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The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 41

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Maybe not the most helpful comment, but I certainly didn’t expect the Boba story to end with him in prison (?) and the Slave I blowed up.
I enjoyed the episode, though!

My stance on revising fan edits.

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EddieDean said:

  • The Deserter / Gregor (Droids in the Void) / Hidden Enemy / Grievous Intrigue: Do the first three work well as a “Lost clones” anthology? Do the first two work better as a Rex-focused duology? Does Grievous Intrigue paired with the Deserter give us a stronger episode overall? Does Grievous Intrigue work well elsewhere - perhaps interspliced with Cloak of Darkness, currently my weakest epiasode?

Honestly the action scenes in this episode are pretty good, featuring the Grievous/Obi-Wan duel that is pretty even. These could be part of the Grievous manhunt that is implied in your Season 1 opening texts.

  • Revival / Younglings arc: I need to see what I can do to flip the chronology of these without it breaking anything.

The key points of continuity between the early season 5 episodes (Revival, the Younglings arc and in a lesser capacity the Onderon arc) are the following:

  • Grievous sacking Hondo’s base in Younglings. Revival shows the base almost in ruins and full of wreckage, and Grievous is mentioned by Hondo as the culprit.
  • Hondo’s character model progression (from the early season-like Onderon arc Hondo and the greatly updated model for the other two arcs)
  • If Revival is shifted later it might solve at least a few of the issues arising from Adi Gallia’s death, namely her role in the Citadel arc.
  • Order 66 arc / The Last One (first Yoda arc episode): I wonder if these can be tied together, since in TLO Yoda is actively investigating O66.

An interesting thing that came up to my mind: in the Legends continuity, the last stage of the war, concurrent with the Outer Rim Sieges, involved the Jedi leading further investigations into the identity of Sidious, almost unmasking him if it weren’t for the battle of Coruscant. They even search Sidious and Dooku’s hidden meeting place at Coruscant, something that happens in vision form in TCW.

In Legends what triggers these investigations is an oversight by Gunray that provides evidence to the Jedi, but in your recut TCW it could be the incident with Fives or the revelation that Dooku=Tyranus and that he was involved in the creation of the clones. In the opening text for The Lost One you could state that the chip incident has led the Jedi to launch an investigation, leading up to Plo Koon discovering the place where Sifo-Dyas died.

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Two quick thoughts on the fist half of S01E00:

When Dooku arrives and enters the arena, a few subtitled lines are missing. Not sure if deliberate, and if so fair enough.

It might be good to go ahead and allow a fade to black and fade back in after Sidious comments after sending Ventress on her first mission.

So far it seems to be a pretty good sequence of things!

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I didn’t think my episodes were being produced with subtitles, Hal, so the fact they have any is a suprise to me! In all my demuxing and rendering, subtitles aren’t a part of my pipeline. I did make a trim there though, deliberately cutting those lines, so ideally the subtitles wouldn’t feature either.

I’ll take a note to think about a fade on the Sidious beat.

Kalee, lovely notes thanks - this is exactly why I share this stuff.

On Grievous Intrigue, my notes say that he’s got some real malice in this episode, so it does serve as something to strengthen Grievous. I don’t know yet if that makes preservation of the whole episode worthy, but I’m considering it. The other option I realised we have is possibly taking the good malice (which I think I remember being mainly upfront) and turning this into Grievous capturing Even Piell, leading up to the Citadel arc. There’s quite a lot of Piell getting captured footage in the Citadel newsreel which might work.

On Younglings, thanks for the detail. I hadn’t noticed the models change but I’ll compare them. I do really want to keep Maul as an ever-present threat, who just keeps growing in power, and that really starts with Revival, so I want that early. I’m tending towards keeping the Younglings arc in some form since it features more of Ahsoka teaching, which I want to lean into in this edit. So ideally I can play Revival > Younglings in that order. I might have to downplay the Grievous vs Hondo angle in Younglings to achieve this, so there’s no implicit clash. The Florrum base doesn’t need to have been sacked by Grievous, I don’t think that’s a particularly important plot point.

One thing I was thinking about Younglings though is that you could probably drop the first episode altogether - as much as I do kinda like it - because really the Younglings shouldn’t be the focus of the arc, Ahsoka and our main characters should. I think that can work. (And of course I’d still release the first episode as part of my Continuity Cut if so, so it’d be there if people wanted it.)

I really like that note about the investgations. In the final season I want to be emphasising the mysteries of the war, so having the Jedi act in response to the O66 arc and mentioning that in my crawls seems like a good idea plus a nice nod to continuity, thanks.

(I’ve already put a couple of cheeky nods in my crawls in a couple of places, though nobody seems to have noticed yet 😉)

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Here’s something else worth thinking about - the first lines of my crawls.

It’s my intention that they serve as a kind of top-level state of the galaxy (to be followed by more detail), so I think having them be the same per batch is acceptable. I don’t think I want to write 50 unique ones!

Back when I was working as eight production seasons, I assumed I’d do eight, but if I’m now working towards five release seasons perhaps I should just have five.

In which case we might have something like:

  1. It is the early days of the Clone Wars. (Christophsis up to Holocron Crisis, the establishing acts of the war)
  2. Darkness grows as the Clone Wars engulf the galaxy. (a lot of bounty hunter episodes plus Geonosis)
  3. The Clone Wars continue to rage across the galaxy. (Citadel, Lux, Rako Hardeen, Kadavo)
  4. The long-fought Clone Wars are taking their toll on the galaxy. (Younglings, Onderon, Umbara, Mortis, Ahsoka’s Fall)
  5. Mysteries abound in the final days of the Clone Wars. (O66, Yoda, Bad Batch, Maul)

Interested in thoughts.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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^ I just meant that those two lines originally had subtitles in the source material but do not for your edit. Just wanted to make sure that was intentional. I mean a hard coded subtitle for alien dialogue.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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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!)

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Really clever ideas. I really like the idea of a “clone individuality” standalone episode, and we’ll be interested to see how that turns out. Your ideas for ‘Return to Christophsis’ is really smart, too, but I understand why you would consider it for a Complete Cut rather than Quality. I’m assuming the Clone standalone will be qualitity, right? I know they might be standalone stories, but I do see how it would contribute to the characterization of the clones in general.

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Yeah, Clone standalone would be Quality Cut. Deserter is the ‘core’ clone individuality episode, I think, so if you’re only including one such episode I think that’s the one. But bringing a few good ones together on the same theme might help sell the concept and allow you to highlight the best moments without needing deep dives, so that when that thread starts getting pulled more later, you’re lined up for it, without having had to take focus off the main plots of the show for too long. The secondary feature of such an anthology would be to pull Rex into more focus and allow him to become more of a main character, a little further into the show than the beginning, when you’re ready to follow someone new.

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Continuing to take stock of my excluded / non-Quality-Cut episodes.

The Dooku Captured duology is alright, when I get to it I can probably cut out having them all tied together, and minimise Jar Jar, which were my main objections. There’re a couple of decent Dooku lines I might use elsewhere, and Obi-Wan’s spacewalk which is quite nice. Weirdly enough, the original episode has discontinuity, where the fist episode ends with Obi-Wan and Anakin successfully avoiding being drugged, and then the second episode having them wake up having been drugged.

The Lurmen duology is quite boring, though it begins with one of the best space battles of the series. I might cut the entirety of Lok Durd and the Lurmen, leaving it to be the great space battle followed by the quick theft of a shuttle from the Separatist compound, unless I can find a better place for it. Problem is probably that Aayala Secura doesn’t appear in many other episodes, so you can’t play out the full thing, though it might make an opening to any old episode if you just cut after Anakin blacks out. I’d want to at least have a bit of context though, rather than just sticking it on somewhere. If I can’t make the cut of Lok Durd and the Lurmen work, I’d just release this in full.

Orto Plutonia has nothing to use, but is fine (in the Complete Cut).

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EddieDean, in the Tartakovsky series at 16:59 there is a super fast cut which I think is not intentional

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Thanks buddy, I’ll check that out!

I’ve just gone through my own first few episodes, and they do have glitches in their current form that I’m not pleased with. I’ll polish them all up ASAP, I can’t have new people come in and see them in this unpolished state.

I let my momentum get away from me!

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I checked the official DVD, and the subtitles for that alien guy read:

“Everything has been arranged
precisely as you have requested…”

“most illustrious Count Dooku.”

and then

“I trust you will find
what you seek.”

In said DVD the subtitles play automatically but are not hardcoded. Dunno if you’d want to include them, but it does make clear that Dooku is scouting out an assassin.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I can for you, since it’d be such a simple job.
Would you rather they be hard-coded? Since most people are going to watch via Google Drive, and there are no foreign language options anyway, I’d think that would be best.

If you can send me the relevant shots or scene, I can add subtitles for those two lines formatted like the OT or PT, whichever you like.

TCW doesn’t ever have subtitles for alien dialogue, does it? I imagine the closest thing to be faithful to would be the subtitles in TPM and AOTC.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Eddie Dean, in A Strike at the Heart part 2, the final sentence of the intro text is “but the sith lord’s intentions must remain hidden”.

I’m wondering about the grammar there; if the word “must” means that the sith lord APPEARS to be hidden, or that he ‘should’ be hidden etc.

I was thinking that “but the sith lord’s intentions remain hidden” is a bit more concise, what do you think?

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Right, I’ve finished my period of ‘taking stock’. Prepare for a wall of text.

Of the episodes I planned to exclude, I’m certain I still want to exclude them all. That means I won’t be including them in my edit in any capacity - not my Quality Cut, nor any of the lesser ones. That covers Huttlet Crisis (from the movie), Ambush, R2 Captured duology, Bombad Jedi, Blue Shadow Virus duology, Sphere of Influence, Ziro the Hutt (except the Senate Hostage Crisis scenes), Droids in the Void (except Gregor), The Disappeared, and Crystal Crisis (unfinished episode). I won’t be adding credits etc to these episodes.

Of the episodes I planned to include only in the Continuity and Complete cuts, I’m certain I still want to keep them out of the Quality cut. That means they will get edits (though I may be relatively lazy here and they might just be polish rather than the execution of any creative ideas), and they will get full TCW:R credits, so you can watch them as part of TCW:R if you want to. I won’t be editing these until after I’ve created my Quality Cut, though. This list includes the Tartatkovsky Microseries Mon Calamari/Dantooine/Ilum episode (already complete as I did it while I did the other Tartakovsky one), the Mon Calamari arc, Lightsaber Lost (already complete as it was Quality but got downgraded), Lair of Grievous, Dooku Captured duology, Crash on Maridun duology, Orto Plutonia, Innocents of/Liberty on Ryloth duology, Zillo Beast duology, Grievous Intrigue (unless upgraded), Shadow Warrior (unless downgraded), the Droids duology, Tartakovsky’s Nelvaan arc, Tartakovsky’s Coruscant arc, something with the remainder of the Christophsis content (unless any of it gets upgraded into a ‘Lost Clones’ anthology), and Pursuit of Peace/Senate Murders (unless upgraded).

Of those, I found some useful lines and scenes which I may be able to repurpose to improve more important episodes, as detailed in the last couple of pages.

I then watched over all of my episodes again, in the new chronological order. Broadly I’m very pleased, though I think I have a lot of refinement to do. I’ll be bringing them all up to standard before producing any more episodes. I’ll also do a pass of their opening text just to make sure everything flows in the new order. I have collected all of the comments previously left in this thread, so they will be actioned if they’ve been mentioned here. But I also wanted to specifically highlight a few things:

  • Main takeaway 1: I must improve the music. This might mean picking up the skills myself, though I have really no idea where to start. I love McFibb’s music and will absolutely preserve them, but I mean that the transitions into my episodes (from near silence) and out of my episodes (into the piano which kicks off my outro music) are poor. I’ll see if finding suitable replacement tracks for the content in those sections (replacing the original music in the episode, NOT replacing McFibb’s credit music) gives me more to work with. (I might also think about improving the actual music within the episodes themselves, though that’s not going to be anywhere near first pass for this project.)
  • Main takeaway 2: The art in the credits is good, but sometimes too low resolution. Chase Adams used a cool technique which kind of turned images into tapestry style, which served to increase the resolution by artistically obscuring some of the detail. If anyone knows how he did that, or has other ideas for improving the credits imagery, that’d be much appreciated.
  • s01e00 - DARK FORCE RISING (Tartakovsky intro) - Via Hal I’ll fix the missing subtitles.
  • s01e01 - THE NEW PADAWAN (Christophsis) - I have fixed the video except for one shot, but haven’t released this to you all yet. I’ll fix this. I’ve also colour-corrected Bail in the last shot a bit more, and found another shot which might help his appearance at the end land a little better. There are a few transitions I need to fix, but I have the skills now. I did find this episode contained very quick cuts, but I don’t have options here really - I’m using the longest shots I can. You guys can still highlight anything you feel doesn’t quite land though, for me to investigate.
  • s01e02 - THE DEATH WATCH - One of the opening scenes in Duchess where a scout reports to Almec and they summarise Satine’s importance may work better here as the ending. This episode was the first I released and still has the old music and old credits art and timings, which I’ll fix, though I’m still short on a couple of pieces of art, which I’m not sure how I’ll work around.
  • s01e03 - MALEVOLENCE - I’ll tidy up the Plo Koon/Republic cruiser intercut scene to remove the Republic cruiser, and just have Plo cover the key information. I’ll also remove the briefing room chatter of “the head clanker” just because it’s delivered quite awkwardly and we know who Grievous is. I’ll be replacing a goofy pod-killer droid line with “No survivors” from the Lurmen episode.
  • s01e04 - THE 501st LEGION - I’ll trim “open up”/“didn’t say please” to remove banter in a life-or-death situation. I’ll dub Hevy’s death with him now saying “Brothers!” in a slightly pained way, from Hidden Enemy. I’m not going to add the original worm scene in, because I don’t mind the suprise worm, but I will cut the dialogue where a droid specifically highlights the number of surviving clones who escaped. I’m happy to imply Cutup died offscreen during the Commando attack. I’m also happy to leave the fight in the training room having a clone shot then fine - this is a simulation, and we don’t know the rules. The clone who gets injured gets properly injured - which is why he stays down if we want to think of it that way - and that can be a part of why they failed in a simulation. The scene where the main clones meet 99 when they return needs to not imply they’ve been away for ages, and the reaction to Hevy’s death needs some tweaking. I’ll regretfully remove Chase’s animated credits and go back to static ones, since I can’t output every episode to that same standard. Though I’ll hope for more in future, and welcome more of Chase’s if he’s able to produce more, and probably I’ll eventually come to this myself if nobody else can help. (But probably not for the first pass of the project.)
  • s01e05 - CLOAK OF DARKNESS - No notes for this one. I don’t think I can find better insults for Ahsoka to use to describe Ventress, but it’s OK either way.
  • s01e06 - CHILDREN OF NIGHT (Nightsisters) - This was a suprise to me, but I think I’m going to remove the initial fight between the invisible Nightsisters and Dooku. It doesn’t serve the plot at all - Ventress and the Nightsisters are already vengeful against Dooku, and Dooku already has cause to want a new assassin whether or not he’s just had an attempt on his life, so there’s no change before or after. And we don’t really need another lightsaber fight - even one that’s bad guy on bad guy. Ventress even fights Dooku later in this episode, so all the emotions get to come out in combat then. The loss here would be that Dooku’s kind of badass in it, though I don’t know quite that it’s valuable to state that, and the gain would be tightening the pacing (in a LOOONG episode that’s already a large sequence of events) and also the fact that invisibility is quite a weird force power, even for witches. This will require slight trims to the scene where Talzin calls him, because otherwise he’s surrounded by broken glass with no explanation. I’m also going to trim the final hangar fight a bit.
  • s01e07 - THE BLOCKADE OF RYLOTH - I need to add a wipe and remove a wipe, and fix a few transitions. Nobody fed back on it, but I don’t think my artificial scene where the Toydarian (who used to be a guard) offers Bail Organa aid flows naturally. I think I’ll either get this scene to work or just drop it - The surrounding context works just fine if I can’t. I needed some space from this episode because it was a complex interlacing, but on review I think it worked totally fine. These fixes might be a pain to do though, because I lost the project file even though I have triple backups.
  • s01e08 - DUCHESS OF MANDALORE - I might remove the opening scene with the scout and Almec, so that the Almec conversation can be used in The Death Watch. There’s an odd camera swing where I trimmed Obi-Wan’s infiltration, and a bit too much obvious malevolence from Mas Amedda at the end, which needs a trim.
  • s01e09/10 - A STRIKE AT THE HEART (Holocron Crisis) - I’m going to cut the goofy rabbit droid from when Bane’s team take the Senate. When Bane’s called the shapeshifter but she’s spent a while talking to Ahsoka, I’m going to add “Talk to me” from Evil Plans before the shapeshifter replies “I’m in”, to imply impatience and tie it better to what we’ve just seen. As Anakin’s been captured I’m also going to have Bane say “The Separatists are paying a million a head for Jedi” from Hunt for Ziro, which works here but also explains a little extra in the Boba Fett arc. There’re a couple of silent mouth movements elsewhere which need trims. (As an aside, I’m still so pleased with how the Ahsoka teaching ending comes together to cap this off. Anakin even says “this weapon is your life” to Padmé at the start, then Ahsoka passes that on at the end. My reading now is that she realises that the Sith Lord has a multi-generational plan. So she immediately shifts into a mode where she’s solving that problem - by investing in the next generation. And that’s ultimately how Palpatine is defeated, so she’s proven completely right, and therefore wise beyond her years.)
  • s02e01 - SEVEN WARRIORS - I’m going to remove the ‘medical station has gone quiet’ angle, since in A Strike at The Heart the Republic have abandoned Felucia. Instead, they’ll have heard rumours that the Separatists have pulled their forces together elsewhere so they’re checking if they can take Felucia back, only to find a cursory defense in orbit. I’ll try to remove the audio of large creatures crunching about if possible.
  • s02e02 - MASSACRE - Since I don’t want Dooku to fight invisible Nightsisters in my Children of Night, I won’t have him reference ‘Illusions’ here. I’ll also remove the mention of the Defoliator - it’ll still be present, it’ll just be a special sort of tank that fires a kind of fire bomb, without a name. (I don’t like “unique” weaponry appearing then never being used again, much like the incredible EMP weapon that takes out a whole army in Zillo Beast. I don’t care that it caused a sinkhole, there’d be times when it’d still be very useful, like in space…)
  • s02e03 - SINS OF THE FATHER (Boba Fett) - All good, though I think I rendered this without credits art by mistake. (Total aside but I love the scene where a clone is taking the cadets in the wrong direction, and the Admiral puts on a totally happy face and makes out like going to the escape pods is a game, so as not to panic them. That scene alone made me comfortable removing his other early appearances, because it showed absolute lightning-fast empathy and tactical good sense, which is all we need to depend on later for Boba’s arc.)
  • s02e06 - RETURN OF MAUL - I’ll shift the one scene where Yoda and Obi-Wan react to the Return of Maul later, to after Maul’s just had his sanity recovered and then he runs outside to scream. This way, that scream carries more potency, implicitly causing a kind of rageful echo in the force. That Maul scene it comes from can be happily interrupted there.

After that it’s back to normal production, though I’ll be reviewing a few episodes in batches just to see what value I can create. I’ve got Assassin coming up though I really don’t like the idea of Ahsoka only having known future visions in that one episode, it doesn’t feel quite right for her.

Oh, and I still need to have a little think about my Maul arc pacing. It won’t shift by much, but now I feel I’ve adopted a five-season structure, I’ll just see if Maul wants to wiggle a bit to fit right.

Finally, just to be clear - the only way this project will be left incomplete will be if I’m incapacitated. I’m extremely motivated and excited to see this all the way through. I want to create the optimal completed product, and that isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, you’ll have your 50+ episode Quality Cut, and after that, your 64+ episode Complete Cut.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at, my dears!

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Grievous capturing Even Piell at the beginning of Citadel might work! You could even go further and have Grievous outright kill Eeth Koth and capture Piell because of his usefulness. (Even if Koth appears in other episodes he could be said to be his convenient lookalike Agen Kolar, and honestly the fact he mades it to the early Jedi Purge in comics doesn’t really impact that much). I might watch both Grievous Intrigue and the beginning of Citadel to get some ideas running.

I’m not entirely sold on turning around the chronology of Revival and Younglings, mostly because I liked seeing a Separatist victory whose effect was felt later in the series. But in any case you have the last word, you’re right the Maul stuff should be rolling around as early as possible, and the original TV airing released those episodes out of order to begin with, so it’s a minor thing.

Your own feedback seems pretty complete, I agree with most of your notes and there doesn’t seem to be any issue that’s been oversighted. I think cutting the invisible witches sequence could work (maybe you could release alternate cuts?), and I agree with moving the Yoda and Obi scene to after Maul is restored.

For Assassin, maybe you could cut one of the visions or merge the two, this way it would feel more like a one-off, specific disturbance in the Force much like Luke’s unseen vision in Empire Strikes Back.

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Excellent, Knight! If you do check out the potential Grievous Intrigue/Citadel links, I’m eager to know your thoughts, because it’s a good way down the list for me so not something I’ll encounter for a while. I’ll review Revival/Younglings though - since I’m trying to emphasise the Ahsoka as teacher angle, maybe I’ll pull Younglings up a bit anyway.

I don’t intend to release alternate cuts - I’d like to have a set of one version of each episode, which people can select from based on personal taste - so if anyone really objects to losing the invisible fight they should shout now! Like I say, removing that was a suprise to me because I do kind of like it, but at the same time it’s not a value add and I think the episode a whole would be stronger without it - mostly because the episode already has so many scenes and events the it feels like “and then, and then, and then, and then”. It’s a great episode, it’s just denser than most.

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EddieDean said:
I don’t intend to release alternate cuts - I’d like to have a set of one version of each episode, which people can select from based on personal taste - so if anyone really objects to losing the invisible fight they should shout now! Like I say, removing that was a suprise to me because I do kind of like it, but at the same time it’s not a value add and I think the episode a whole would be stronger without it - mostly because the episode already has so many scenes and events the it feels like “and then, and then, and then, and then”. It’s a great episode, it’s just denser than most.

I mean, the Dooku vs witches scene is great, its choreography is good and Dooku is a badass in it. But you’re right that it is the least necessary lightsaber action scene in an arc that is already loaded with lightsaber duels. It works great as a climax for the first episode but not as well for the combined chapters.