What if your secret lair was turned into an amusement park?

On this brilliant twist this episode leads us to the best episode of Skeleton Crew yet.

Arriving at the hidden lair of the legendary pirate Tak Rennod, our heroes discover that not only is it properly hidden, the entire location is now an adults only entertainment resort for the kinds of people who think children unfortunately have to exist but shouldn’t be allowed to do so in their presence.

They sneak their way into the resort and then everything kind of falls apart.

What’s great about this show is that they haven’t lost sight of the fact that the four main characters are children with the kind of innocent approach to fun and wonder and novelty that many children are fortunate enough to have.

This decision to writing younger people pays off with bad decisions, inconsistent thinking and the kind of problem solving that gets easily distracted (and honestly I know plenty of adults like this…).

The episode is fully in the Goonies mould – with treasure rooms that can’t be touched, final resting places of legendary captains, pursuing bad guys and plenty of absurd moments that raise a chuckle. This formula of mixing The Goonies with Treasure Island with Peter Pan pays dividends.

We also have a lightsaber and it provides a couple of fantastic moments.

My only criticism of the show is that with four young people none of them are getting enough time on screen to explore who they are and what they’re interested in. We have flashes but they jump around and leave each of them without time to get to know one another, to actually have a chance to be themselves enough that we learn about them. The worst for this is Kyriana Katter’s KB who is given very little to do and, so far, we haven’t really learned anything about her, good or bad. It’s a huge shame because I think we could have lost one of the characters and been better for it. Even better we could have had an extra minute’s run time for each episode focused on who these children actually are and how they relate to one another.

There’s a side quest focussing on the parents that’s tense and interesting but I worry that with the time left to us there’s not enough space here either. We shall see.

Overall this was a great episode and the series is getting stronger as it goes.

Verdict: Does it need to be Star Wars? Up to this point I would have said no but this episode makes a strong case for the Star Wars universe and I think we’re in for exciting times as we head into the final act of the series.

9/10 secret lairs

Stewart Hotston