Still just taking stock and refining future plans.
I’m not sure yet if the traitor clone stuff from Hidden Enemy should work best as an anthology episode grouped with Cut Lawquane from Deserter plus Gregor from Droids in the Void. ‘Tales of the Lost Clones’, to highlight Clone individuality in one focused grouping before we start to see more of that, especially with Rex, in the Umbara and Order 66 arcs. This is probably the preferred option, keeping these small but decent arcs focused as one rather than peppered throughout (which would divert us from the main thrust of the show).
However, if I don’t use Hidden Enemy like that, then the Christophsis content left over from my first episode might be best presented as a ‘Return to Christophsis’ episode as follows: Later in the war, the crystal tech factories on Christophsis have successfully miniaturised stealth tech, leading to the creation of the stealth ship prototype. However, someone in the Republic military has leaked the information about a new secret Republic weapon to the Separatists, and they’ve reacted with a blockade while they attempt to identify and capture the weapon. We then play both episodes intercut - Anakin’s brought in to break the blockade whilst Rex on the surface investigates the leak. The reveal that it’s Trench that’s the bad guy and the implicit threat of him, justifies the use of the stealth ship even though that means revealing what it is, so they effectively ‘spend’ the one use of the stealth ship on destroying Trench. Having the traitor be linked to the stealth ship and implicitly leaking the tech specs can help justify why we don’t see this tech again.
I only ever wanted these elements to appear late in the show anyway (as opposed to earlier even than episode one, the movie), because in their original placement I think it’s way too early to see stealth tech (that’s never used again) and it’s way too early to have a traitor clone.
Either way, I don’t think this episode would become a part of my quality cut, becoming Complete Cut at best (or Continuity Cut if Bad Batch returns to the stealth ship idea.)
(The main reason I watched these was to see about other collateral I might use elsewhere - and I did find a useful Bail shot in the newsreel which might help expand my Bail scenes at the end of my s01e01, so totally useful!)