The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] — Page 66

Bummer indeed! Either way, I’ve made a lot of progress on this episode now. Given the start a little longer to breathe, and I’ve done all of the intercutting through the plot of Supply Lines, now with just the last few scenes of Liberty on Ryloth to go. Feels good though, look forward to getting this one out to y’all.

I wish! But my other option worked just fine, at least. It’s all coming together nicely though. I’ve got the structure and audio of the ending all working, I’m just working on some colour matching to try to extend Anakin and Ahsoka taking out the bombers now, then I should be able to wrap it all up and render it. Not long now!

Edit: Watched through my workprint and I’m really happy with the structure. I’m going to remove a few transitions and smooth over the audio in a few places but I think this episode comes together well.

(RE)RELEASED (WITH A NEW STORY) - S01E06 - Resistance on Ryloth (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our sixth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising content from the episodes Storm Over Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth. (IMPORTANT: The prior v1.x version of this covered Supply Lines and Storm Over Ryloth, but not Liberty on Ryloth, so this story is all-new. Worth a look if you’ve seen this one before.)
• Running 38 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 my version of the Ryloth story, originally told over five parts. I use only Storm and Liberty here because it focuses on the core plotlines of this arc, which also happen to be the strongest - Ahsoka’s first command, Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, Mace Windu meeting with Cham Syndulla, and the politics between Cham and Orn Free Taa. Because these episodes share some characters (notably Mace and Wat Tambor), they tied together nicely. I’ve placed it here for character balance in the season, and as a light follow-up from the events of my episode Assassin, which features Neimoidian subterfuge.

I’ve changed this since the original because the original jumped around between too many plots, since Supply Lines had two on top of the core from Storm. The Cham content in Supply Lines wasn’t as valuable as that from Liberty, and as much as I like Bail, his plotline was too disconnected from the main plot and too heavy on Toydarians and Jar Jar. I didn’t use Ambush here because it’s a very weak episode (other than that one scene with Yoda and the clones in the cave), and I didn’t use Innocents of Ryloth because it was a fairly middling and quite unimportant episode (even accounting for Waxer, Boil, and Numa, which is a cute plotline but hardly core.)

As it stands now, this episode tightly tells the story of both the ground and air attempts to liberate Ryloth from Separatist occupation, highlighting Ahsoka via her first failiure and the lessons she learns from it, and Cham Syndulla and Ryloth’s politics which’ll pay off more in Bad Batch and Rebels. Pleasantly, the villains in this one are quite competent, so there’s genuine threat.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Resistance on Ryloth’, for the popularity of Ryloth in Star Wars fandom, and to highlight the Cham Syndulla angle.
• The opening crawl establishes that the swift attack on Ryloth is a result of the Republic’s distraction at Kamino (as seen in my prior s01e05), and references Ryloth’s stolen military data (as hinted at in my opening for my s01e04 which featured Nute Gunray’s liberation by the Separatists).
• The opening crawl also establishes that only Mace Windu has made it to the surface, but that Anakin and Ahsoka are leading the counterattack on the blockade. The blockade is now supplying the bombers in what is now almost exclusively a firebombing campaign, explaining the relative lack of ground forces on the planet and adding to the blockade’s importance.
• I intercut between both Storm and Liberty, having both stories progress in parallel, with amended dialogue to allow both stories to reference each other.
• I used almost all of Storm, though I trimmed the start of Liberty where Mace has led his forces through a really exposed pass, and removed all references to the force bridge, which I didn’t want highlighted. This required a little restructuring to the final assault, though it still matches the music nicely. I also cut a few of Liberty’s scenes together, making Wat more overtly disobedient (mainly for expedience).
• The stories conclude with Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, then Dooku’s final attempt to bomb Mace and his forces during the assault on the capital, before Anakin and Ahsoka arrive from the skies to take out the bombers and save Mace and the Twi’leks, bringing both stories neatly together.
• I shifted and colour-corrected the earlier scenes of Anakin and Ahsoka shooting down bombers into the final sequence, to give it a bit more punch, and to remove them from the earlier scene to avoid a continuity error.
• I made a few trims to droid banter but they’re largely inoffensive here. I kept the reference to droids no longer requiring a control ship, which is useful exposition, but it’s also one of the show’s better jokes.

This episode (re)release took me a while as it was a brand-new episode created from scratch, but there’s nothing radical needed for the next few episodes so I hope to get them upgraded to 2.0 standard more quickly.

Opinion time - what do you guys prefer?

1. Ahsoka DOESN’T get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth (s01e06), but remains offscreen until the Holocron Crisis arc (starting s01e09), where she is disobedient at Felucia, then gets assigned the guard duty that pays off in that episode.

-OR-

2. Ahsoka does get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth via a new scene added at the start of the following episode (s01e07), being assigned guard duty that’ll explain her absence until the Holocron Crisis (s01e09), in which it’ll be resolved. In this version, we won’t include the Felucia scenes.

Technically, both are possible. The dialogue in the discipline scene will definitely work for both versions, and I’ve checked that I could remove the scenes from Holocron and still have it paced correctly.

Loud and clear, folks.

Thanks for the feedback, djonesed. I’d agree with your critique of both episodes, but I think I’ve reached the limits of my options here (unless anyone else has an amazing idea). I think they’re my weakest two episodes, but they’re good enough, and at least (in my opinion) far better than what we were originally presented with.

I will rethink the Malevolence fades though, just in case.

I know that using opening text isn’t ideal, but as you’ve acknowledged, I think it’s the best option I have available for keeping the quality of the actual body of the episodes high.

Keep it coming!

(RE)RELEASED - S01E07 - The Death Watch (V2.1)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our seventh episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, BUT notably NOT any content from the episode originally called Death Watch. (I’ve essentially flipped the two names for my edit.)
• Running 24 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 the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, where the Duchess is attacked on Coruscant by the Death Watch following her escape from them earlier in the season. It features a good amount of politics between the Republic, Separatists, and Mandalore’s two main factions, giving us some good interesting ‘third party’ content early in the series, as well as that valuable Mandalorian focus which I’m keeping present throughout my show.

The content from this episode is largely untouched. It’s split from the prior two episodes in the original ‘Mandalore trilogy’ mainly because they didn’t need to be back-to-back, and this way, we get two bites of the Mandalore apple this season, helping reinforce that Mandalore is going to be a running plot. We also get our first sight in TCW:R of Padmé without it being boring, and our first sight of Coruscant’s underworld. We also get some scenes set in locations originally designed by Ralph McQuarrie during the production of the Original Trilogy, back when Coruscant was known as ‘Had Abaddon’.

I’ve added a couple of scenes originally used during the holocron heist arc, where Ahsoka is disciplined by the Jedi council (originally for insubordination at Felucia, now in context for insubordination in our previous Ryloth episode). The Jedi assign her guard duty of the Jedi archives, which effectively explains to my audience why she’s not present in this or the next episode (Nightsisters arc), until she rejoins the plot during the following episode (Holocron Heist arc).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘The Death Watch’, to highlight the return of a key reoccuring threat in TCW. And it sounds cool.
• Used the opening text to remind the audience of the situation with Mandalore. I also mention here that, after the initial strikes of the war, the Republic has now realised that this could be a longer and more complex war than they intended, so they’ve summoned the Jedi back to Coruscant to scry into the future. I’m doing this partly because it’s an interesting angle but partly to explain why the Jedi wear their season three robes in my next episode (Nightsisters), where I’ll open with mention of their (scrying) meditations being interrupted, which is probably about as well as you could explain that temporary costume change, given that I think it’s the greater good to place that episode as early as I can.
• Opened the episode on Ahsoka being disciplined for her disobedience at Ryloth, before transitioning into this episode’s original opening.
• Moved one scene of Dooku telling Sidious that their plan is going fine earlier, to where their plan WAS going fine, as opposed to the original placement where it came after showing their plan starting to fall apart. This placement also helps clarify why Republic overreach on Mandalore would be a bad idea.
• Removed the idea that Satine has to hand herself in as ‘a distraction’ so Obi-Wan can sneak into the senate to deliver the true recording to Padmé. That was always a slightly odd/risky idea, and I didn’t like the implication that the Republic senate building’s security was so lax, so now Satine suggests Obi-Wan gives it to Padmé (which he should be able to freely do without scrutiny as he’s a senior Jedi) and she implicitly just stays in hiding while he does that.

Onwards now to Nightsisters, which only requires basic polish, then the Holocron arc, where I’ll remove the scene I’ve moved to this episode.

Nearly done with Nightsisters too. I improved a lot of the audio transitions, and trimmed a couple of scenes. Hopefully get through that tomorrow. It feels right as the last episode before the two-part season finale, following the tradition of having a big escalation before the end of a season. And it gives a nice deep dive into the two least explored major villains of our show, so I think this whole season is going to feel very “right” when it’s done.

(RE)RELEASED - S01E08 - Children of Night (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our eighth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the entire original Nightsisters arc.
• Running 52 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.

The Nightsisters arc is a popular arc with good reason. It focuses on the internal politicking of the Sith and the Nightsister/Nightbrother darkside cults, has some great development for Ventress and a little development for Dooku, and gets the ball rolling on the Maul plotline which is very important to the show. I placed it here in the chronology because the Maul(/Mandalore) content is so good that I wanted to make it the ‘spine’ of my show, an ever-present threat that throws the idea of the Clone Wars just being a predictable two-party conflict into doubt, that adds threats and characters that we don’t know the outcome of even if we’ve seen the movies.

Ahsoka is absent from this episode, but since our last episode put her on archive guard duty, that’s explained well enough (well, better than the original episode, which didn’t explain it at all, at least).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Children of Night’ to highlight the various self-styled ‘children’ of Dathomir - Ventress, Talzin, the nightsisters and nightbrothers, and Savage.
• The opening text lightly reminds the viewer of the current state of the war: After all of the opening strikes against key targets, both sides have now bedded in for what they realise is going to be a longer war than they anticipated. The Jedi are meditating on the future, which I think works thematically, but I also use here to lightly explain why Anakin and Obi-Wan are in their Jedi robes rather than their more military garb (a costume change which originally happened for season three of the original show).
• It’s pretty much the entire trilogy of episodes stitched together, with only minor trims, other than-
• I removed the scene of the Nightsisters trying to assassinate Dooku directly using invisibility spells. It was a fun combat, but it returned us to the status quo, and I’m not a huge fan of adding too many new force abilities. Instead now Talzin’s plan is always the subterfuge of sending Savage as a sleeper agent.
• I trimmed the recruitment of Savage heavily. Now, there’s only one trial, and Ventress only selects Savage and Feral to fight - implicitly because she can see that Savage is the strongest, and she needs to use his feelings for Feral to break him.
• I cut the references to Iridonian versus Dathomiri Zabrak. It’s not something relevant to the plot, and it’s the kind of thing that, if you cared about it, you’d have already looked it up on Wookieepedia.
• I also cut the scene of Anakin and Obi-Wan at the Nightbrother village. All they learn there is to visit Talzin, which they should have done first anyway (other dialogue refers to Dathomir as the ‘planet of the witches’, and Obi-Wan later shows he knows that ‘women are dominant on this planet’), and the Nightbrothers aren’t as important to this story or to the Clone Wars as a whole, beyond Savage. Instead they just fly directly to the witches.

Onward now to the Holocron arc, the two parter which concludes this season, which shouldn’t take too long to polish.

Oop, just caught a little audio glitch in s01e08 - Children of Night. I’ll fix and reupload that soon.

Edit: It’s fixed and rendered, and uploading now. Should be about two and a half hours from now until it’s uploaded.

Edit 2: Uploaded now as v2.1.

Good progress on s01e09 - A Strike at the Heart (our holocron heist episode).

I’ve removed the scene I’ve shifted to an earlier episode and got the main body all polished up, including some visual and audio transitions. I’ve also smoothed out the ending scene, which I was never quite happy with. I’m just going to see if I can add a little context to the new beginning of the episode, then I can wrap it up and release it.

Here’s the opening crawl:

• Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.
• As both militaries shift their focus to large-scale strategic priorities, bounty hunters are increasingly hired as precision tools.
• One is the Duros CAD BANE and his network of specialists, hired by the Sith Lord DARTH SIDIOUS to carry out a personal mission.
• Meanwhile, with Anakin back on Coruscant, he and his secret wife Padmé have found a little time to spend together as a couple.
• Ahsoka has performed her duties guarding the Jedi archive with humility, and Master Yoda has now assigned her to the library floor.
• But the Sith Lord’s subterfuge is about to disrupt this brief peace.

I reference Bane’s ‘network of specialists’ in order to justify the fact that he has two apparent crews in this combined episode. I also specifically call out the difference between general ‘archive duty’ and the specific ‘library floor’ to smooth over Ahsoka’s assignment to the archive two episodes prior, but her being walked through the library (and holocron vault) in this episode. The archive can contain many different areas, and this is now a more senior post (for ‘humility’, which was the point of her discipline). I mentioned that it was Yoda who put her there as a way of tipping my hat to a cut scene of Yoda having a feeling that an attack on the vault might be coming. I also chose to emphasise the brief moment of peace the characters are currently enjoying, as it’ll be the last they get for a good while now, and I’m setting up this group of episodes as a brief lull in the war.

Brilliant Meeko, thanks very much for this! I do allow myself a little leeway on audio transitions where I can’t quite make it work, since the original show did have similar issues, but I always re-check any raised issues so I’ll see what I can do with these again!

Oh, and for those wondering about the black bars in a couple of early episodes, those’re fixed now.

(RE)RELEASED - S01E09 - A Strike at the Heart (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our ninth episode of the first season, and the first part of the two-part finale.
• Comprising the original episodes Holocron Heist and Hostage Crisis
• Running 31 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.

These are two Cad Bane centric episodes combined to essentially make the hostage crisis in the senate building a distraction to help enable the holocron heist, using the idea that Smudger9 had for his movie.

This is the first of a two-parter, the second of which combines Holocron Heist’s follow-up episodes, split here mainly because the episode that follows this had a lot of plot happen in its narration, which I needed to preserve via a new opening crawl.

They’re a great set of episodes, and a fitting season finale - Cad Bane is an excellent new villain, we get absolutely all of our main characters going on a great high-stakes romp through Coruscant and space, and we get some great hints at Palpatine’s larger plans and a good chapter in Ahsoka’s growth (more on that in the detail for s01e10).

Compared to the prior version of this episode I’ve only really added polish, mainly including a slicker start (and introduction to Bane) and a cleaner ending. I also took out Ahsoka’s failiure at Felucia and subsequent discipline, since that scene’s now used earlier this season (as discipline for a similar failiure at Ryloth) to help justify why she’s offscreen for a couple of episodes so early.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘A Strike at the Heart’ to highlight that it’s the first episode in this season where the capital planet - Coruscant - is attacked. It also highlights the personal stakes for Anakin as both Padmé and Ahsoka are put in jeopardy.
• Used the opening text to continue the theme of both sides re-strategising for the long war they now know is coming. I also mention Cad Bane’s ‘network of specialists’ to help explain to the viewer why he appears to have two different teams in this episode, and took the opportunity to emphasise Anakin and Padmé’s relationship as well as Ahsoka’s discipline causing a little growth, which’ll lead nicely into the respect she’s earned by next season.
• The structure of the episode is basically Bane’s introduction via his scenes with the shapeshifter, before he and his larger crew infiltrate the senate and capture hostages, and upon that distraction going to plan he then goes to the Jedi temple to steal the holocron.
• Dialogue changes throughout and intercutting to Ahsoka in the Jedi temple help the two plots run side by side, and there’s some useful Anakin dialogue which in context explains that he’s heading back to the temple in time for the holocron heist, so it all works quite smoothly.
• I trimmed some of TODO-360’s silly banter, though he still appears and is generally set upon and dejected so his characterisation is preserved for his appearances in future media.
• I trimmed some of Anakin going John McClane in the senate building, but only the weaker bits for pacing, leaving the most exciting bits.
• I also trimmed some of the more boring scenes of Cad Bane dealing with obstructions in the Jedi temple shafts, for pacing and to maintain his competency.
• I removed all references to the ‘Kyber Crystal’, which in this episode was needed to unlock a holocron (in contrast with newer (and EU) context that Kyber Crystals are for lightsabers and Death Stars). This also serves to simplify Bane’s need for a Jedi to open the holocron, and means we don’t need the Master Ropal angle later.

Onwards now to Future of the Force, the second part of this duology which completes the first season! I’m away for a little while, but should have it out to you all mid-January.

It’s a decent idea, for the reasons you mention, but I think Christophsis is still the sensible first step.

Ahsoka is great, she’s the heart of this show, she’s now extremely popular, and her legacy is clearly really important to the current world of Star Wars releases. However, it’s worth remembering that Ahsoka was very unpopular on release - by design, so that audiences could see her growth. Also, Clone Wars was a new entry in a franchise which had never once mentioned Anakin having a padawan, especially a youngling (Vader’s secret apprentice being something very different). Because of both factors, the original show had to position her very carefully knowing that she was (1) unexpected (and possibly unwelcome because of that) and (2) at the beginning of her maturity (and for some, again unwelcome because of that). The show ultimately was justified in the way it introduced her, but it did put people off at first. So there’s already good sense to placing Christophsis before a solo adventure.

But also, I think one of the important audiences for this edit in particular is people who either never picked up Clone Wars because of its original (and ongoing) poor reviews, or people who checked out the original Clone Wars but gave up on it early because of the early poor quality, of which Ahsoka’s unwelcomeness was a factor for many. I’ve done what I can to minimise some of Ahsoka’s more abrasive traits whilst retaining a lot of the weaknesses she ultimately grows through, but I think I still need to make sure that Ahsoka is used carefully at first and not forced upon the new viewer, so she’s not overly highlighted at first and there’s lots of other interest and quality to keep audiences of this edit engaged until they grow to like her.

It’s for these reasons that I wanted to ensure the first season was strong, varied and interesting (Mandalorians, Domino Squad, Nightsisters, etc), and with Ahsoka’s appearances being as decent as I could make them (her care for Plo Koon, her boldness/rashness well applied with Luminara, her victory at Ryloth after her earlier failure, her competence and wisdom in the finale). But I wanted to do this with control and balance, hence moving a few scenes around to help explain her absences, so the early skeptic will find her present but not overwhelmingly in focus.

Additionally, while Cloak of Darkness is a decent-ish episode, it is one of the weaker ones in this season, which I think benefits from being made a bit more relevant to the ongoing plot (the hunt for Grievous) once we’re more invested in it. And having the three weakest episodes up front (Cloak, Christophsis, Malevolence) might be too much of an ask.

So yes, it’d be a good introduction to Ahsoka, but I think she’s better framed initially in context as a part of Anakin’s story through the Clone Wars, who grows quickly to the fore once the audience has warmed to her.