Jod and SM-33 are captured by the pirates and Pokkit…

Episode 6 delivers against my major criticism of the show to this point. Namely it gives us space for the four young people to develop and it gives the most space to Kyriana Katter’s KB. I love it when a show does this – because to my mind what we have here is a narrative that knows when it needs to fill in the gaps, perhaps even structured itself this way to provide this particular element at this point. It fills me with a sense that the people making the show know what they’re doing – it builds trust and earns my commitment.

More than that, this episode undercuts the idea of what and who a main character should be. It does this by giving us KB’s point of view. We see her loneliness in her limits, how they aren’t seen by others and how they shape her experience of the world. KB is never written as less than her friends but we’re privileged to see how her experience cuts at that of the others, how it comes from a different angle. Gone is the supposition that she’s the geeky one (read a clumsy autistic trope in so many of these shows). In its place we have, now, a rounded character who struggles with the world, is absolutely neuro-divergent, is painfully aware of it, lonely and desperate for others to see her not as one of them but as herself.

This sense of KB wanting the others to see her difference and work with it rather than assume it’s not there or regard it as some kind of super power is the meatiest thing in the show so far. It’s presented simply as KB’s experience of the world. There’s no exposition here, just kids doing wonderfully childish things.

The subtext we come back to is the sense that stretches well beyond the Star Wars galaxy that to be a hero you have to be at least able bodied if not actually some kind of exceptionally resilient super powered god.

None of the young people are superheroes, yet in Neel’s commitment to knowing childhood can be about more than survival and competition, KB’s struggle to be at peace with herself, Wim’s desire for meaning and Fern’s desperate attempt to be self-sufficient (because it’s what she sees as the model for adulthood), we see the true battles of the show.

Coming of age here is the great shaper of their decisions, their frictions and, in the end, how they engage with the scurrilous and scandalous adults they’re forced to deal with.

Verdict: Episode 6 was excellent story telling with great direction of young actors. It fit perfectly into Treasure Island’s narrative beats while owning the story for itself. Given where we are the final parts of the show should play out a certain way but given our journey to date I can see Skeleton Crew subverting Long John Silver, Captain Hook and One Eyed Willy for its own story of the lightsaber-wielding Jod Na Nawood.

9/10 homemade capacitors

Stewart Hotston