A change of presentation
So, as I’ve been producing these episodes, in my mind I’d been working towards eight ‘production seasons’ of about six episodes each. That was always fairly arbitrary - it really came about because I wanted to draw the Mauldalore plotline out throughout the show in order to have it behave like a bit more of a coherent spine and to build anticipation towards that awesome finale. And just because of the maths of that, keeping the Mauldalore episodes on a relatively regular cadence gave me eight blocks of six.
I never intended to actually have the final output of the show be eight seasons of six episodes, and I never thought that season breaks were particularly important, but I thought I’d work that out as I went along, based on my feelings and on your feedback.
Now, TCW in its original form never really had season premieres or finales. At least not in the traditional sense of episodes which re-establish the character and world to open a season, and episodes which bring the plotlines together and punctuate character arcs to end a season. Its production codes don’t even align to its release numbering. What TCW did sometimes do was shift episodes of interest toward the start or end of a release season, but this was clearly more of an afterthought than a forethought.
That said, that shuffling can give us some indication of arcs that they considered worthy of bring premieres or finales - Boba Fett, Mon Cala, Return of Maul, Maul Piracy, Ahsoka’s Fall, Order 66, Yoda.
Anyway, since the production of my Holocron Crisis two-parter, and feedback in this thread, I feel like having slightly-more-special premieres and finales is a sensible thing to do, with the Holocron Crisis (my “A Strike at the Heart”) being the end of season one (for reasons specified above).
That would suggest about five seasons of about ten episodes each, which I think feels inherently right, in terms of making the whole show feel approachable and digestible. It also gives me a small enough number of episodes to make feel special, and the flexibility to shape and flesh out a season to ensure all the necessary beats are hit, including the important anthology episodes where our main characters feature far less, while keeping it feeling like more of a serialised thing.
In that case, taking the second season as an example, I don’t think Massacre, Seven Warriors or Lightsaber Lost deserve premiere status, but probably the Boba Fett arc should lead the season, and our throughlines should be the Return of Maul, Corruption on Mandalore, and then those two plots coming together for the Maul Piracy arc in the finale. Anyway, I think it’s best I don’t finalise that plan until I’ve produced all the episodes and felt it out.
But for now, I’ll at least update my ordering as follows:
- s01e01 - The New Padawan (Christophsis)
- s01e02 - The Death Watch
- s01e03 - Malevolence [formerly s01e04]
- s01e04 - The 501st Legion (Domino Squad) [formerly s01e05]
- s01e05 - Cloak of Darkness [formerly s01e03]
- s01e06 - Children of Night (Nightsisters)
- s01e07 - The Blockade of Ryloth [formerly s02e01]
- s01e08 - Duchess of Mandalore [formerly s02e02]
- s01e09/10 - A Strike at the Heart (Holocron Crisis) [formerly s02e03]
I appreciate that changing things up in flight is a little confusing, but I think it’s right to feel it out as we go, to make the eventual final version of this project the best it can be. I’ll still be as clear as I can.
Basically, what this all means is, I’ll need to keep drawing attention to the difference between my PRODUCTION CODE and my EPISODE NUMBER. And if you’re unclear, I’ll keep the TRACKER SPREADSHEET up to date for you.