Episode four of Skeleton Crew was a bit of a weird one if I’m being honest. After finding the map to At Attin in last week’s episode, the crew find themselves on a planet, believing it to be their home world, but discovering a whole different, yet eerily similar, planet instead. But the episode, directed by Everything, Everywhere, All At Once directors The Daniels, makes a critical error in splitting Jod from the kids for most of the episode and introducing a new subplot for the episode.

The episode opens in what feels like the middle of the action, with the crew coming out of hyperspace at what they think is At Attin. But despite looking similar to their home planet, this one is overrun by fauna, derelict buildings, and roaming tribes. Believing this to be home, the kids split from Jod and SM-33 and go exploring, only to be captured by one of these tribes. They insist that the four kids should lead them into their next battle, because, reasons? I’m not sure why they’d want four inexperienced youngsters leading them. Neel is the only one who thinks this is stupid and openly yearns for the peace of his home world, spending his time with one of the other child soldiers named Hayna, who does not understand the concept of not fighting but grows to appreciate Neel’s “weakness” as kindness.

Meanwhile, Jod and 33 are taken by the other tribe, only we get to see none of the interactions they had with their captors. The whole diversion with the tribes did feel pretty pointless, not going to lie, despite it all serving Neel and Fern’s arcs, the former learning to be braver for his friends, the latter realizing that being a pirate captain has consequences that could be costly. But I think splitting the kids from Jod so soon after joining him derailed the tempo and the vibe of the show, resulting in a very choppy and rushed episode that felt like scenes were missing. The short runtime of these episodes didn’t help episode four either, as we had to cram so much into such a short amount of time. I feel like the crew should’ve just found their way to the tower organically, without the tribal conflict and questioned the state of the planet on their own terms, and Neel could’ve learned to face his fears by facing the unknown, as opposed to the detour with the warring tribes.

It did improve towards the end that said, when they said their goodbyes to the tribe and made their way to the supervisor’s tower. It’s here they learned that there are a series of other “At” planets (this one is At Achrann) with their coordinates conveniently carved into the rock columns; all but At Attin’s of course. The reason for that is revealed that SM-33 destroyed the coordinates on instructions of his former captain last time he was here, in order to keep the apparent treasure safe. 33 was then ordered to forget everything about the planet, which resulted in his constant comment about never having heard of the planet (and thus the name of this episode). Fern, realizing that he was instructed to say that, told him to override that command by using her authority as Captain, which worked. That, in turn, triggered his “kill everyone around him” mode (limb from limb!) in a pretty intense sequence, with the camera strapped to the puppet, only for Jod to trigger the failsafe button on his back.

There are many questions in this episode, such as when did SM-33 come here last, who his captain was, and why are there a series of duplicate planets in this system, and thankfully those questions save the episode and push the overall mystery along. Couple that with the time spent with Neel and the episode wasn’t bad. But it did feel like a rather choppy detour that lost a lot of its Amblin-inspired charm and was my least favourite of the season to date.