Anyway, let’s focus back on editing. Today and tomorrow I have a good amount of time, and am working through Malevolence still. It’s kind of fine as is, but I’m just tweaking and pruning it, which is taking a lot of time as it’s got a lot of cuts.

Anyway, I’ve taken the recent feedback and been tweaking the Christophsis opening text further. I thought I’d share it here before rendering the episode again. Bear in mind this is our very first episode, so it has to do a little heavy lifting:

Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.
With ANAKIN SKYWALKER’s ascension to the rank of Jedi Knight, his former master OBI-WAN KENOBI has requested a new padawan.
Aided by a small clone squadron, the duo now defend Christophsis, a planet whose crystal factories produce military energy shields.
Count Dooku’s fleet has forced the Republic’s ships to retreat to a nearby medical station, leading to fears of an imminent invasion.
But having detected the distant signal of Dooku’s assassin ASAJJ VENTRESS, a priority target, the Jedi rush to capture her.
They are unaware that comms have just been jammed planetwide…

Notes:

In this episode we formally introduce ANAKIN and OBI-WAN (hence their full names and capitalisation), and the villain VENTRESS. (Ahsoka doesn’t get named here since she’s only introduced within the episode, but is still made the episode’s largest focus via the episode’s title.)
The fleet now is “Count Dooku’s” (not “Separatist”), because the character is more important than the faction (in our first episode). This season we’re focusing on the villains, with Dooku as their leader, and both this and the next episode (Malevolence) rely on knowledge that Count Dooku is pulling the strings. This change also adds more weight to why we’d care about Ventress as “Dooku’s assassin”.
I changed some of the jankier language. It’s now “With Anakin’s ascension to the rank…” rather than “As Anakin has earned the rank…”, which is cleaner, and I’ve kept “But having detected” but dropped “However”, so at least we don’t start two sentences in a row with those slightly jarring context-sensitive words.
I wanted to keep “But having detected” because it’s the imminent invasion which they miss BECAUSE they’re forced to pursue Ventress, so I needed to maintain the causal link between the two sentences.
I’ve also made it more explicit that Ventress is a priority target, pulling them away from their other duties, and kept the idea that her signal is “distant”, which gives us leeway in overland travel times and day/night cycles.
To fit in the fleet status sentence, I’ve had to change the tense, so the Republic fleet has been forced to retreat but then we see that actively in the episode. I think it’s an OK compromise.
All of the remaining language and references ties into the rest of the season and this episode’s lanugage more accurately.