-1 for changing “Death” to “Birth”.

If we change it to “Leia foresaw the birth of her son”, we’re implying that parenthood is sufficient reason to quit being a Jedi - as if you can’t both become a (force using) major player on the galactic stage and also raise a child. This also doesn’t quite work because she remains a politician and general, both major player roles, whilst still having young Ben.

As it stands, as “Leia foresaw the death of her son”, that’s saying that Leia (implicitly) saw her son’s birth and existence, but then (explicitly) saw that continuing down the Jedi path would end in tragedy, so she sought to focus on her political and military strengths instead of leaning into the force as a solution.

We have to remember that one of the main themes of the Star Wars franchise is that fear of loss leads to the darkside.

• Anakin feared the loss of Padmé, and this gave him an emotional vulnerability which Palpatine was able to exploit. (Hell, Anakin even foresaw the death of Padmé, leading him to become Darth Vader.)
• Luke feared the loss of his friends, abandoning his training under Yoda and going to face Vader on Bespin too early.
• Luke later feared the loss of his sister, which on the second Death Star was almost successfully exploited by Palpatine in the scene where Luke almost gives in to the dark and batters Vader against the throne room railing.
• Leia feared the loss of her son, which in the current context we could view as a similar potential vulnerability if she continued down the Jedi path.

She’s also proven quite right - Luke loved and trained his nephew Ben, overreacting (or at least acting too rashly in the moment) in response to his fear of losing Ben to the darkside. He recognised his failure in that moment as a reaction to the fear of loss yet again, leading him to question that core belief, and ultimately to shut himself off from the force and go into exile.

Luke even teaches Rey as one of the core lessons, “confronting fear is the destiny of the Jedi”. What fear is he referring to there? I think it’s safe to say, fear of the loss of a loved one. Luke learned this lesson - too late for himself, but in time to pass it on to Rey as the inheritor of the next generation of Jedi. Leia recognised the threat of her feelings for Ben should she become a Jedi, and sought to avoid the issue by not continuing down the Jedi path.

The Jedi of the Republic knew of this vulnerability and forbade emotional attachments - romantic love and parental love. Ultimately, the Sith under Palpatine were able to exploit this forbiddance too. I believe that the later journey of Luke and Leia (from about ROTJ onwards through the Sequels) is about them recognising that denying love is just as dangerous as permitting it, and that instead, healthy emotional processing of emotional attachments (and learning to let go) is part of the solution.

It’s a tragic irony that Luke’s fear of Ben turning to the darkside helped turn him to the darkside, and also that Leia’s fear of Ben’s death ultimately put him on a path which still led him towards his death - but it’s a triumph of Leia’s love and willpower that she was able to help return Ben to the light before he died.

RogueLeader said:

I also like Politics of War. You know exactly what you’re getting into with that title.

It blows my mind how you’re able to go through and look at these episodes with such a fresh perspective.

So, Padmé and the other senators winning or losing this the political battle doesn’t get brought again in the series? Any references could easily be cut, but was just curious about that. I think it is great that Padmé gets a big victory on the political stage. Her slowly watching democracy die throughout the prequels is a bit depressing, so it is nice to show her succeeding for a change. I also like the implication you mentioned that Padmé in a way is making Anakin’s job more difficult by voting against the creation of more troops. This episode will definitely be some nice food for thought.

Thanks Rogue - it’s always nice to hear that you’re getting value out of the analysis.

I don’t think it gets brought up again in the series. (And if it was, it’d be an easy fix as you say.) A lot of the macroplot of many episodes is really just a bit of flavour to set up the microplot which is the character drama. On the galactic scale, none of this stuff really matters (which is one of the reasons I have the opportunity to weave a bit of a new narrative out of it in my opening text).

In the case of this trilogy of episodes, I’m sure development went like this:

• First, during the season two production block, the team wanted to make a Padmé-centric politics episode set on Coruscant. Attempting to “make politics interesting”, they made it about a murder which was personally significant to Padmé which she would have to investigate, bookended by some scenes which showed Padmé’s competency as an orator on the senate floor, and showing some of the political adversity she faces.
• In that episode, Senate Murders, the speeches in the senate are not important to the plot - first she gets support for a clone loan bill (to great applause), then she loses support for the clone loan bill (to great applause). Since these don’t tie in much to the episode at all, I think they’re more to show the ebb and flow of politics, you win some/you lose some, etc. But the speeches aren’t the focus of the episode - it’s still a victory in this context because she solves Onaconda’s murder.
• Later, during the season three production block, the team wanted to make a Padmé-centric politics episode set on Coruscant. Why? I think, really, because they didn’t really do a politics episode with the last one there (it was more of a murder investigation against the political backdrop), or at least they felt like they hadn’t done the idea justice yet. There was also the opportunity to bring more shades of grey and corruption into the story, and the opportunity to show Ahsoka (but not Anakin) that it’s not as simple as black and white - always an important part of Ahsoka’s character.
• It being season three, they were deep in the mindset of creating prequels to existing episodes, so opted to make a prequel duology to Senate Murders. Since Senate Murders went from (political) success to failiure, its prequel needed to end in success - and besides, there was a good plot there where Padmé could really work for that success, better showing her strength.
• So we get the duology Heroes on Both Sides (whose supporting plot is Ahsoka learning of the shades of grey) and Pursuit of Peace (whose supporting plot is the opportunistic evil within the Republic working with the Separatists to intimidate the voting senators), which ends in Padmé’s success.
• The reason it’s all a bit wonky is because the success gained in the prequel duology doesn’t quite align with the success that Senate Murders begins with. They’re ostensibly about the same thing, but when smushed together as a trilogy the point where they connect has (essentially) one heartfelt hard-won powerful winning speech, followed by a casual easy win which is quickly undone for less well explored reasons. And Pursuit of Peace establishes that that was the vote, but then in Senate Murders they undo it? With another vote? It’s unclear - mainly because that wasn’t the original intent of those scenes. So it doesn’t really work as a trilogy, even though it’s been set up this way.
• And so, whilst it’s now “officially” three episodes next to each other in chronological order, if you did want to preserve all three you’d actually be best served by spacing them out a bit instead with a bit of extra exposition, so that Senate Murders wasn’t an awkward connection then an immediate reversal of the success. But, in our case, Senate Murders is pretty weak, so it’s best used as spare parts to enhance the other two.

You’re right that the slow erosion of democracy is a bit of a sadness, and Padmé deserves a good victory, and ultimately of course it’s perfectly fine to show that she’s just one of very many politicians and she’s surrounded by a stagnating and corrupt system which was just begging to collapse.

To be honest, adding rich politics to Star Wars in the prequels and Clone Wars is one of Lucas’ ideas which I think was a huge net gain. He added some really complex but important stuff, which he made more accessible, and so much of it is so relevant today:

• That stability can be an illusion masking corruption and stagnancy
• That artificial wars (or threats) can be used to encourage a voting population to live in fear and vote against their own interests
• That war is politically complex - and many can benefit from it
• That often, neither opposing side thinks of themselves as the bad guy
• That corruption will always emerge because all it requires is to put personal interests above those nominally served
• That money is a particularly corrupting force
• That even the corrupt often consider themselves benevolent
• That corruption produces opportunities to yield power to autocrats
• That we are never too many steps away from autocracy
• That it is the responsibility of all citizens to expose corruption and remain vigilant
• That the law is not infallible, especially when it serves to protect those in power rather than the vulnerable
• That sometimes, rebellion/resistance is the appropriate way to do good (OT politics)

And this is all great stuff! Importantly, it’s not too complex for kids. I have a five year old and NOTHING is too complex for her - it just needs explaining in the right way. (I guess that’s why there’s a subreddit called ‘Explain Like I’m Five’.) You can absolutely teach kids this stuff - and present it in a way which makes it accessible and interesting. And it’s fantastic that the Star Wars franchise really dives into it because we do need to give our kids an education in politics which starts early - because, as above, it’s the responsibility of all citizens to remain vigilant against corruption and autocracy. Sure, we don’t need to go too deep into the detail - the Clone Wars goes too far when it talks about 25% interest rates and schools being adequately funded - but the core principles are super and the broad ‘gist’ of this era of Star Wars covers a lot of this stuff really well.

Man, I’m suprised that I’ve written so much over the last two big posts about this particular episode. I guess since I’ve been away for a while I’ve got a big boil of Star Wars analysis which needs lancing.

Ice said:

I watched the Lost Clones episode again and it really works well as a mini anthology.

I’m wondering there are more parts of episodes that can be used like this in the future, perhaps the citadel rescue (Where Echo is MIA) can be condensed this way, along with another clone “mission” or two? Or with som political stuff that otherwise didn’t work in a full episode?

That’s certainly a good thought, Ice. When I’m reviewing the other clone-heavy episodes I’ll keep that thought in mind, and if they have a strong clone subplot but an otherwise weak body of content, I’ll take note and consider aggregation. Perhaps there’s even good clone stuff in other excluded episodes?

Yeah, and this is certainly our strongest politics episode.

There’re two things which make people remember an episode as “good”. The first is a good narrative - a good holistic character or story arc which takes you on a good journey. The second is a good moment, which can make an otherwise ungood episode considered good.

There are certainly examples where good moments seek to make people think an episode is good, even if actually the narrative isn’t that great and the experience of watching the episode is a bit underwhelming.

In this case though, Heroes on Both Sides has a good narrative (with the Mina Bonteri plot), whereas Pursuit of Peace is a far less interesting narrative but with one particularly strong moment (Padmé’s speech). The task then becomes crafting a new story which preserves and enhances both, dropping anything which is neither a strong moment or a strong narrative.

Thanks baby ❤️

It’s good to be back!

Yeah, THE POLITICS OF WAR might be a good one, because it also sort of implies that this is the ONLY politics focused episode, which is mostly true.

I’ve just rewatched a couple of episodes from season two:

• I’m going to rename ‘The Return of Maul’ to ‘Monsters’ as an homage to the earlier episode ‘Monster’ and since Maul is, in this episode, also referred to as a ‘monster’ like his brother was before him.
• I’m going to flip the order of 204 Corruption on Mandalore and 205 Tales of the Lost Clones, because (1) in 206 Maul is also lost and his plot echoes some of the Lost Clones a bit too closely, and (2) to avoid having two no-Ahsoka episodes back to back. This way, we’re only ever one episode away from Ahsoka.

Once I’ve got 301 finished I’ll come back and fix the bugs in the latter half of season 2 raised since its release.

So, I’m back on the horse, having got my teeth stuck in nicely to my season three premiere episode, taken from Heroes on Both Sides / Pursuit of Peace / Senate Murders. My earlier analysis is here if you want a reminder.

I was hoping to release this one as a suprise, but I’ve run out of edit-brain for today, and I wanted to write up my thoughts.

This episode is yet another fantastic example of Clone Wars being goodbad and badgood, and why the episodic 22-minute structure often worked against the show’s good ideas BUT that pure aggregation also wouldn’t serve it particularly well. Taken as it stands, as this chronological trilogy (originally with the third part released long before the first and second), it’s such a weird story, even though it does have really great bits:

1. Padmé, Onaconda, Bail and Mon Mothma try to convince the Senate to vote against taking out a huge loan to buy more clones, and manage to put the vote off temporarily as there’s no immediate emergency.
2. Padmé illegally (but don’t worry about it) uses Ahsoka to make contact with a Separatist friend, Mina Bonteri, in the hopes of forcing peace talks, which very nearly go ahead.
3. To subvert this, the corrupt Republic forces who are in league with the Separatists arrange for a bombing on Coruscant, so that the Republic’s fear will shut down the peace talks and they’ll take out the crippling clone loan.
4. As the Republic Senate returns to the vote in an emergency response to the bombing, the Separatists kill Mina Bonteri, doubling down on shutting down the peace talks (though this does postpone Senate activity for a few hours).
5. Bail, seen as a respected moderate, plans to convince the Republic to stay their hand, whilst Separatist-paid bounty hunters intimidate and beat up Senators including Bail, Onaconda and Padmé.
6. Bail is injured by his bounty hunters, leaving Padmé (seen as more of a separatist sympathiser) to speak in his stead, making an impassioned plea (based on listening to her constituents’ needs) which successfully wins the vote against the loan.
7. Padmé later makes a further, simpler plea, again to applause, though some other corrupt Republic forces (who are NOT in league with the separatists, and one of whom is a very obvious red herring) object and act very shadily.
8. Onaconda is poisoned by his Rodian aide in a matter unrelated to the conflict, which causes an investigation which Padmé solves.
9. The chaos of that murder again makes the Senate uncomfortable, and they ultimately change their votes (even though the vote already happened an episode ago?), instead voting in favour of the clone loan.

So, all of that is pretty much fine, and indeed really decent politics both for Star Wars and as general drama. It’s just a real mess when it’s all mashed together, and the ending kind of flops. Either way, you couldn’t ask someone to watch an hour of that. And what a crazy arc. Taken as a three-act structure, it’s about Postponement > Success > Failiure, which is an extremely weird arc, which undoes the strongest moment - Padmé’s speech. And in that trilogy of episodes there are about four different groups of antagonists, all with different motives, some of which are proven irrelevant.

So in editing this, I had a lot of decent content to use, but the challenge became which elements to preserve and which to drop, and which were necessary for each narrative part. This was especially tough as almost every scene is chat in and around the Senate building, and I didn’t want to pad it with action just for the sake of it. (Fun fact: You don’t need action if the drama is good! And there’s lots of good tension here.) As always we must identify the strongest emotional core of the episode, which is of course Padmé’s speech in Pursuit of Peace. To maintain that, the plot therefore must be structured around that being the victory moment, which means dropping most of Senate Murders (fine, as that was the weakest and most convoluted). To best support that moment then, the plot would be most enhanced by Padmé facing as much adversity as possible, making this a success of her heart and perseverance. Therefore, the plot simply needed to become:

Padmé, in spite of corruption, doubt, and the murder and assault of her friends, persists in smartly and successfully making a political move which will improve the lives of billions of citizens.

We must also preserve the Mina/Lux content, since that’s the most important to the overall plot, although it doesn’t serve our new ideal plotline quite as tightly as we might like.

This way, the new episode plays as follows, the whole running to about 35 minutes:

• Padmé buys extra time to put off the vote.
• Padmé works on plan A, spending about 15 onscreen minutes making peace with the Separatists.
• Separatist extremists counter, causing the bombing to trigger Republic cowards and intimidating Senators.
• Padmé persists, reverting to plan B, making good political moves, finding the heart of her message, and winning the day.
• The good Senators celebrate while the corrupt folk begrudge their loss.

Further changes and musings:

• Though this is an episode which ends in victory, it remains bittersweet since while Padmé got what she wanted, we know there’ll be more pressure on the clone army now (which naturally I’ll play up in the crawls). This is pretty nice since Padmé (who represents peace through diplomacy) has come into conflict with Anakin (who represents peace through war).
• This is a nice season opener as it gives us a well-earned mature Ahsoka, but contrasts her nicely with both Anakin and Padmé, so we get an early insight into the ideological differences between the three.
• Loads of great corruption in this episode, really showing why the Republic sucked independently of the war with the Separatists. It’s one of the best themes of TCW.
• 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 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 have their appearances from Senate Murders shift to early in my episode 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 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.
• 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. (Though I might remove this scene if I can remove injured Bail later.)
• 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).
• I haven’t done this yet but if I can find good sources to use I’ll use some scenes of destruction from Zillo Beast Strikes Back, to maybe imply that the bombing on Coruscant was more widespread.

I wonder what to call this? HEROES OF PEACE would respect the original names, though in this context it would feel like it was referencing the Rebel leaders more than Mina Bonteri / the Separatist side I think. SHADES OF GREY might hint nicely at the fact that you’re about to get a big mess of politics, or THE POLITICS OF WAR might tell the audience that while they’re getting a politics episode we’re going to keep it a little spicy. Maybe I’d even go with the Yin/Yang imagery and something like DARK WITHIN, LIGHT WITHOUT.

WitchDR said:

I’m currently watching through your edit now Eddie and it’s great so far. Just started Malevolence and noticed a stray frame during the transition at 3:21.

Just fixed this now as v1.3.

I saw that! Incredible design, it’ll be great to see these episodes properly realised.

I’m getting more and more antsy to return to this project now, and nearly span out the next easy episode before realising it’d be a bit more of a complex one. Must finish my book though, otherwise I never will…

Hey guys, I’ll be back with the start of Season 3 soon, I’m just wrapping up the book I’m reading and have dropped 50 hours into Hades, which is an incredible game by the way.

Either way, I keep coming back to my idea for the Scipio episodes, and thought I’d see if you guys have any ideas/technical knowhow.

If you recall, my plan for the Scipio trio of episodes is to cut it down into one single episode, but include the fireside chat from the Utapau unfinished episode reel. The intention is to use the fireside dialogue about the loss of Ahsoka) as some kind of memory segment, which might enhance Anakin’s harsh behaviour towards Padmé and Clovis to make it feel like his rash actions are a response to losing Ahsoka.

(The main reason I think this is worth doing is because we don’t really get the opportunity to see how Anakin responds to the loss of Ahsoka in the show the way it was originally released, due to the way the last couple of seasons were cancelled and released.)

In that case, I’ll need some kind of effect/visual to accompany the audio, I think. I was thinking either lightly wafting fog (to hit the ‘memory’ angle) or perhaps a fire animated in the same style. Does anyone know where I might get a good simple shot of ‘dream sequence’ stock fog? Or if there’s a good animated shot of a fireside in any TCW episode?

ThisIsCreation said:

To get off topic just a tiny bit, the first cut was mentioned in a youtube video today from pretty big channel and they mentioned the things that have been added.

https://youtu.be/DkuIHWJmqUg

That’s a really decent video, especially to give people a primer on the concept of fanediting. The Ascendant stuff is almost all in the last five minutes if anyone just wants to look at that.

triadne said:
Snip

Oh that’s excellent then, I’m very glad it’s artistic choice. And bringing it closer to McQuarrie’s art is a really awesome goal, because his art has that mystical/wistful/adventurous aesthetic that the execution has often failed to capture, or that the franchise aesthetic has tended away from since, so it’d be wonderful if you manage to achieve something closer to that.

Congratulations on all of the significant effort so far, and good luck with the rest!

I think a lot of the technical changes you plan for here sound really sensible.

Intending for this to be helpful feedback rather than criticism, however, personally I have a couple of issues with the colour grade which you might want to look into. Firstly, to me, your grading looks like it’s putting a brown/grey filter over everything, which I think is detrimental. Secondly, I think the filter is particularly affecting your human fleshtones, which I think look quite pallid, giving the characters pale skin and pinkness around the eyes.

As I say - not intending to criticise your work at all, merely offering that up in case it helps you tweak to achieve your desired effect.

Imhotep, thanks very much for this feedback - that’s all really useful.

TOTLC:

• Noted on all of the text, I think those are some good suggestions and I’ll do a little polish pass soon.
• I think I’ll stick with Rex and Cody in the control room working it out, because it’s kind of cool how, unlike a lot of TCW, it’s shot in quite a subtle way, and you have to watch the eye movements, rather than it being an explicit verbal thing. I think it’s a nice touch. Good idea though!
• I don’t think I can trim Gregor’s amnesia either, since that would make it hard to get from A to B in this storyline. Also, I think this helps his later appearance in Rebels. Since that appearance has a mental health component, I think it’s worth maintaining evidence of the mental damage here too.
• Agreed on the TOTLC intertitles. They’re still unfinished. I’ll have a think about how better to open into each episode, without front-loading all of the text too.

Shadow:

• I’m not certain what to do about the Jedi order essentially pimping Padmé out or using her as a Honey Trap. I think it helps to lean into the angle that they’ve kind of become tools of a corrupt Senate and continue to drive a wedge between Anakin and the Jedi, though agreed, it is a bit weird.
• I’ll look into Lott Dodd’s plot reveal. I had thought about removing that before, and can’t quite remember why I decided it should stay. I think perhaps because having it be mysterious took away from Clovis’ selfishness. But I’ll check this one again.
• I’ll also check Clovis’ ‘I love her’ line. It is very strained. This one’s kind of a decision between making Clovis more of a legit creep (which I’m fine with), versus making him a bit more of a serious threat to Anakin because he genuinely loves Padmé and he’s the jealous type. I might check the Scipio arc soon and see which best serves his character.

Assault:

• The only reason I highlight Luminara’s absence is because she shows up at the halfway point of this story and some of the characters comment on it there. I figured having one Jedi implicitly absent might increase the stakes and make the plan feel a little more scrappy. Does that land, or do you reckon I should switch that line out for something else?
• I’ll review the cuts at 16:00 and the fade at 32:55, thanks!

Great feedback and much appreciated, thank you! Please keep it coming!

Totally valid point, Peter. I agree that it doesn’t go far enough, but it’s better than the original. I’m not a woman and I’ve never been in a nonconsensual situation like that though so I’m not qualified to comment further.

Love that.

Can the Gungans be excised altogether, other than JarJar when he has to be seen with the party? Battle droids still attack Theed so there’s still jeopardy for the Naboo characters and a reason for Anakin to fly off to shut them down.

Anything that makes that whole scene consensual is a massive value add as far as I’m concerned.

smudger9 said:

Definitely worth taking a break. The amount of work you’ve done is phenomenal, but the best way to keep the enthusiasm is to take a time-out! I havent started watching the episodes yet, but I do love the intro.

Thanks Smudger! Really lovely to have you here. Yeah, I’ll take a couple of weeks to breathe, but I am champing at the bit to get stuck in to season three! Please, if you watch my edits, feel free to challenge and critique any element. And if you’re wondering why I made a particular change or format choice, I’ll do my best to explain!

Looking forward to it buddy!

Thanks! It’s always lovely to hear stuff like that, especially from editors whose movies are my definitive archival versions, since long before I ever thought I’d pick up editing myself. I did just today think that I might record myself producing an edit whilst thinking out loud, and then edit that recording to fast forward through any slow bits, for those that might be interested. But I don’t know, I’m not a particularly competent technical editor, there are people out there who people would be far more interesting to watch than me.

I enjoy sharing my thoughts - it helps me think things through and I like to imagine that there are others like you who enjoy to see my working. Part of what got me into this community beyond the edits themselves was this constant sense of wonder at the incredible problem solving that other editors often demonstrate, and I still enjoy seeing that in threads even where I’m not invested in the output. Fanediting is a cool discipline and a fascinating challenge.

That said, my huge volume of posted thoughts don’t generate as much discussion as I’d expected, which I think comes down to one of two things: Either people read it and are like ‘yeap, sound enough, carry on’, which is fine by me as it means I’ve generated good trust, or I’m just overwhelming people by massively overdoing it and they’re sitting there wishing I’d just shut up and output content. Which is also mostly fine, though I’d rather not be putting people off with a too-high volume of unnecessary analysis and losing out on having people chime in on the necessary analysis.

But hey, if it were just up to me, I’d constantly have people chattering away disseminating and rethinking and challenging, for the best possible output. Y’hear me, people? ALL feedback is ALWAYS welcome!

Either way, the project’s an absolute joy, I’m loving churning it out. As I say I’m going to force a break to read a book and finish a videogame at least before returning, but Season Three can’t take too long either. It’s a bunch of easy polish passes for the most part, plus quite heavily trimming Umbara, turning Rako Hardeen into probably two longish episodes (because it’s all good), and then possibly one more complex edit in the Onderon finale.

Released - s02e09 - TERROR OF GEONOSIS

Comprising Legacy of Terror and Brain Invaders.

Details on the last page, link in the spreadsheet, PM for access.

And with that I can say-

Complete: SEASON TWO

(Well, except for those couple of transitions in my clones anthology, and I think one episode with a very minor bugfix pending, but shhh, I’ll fix them soon.)

Woop woop woop! Trumpets, etc.

Now I’m going to force myself to take a little break because it’s been all-out for a couple of months. Only a little one though!

Released - s02e08 - Assault on Geonosis

Comprising Landing at Point Rain and Weapons Factory.

Details on the last page, link in the spreadsheet, PM for access.

The final episode of this three-part arc and the season is rendering now, should be up in three hours max.

I nearly just rendered an episode with incomplete titles by mistake.

It would have read:

"The Clone Wars spread instability and chaos across the galaxy.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando Mando.

Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando."

I’ve no doubt that’s exactly what Dave Filoni’s template document for scripts for episodes of the Mandalorian looks like, but it’s not going to suffice for you guys.

I think I’d like to stick with Return of Maul as the priority, because I really want the show to be bold about the fact that “MAUL IS COMING BACK, deal with it”, because it’s useful to rip the plaster (‘band-aid’) off early and let people come to terms with it earlier.

So I’m more inclined to rename the Geonosis episode, and I think for the sake of uniformity for that now-trilogy I’ll stick with the ‘X of/on Geonosis’ format. I suppose it’s clear that we are returning to it, so Assault works fairly well because it implies some urgency after Padmé’s discovery. That would also help preemptively let people know that Padmé’s episode is not likely to be action heavy, so would help manage expectations there.

Maybe Assault on Geonosis?