^ Got.
Today’s work has been a bit of a bust, unfortunately. I was working on the capture of Nute Gunray arc.
If you remember, it has three episodes:
- One of the worst episodes of the entire show, to be ignored entirely
- Cloak of Darkness, where Ahsoka’s escorting Gunray with Luminara, but Ventress frees him
- Lair of Grievous, where Kit Fisto tracks him to Grievous’ Lair
I’ve gone through Cloak with just a couple of minor tweaks and reorderings just to take out a little bad humour or characterisation, no problem.
But I’ve spent the day trying to make Lair of Grievous work, and frankly, I can’t get it to.
I believe that Lair can’t stand alone, because it’s following the escape of Gunray, but it doesn’t feature any of our main characters. So I wanted to have it be a short capper at the very end of Cloak, if possible.
What it adds, is the reveal that Gunray’s escape contained a bonus contingency where the villains might even be able to draw a Jedi or two into a trap. So I wanted to maintain that if possible. And while doing that, I wanted to take the opportunity to have Grievous become more of a menacing villain. I think Nadar was a boring new character who was ostensibly a knight but felt more childish than early Ahsoka, and since he dies in this episode, he adds no ongoing value to the series, so I wanted to minimise him and make this Fisto’s mission. I cut out the pointless monster, Grievous being damaged and rebuilt, and the goofy medical droid entirely.
So, I had essentially structured it so that Kit Fisto lands, meets Nadar and enters quickly, and then they discover it’s Grievous’ lair straight away (so for the viewer it all now adds to his menace). They reach the chair where they think Gunray is (without any fight or lesson as they advance), and Dooku reveals it’s a trap for them. They press on, while Dooku calls Grievous to tell him that Sidious wants some Jedi deaths. Grievous leaves his control room, knowing Kit and Nadar are watching him, and as Kit enters first I used a quick cut to have him suprise Nadar and shut the door, then kill Nadar very quickly. I then needed a reason why the clones all end up dead (since originally they get picked off one by one), so I used the scene where one tries to call for backup, and intercut it with some shots to have Grievous appear to jump out on them and slaughter them off camera. Kit then calls R6 and leaves the facility in a hurry. Grievous appears, wanting a fight, but instead I had Kit just leap into his starfighter and fly away, then have Dooku be like “not great, Grievous.”
There was no conclusion available, since originally it was just Kit saying to the Jedi Council “Nadar got a bit aggressive there” and Yoda saying “yeah, let’s not turn too much into warriors I guess”. But there was no way of tying it back into the original plot either - or even having them say “Well we never did find Gunray”.
Ultimately, I think it succeeded in making Grievous a bit more badass, though it made Kit Fisto run instead of fighting (which I think was the better move but I can see people objecting to), but ultimately it just didn’t add anything, and it felt like a weird diversion. I don’t think it can stand on its own, so I’m just going to change the ending of Cloak to “Gunray got away, but there’s nothing we can do about it, and at least Ahsoka had some character development.”