Onwards to my RYLOTH episode. I think I could really do with some extra thinking here, if anyone has any spare.
As a reminder, my episode as it currently stands uses pretty much the entire plot of Shadow Over Ryloth, which is about Anakin and Ahsoka having to break the blockade above the planet, with the emotional core being Ahsoka failing in her first command and having to deal with that. The secondary plot I intercut was from Supply Lines, where Cham Syndulla appears, though the main focus there is on Master Di’s plot as he tries to protect some Twi’leks trapped on the surface, while Bail tries to get some blockade runners from nearby Toydaria to Ryloth in time.
Reviewing what I’d already produced, I think it’s really unacceptable that I left this episode available so long with the huge audio glitch at the end, so I’m very sorry about that. It’s a really poor standard. I know I was keeping up momentum at the time but damn. I let you guys down with that one.
Going into this episode’s polish, I already knew that, because of the reordering, I could have the Toydarian King Katuunko appear in this episode, since now he won’t be killed by Savage until my following one (which makes a nice tight pairing as I can frame it as more immediate revenge). So I was already planning on reintroducing the scenes with Bail and Katuunko, albeit avoiding JarJar if possible.
However, on review, while the structure of the episode is broadly fine, my big takeaway this time was on how much jumping around we do. You’ve got Anakin and Ahsoka, you’ve got all the POV stuff of the Separatist admiral, you’ve got Master Di and Cham, AND you’ve got Bail and Katuunko. There’s too much juggling.
Now that I’ve had more experience at digging into the value of the source content, I think I need to make some changes.
- Mainly, I need to remove most of Master Di, while preserving almost all of Cham. Cham, regrettably, is very passive in this episode, and barely a character at all. But, he’s developed now in both Bad Batch and Rebels, and as Hera’s father, there’s lots to get to know. So I should certainly retain him here. However, as much as it’s a cool little military diversion, I don’t think there’s enough emotional value to Master Di’s protection of the Twi’Leks (using the plan to blow up the ship to block a path), nor of his eventual death. Also, if we do care about Di’s death, it’s a bit of a bummer at the point in the episode where we’re supposed to just be winning - Ahsoka and Anakin breaking the blockade, and Bail dropping supplies. I think I’d like to refocus this section, so that instead we’re focusing on Cham as the person with a problem (we’re starving and on the run), with Bail’s hunt for supplies as the solution, until Ahsoka overcoming her trial wins them all the day. This way we’re focusing far more on the emotional core.
- In doing this, I’ll intercut a lot less of the remaining content too, keeping the episode feeling more ‘blocky’ than parallel.
- The Separatist admiral is definitely our most interesting Neimoidian, as he’s definitely competent, but (1) he’s still a Neimoidian, and (2) he’s surrounded by Separatist tech and in particular chatty Battle Droids, so I want to trim his scenes just down to his most compelling. I might also remove Wat Tambor entirely, because fuck Wat Tambor, but also my possible second Ryloth episode will be about a season later so I don’t think Wat Tambor should be on the planet yet.
- While my artificial scene of Bail hiring the Toydarians was better on this rewatch than I remember it, I’ll be replacing it with ideally just one scene of Bail and Katuunko, without Jar-Jar.
That’s the main stuff, and to be honest that all warrants recreating the episode from scratch, which won’t be as tough as it sounds.
However, also a factor is the plans for my second Ryloth episode. Again, due to Cham’s increased importance, I’m tempted to include more of him. The problem being, I remember Innocents of Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth both being fairly unemotional and unexciting episodes with just Obi-Wan appearing from our set of main characters.
One option I’ve been playing with here is the inclusion of some of Jedi Crash, which has a great opening action sequence, and is crap otherwise other than showing Ahsoka caring for Anakin. I’ve considered a merge of that with Innocents/Liberty, to show essentially the big three characters split from each other. That might just give both plotlines the balance they each need in order to stand together.
But before I pursue that, I might look into including more from Liberty into this current episode. To memory, the best content there was in seeing Cham’s conversations with Mace, where they discuss Ryloth’s difficult politics, the victims of the war and the freedom fighters, and Cham’s issues with Orn Free Taa. I’ll see if there’s a workable solution there, or default back to the other plans listed here.
The other combo, the least likely I’ll use, might be to put the Master Di content in Liberty/Innocents, perhaps as the setup for things going badly for Cham before the start of that episode. So the first episode would be all Ahsoka’s trial, and the second would have all the Cham scenes.
Anyway! Pile of thoughts. If anyone has ideas there I’d love to hear them.