(Usual caveats about coming back to polish all prior episodes notwithstanding…)
So, I’m now in a good solid run of easy edits, so my output should increase for a while.
The next episode is my s02e02, Duchess of Mandalore. I’m barely editing this episode because it’s great. This is also the first time that we get the return of what I’m presenting (via reordering) as one of our show’s core themes, so this one should serve to say “this anthology show still has a core”. To be honest, I think it really works. Now that it’s not back to back with the prior two Mandalore episodes, watching it solo now feels to me like the show’s committing to having strong connective tissue. It might just me, but I feel like watching this one ‘clicked’ something, reinforcing the prior Mando episode and itself more than if you saw all three episodes as one arc.
Plus, it’s a great episode. We get more Mandos being threatening, our first sight in TCW of Padmé without it being boring, our first sight of Palpatine and Coruscant, including Coruscant’s underworld, and some good politics that’s different to the binary Republic/Separatist conflict and everything that’s happened before. It’s slow paced but still gripping and strong. We also get some scenes set in locations originally designed by Ralph McQuarrie during the production of the Original Trilogy, back when Coruscant was known as ‘Had Abaddon’.
I don’t think I’m going to edit this episode at all, in which case I think it’s appropriate that I only take a ‘Presented by’ credit, because all the work I’ve done begins and ends at the presentation aspects, there’s been no actual fan editing.
You could possibly argue that there’s one slightly silly moment, and that’s that apparently the galactic senate building only has two guards, who can be easily distracted. But you kind of need this, I think, because otherwise it’s not really explained how they got the unedited video file to Padmé. And the tension of Satine turning herself in is quite good, even if it’s immediately undone.
Edit: Scratch that, I’ll preserve the plan to distract them but then just show Satine’s distraction without the Obi-Wan shots, leaving him to implicitly break in in a way that’s cooler in our heads. That counts as an edit!
Shouldn’t take long at all to spin this one up, then it’s on to the Holocron arc.