie. Or a series of YA novels; close your eyes and you can even picture the cover-art circa 1987, thin volumes with authors whose names no one remembers stacked in the discount bin at your local bookstore. As a TV show, though, it struggles to meet the demands of episodic storytelling without losing the necessary pacing and energy a plot like this requires. The result will be familiar to anyone who has watched a streaming show in the last decade: 10 minutes of story stretched out over hours of well-made, eye-catching, but fundamentally empty “content.”
The premise of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is not a new one, but it’s the kind of foundational idea that keeps getting redone: a group of children, yearning for adventure, stumble into an adult world full of mystery and danger, and have to team up with a charismatic scoundrel to find their way back home. Lessons are learned, friendships are made, droids are broken and repaired, and, while it’s too early in the show’s run to be sure, it seems more than likely that everyone will end up safe and sound in the end. For decades now, “Star Wars” fans and detractors alike have insisted on the franchise’s origins as “kid-friendly,” and “Crew” is as kid-friendly as they come, with danger a constant but never exactly threatening presence, and a narrative that goes out of its way to make its youthful ensemble the center of the universe.
At least the episodes are short. But that shortness is an illusion: the three episodes sent to critics (the first two debut Dec. 2) are varying numbers of minutes long, but all three could’ve been easily combined into a single hour without much damage done in terms of plot coherence. The first episode is particularly egregious. After an exciting, if cliche, action setpiece, we switch focus to our young leads as they navigate the challenges of school and home. The actual story doesn’t begin until the end of episode one, and even then, the main adult star of the series, Jude Law, remains absent. Given that the tension between vulnerable children and a desperate, manipulative adult is the best dramatic trick the show has to present us with, it’s frustrating to have to wait so long for it to actually get started.
From left: Jod Na Nawood (played by Jude Law), KB (Kyriana Kratter), Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) in “Skeleton Crew.” Matt Kennedy/Lucasfilm Ltd.
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These are choices that can be defended — one could argue that the time spent on the kids’ home world (a place with secrets of its own) is vital to establishing both their outsider status and the lives they’re trying to get back to, and there are times when a slow-burn is vital to building tension and grounding a fantastical universe. It’s just that none of the information that’s revealed between things actually happening is particularly compelling or surprising, given how rigorously the show is following the template for a standard coming-of-age tale.
There’s a boy, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), who yearns for adventure and wants to be a Jedi. There’s a girl, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), whose cynicism serves as a foil to Wim’s idealism and naivete. Both of them have their own best friends who tag along, and all four performances (Robert Timothy Smith and Kyriana Kratter round out the young cast) are solid and likable. But both Wim and Fern are archetypes at heart, and the extra time spent watching them fail tests and disappoint their parents adds nothing that wasn’t immediately obvious the first time they appeared onscreen.
It may seem like a petty complaint, but this maximal approach to storytelling, the competently-made but clearly unnecessary scenes that exist simply to reinforce what the audience knew 20 minutes ago, more or less kills the fantasy adventure that is at the heart of great “Star Wars” stories. “A New Hope,” with its clunky dialogue and awkward performances, hit as hard as it did in part because of its speed, the story moving swiftly down an increasingly greased rail starting on Tatooine and ending with the Death Star trench run. It’s something George Lucas himself forgot in deciding to make the “Special Editions” of the original trilogy, and the lapses in “Skeleton Crew,” while never outright embarrassing, seem to be operating under the same assumption: more is always better.
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There is potential here. The show looks good, and it’s always fun to see Jude Law playing a rogue. (Kerry Condon is also a welcome presence, although she’s stuck in the “worried adults” portion of the show.) There are some plot ideas that could pay off in interesting ways, and while Jedi are, as always, a reference point, there’s a refreshing lack of Skywalkers or overt references to anything else from the films outside the setting. But all of these assets are buried under one problem: this is a premise that doesn’t know how to be a TV show yet.
STAR WARS: SKELETON CREW
Starring: Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Robert Timothy Smith, Kyriana Kratter, Jude Law, Kerry Condon
On: Disney+