Just addressing some of the earlier comments too -
idir_hh: I don’t know exactly if I’d call this streamlined, since I’d like to keep as much good content as possible. But I’d hope it’s at least particularly digestible, by measure of each episode being as good as possible.
RogueLeader: Agreed on Tartakovsky’s. It’s great in a different way to TCW, but still very welcome. It’s especially necessary to introduce Ventress and Grievous, and to get Anakin knighted. But it’s also just a whole load of fun, and establishes that anthology feel of the clone wars nice and early. I’ll find its proper chronological placement and where to break or group the episodes, but probably not touch it much beyond that.
Solemn.Philosopher: Thanks for the arc grouping list! It reminds me of one issue I’ll need to consider, that of the Domino Squad episodes. Because they’re an arc, but they are split by other episodes chronologically. I forget exactly how much time is implied to have passed between episodes, but I appreciate it’s more than just back to back. It would make sense to present them together, and very early (since it establishes some clone culture early after their introduction) but if they depend on time passing then that needs solving. Again, I’m brought back to Smudger’s, who used it as an alternative to the baby Hutt arc, but also used the intersplicing of both this and the Christophsis arc to give the sense of time passing to both. I’ll still interrogate all of the episodes involved, but I’ll probably end up favouring opening with Smudger’s - though I may replace what video I can with NumeralJoker’s.
That raises another thought, though. If we’re no longer beholden to the movie format, are some arcs (like Domino Squad, and Maul’s return and ascent) better served as peppered throughout the show than in large arcs? Might making it more episodic make this feel like a more cohesive and developing war, than focusing on specific areas and narrative chunks for so long? Probably mostly not, though I think there may be cases when this is the case. I’ll have to make a judgment call (and ask you all for input) when faced with choices like that, with the top two priorities being episode quality and then show flow.