Great edit but the then dead jedi master di Gallia making a chronological misstep in the series order.

EddieDean said:

RELEASED - S03E06b - The Citadel Rescue (v2.0)

RELEASE VERSION.

This is a BONUS episode that is NOT part of my recommended viewing order! (See below!)

This is numbered as episode 6B of season three - fitting between s03e06 and s03e07 if you want to watch it.

Comprising the original episodes The Citadel, Counterattack, and Citadel Rescue.

Running 65 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.

By popular request, here’s the Citadel arc, added into TCW:R. I don’t vouch for this episode as part of TCW:R, indeed it is NOT part of my ‘Recommended’ cut (or my ‘Filoniverse’ cut) of the show. Instead, this belongs to what I call the ‘Continuity’ cut - additional content mainly just for those people who don’t mind weaker content so long as it expands on characters from wider canon (in this case Tarkin and Echo).

But, importantly, it IS a bit weaker than other episodes - so please consider yourself warned before you mark me down for its inclusion! I don’t recommend it for a first-time viewer, or one who is mainly looking for a quality watch. It’s here as an optional extra, mainly for those who know they like it.

Why don’t I recommend it? And should you watch it on your run-through? Firstly, let’s look at why people have requested it, and why it remains a popular arc:

Firstly, it features a semi-major (to the Clone Wars) character death, which becomes a major plot point the Bad Batch show. So a lot of people think it’s important for that reason alone.

Secondly, because it features Tarkin, and some good Anakin-Tarkin content. I completely agree on this point - they’re great scenes.

Thirdly (but far less importantly), there are a few other decent elements, like a bit of ‘state of the war’ drama, and Plo Koon’s appearance.

But, why don’t I like it? Your mileage may vary, of course, but for me:

There is VERY little meat beyond the Anakin-Tarkin content. There’s barely an emotional core to the story, Ahsoka’s plotline barely gives us anything new for her character, and though it talks a big game (with the Nexus Route and arguably the most useful Separatist droids), it has no impact on the wider story of the Clone Wars and these plotlines are never picked up again. Everything it does (other than Tarkin), other episodes do better.

The pacing is SLOW. It’s an hour of combat and travel, split-up and meet-up, capture and escape. All of the combat is more of the same we’ve seen before, and I spend my watches through this desperately awaiting the next nugget of dialogue.

The aesthetic is poor. It’s got a very cool looking planet - purple cracked with rivers of yellow lava - but once that cool impact starts to fade it makes for an extremely dull and repetitive backdrop, more akin to the early season one/two locations. Osi Sobeck is yet another hammy cackling villain, and it over-uses lightning-like energy fields, which I especially dislike in Star Wars.

The character death I mentioned above is extremely throwaway. It’s not a focus of the episode, and that character doesn’t feature other than to die in an explosion, meaning that all you need is the characters in a future episode to say “oh yeah, he died offscreen” to get the same impact.

Many of the episode’s ideas are cheaply used without considering their impact on other content: The use of carbon freezing both pre-Empire and without eye damage. Republic-hacked battle droids (never used again). New Separatist battle droids with legitimately useful design and tactics (never used again). The idea of a secret hyperspace lane between rival homeworlds (never used again).

It is a load of better-elsewhere blandness and frustration wrapped around a very small amount of interesting content. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just got a stick up my arse about this one. Look, it’s not bad, it’s just fine. Either way, you asked for it, so here it is!

Anyway, when it came to editing this, I was hoping to find some sensible trims, but like the first time I reviewed this content, I found it’s a particularly hard one to cut. The goofy droids carry important plot, the frustrating use of carbon freezing is necessary, the good Anakin-Tarkin dialogue can’t be removed from an otherwise pretty worthless ‘split up’/‘meet up’ sequence, and so on. Ultimately, rather than do a deep dive on the feasibility of possible routes for polish (like focusing solely on Anakin’s side of the ‘split up’ sequence), I opted to just leave it all as-is. There are maybe a couple of combats which could have been cut, but I don’t think there’s value in trying to unpick the whole thing and put it back together again.

So, essentially, this is just the full three episodes, stitched together. The only change I made was removing the redundant opening scene.

Noteworthy changes:

This episode is titled ‘The Citadel Rescue’. I figured that people looking for this need the word ‘Citadel’ in there, and I haven’t edited it enough to justify a fruity new name.

Regarding placement, I think it belongs here, in the middle of Ahsoka’s journey to independence, but before her more extreme trials later this season.

I used the opening crawl to essentially replace the original newsreel and the very first scene. The first scene is exposition, and repeated a lot of content from the newsreel anyway, so I killed two birds with one stone and just covered that initial plot, so we can kick off the episode with Ahsoka wanting to join.

I also, in the crawl, mentioned that the droids there fight captive Jedi to develop new tactics. Hopefully that explains why we see some very competent droids here that we won’t see again.

Other than that, it’s all as-is.

I will take suggestions for trims, if anyone can spot any, for a future release, but for now, this is just The Citadel arc, pretty much untouched.