Right, while letting other tasks do their thing, I’ve taken a closer look at the necessary cuts to the Malevolence arc - our episode four.
The bulk of Ahsoka’s development is in the first episode, the second is OK but slow, and the last is poor.
I had been thinking I’d switch Trench in for Grievous, and there is enough Trench dialogue to replace the key things (he says ‘I’, ‘on’, and ‘cannon’, so you can at least have him fire the Malevolence’s Ion Cannon), but I realised that if you’re keeping the focus on the first episode, it actually makes Grievous more badass rather than less. And Grievous needs to appear tougher.
I realised a way to make the final edited episode have more threat and heart is if we roll episode two’s attacks on the medical station into this one - plus make it multiple stations. So now, in the crawl, we establish that Grievous has a new flagship and has been destroying medical stations - that’s good and villainous but also strategic this early in the war - and no fleet that’s been sent to stop him has come back alive.
We establish that Abregado system (where he does the pod killings) is near to Naboo/Rendellia, and that he’s been spotted there. Plo goes to Abregado, we use some extra dialogue from episode three where he says “The droids are jamming our transmissions”, episode one plays out pretty much in full. After Plo is saved by Ahsoka, we see him and Yularen tell Anakin that he’s now in Rendellia where there’s another station. We cut to Plo and Ahsoka in episode three calling Luminara for support, and she says she’s on her way, as we see the Malevolence bearing down on the medical station, and the Kaminoan working on helping clones escape. But then we immediately cut to the end of episode two where the three Republic cruisers appear near the medical station, and the start of episode three where they do a lot of laser damage. We splice in Grievous getting into his ship, see Obi-Wan shout “Maximum firepower”, cut to laser fire, and simply have the Malevolence explode - we can cut from one of its smaller explosions to some clone admirals cheering. Grievous goes to hyperspace, we wrap up.
All of the wheat, none of the chaff. And Grievous got to be a savage who just got overwhelmed by superior firepower.