Personally, while I definitely didn't hate it, I have to say I didn't find the "world at constant war" trope very interesting either, even with the child soldiers. It felt too much like a Star Trek episode because of the "random encounter table" aspect of it, except it works a lot better with ST's overall premise than it did here.
In this ep, other than the discovery of the mystery of At-Achen itself (which was actually cool), nothing happened until the last few minutes that had any bearing on the show's story arc.
And I have to say, there were a few things that really didn't make much sense. Like Heyna apparently considering an new worldview because of Neel. I mean, Neel was his usual pacific, sweetheart self, but other than offer his food to the littler kids, I didn't see anything that made me understand why Heyna was so taken with his kindness. Unless her people are so embittered by conflict that offering your food is unheard of (though neither she nor the two kids acted like Neel's generosity was as astonishing as it should have been, in that case). And I think it could even be argued that Heyna offering food to Neel in the first place was just as generous as Neel's gesture, since he was a stranger who couldn't even fight.
Her dad's interest in immediately using these four kids as canon-fodder made no sense either. Like, these are four children who arrived from another planet and nobody's more than vaguely curious about them? If the Troik are so desperate for more members/soldiers, why waste four of them instead of keeping them out of battle until they can be properly trained? And if he was that certain there would be an ambush, why bother springing it with four kids all liable to run or die instantly instead of an actual trap?
And, as someone else mentioned above, how did Jeb find out about the eopie theft? But even more baffling, what in the galaxy did the Hatten need credits for? They stole the eopies because they were the Troik's source of food and barter via their hides, so who would they be buying anything from? Unless Jeb and SM33 really did murder all the Hatten dudes and hid the bodies and Jeb just lied about buying the eopies?
And, where did Fern ever make the kind of decisions that would either make her thing she was a lousy captain, or give Wim reason to say she was "amazing"? All I can really remember her doing was arguing with him and taking control of SM33. Whatever orders she gave on SW Tortuga were immediately ignored by the boys, and then they followed Jeb's lead to get back to their ship. She did force Jeb to get SM33 and I guess that was in her position as Captain, but there wasn't much else. And on this planet, literally all she did was leave the ship with the others, follow Wim and Neel because they kept running ahead, and get captured. She didn't really make any decisions with the Troik either. So, what decisions did she think she'd done badly, and what did Wim think she'd done all that well?
This ep was also strange because it went too fast and too slow at the same time. I was bored when they were exploring the planet, because it felt like none of the kids cared about either the astonishing similarities between At-Achen and their home planet, or the fact a direct copy of their home had been destroyed at least a century before. After all, did that mean there was a copy of Neel's entire family who were dead? The kids should have been spooked at the least, but none of it seemed to matter to any of them.
If I had written this episode, I would have aced the forever war part and really leaned into the dead planet. I would've had the four kids finding skeletons as they explored and more artifacts left behind, all with the same, eerie similarity to the world they knew. This show has already shown a willingness to go dark and violent, so I would have made it obvious the school was a last place of refuge, where the few survivors died fighting over scraps of food. Rusted robots everywhere, including the barely-functioning rusted hulk of one of the truancy bots, still trying to urge a set of skeletal remains in a uniform to stop lazying around and go to school.
Fern could have her crises because Wim would ask her, what do we do? And she wouldn't know. They can't go back to Owlkitty because they'll be taken by the X-wing guys, but they can't stay here. SM33 points to the tower and says there will be coordinates there, but of course can't tell them why he knows.
Wim finally really gets an inkling that being out in the galaxy might not just be a fun adventure. Hell, maybe he almost dies (again) because he doesn't listen to Fern, and starts figuring out there's a reason an older, wiser kid might be telling him what to do sometimes. The Supervisor's tower stands out even more on the wrecked landscape because someone painted, "PLEASE HELP US" on the dome at the top. But nobody came.
I think that would've been a lot more tragic and hopefully interesting than what we got.
