s01e04 - MALEVOLENCE - Review cut available

My review cut (v1.0) of the Malevolence arc is available. Check the tracker spreadsheet or PM me for access.

Note that the credits music is not quite finalised so excuse the slightly rougher transitions into and out of the episode.

This is quite a radical restructure of the Malevolence arc. Fundamentally it’s the Plo Koon escape pod content and Ahsoka’s rescue from Rising, then the bomber segment from Shadow. The only parts I use from Destroy are scenes of the fleet destroying the Malevolence - there’s no Padmé in this story, and nobody boards the ship. I also cut out the space whales in the nebula - bombers go into shortcut, bombers come out of shortcut. To enhance the emotional stakes and the threat, I’ve pulled the medical station scenes throughout the whole episode, as well as the parts where Grievous is travelling through hyperspace, so the entire episode is much more of a race.

I’ve rearranged absolutely masses of scenes here, to achieve a lot of things. The Malevolence feels more ominous and dangerous, Anakin and Ahsoka act more against the council’s orders (without fully jeopardising the wider mission, but definitely a bit too far along the path of fear of losing someone), the pod killing is more tense as their salvation keeps getting subverted.

The opening crawl establishes that this is not so much a secret weapon, as an extremely deadly one, and that Grievous has been targeting multiple medical stations. Knight of Kalee (and anyone who wishes Grievous were more badass) will be pleased to hear that Grievous is acting far more autonomously and brutally here, and has Dooku’s support rather than being constantly in doubt.

There are a couple of things that I could do with feedback on, but I won’t spoil them - I’d rather see what you guys think without being directed to those elements.