“Skeleton Crew” is a delight – a “Star Wars” show with a sense of wonder and adventure we haven’t seen in years. It feels like a live-action “Treasure Planet” TV show, with a group of kids in search of a legendary missing planet filled with boundless treasure while on the run from pirates.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the show is its central mystery, which is all about the planet the kids come from: At Attin. This is basically Anytown, USA but in space — a suburban town complete with schools, buses, cul-de-sacs, and probably space malls, too. It was the most jarring thing about the show when trailers and images first started getting released. Why would there be such an obvious ’80s town in “Star Wars?”
Well, it seems that’s the point. “Skeleton Crew” is making it very clear that the plot is all about the mystery of At Attin, with one big question looming over the entire concept of the place: how long has it been hidden? Or, in other words, what does everyone mean when they talk about the Old Republic in relation to At Attin? After all, the fact that the ruling government at the time of “Skeleton Crew” is called the New Republic implies that everyone would call the previous one the Old Republic. But there’s also the Old Republic setting from the “Knights of the Old Republic” games and James Mangold’s upcoming “Dawn Of The Jedi” movie.
Well, we do have an answer … sort of. Inverse asked showrunner Jon Watts about a line in the second episode where a street vendor is presented with some of Wim’s lunch money and exclaims, “Whoa! Where’d you two find an Old Republic credit?” According to Watts, the use of the phrase is very non-specific:
“Most of the time when we’re saying Old Republic, we’re using it in the same way that Obi-Wan uses it in ‘A New Hope’ when he talks about the Old Republic. That just meant he was familiar with part of that Republic, and that Republic continued back thousands and thousands and thousands of years.”
How long has At Attin been lost in Skeleton Crew?
That only answers part of the question, because At Attin seems to not just be old, but strangely out of time. There’s the constant talk about the “Great Work,” and the fact that people from there don’t seem to be aware of anything that’s happened in the galaxy the past 40 years or so. Really, how do you go about summarizing the Clone Wars, the rise of the Empire, Alderaan literally blowing up, and the whole war? Not even Ezra had it that bad. There’s also the small but weird fact that Wim is not only a big Jedi nerd, but he also knows about the Sith (who were all but a legend by the time of the prequels). When it comes to other locations, the kids only seem to know about Coruscant and Alderaan, two of the founding members of the Republic tens of thousands of years before the time of the show.
Even if Jon Watts’ comments are quite vague about where in the tens of thousands of years’ history of the Republic At Attin was lost, we do have a big hint: the constant talk about the planet’s “Great Work.” This is the same term used in to refer to projects commissioned by Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh during the High Republic era. That the entire state of At Attin feels very much like the kind of sick social experiment you’d find in a Vault-Tec Vault in the “Fallout” games only serves to further make the cast that At Attin is a High Republic-era experiment that was forgotten with time.
Even if some fans might be disappointed the planet isn’t a time capsule from tens of thousands of years in the past, it is still rather big that At Attin has been hidden for hundreds of years, with treasure from that time. Sure, Wim wasn’t going around paying with Ancient Greek drachmas — but paying for dinner with a Spanish doubloon is still rather impressive.
