I originally wanted to watch a few more episodes before I give feedback but since I didn’t have the time for that, I figured, I’d at least leave some thoughts on the first episode of your show.
First of all, editing wise and from a technical standpoint it’s really pretty much perfect. The story on the other hand - and I know that you already know that and that this is something that’s only a problem for the first two episodes - is really all over the place in that episode. I feel like keeping some more weaker material from Christophsis would have helped here, but it’s been a while since I saw the original episodes so I might be completely off here, but one example of the plot not working for me is the Ventress fight that just ends with her running away and then she just never appears again. Surely there was some closure to that in the original episodes?
But anyway, that’s not the part I actually wanted to talk about since I’m sure you gave the possibilites for making the plot in that episode work way more thought than I did.
What I mostly wanted to mention is the one thing that made the episode feel like a fan edit to me and that’s the introductory text. I’m not against that text in general. In fact, I really liked the kinda cold opening with the first line “Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.” That’s a really great line but by the second and third line it began to feel too much like an info dump which was still kinda fine but then it continued for another three lines while I just wanted to get into those conflicts the first line promised.
So my main suggestion here would be to shorten the introduction to three lines which I think in this case is easily done (that might not be the case for other episodes of course), so let me just comment on how I could see that being done (sorry for the lengthy stuff about something you probably don’t want to change this late into your edits).
Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.
Great line!
With ANAKIN SKYWALKER’s ascension to the rank of Jedi Knight, his former master OBI-WAN KENOBI has requested a new padawan.
I don’t think we need this information. Except for the fact that Anakin is now a Jedi Knight, we are told the same thing in the episode when it becomes relevant. And the Jedi Knight bit could probably be combined with some other information in a later line.
Aided by a small clone squadron, the duo now defend Christophsis, a planet whose crystal factories produce military energy shields.
Something about Anakin and Obi-Wan defending Christophsis is of course important but the rest seems unnecessary to me. I mean, it’s a nice bit of trivia that Christophsis produces energy shields but it’s not like Star Wars has been known for providing reasons as to why there is a battle on a certain planet.
Count Dooku’s fleet has forced the Republic’s ships to retreat to a nearby medical station, leading to fears of an imminent invasion.
IIRC you put that in in order to connect the episode to the next one, but still, this information doesn’t feel necessary to me.
But having detected the distant signal of Dooku’s assassin ASAJJ VENTRESS, a priority target, the Jedi rush to capture her
.
That line is of course completely necessary to set up the first scenes.
They are unaware that comms have just been jammed planetwide…
That is literally the first line of dialogue in the episode, so rather unnecessary.
With all that, I think it would be possible to combine lines 2, 3 and 4 into one that just sets up that Anakin and Obi-Wan are “desperatly trying to defend Christophsis while they wait for reinforcements from the Republic feet” or something like that. Maybe include the blockade or fear of invasion or whatever. Then lead into the episode with line 5 and just skip line 6.
As a secondary suggestion, something else I for some reason expected when the first line showed up on screen and that I still like as a concept is that after each line, you could show maybe 5 to 10 seconds of footage in the style of a silent movie to underline what was just written. So after the first line about conflict erupting, show a montage of that conflict (in this case scenes from Geonosis would probably make most sense since one would watch this after AoTC) and the same with the second line and then have the third (or whichever is the last) line lead directly into the episode and show the logo and episode title only after the first scene.
I think that could work really nicely, but again, I get that you probably don’t want to make this change that late into production.
Anyway, once I got the chance to see more episodes, I’ll (hopefully) be back with more feedback on the actual episodes themselves.