UPDATE ON THE STATE OF PLAY-

WHERE WE’RE AT

Just to catch people up to speed, I’d produced the first 30 of ~50 episodes back around mid-June 2021. I was allowing passion and momentum to carry me through getting a lot done, because I really wanted the mental confirmation of having a majority of episodes under my belt. While I focused on churning episodes out, I developed my skills and built up a good body of extremely valuable feedback and ideas from all of you here.

So after finishing my third season (of five), I went back to the beginning, establishing more polished standards to release to, and using my improved skills and community feedback to re-release already completed episodes up to what I’m calling ‘2.0 standard’. I’m sure there’ll always be the odd tweak or improvement that someone might suggest and/or I might pursue, but these revised edits should be as close to final final as any other release you’d find on these forums.

2.0 standard incorporates improved opening credits (using unique franchise credits I’ve made for this show, taking elements from both Mandalorian and Bad Batch), better-timed closing credits, a refined community credit, fixed audio without pops, smoother visual transitions which accurately match the original sources, smoother audio transitions, rethinking every single decision and edit I’ve already made, and restructuring and recontextualising some episodes further to squeeze more value from the content I have. I also remade a couple of my very first episodes from absolute scratch.

It was particularly important to me to make sure that the very beginning of the show was as good as it could possibly be. The first reason being that TCW famously starts particularly badly, so I needed to challenge that knowledge. The second being that this is people’s introduction to TCW: Refocused, so I need to make a compelling argument for TCW:R’s own existence.

Now, with the release of s01e05 to v2.0 standard, I believe I finally have that solid introduction to TCW and TCW:R.

As I came to reorder the first season, Imhotep and others here suggested an order which I thought was really powerful, so I’ve leaned into that for this edit, making those episodes up to s01e05 work like a small story arc with a few ongoing elements, which I think adds value over the original presentation. This focused little arc introduces all of our main characters and the early themes of the show, gives us a good high-stakes peak, demonstrates my technical skills and intentions, and gives some good variety. And as a bonus, it carries us through easily my least favourite (but still necessary) three episodes of this project, so once you’ve finished this arc, you’re over the worst and into the far stronger body of episodes which follow.

So, to summarise:

THE EPISODES UP TO s01e05 MAKE A GOOD SOLID INTRODUCTION TO THE SHOW.
They are very final, having been heavily revised, are of my highest release quality, and form a mini story arc.

I’d recommend that the new (and returning) viewer watch these five episodes (plus episode zero if you want the Tartakovsky microseries to set everything up), and personally I’d be very interested to get feedback on this group of episodes, particularly in how well it works as introductions to TCW and TCW:R (compared to the original launch of the show), and how well the connective tissue works together.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

In terms of what follows, I will of course be polishing the rest of the completed three seasons up to 2.0 standard. There’ll be a couple of extra episodes I’ll release during that polish, one of which will be a bit of an experiment to see if I can make a decent episode out of some unused Ryloth content now that we know Bad Batch returns there (Edit from the future: I’ve done this now), and one which just fits better in season three with my revised ordering. Then I’ll continue working to conclude the show. I have a few more demands on my time these days, so followers of this project may have found the pace of release slowing, but I assure you, my resolve has never been stronger.

That said, despite the polish currently being undertaken, you can watch this show pretty much to completion right now if you want. Season one is already completed to v2.0 standard, so that’s the worst content from the original show already up to a far better quality. The 1.0 versions of seasons two and three are by no means unfinished, and feature all of the key edits I intend to make, so you can watch those if you don’t mind a little less polish. And the final seasons I’ve not touched at all yet (four and five) require very little serious editing, so you can watch the original episodes in my spreadsheet’s recommended order if you don’t mind the trappings of the original release, without my hand.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN

This project is almost a year old now, so please indulge me a little here as we approach its first birthday. When I first had the idea for this edit, it was just some thoughts and a suggestion, and I didn’t really intend to carry it out myself. I never loved TCW, as much as I wanted to. But seeing the initial support for the idea, noticing I had already put a lot of foundational thought into TCW without realising it, and with very very basic editing skills, I decided to crack on with it myself. I had no idea how long it would take, what structure it would take, or how many episodes I would produce, and I certainly had no clue what level of analysis, planning, skill, or community support it would require. But as it grew and cohered it only felt like a more and more worthwhile project. I’ve now fallen properly in love with the show, and my passion for this project is mainly driven now by wanting to give this wonderful community another piece of Star Wars that they can love too, and that fits alongside, supports, and enhances the franchise’s excellent and ever-growing canon.

I’m extremely grateful to all of you, for your support, feedback, ideas, and patience, and extremely proud of what we’ve been able to achieve together. It is an absolute pleasure to work on this project with all of you.

As always, any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged.