REVIEW VERSION RELEASED - S02E06 - ATTACHMENTS (V2.0)

REVIEW VERSION, not quite ready for full release, but presented here for feedback.
Our sixth episode of season two.
Comprising the original episode Jedi Crash.
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 by far the least important episode of my edit, featuring a pretty light ‘meeting the natives’ story. It’s skippable, but I’ve included it here for a few reasons: Mainly, because it balances out this place in the season nicely, since this period of time needed more Anakin, more Ahsoka, a little more exploration of the duo both together and apart, and more of this season’s focus on the war’s impact on the little guy. But also, it does begin with a great action sequence I’d hoped to include somewhere, it has a nice little hint at the Holdo Maneuver, and it does show us a little more of what happens on the fringes of the Galaxy, something that’s nice to see in the show but often appears in the show’s weaker episodes.

I didn’t follow it up with its sequel, Defenders of Peace, because that episode is very dull and its villain is very goofy. The Lurmen plot across both episodes feels quite half-baked and rejecting even self defence always just felt silly to me, so I’ve changed the dialogue in the Jedi Crash content that I am using to make them more isolationist and pacifist and less self-destructive.

Noteworthy changes:

The episode is titled ‘Attachments’ to highlight primarily Ahsoka’s attachment to Anakin (the main focus of the episode), but also Rex’s loyalty to Anakin, and the Lurmen’s attachments to each other and their creed.
The opening text and title focuses on the episode’s theme of the various connections people have - to their home, their culture, their creed, and each other.
We open on the battle sequence, unchanged saved for cutting a few bits of silly droid dialogue, continuing through to the crash.
I slightly reordered the bird-beast attack scenes for tension, so that it begins with Rex being vigilant, then Rex seeing something moving (but not being clear what it is), then the creatures attacking and killing some of Aayla’s party (so we now understand the threat), then a one-on-one fight between one of them and Rex, and then we know that more of them are closing in on Rex as he guards Anakin. The last shot of Anakin before help arrives is of him blacking out, increasing the medical risk angle too.
I trimmed a bunch of wipes, in so doing, so it doesn’t feel like the episode’s full of wipes.
I also moved the scene of Aayla’s discussion about the purpose of the Jedi in the war to nearer the end, so it can have more impact to the overall story for the viewer, and skipping it in its original placement serves to bring help to Anakin a little quicker (after a wipe transition to daytime) and lets us cut out a few shots of the Lurmen rolling like a ball, which is a bit goofy.
I modified dialogue for Tee Wat Kaa, including adding some lines from Defenders of Peace, to make it more that the Lurmen are worried that the Jedi’s presence will draw Separatist attention to their quiet colony, and that they don’t believe in fighting. In his conversation with Aayla, he does now concede that the Jedi fight for peace, though ominously asks ‘at what cost’, to give Aayla (and the audience) something to mull over.
We end on the episode’s original ending, with Ahsoka and Aayla acknowledging that the Republic will probably find them soon. I didn’t include the shots from the next episode of them being found, which I could have added, because it felt redundant after them saying that. (As a note, the ending music transition was difficult to get decent, because this is one of the few episodes from season one which mixed the music in with its voice/SFX track, making them hard to isolate.)

I don’t love this episode and I don’t think you will either, but as I say, it serves a decent purpose in the grander edit. I’ve just tried to make it as neat as I can.

Onwards to s02e07 Monsters, where we finally get the return of Maul.