Was not expecting to have such personal cyborg feelings this week…
Recap
The kids fall through the trap door in Rennod’s treasure room, down a tube, and out onto land. KB is unresponsive and Fern explains that sometimes her augmentations go bad and she isn’t able to move. She resets KB’s occipital link to aid the problem, insisting to the others that everything will be fine. Meanwhile, Jod emerges from the treasure room to find the hotel staff… and the rest of the pirate crew. They capture him to take him back to Brutus for judgement. Jod tries to get 33 to attack, but they shoot him, shorting the droid out. A crew of X-wings show up, so the pirates load Jod and 33 onto their ship and make a run for it. The kids see the action from afar and try to attract their attention, but can’t manage it.
KB has the coordinates to get them home, so Fern decides that they need to get back to the ship, and that their best option is climbing up the side of a nearby cliff to the landing platform. She wants KB to back her on the plan, but KB wants to consider other options and is angry with Fern for assuming that they can’t find another way and never discussing anything with her. Crab-like creatures with shells made of mechanized trash approach, and Wim thinks they should follow them to find more locals and get help. KB agrees, so Fern decides that they’ll split up—KB and Wim can follow the trash crabs, and Fern and Neel will scale the cliff.
Brutus declares Jod guilty and sentences him to death by airlock. Chaelt (Dale Soules) demands that they follow the pirate code, requiring Jod get the Right of Last Appeal and equal time to plead his case. Jod gets the pirates into a frenzy by praying on their desire to have an easier life and telling them that he knows that way to At Attin, showing them one of the Old Republic credits. Brutus decides that they’ll head to the planet, and if Jod is lying, he goes out the airlock anyway.
Wim asks KB if she really thought his idea was any good, or if she was just mad at Fern. As they continue on, Wim realizes that KB is sitting in the ground and unable to move. She asks him to collect parts from the trash around them. Fern and Neel are also having trouble scaling the cliff because Neel has shorter legs than Fern—he points out that not everyone can do the things she can. KB instructs Wim on how to unwind wires from servos to get a source of metal. Wim asks why KB didn’t tell Fern about this, and KB tells him hat since her accident, Fern has always treated her like they could do all the same things. Wim thinks that sounds nice, but KB points out that she is different now. Wim still doesn’t know why she wouldn’t tell Fern, but KB insists that Fern doesn’t have the patience for that, and then KB would have “zero friends again.” Wim tells her that she’d have him and Neel. They take out an important piece from KB’s augs and use it to create a mold and replace the part using melted wire.
KB almost hits total system shutdown, but they make the switch in time. She tells Wim that he has actually saved someone’s life, as he always wanted to and tells him “Thanks, Jedi.” They continue onward. Fern has meanwhile created a rope system that allows her to help Neel up the side of the cliff. They see programmed disposal units going for the Onyx Cinder and Fern gets an idea. The trash crabs brings Wim and KB to a much bigger crab that clearly means to eat them. They try to get in touch with Fern and Neel, who are driving the disposal unit that are carrying their ship. They pick up KB and Wim, but crash nevertheless. Fern apologizes to them for leaving them, and to KB for not listening to her.
The best friends hug, but the reunion is cut short as they find that the Cinder is about to be eaten by a gigantic mobile trash compactor. The rush into the ship and start powering up systems; KB know knows how to handle the engines, Neel and Fern can pilot together, a Wim heads to the gun turret to try and shoot the compactor off them. The trash compactor has a good hold on the ship, and they’re losing the Onyx Cinder. Fern remembers the emergency hull demolition sequencer. The kids remind Fern that SM-33 said never to touch it, but Fern makes the call and hits the button. The hull explodes off the Cinder revealing a sleeker ship beneath the main hull and the kids fly away.
Commentary
Did… did they just manage to make a shorter-length episode that was good? Because it was almost entirely character development? Sure, the topics at hand were addressed pretty simply, but this is a show intended for families and kids, so I’m not mad about the execution.
After intimating that KB’s disabilities were far more impactful than we were being shown, this episode finally addresses the issue with an impressive amount of sensitivity and realism—even accounting for the extremely high-tech nature of her medical assistance. It’s an aspect of Star Wars that I appreciate a great deal when handling the subject of bodily modification; in The Book of Boba Fett we see that modification can be voluntary with an eye toward enhancements. But plenty of people who get these augmentations are doing it because they need them to live, and that gives them a very different relationship to the technology. And that’s important because it’s much closer to how medical advancements work for people with disabilities here and now. (I’m one of those folks—I have a medical device implanted in my body to keep it working properly. And it’s, uh, weird.)
The fact that KB has such impressive technical expertise means that she likely knows exactly how her augmentations are keeping her alive, which is frankly horrifying for a kid her age. So these repairs have been a while coming, but it’s also not surprising that she was trying to avoid the subject. And having this experience allows the kids to grow closer in new ways, but it also allows KB to voice something that’s clearly been bothering her since well before the series began—in trying to prevent her friend from feeling different, Fern has been ignoring KB’s disabilities.
It’s a great little microcosm of an argument that disability activists are constantly making today: People with disabilities don’t need you to treat them like they’re not disabled. They need you to consider and accommodate their disabilities in order to properly include them; you can’t have one without the other. While treating a person as though they have no disabilities sounds empowering on its face (as Wim initially believes), handling disabilities in this matter only serves to stigmatize them further. There is nothing wrong with needing accommodations—and the fact that KB’s go untended almost kills her in this situation.
On the other side of this, we have Fern learning that her own competence may be a burden, but it is also a privilege in certain circumstances. She can handle difficulties that the rest of her friends cannot. It’s not a fair scenario—it does mean that Fern is taking on emotional and mental responsibilities that her friends aren’t—but part of being a good friend is listening to others and aiding them where you can. Having to help Neel up the cliff is a great proxy for the trouble Fern is having in her relationship with KB; she has to consider his abilities in order to complete her task.
And this episode also does the job of letting the friendships blossom between the boys and girls. I was a little peeved when the show started because the gender lines between the kids were so strong at the opening, and it drives me batty how often fiction refuses to acknowledge that boys and girls can be friends. But Skeleton Crew seems to be working toward dismantling common tropes from the genres it heralds from by starting from a similar places and letting those issues fan out differently in the telling. The bond forming between KB and Wim was particularly endearing here, and the whole group is a much stronger team by the end of the episode.
Meanwhile, Jod’s busy leading an entire crew of pirates to the kids’ home. I’m still a little aggravated/fuzzy on the concept of At Attin being the place where you create the money and why those credits have such high value comparatively. (Just give us a tiny bit of explanation! A crumb.) But I suppose we might learn a little more once everyone’s back on At Attin.
Wonder what the parents have been up to during all this…
Spanners and Sabers
- Bryce Dallas Howard is really proving herself to be a great director for pieces that require deft emotional work? It’s been interesting to watch her Star Wars directing career showcase that skill.
- I would really like Kona (Sisa Grey) to get her own show, please? Also Chaelt?
- Jod said kriffing! (This is technically the second time we’ve heard it in the show.) I was really hoping that particular curse would make it’s way into the current canon—it’s one of the best curse words devised in the EU, and had so far only appeared in written media.
- Great Batteries Not Included vibes with the trash crabs. Even if they did turn out to be a little menacing.
Comments will be closed until after the holiday.
Next week is our penultimate adventure!
