So, more thoughts on the Holocron arc. This episode I think is a good example of why aggregation of episodes isn’t always a net gain, because it’s weirdly paced. It’s a good episode, but there are a lot of variables here to think about, so I’m not settled on my approach yet.
- A few trims for cringe/silliness throughout, and to make the episodes flow better.
- The first episode, Holocron Heist, is well structured and good fun throughout. I might trim a bit of TODO-360’s dialogue where it gets a bit too silly, and I might trim some of the breaking in sequence which isn’t so interesting.
- The second episode, Cargo of Doom, covers LOADS of plot in the opening narration, which is a challenge. I might need to end up cutting there just so I can put in my own intro text alternative, if I can’t find a clean way to bridge them. Smudger had an idea for this I might check in case it makes sense to steal it.
- Also, there’s this weird thing where Bane needs both the Holocron AND the “Kyber Crystal”. Firstly, in the canon now, Kyber crystals are more explicitly lightsaber crystals and/or Death Star laser things, not data storage devices. And secondly, having the Holocron and the Kyber crystal just makes it a bit overcomplicated, especially since Bane gets the crystal offscreen. I’d like to remove all references to that as smoothly as possible.
- The first episode ends on “find master RuPaul who has the Kyber Crystal”, then the second begins on “Bane’s got the Kyber Crystal from RuPaul and is torturing RuPaul to open the combination Holocron/Kyber crystal”, which is too complex. I think I’d rather that they’re just chasing Bane in order to get the Holocron back, which is the only thing with the Children’s names on it.
- The second episode has some good moments, especially a cool zero-G climax and some good scenes with Ahsoka (points in favour), though it’s very slow and action heavy, so even after finding a good transition into it, it would need some heavy trimming.
- The third episode, Children of the Force, really whips by, in contrast to the prior episodes, and a lot of plot happens. You could probably skip Rodia entirely, and just have the visions of the kidnapping be Naboo, and have Anakin and Ahsoka ready to capture Bane there more quickly, before moving onto Bane’s base and then the Mustafar finale.
- I’d trim Sidious’ motives to make them less explicitly about making ‘force spies’ and more implicitly whatever he’s now been seen doing in Rebels and the Mandalorian.
None of this stuff is egregious, though, so if I can’t achieve it all that’s fine.
A breakthrough! I took a look over how Smudger handled these and actually stealing his ideas (thanks Smudger ❤️) gives us the best of both worlds. He merged Hostage Crisis (from the horrible Ziro arc, which I’m discarding) with Holocron Heist, to make the hostage story in the senate building essentially a massive distraction to enable the heist of the Jedi Temple. Using this actually achieves us a whole bunch:
- Firstly, it means I can split this now-quadrilogy down the middle, to have one ~30 minute episode about the heist and then one ~30 minute episode about chasing Bane, without it feeling unbalanced and making the EXTREMELY wobbly pacing a lot more moderate.
- Secondly, that split means we can use the second part’s intro text to deal with the RuPaul issue. (As an aside, I’m certain that there was a planned episode that got cut here. The second episode refers to a lot that happens offscreen with RuPaul, whilst the first ends with an implication that Obi-Wan is going to track Bane on Coruscant.)
- And if a better paced duology that has time to breathe wasn’t enough, we also get not only some good Padmé but also some good Anakin/Padmé scenes, right up front in the show.
- This also lets me produce some trims above what I had originally planned and above what Smudger had achieved, most notably around the removal of the unwelcome ‘Kyber Crystal’.
I don’t know how long it’ll take to execute this two-part edit, but I’m getting started now.
Edit: I’m not sure what to call this two-part episode, but it’s cool because it gets us right to the heart of the Republic (the Senators) and the Jedi (the force-sensitive younglings). So ‘A Strike at the Heart’ or similar might be a thing. Or I could go campy - Holocrons and Hostages, for example. It’s about Sidious directly attacking these fundamental Republic institutions, so maybe there’s something there.