Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

A lot of the stories in “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” go on for

more than one episode. Is there a lot of planning involved in
this? How much control do you get over your episode in the
story line?
 
Great question! Yes, there is a huge amount of work that has
to be done when laying out a multi-episode story. Especially
when you consider that there are usually different teams of
writers, directors and artists for each separate episode. The
challenge is to maintain continuity - both visual as well as
contextual - over the course of the mini-arcs. In many ways, it’s
like creating a feature film a feature that¹s composed of
multiple scripts that are constantly evolving, along with all of
the associated designs, storyboards, and animatics. Luckily,
we had a solid writing team and lots of support, so although
challenging, it was great fun.
As for individual episodes, we were usually assigned scripts
sometimes fully realized ideas, other times just a rough sketch
that we would elaborate upon. The concepts would come from
George Lucas, the supervising director and story editor and
then we would flesh them out, add dialogue, place some
action and revise as we got notes. All in all, a pretty traditional
process in terms of writing for animation.
 
In the season one episode “Downfall of a Droid” IG-86 model droids are featured, did you include them as you were a fan of IG-88?
 
How could you not love the guy - I mean just look at him! He looks like he's about to topple over at any second. He doesn't do or say anything. He doesn't look like he'll make it across the room, let alone across the galaxy, hunting down rebels.
So we wanted to validate Vader's later decision to invite him to the hunt in 'Empire,' by showing how dangerous (and agile) even the earlier models were.
 
You manage to get the line “I have a bad feeling about this” into this episode, is this something you wanted to do when you knew you would be writing the series?
 
Initially, when the series was being developed, we were told to generally try and stay away from any iconic references be they lines, character beats, etc. But as the show began to grow and evolve, it was felt that a playful call-back once in a while would help create a bit of continuity between this series and the rest of the SW universe that came before it.

Where did you get the idea to tilt the ship on its side to avoid damage in this episode and to crash one ship into another in the episode “Storm Over Ryloth”?
 
If I remember correctly, that was our supervising director’s idea, or it could have been our story editor’s or both. Creating for television is a very collaborative process, so a lot of different people add their voices to each step, often enhancing each episode with new lines, scenes and sometimes entire acts.
 
In your second series episode “Cargo of Doom” it has been shown that Cad Bane is going to appear in this episode, can you give us any other hints about what may happen it the episode?
 
Ha! C’mon man, you want them to send a bounty hunter after me? What I can say, is that as just in everything I write things blow up, bad-assery ensues, and characters are forced to make fateful decisions.

Do you know if you are writing any other episodes for the second series of “The Clone Wars”?
 
As much as I¹d love to keep having fun in the Star Wars universe, I currently have my hands full with my own projects including an original sci-fi series that I am developing for Warner Bros, as well as a feature I'm putting together with one of the writers of "Finding Nemo."
But who knows, if things calm down a bit, I may just dust off that old lightsaber and dive back into the fight...