(RE)RELEASED - S03E01 - The Politics of War (v2.0)

RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished v2.0 standard.
Our first episode of season three.
Comprising the original episodes Heroes on Both Sides, Pursuit of Peace, and Senate Murders.
Running 32 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 a radical edit of the Heroes on Both Sides / clone loan arc, and one of my personal favourites that I’m particularly proud of.

You can read more about the process behing this one here (scroll down a bit) and then here if you’re interested in the process behind a really complex radical restructure like this.

The original set of episodes in this arc were really messy. First there was a one-off politics episode (which was bad), then two prequels to it which I think attempted to cover similar ground but do it better. The problem is that that new chronological order undid Padmé’s successes in the prequel episodes. And the fact that they were all adhering to a 22-minute open-and-close runtime meant that there was a lot of additional politics, weird tangents, and a lot of different antagonists (many of whom are irrelevant).

However, the core of this arc is really good, and I like to think I’ve let it shine. Padmé’s character is fantastic here and she earns a great win, one that’s bittersweet since while it’s good for the people, it makes the war harder. (I’ve continued to emphasise this over this season.)

It also introduces Lux and his relationship with Ahsoka, a story which in my edit plays out (and concludes) throughout season three. Ahsoka gets some good lessons and growth in this episode.

Noteworthy changes:

This episode is titled ‘The Politics of War’ mainly because I like to manage expectations. You’re getting a politics episode, we might as well be confident about that.
Regarding placement, while it isn’t particularly action heavy, and may be too complex for younger kids, it really sets the stage and tone for what’s to come in later seasons, so served well as the opener for season three.
I use the opening text to position the episode as partially a response to the end of the previous one, with fear of more droid foundries turning into pressure to buy more clones. Also that Padmé recognises this might be cripplingly expensive, and a little reminder of Padmé’s friendship with Ahsoka.
Structurally the whole plot is now in service to the moment where Padmé, after persevering through much adversity, gives her impassioned speech to successfully call off the loan for more clones. Now, Padmé first buys extra time to putt off the vote, then works on plan A (making peace with the Separatists via Mina), then after Mina’s murder shifts to plan B (making good political moves, and connecting with the people), then she makes her impassioned speech to win the day.
I kept all the Mina/Lux stuff, except for Lux ogling Ahsoka and her tutting about ‘boys’. I took out a little of Padmé’s response to Mina, but borrowed some audio from Senate Murders where Padmé’s talking about her “dead friend” Onaconda to keep her dead friend Mina in mind instead.
I trimmed some political conversations which didn’t serve that key plot - in particular those which went too deep into the mechanics of interest rates.
I did get some good value out of Senate Murders, notably a couple of repurposed scenes. Since Dracula and Halle Burtoni both appear in all episodes, we can show a little of the Republic’s internal corruption to give our characters some adversity, and then the bad guys’ negative reactions as Padmé succeeds at the end seek to still give a satisfactory conclusion to their now short arcs. (Halle Burtoni’s arc also hints at the future developments regarding Kaminoan allegiances.)
Senate Murders also gives us our closing scene, showing Halle Burtoni being petty whilst the pre-Rebels celebrate together (which was previously merely a false sense of happiness before Onaconda’s death). I also modified the dialogue here to have Padmé reference her recently murdered friend, since in the original chronological ordering that plot kind of fizzles away.
I cut Grievous out entirely, plus most of the scenes of the bomb droids, and all references to Dooku coordinating the attack. He’s aware of it but we assume that the attack has been set up by the corrupt Republic guys instead, which makes them more threatening and individual.
Ahsoka now disappears halfway through. She had to, because she’s handed back to Anakin in a scene where the Senate has its emergency lighting on. I moved a few things around to emphasise this, so that it feels like Padmé knows she needs to get Ahsoka back to Anakin while there’s an unexpected situation happening.
To get Padmé out onto the street, I manufactured a new scene where she’s thinking through recent events, lost in thought (using a few of the most relevant lines from people she’s talked to in the episode and a bit of reverb). Now it makes more sense why she’s out alone, and so easily jumped. I know Star Wars rarely does this, but I think it’s a very effective device here.
I skipped over a lot of Padmé’s action scene with the bounty hunters. Now, when it appears that the bounty hunters have been arrested (but before they escape to chase Padmé), I cut straight to her meeting Tecla, implying that they were indeed arrested. (I would have skipped the action scene entirely but she’s got the injury on her face later.) I also didn’t show Bail’s assault, instead just showing the effects of it.
The one bit of adversity I cut entirely was Bail being the one who was expected to make the speech, with Padmé only standing in once Bail was injured. This wasn’t really necessary - she’s a successful Senator and former Queen, and definitely a competent orator. We didn’t need the self doubt here, and this way she’s kept in focus through the story. Yes she’s a bit of a softie but I think that works well here - she wins because being soft is her strength. The political middle ground wasn’t required.
Pursuit of Peace originally had Onaconda beat up during a “mandatory blackout”. But seeing as we’d literally just had a power station bombing cause a regular unintentional blackout, I felt I had to shift Onaconda’s assault to immediately after the explosion, while everything was chaotic, which also made the whole attack look more coordinated. I had to cut Onaconda out of some shots in the Senate chamber to achieve this, but there were so many Senate scenes in this trilogy that I had plenty of alternate reaction shots to use instead.
Onaconda survives this story! He’s boring though and I didn’t care either way. I think in TCW:R he’s not even a senator, potentially just a political friend or part of Padmé’s retinue. I haven’t actively cut references to him being a senator though so who knows? But more importantly, who cares?
We don’t see that horrendous investigator character in this episode (or indeed anywhere else in TCW:R).