(RE)RELEASED - S01E04 - Assassin (V2.1)

RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
Our fourth episode of the first season (I’ve shifted the first season around, so check again if you’ve seen this one before).
Comprising content from the episode originally called Cloak of Darkness.
Running 22 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 largely untouched version of Cloak of Darkness. It was a middling episode, but with a good focus on Ahsoka and some decent development for her, which deserves early inclusion, plus a good highlight on Ventress which I’ll have pay off in the next episode. It suffered from its core plot being a bit disinteresting, but I’ve remedied that a little by making it more relevant to the current plotlines for my first season.

Noteworthy changes:

The episode is titled ‘Assassin’, to highlight Ventress as a villain here, and to emphasise the threat to Ahsoka.
It’s now recontextualised (via the opening text and some subtle new audio) to fit here in the story. In this context, Nute Gunray is wanted specifically because the Republic are undertaking a major hunt for Grievous and he may well know his location.
In the opening text I also lightly reference Ryloth, which will pay off later.
I rearranged a couple of intro scenes to best frame the whole story as Ahsoka’s reactions to Venress/Separatist actions, and to frame Ventress as a major focus. Sidious doesn’t refer to Ventress’ failiures, though he still implies some uncertainty, which’ll pay off later.
I tightened up a few scenes to make them flow together better and give us less jumping around.
I amended some dialogue so that there’s less name-calling and a little more maturity and competence from Ahsoka, while preserving the slightly careless boldness which she has at this time in the story.
I also used the opening text and some subtle audio changes to emphasise the angle that the Republic may be infiltrated quite heavily by Separatist spies already this early in the war (as originally hinted at, but never expanded on, in the Malevolence arc).
I also tweaked audio a little to remove some of Ventress and Ahsoka’s familiarity, which was never justified in the original episode as they were never seen meeting before this. Now, it’s implied that Ventress is known to the Jedi, but not that she’s clashed with Ahsoka.

This one’s all done now, so I can move on to what should be just some minor changes to The 501st Legion before working on the somewhat more complex edits to Resistance on Ryloth.