OK, I think I’ve got an idea which’ll get us a lot more value out of the Ryloth arc.
There’s a lot I don’t like about Liberty on Ryloth - mainly the extremely bland landscape, poor military tactics, and lack of main characters - but there’s a lot of unleveraged value there too. Far more so than Supply Lines, this showcases Cham, his strength of character, and his good political interactions with Orn Free Taa. And contrasting with Innocents of Ryloth, the suffering of the natives is far more pronounced, giving us far better established emotional stakes, and a more competent and threatening opposition. The ending is a good high too (more exciting than ‘we’ll come and pick up Anakin now’ from Storm Over Ryloth), showing the natives properly liberated and incorporating Ahsoka and Anakin as they take out the Separatist bombers to help win the day.
Therefore, let’s consider merging Storm with Liberty. The situation on the ground can be established early to give us the stakes for Ahsoka’s challenge in the skies above, and as the space battles progress, we can intercut with Mace searching for Cham and encouraging him to resist. After Anakin and Ahsoka break the blockade, we can follow Cham and Mace liberating the natives, with their suprise heroic appearance at the end to save them from bombers.
To achieve this I’d recontextualise a few things. We’d establish that Mace was already on the planet when it was overrun. I’d have no major Separatist ground forces on the planet, instead having the situation be entirely a bombing campaign coordinated from the overhead blockade after the massacre seen in Liberty. Rather than making this about retaking what was the capital city, I’d recontextualise that location instead as Wat Tambor’s prison complex. (Which can be the converted capital if you like, but I won’t draw attention to that). I never liked the ‘single force bridge’ entrance, but I think I can trim around that cleanly so that the combined Cham/Mace forces are free to walk up and assault it directly. Oh, and I can of course use my prior Nute Gunray context to help explain why the bombing campaign was so swift and effective. And the distraction of the Kamino attack to explain why the Republic didn’t help at the time.
I think this is the stronger core. Now that Cham is a major player in other media, I think we get good value out of his emphasis here, but it’s Ahsoka who remains our hero.
I’m going to continue reviewing the other Ryloth content to see if there’s anything else I can make work here, including the couple of Ryloth episodes in Bad Batch. I’ll also consider whether any of the spare can make a decent second episode to follow-up later, but I think the Storm/Liberty combo takes some of the pressure off there.