RELEASED - S02E07 - Monsters (V2.0)

RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
Our seventh episode of season two.
Comprising the original episodes Brothers and Revenge
Running 35 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.

A brilliant episode, this, bringing Maul finally back into the Galaxy. We get a good deep dive into Maul’s psyche since Naboo, more of the surviving Dathomir characters, and some meaningful character work for Obi-Wan. It’s got great action, complex alliances, and builds more anticipation for what’s to come. It’s one of the big turning points in the original show, leaving the threat of Maul hanging over it, and hopefully one that’ll serve the same purpose in my edit, which is why I wanted to kick off the hints at Maul’s return as early as reasonably possible.

Noteworthy changes:

The episode is titled ‘Monsters’ as a light reference to the prior episode ‘Monster’ (where Savage was the titular Monster’), but pluralised here because both Savage and Maul have been referred to as monsters, and they’re the focus of this episode.
I’ve truncated everything before Lotho Minor. Dooku and Grievous’ discussion, and Savage hunting through the diner, is now in an earlier episode, to help create anticipation for this one. We don’t need Anakin and Ahsoka having dinner here either (especially because this has Ahsoka’s older-looking character upgrade).
I’ve heavily trimmed Lotho Minor (including some further smoothing compared to v1), removing lots of wandering, snake banter, the pendant going faulty, the ‘fire breathers’ (even though they look cool) and Savage slaughtering Lotho’s scrappers. None of it’s vital. He just meets the snake, who leads him to the right place then tricks him into the trap. It makes sense for both characters.
I’ve shifted the scene of Yoda sensing Maul to immediately after he’s healed on Dathomir, runs outside, and screams. I used an iris wipe and preserved some of the Maul/Savage audio to help emphasise that this was a powerful moment in the force.
I’ve cut the scenes of Ventress on Tattooine seeing Savage’s bounty. The main reason for this is because she’s not yet a bounty hunter in my version of events. (This change is the most major canon impact of my restructuring.) Instead, she shows up unexpectedly (though Yoda’s implied there’ll be a suprise visitor), and it’s not a huge stretch to assume she’s felt something in the force (or seen the same transmission the Jedi did). I actually think this works a bit better, and it also makes her now-later journey to Tattooine and decision to become a bounty hunter more of a reaction to her failiure here and fear of Savage and Maul, and has given her longer to keep her resentments before she starts to soften.

Onward to s02e08/09/10, the Geonosis trilogy (formerly the Geonosis pentalogy), where we finally see why there’ve been no major Republic/Separatist conflicts this season. After that I’ll revise the workprints for Monsters and Attachments, to complete the season.