RELEASED - S02E05 - Tales of the Lost Clones (V2.0)

RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard, and with proper transitions between chapters.
Our fifth episode of season two.
A special anthology episode comprising the original episodes Hidden Enemy, Missing in Action, and The Deserter
Running 45 minutes (with each chapter being 12-15 minutes long).
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 special anthology episode focusing on clone loyalty, often with Captain Rex at the center. Aggregating three episodes this way gave me a way to present the audience with three good but short stories carved out of larger and less valuable content, and combining them allowed their core themes to complement and reinforce each other. It also serves to provide a highlight to Captain Rex, whose relationship with loyalty is a secondary - but still important - theme of the show, which I’ve chosen to focus one episode per season on, so it grows gradually whilst not taking too much focus from our core plotlines.

I opted to avoid planetary establishing shots and much exposition, instead letting each chapter stay small scale and isolated from wider context, to allow each chapter’s content and this anthology’s core theme to be the primary takeaway.

Noteworthy changes:

The episode is titled ‘Tales of the Lost Clones’ to highlight its anthology feel and shared theme. ‘Lost in Spirit’ highlights the traitor clone’s betrayal of his brothers, ‘Lost in Mind’ highlights Gregor’s mental instability which is a major part of his character that we’ll return to in future media, and ‘Lost in Heart’ highlights Cut’s loyalty shifting without beytrayal.
The opening text emphasises the core theme of the anthology and gives a little highlight to Rex, and makes clear that these stories are not necessarily at the same time in the war. It only mentions our first chapter starting after an ambush, since that’s immediate context that I think is necessary to avoid disorientation.
Our first chapter is LOST IN SPIRIT, featuring the traitor clone subplot from Hidden Enemy, with barely any trims. I placed this chapter first in this anthology since it features Anakin and Obi-Wan, which serves to ‘hand off’ the plot to Rex and the clones from our more familiar main characters. It would also be less interesting if it followed the other two chapters, since it’s less nuanced, but it’s a good introduction to the idea of clones questioning blind obedience. (As a note, I didn’t want to include this content with the Christophsis storyline because I felt that starting our show with a traitor clone right off the bat raised too many questions.)
Our second chapter is LOST IN MIND, featuring the Gregor subplot from Missing in Action, the third episode in the four-part Droids in the Void arc. That arc is pretty horrible, full of bland imagery and really childish goofiness, so this is the only time in my edit we’ll see any of its content. The Gregor story, however, was decent, and Gregor returns in later media. I trimmed some of the closing action and as much of the goofy droid behaviour as possible, as well as cutting Gascon’s dialogue down so that he appears more competent and a much more legitimate leader. This episode doesn’t explain why R2 is present, but I don’t think I have a good option here. (The first release of this edit put lots of exposition in the opening text, but it was far too much to ask the viewer to remember.) I think it’s a fair trade-off for the quality we get in return.
Our third and final chapter is LOST IN HEART, featuring the Cut Lawquane subplot from The Deserter, the second episode in the loose Grievous Intrigue/Deserter duology, with barely any trims. I’ll be eventually making the remaining content into a regular bonus episode, but it won’t be part of the main version of my edit. The Cut Lawquane story is one of the frequently-cited highlights of The Clone Wars, and Cut Lawquane appears in later media, so it was important to include this somewhere in my edit. This was the best episode to end on since it’s got a nice emotional ending with Rex riding away with time to mull over the lessons he’s learned, helping to forment the change in the viewer’s mind too.
It took me a long time to get the transitions between episodes in a decent place, especially the audio, since it necessitated something that was both an ending and could carry a return to the opening titles. I think and hope I’ve achieved this, but feedback would be appreciated if it still doesn’t work (though I’ve got no idea what I’ll do if it doesn’t).

Onward to s02e06, a new episode using the Jedi Crash duology of episodes. This’ll be the least important episode of my show - and remain marked as a ‘bonus’ episode rather than a main episode in my tracker. However, I’m going to add it presented as the sixth episode of the season because it rounds out exactly what the season needed at this point - a little more Anakin, a little more Ahsoka, a little more of Ahsoka’s development solo, a little extra layer to their relationship, and a little more exploration on the war’s effects on the ‘little guy’. Plus, while it’s quite light, it does feature an excellent bit of opening action that I’d always hoped to include somewhere.