I hope I can do them justice. Bear in mind this is mainly removal and reordering rather than addition, so there’s a limit to how much value I can add.
I’m not quite able to use that idea I mentioned above, since Onaconda accompanies Padmé to the talk with an on-the-fence Senator. (I’ll still be able to get some value out of reframing Onaconda though - and I can actually use more scenes from Senate Murders to put Padmé in danger and continue to highlight some more of Padmé’s opposition.) But this bit of work just now has helped me realise I can trim a lot more whilst keeping it focused.
I’ll be keeping the storyline centered on a single political issue (other than the attempt at peace via Mina Bonteri) - the Republic needing a loan to buy clones. I’m vastly reducing the way it was originally split into two parts and the volume of those two elements - firstly the deregulation of the banks, and secondly the loan against huge interest, because those just aren’t emotionally interesting. A lot of their context is still present, it’s just said the once instead of emphasised about three times each, and our main focus is “the clone loan is expensive and war is harmful to our people”.
I’m instead using scenes from Senate Murders to bookend things, because they set up Padmé’s support network, and now the whole episode becomes more of a study of the people around Padmé - both those who support her, and those who oppose her - so it essentially works as a study on the depths and complexities of the political arena, around Padmé in particular.
I’ve also changed the bad guys’ motivations - now, the Separatist-aligned Republic Senators plan the bomb plot, but after Padmé talks to Palpatine, Dooku quickly contacts the thugs to have them specifically target Padmé’s retinue. This way, the thugs’ relative incompetence is explained by the fact that this was a relatively spur-of-the-moment plan to take advantage of the chaos that their plan A was otherwise already going to cause, to specifically target Padmé now that she’s shown quite how competent a threat she is.
(I’m aware this is the third plan/essay I’ve written up on this episode! I had thought it’d be an easy one, but in the end, cutting three different-but-similar politics plots into one single narrative has been quite the challenge!)
The episode is fully planned now. I’m going to chill this evening, but I hope to crack the execution of it tomorrow.
Knight, if you’re up for a bit of homework, I’d be very interested in your review of my episode if it’s watched with the three original episodes which went into it freshly in mind. No obligation if that’s too much of an ask though!