Hmm.
Thoughts on a possible episode to fit into season two, to give a bit more character balance in a season that slightly needs it:
I’d considered the fun romp of Zillo Beast, despite having some problems with that episode (a useful ion weapon never seen again, plus Palpatine’s malice), but on review it doesn’t feature Ahsoka so it doesn’t satisfy the goal of what I’m looking for in this slot.
The other that I’d considered was Innocents/Liberty of Ryloth, which gives us a bit more tie-ins to later media but isn’t super strong on its own. That doesn’t feature our main guys BUT-
I’ve always liked the crash from Jedi Crash (on Maridun). It’s a great action sequence, Anakin gets injured, and Ahsoka looks after him. That’s a nice bit of growth, though I’d want to trim the episode heavily and mostly ignore the natives (and definitely skip the following episode with the goofy separatist attack). Thematically it would fit with season two, where the impact of the war hits the further corners of the galaxy.
I wonder if I could merge the above two? If I do, it’d definitely end up as two parallel plots, rather than two related plotlines, but it’d give us all our focal characters, and the jeopardy for both storylines could be enhanced by the implicit absence of the other characters. Perhaps the skies that the Jedi cruiser crash in are the skies of Ryloth, with the emergency escape jump that Anakin and Ahsoka take taking them off that battlefield and to a neighbouring planet/system. Then Obi-Wan’s and Mace Windu’s actions would be implicitly strained by the absence of the reinforcements. I might need to do some work to tie the plots together a bit more tightly though, or at least have them reference each other.
I’m not certain this idea is workable, but I think it’s the only worthwhile idea to pursue to potentially satisfy a couple of goals that I have for that part of my series. Worst case, I’ll find I can’t do it, and I’ll just retain Innocents/Liberty as a bonus episode.
I’ll check it out (far later).
(That said, am I moving too far away from established canon by using some of these ideas? I don’t want people to consider TCW:R too deviant to consider it a viable ‘true’ alternative to TCW. I’m not trying to produce ‘an experiment’ with this series, I’m trying to produce ‘TCW if it was made today and with hindsight’)
If it works, I say go for it. Chopping and changing happens all the time in myths and SW is, at it’s root, a mythical arc.
As long as the core storyline is untouched it will be fine. And considering the core storyline is ‘clones fight droids for puppet masters whilst ninja monks chase ninja robots and ninja witched around’ then I doubt there’s anything you could actually do to change the story to the point a casual viewer would notice anything amiss.