RE-RELEASED - S01E02 - MALEVOLENCE (V2.0)

Comprising the entire Malevolence arc.
Our second episode of the season (formerly our third, but I’ve shifted the first season around and it fits better here).
Now brought up to my 2.0 standard, with a huge amount of polish over the previous version.
Running 30 minutes.
Download link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.

Changes from the original source material:

This is a very radical restructure of the Malevolence arc, using the Plo Koon escape pod content from Rising and the bomber attack from Shadow, finished off with a few shots from Destroy for the conclusion.
I establish in the opening text that Grievous in the Malevolence has been destroying multiple medical stations, and we join our protagonists on the hunt for him as they manage to identify the rough sector he’s in at the moment. (Later in the episode they get the clue which tells them where he’ll strike next).
(I refer to these events in the opening text as an ‘emergency’, connecting it back to our previous Christophsis episode, where an off-planet emergency features but doesn’t appear. [In the original movie the emergency was Jabba’s son being kidnapped, but that’s not a plotline which appears in TCW:Refocused])
We retain and highlight all of the important early development of Anakin and Ahsoka’s relationship.
To enhance the emotional stakes and the threat, I’ve pulled the medical station scenes throughout the whole episode, as well as the parts where Grievous is travelling through hyperspace, so the entire episode is much more of a race against time. Now, any delays due to the hunt for Plo might cause more lives to be lost as Grievous remains free to attack medical stations.
I also recontextualised and trimmed a fair amount, to make Grievous more of a competent and cruel strategist, who’s not in conflict with his master, Dooku.
I’ve rearranged scenes to make the Malevolence itself feel more powerful and threatening, especially helmed by Grievous. Its ion cannon VFX was extremely goofy, I thought, so we never see it fire in this episode - though we still get a feel for quite how devastating it can be.
I removed a lot of scenes which undercut the core message/character growth of the episode.
I cut the space whales in the nebula - bombers go into shortcut, bombers come out of shortcut.
Nobody boards the Malevolence, and Padmé does not appear in this episode. It’d be good to see Anakin and Padmé together so early, but all of the scenes inside the Malevolence are so cringe, they cheapen all of the characters involved.

I never liked the original, but I’m very pleased with where I managed to get this to. I’m not sure if it can be improved any further, but as always, I welcome and encourage your feedback.

And naturally this means I’m over the early hump, so should get the next ones brought up to v2.0 a bit sooner…