(RE)RELEASED - s01e02 - MALEVOLENCE (v2.1)

RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
Our second episode of the season (formerly our third, but I’ve shifted the first season around and it fits better here).
Comprising the Malevolence arc (Rising Malevolence, Shadow of Malevolence, and Destroy Malevolence).
Running 29 minutes.
DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.

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. It’s not a great arc at all, but it gives us some good exploration of Ahsoka which pays off throughout the show, so it deserves inclusion. My priority was to focus on the emotional value in the episode, and get through it as painlessly as possible - in particular by cutting the scenes in Destroy where they board the Malevolence and it all gets quite cheesy.

Noteworthy changes (v2.1 changes in bold, thanks vranir):

The episode is titled ‘Malevolence’, mainly since that name appeared in all episodes of the Malevolence trilogy. The ship is called ‘The Malevolence’ too, but dropping the ‘The’ also highlights the malevolence of Grievous here too.
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 scenes where Grievous is pursuing the next medical station throughout the whole episode, 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, and the dialogue fits this nicely.
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’ve reordered a good number of scenes for narrative flow, to keep the plot smooth, and to minimise jumping around.
I cut the space whales in the nebula - bombers go into shortcut, bombers come out of shortcut.
I heavily trimmed the assault on the Malevolence, reordering a good few shots to make the attack tighter and clearer and give Anakin more of the lead role.
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’ve spent way too long working on this episode that frankly doesn’t deserve it! But it’s necessary, and at least it’s in a good place now. It really whips through, but I think I’ve got it as clean as it can possibly be, for the beats it needs to cover.