Smart choices make Skeleton Crew Ep. 6 stand out.

Savvy and sensitive writing from Myung Joh Wesner and direction from Bryce Dallas Howard deepens the series.

The Short Take:

The plot needle didn’t move very far, but the key character moments made up for that. Love these kids!

[SPOILER ALERT: There will be more spoilers here than a pirate’s booty.]

Image Credit: IGN

The Long Take:

The clear standout scene in this week’s episode was when Wim, with KB’s guidance, makes a new micro-fuse out of junked droid wires and saves her life. And that’s saying a lot considering this episode also includes Jude Law leading a crowd of pirates in a sea shanty sing-along.

The scene is so quiet. There are no explosions, just Wim gently pouring a melted liquid into a improvised mold in the sand. And yet the stakes and the tension ratcheted so high, as if it were the most stressful action film bomb defusing. Bryce Dallas Howard’s direction here did not, however, play to panic. KB remains still and measured and while it’s clear that Wim is nervous about following KB’s instructions correctly, he never yells or freaks out like “I can’t do this!” The combination of the quiet yet palpable tension with the intimacy of the conversation that soon follows makes for a perfect centerpiece for the episode because it plays to character rather than action.

One of the smartest choices this series has made thus far has been ensuring that each kid in our crew gets a quiet moment in which they admit to a vulnerability and/or provide us some kind of insight into how they view the galaxy. In an action adventure series like this, it can be tempting (and, to a certain extent, easy) for creators to skip these less flashy moments in favor of louder action, peppering scripts with scream-filled, fish-out-of-water reactions to the danger characters encounter rather than slowing down to have subtler, more emotional moments.

Skeleton Crew has provided us with at least one of these moments for each of the At-Attin kids now: Neel had his deep conversation with child warrior Hayna about his peaceful ways, Fern let down her tough exterior and shared her self-doubt about being captain with Wim, Wim opened up to Jod about his disillusionment with adventure, and now, in Episode 6, we get KB admitting that she feels pressure to pretend she doesn’t have different needs or limitations as a cybernetic human.

What KB says to Wim not only helps form a bond between them, but immediately deepens her character so she’s not just the token science and tech member of the crew. Her cybernetic features become a point of inner conflict because she feels as though she has to pretend everything is fine and keep up with the adventure, even though her implants have corroded and she nearly experiences a “total system shutdown.” She says,

KB: “Ever since my accident, Fern always assumed I could do anything she could. Like I’m not different.”

Wim: “Okay, that sounds good.”

KB: “But I am different…Anyway, pretending I can run around on a freezing cold moon, through a bunch of steam, climb a cliff, after days without maintenance, that’s just not reality, Fern.

I love here how KB’s final comments double as a conversation with an absent Fern, as if she’s practicing what she might say to her later or has wanted to say in front of her but couldn’t, and as a conversation with herself. It’s about her own denial about “reality” as it is about Fern’s.

This is also an exchange between KB and Wim, though. I see the choice to make this a dialogue rather than a monologue very telling because rather than focusing on the idea that KB can’t keep up, the screenplay presents us with a more nuanced message about ability, especially for young people coming of age. Wim, standing in for those of us (myself included!) who may not have had to spend a lot of time thinking about ways to talk about ability and disability, admits that the idea that Fern treated KB like any other kid sounds like it would be good. That Fern views KB as an equal and isn’t looking down upon her for being cybernetic. This feels like public discourse’s shift from the terms crippled to handicapped to disabled; with each one trying to have less of a negative or derogatory connotation. Society has worked hard to move away from the idea that a disability is a deficit, making the person who has the disability inferior to other people.

But what may be easy to forget in that process is that de-stigmatizing is not the same as pretending the difference does not exist. I think in an attempt to avoid infantilizing the differently abled, there is a risk of overcompensating and inadvertently ignoring how someone who is differently abled has different needs. The parallel plot line with Neel and Fern echoes this idea when Neel says: “I’m sorry, but not everyone can do things the same way you can.” By listening to Neel, Fern learns that mistaking sameness for equality is dangerous. Neel and KB can do the same things as Fern, but not in the same way. And that’s a really powerful message for both kids who feel as though they are treating their friends with respect by ignoring their differences and the kids who need to advocate for themselves and the implications of their differences.

In my own life as a teacher, this question comes up all the time as I try to think about how to accommodate different styles of learning or provide different options for students whose processes and abilities may be different. I’ll admit it’s hard sometimes, because it’s always challenging to step into someone else’s reality. And as someone who has a hard time asking for help, convinced that I have to tough it out alone to go unnoticed or to avoid burdening others, I heavily identified with KB in this episode.

If I’m zooming back out to consider the series as a whole and the season as it’s progressing, the focus on conflict and resolution amongst/between the kids again, seems very wise from a storytelling perspective. The “baby fight” breakup between all of them and subsequent pairing of KB/Wim and Fern/Neel not only provided opportunity for meaningful character development, it also strengthened the trust in the crew, which is arguably more important than ever considering whatever tentative trust they had with Jod completely broke in the previous episode. Ever since the start of the series, when the two pairs of kids tried to call “claimsies” on the Onyx Cinder, it’s been boys v. girls, with Neel aligning Wim and KB backing up Fern. This episode did a lot to form cartilage between all the bones in this skeleton crew.

I’m looking forward to the moment in which Jod reunites with the kids and sees that they have become stronger and more united in his absence.