Both completely correct. I’ve just finished a re-review of a batch of Padmé-centric episodes: Corruption/The Academy, Assassin, Heroes on Both Sides/Pursuit of Peace/Senate Murders. Onwards to analysis!
Corruption
- Is mostly setup for Academy, though has some good Padmé scenes. In this watchthrough I spotted that there’s a good focused throughline where you focus on Padmé being brought in as someone Satine trusts, and she helps her uncover Almec, but you don’t touch on the school drinks poisoning at all. I also don’t think Padmé should be actively killing the rivals of a neutral party that opposes the Republic though, that screams ‘political suicide’ to me.
- Fixing and refocusing this is all achievable with trimming. You can skip all of the unwanted bits, so long as the green bottles are something else - I think I’d go for explosive fuel in the opening crawl, and probably recontextualise the whole so that this is about Death Watch sympathisers within Mandalore’s citizenry importing black market explosive fuel.
- I don’t know how much value I’d get out of this next idea, but since the drinks contain “Tea”, I might use the opening crawl to establish the street name “T” (short for whatever so long as it begins with ‘T’) if I want to use more dialogue that refers to the word ‘Tea’. I might not need to though.
The Academy
- Is where the meat of this duology is. Though the four kids aren’t very interesting, and don’t add much to the overall plot even if you account for their future appearance. I’d possibly even exclude their initial scene in the warehouse, just letting them report it with context, to keep the focus on Ahsoka.
- The original version of this depends on some pretty heavy handwaving to get Ahsoka training some kids, so I’d use the crawl to establish that Mandalore’s mandatory youth military conscription has been replaced with mandatory youth civic academies, to better sell the idea that it’s really important to Mandalorian culture - both traditional and modern - and better justify Ahsoka’s presence.
- A lot of this episode isn’t super strong, but I still think it’s a worthy episode overall. I’ll trim it quite heavily though, so it might end up being my shortest episode yet (even including the Corruption lead-in).
- Ahsoka giving the kids the political situation is BRILLIANT, mainly because it’s a primer for how the real world works and how to operate within it.
Assassin
- Is awkward. I’ve been on the fence about it but on review I think I’m going to relegate it to a lower cut (probably just Complete Cut, my lowest other than outright exclusion).
- Pros:
- Lovely Ahsoka/Padmé moments. Though I wish they’d come after the following episode(s), which they can’t due to Ahsoka’s model change.
- Alderaan is nice. Though not well explored, and only really shown as static art so you don’t get to enjoy its beauty.
- More good Padmé politics. Though not as good as the following arc.
- Some very nice Ahsoka/Yoda stuff. They have an interesting relationship and it would have been great to see this explored more.
- Good scenes of all our rebel alliance instigators (so long as you’re watching Hal’s Ep3, or at least a fanedit with the rebellion deleted scenes, which you should be)
- But, Cons, which I think win out:
- Ahsoka demonstrates a new power, visions. You can argue that visions are a standard force power, but they’re always used in instances of a strong emotional bond, and this is the first time we see Ahsoka and Padmé together (the official first time, which I’m excluding, doesn’t have them interact, so it’s not like I can do better here). There’s no emotional jeopardy or advantage to having Ahsoka have visions of Padmé’s death.
- Aurra Sing isn’t interesting in this. She’s literally just a paid assassin…
- …for Ziro the Hutt, no less. Who doesn’t appear in my edit, and cheapens Jabba and the Hutts. You could use the crawl to recontextualise this as a Separatist or Mandalorian attack, but neither is as good as the arc which follows.
- We know Padmé doesn’t die, so there’s no jeopardy.
- The payoff is extremely light. The political victory here of Padmé’s speech achieves nothing, compared to the better arc which follows, which cover a lot of similar beats but with a far better Separatist plot.
- So, ultimately. Since I’m including the prior arc which builds on Padmé’s trust with Mandalore, and including the following arc which is a far better Coruscant politics episode, and there’s no value add here for Ahsoka, I can’t include this in my Quality Cut.
Heroes on Both Sides
- Needs a little bit of tightening, but is The Good Shit. Easily, by a mile, the best politics episode in this show, and good enough for the Quality Cut. Good enough, even, to become the season three premiere, since even though it’s action light and politics heavy, it really gives you a load of meat with which to question the war and dive into those good shades of grey. I might not show a kid this episode, but I think an adult would get a lot out of it.
- Ultimately, while we don’t get much (good) Padmé in this show, this episode makes up for it. Yeah, it’s politics, but it’s Padmé at arguably her best in the entire SW franchise. So it stays.
- Obviously the Mina/Lux Bonteri angle also makes this core.
- Introduces Lux, and ideally I’d get back to him not only with his next episode in my season three (which fits in terms of the Mauldalore stuff), but also I’d get to the Onderon arc in season three too, allowing the whole season to encompass Lux, and conclude with Ahsoka having processed it all. (It’d be cool to get the seeds of Rebellion covered in this season too.)
- I’d trim a lot of Grievous directing the bomb droids, and instead have them appear only near the end of the episode as more of a suprise. I think it’d hit better that way.
- This episode also kind of works better as the first episode where Ahsoka and Padmé get to know each other personally.
Pursuit of Peace
- Should be paired with the prior episode into the season three premiere.
- Shame Mina was killed offscreen but OK.
- A little bit drier, a little bit slower than the previous, but pairs nicely and concludes well, including giving us a bit of action with those bounty hunters.
- SOME of the politics should probably be trimmed, here. Interest rates etc are probably a bit too detailed. I’ll see how much I can cut to the point that we still have all of the powerful stuff, and the good intrigue set up by the prior episode, without it getting TOO dry.
- Absolutely brilliant speech - so good that I’d misremembered Padmé’s presence in TCW as basically this entire speech given over and over.
- A really good scene of Palpatine’s menace at the end of this episode, but I think I’m right to have the rule that only Sidious gets to be the bad guy, whereas Palpatine doesn’t, so I’d trim this. I don’t know why I care so much for the Palpatine twist. Actually I’ll talk about it as an aside at the end of this post.*
Senate Murders
- Way weaker than the previous two. And kind of undoes the greatness of PoP, which was clearly designed to kind of do Senate Murders but better.
- The inspector is horrible, the rodian murder plot is boring. Onaconda is a nobody who doesn’t solicit an emotional response, and there’s no jeopardy.
- I’ll use almost none of this, though there are one or two scenes which would work cut into the prior episodes and add a bit of value, mainly Padmé arguing with the Kaminoan senator.
*Regarding the Palpatine twist. I know this is just my opinion, but a lot has been said about the right order to watch Star Wars. Original first, Prequel first, Machete, etc. And a lot of edits have been made so that it can be enjoyed in those preferred ‘right’ orders. Ep1 trimmed as the opening of Ep2, trilogy edits, prequels with the OT twists preserved, etc. But here’s the OBJECTIVELY CORRECT, NO ARGUMENT WELCOME, OFFICIAL DEFINITELY RIGHT, IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE WRONG ordering:
- Original Trilogy
- Entire franchise in chronological order (including the OT, in place).
That’s it. That’s how you watch Star Wars. OT first, then ALL OF IT in canon order. The original trilogy has so much cultural weight that everything else in Star Wars orbits it. No character will ever top Luke/Leia/Han/Obi-Wan/Vader. No moment will ever beat “I am your father”. Babies are born recognising Yoda as the Jedi that trained Luke on Dagobah. You cannot preserve these twists, because they are as fundamental to culture as the fact that spiderman is red and blue and swings from webs. By which I kind of mean, yeah, you can try to preserve them for your kids, but by the time your kids are old enough to enjoy peak Star Wars, they’ll already know the OT. So just show them the fuckin’ OT first. It’s the best introduction anyway. Black and white, good vs evil, classical fantasy set in space, the hero and the villain and the princess and the wise man and the scoundrel. Tropes that will last forever. There’s no need to preserve them because the prequels are not retroactively additive - they are additive AFTER you have seen the OT.
And then, yes, you lose on the fact that Anakin becomes Vader and has Luke and Leia as kids, and you lose on the jeopardy of Obi-Wan (because you know he survives). But again, you cannot avoid that. The prequel trilogy, whilst great, are CULTURALLY prequels. I’ll capitalise that differently: They’re culturally PREQUELS. The PT will ALWAYS be the series of events which bring us to the OT. Because the OT has the larger cultural mass. Therefore, we’ll ALWAYS know that Obi-Wan survives until the OT, we’ll always know that Anakin’s kids are Luke and Leia, because we’re born knowing the OT whether we’ve seen it or not. In fanediting we often talk about the ‘hypothetical first time viewer’. But trust me, the HFTV is viewing OT>Everything else.
That’s not to say there’s no development for the PT characters or reason to follow them - Obi-Wan in the Clone Wars is a great example of this - new layers of sass (Sassy Obi-Wan is best Obi-Wan), the Satine tragedy, the Maul tension - this is all additive even knowing that it won’t kill Obi-Wan, because it’s all emotionally meaningful to his character (except the sass, but it’s good sass). But an episode saying “WILL OBI-WAN DIE?” is boring, because no, obviously not.
BY WHICH I MEAN, the prequel era (and thus the Clone Wars) will always be the PREQUEL era. It was created, CULTURALLY, to precede and lead into the Original Trilogy’s story, and we mustn’t pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean it’s valueless - it just means that its value exists beyond who lives and dies, and the fate of KNOWN characters. The EMOTIONAL impact on known characters, and the FATE of UNKNOWN characters, is where the meat of the prequel era lies.
And of course, it’s not to say that the PT is valueless - so long as we’re pursuing new threads, like Mandalore or resurrected Maul or anything NOT ‘spoiled’ by the OT, it’s all exciting, valuable stuff. I can’t wait to explore the rise of empire era in the Bad Batch, and neither can you.
ANYWAY one of the few real twists in the prequels is the relationship between Palpatine and Sidious, which isn’t spelt out in the OT (unless you’ve been paying attention to the credits, maybe), but it’s one of the few things in the PT (but not the original Clone Wars) that’s a suprise, and whether or not you know that Anakin becomes Vader, episode 3 hits best when all of these moments kick off at the same time. I don’t know why I respect that moment so much, but either way, it’s something I intend to preserve, because even though TCW is a prequel to episode 3, it’s NOT a prequel if you watch it in the OBJECTIVELY CORRECT ORDER as stated above in a way that CANNOT BE ARGUED because it is DEFINITELY RIGHT.
