It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Wing Wednesday blog post, huh? Since I spent the better part of June remaking MSAGW Ep.3, this seems as good a time as any to explain why, of every episode we’ve made, Ep.3 was my least favorite one. Not because it’s bad! But because I feel like it could have been more.
If you enjoy learning about our scripting process, read on!
A Gundam Episode Without Any Gundams In It
One of the main criticisms I have of our script in retrospect is the distinct lack of fight scenes or mecha action. Really, the assassination of Vice Foreign Minister Darlian and subsequent escape are the only action in the eighteen minute episode. And they happen right in the middle. It feels like the big moment of the first half of the episode, building to something bigger later. But nah. It’s the big moment of the whole episode.
This is a show about giant killer robots. It should have giant killer robots. The death of Relena’s dad was the focus, as it should be, since that’s the title of the episode. And his death is instrumental in leading Relena on her path to what she will become later on in the show. But the problem with that premise for an entire episode is… how many of you care about Mr. Darlian? Can you remember his first name? You can’t. Because they never gave him one.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy with our other scenes individually, from the banter we wrote for Heero and Duo as they get to know each other through friction, to Trowa’s introduction to his circus day job, to Relena’s arc in total. Where my critique is centered (and what I learned from this episode going forward) is on pacing and expectations. For a show all about abridging the original, Ep.3 remarkably doesn’t deviate all that much from the events of Wing’s Ep.5. The pace is too slow. Scenes take too long. For all we subtracted, we added just about as much back in.
So why did the script take this shape in the first place?
Because Episode 4
One of the difficulties of scripting for an entire abridged series is planning ahead. When we write an episode, we’re typically working with outlines of the next two episodes as well, just to keep things consistent and remember what we’re trying to set up.
Now, I want you to think about Wing’s plot in its early episodes, before the Gundam boys finally meet up and accidentally kill Marshal Noventa. Here’s the order of events, starting from the end of our Ep.2:
- Une kills VFM Darlian, Relena finds out she’s a princess
- Duo rescues Heero and gives him back Wing; Heero repays him by stealing parts form Deathscythe and jetting
- Relena basically blackmails Heero into dancing with her, then Une for some reason leads a military operation against a high school
- The Gundams finally meet up and fall for Treize’s plan
That’s it. Trowa, Quatre and Wufei are kind of just off doing their own things individually, with none of them being particularly interesting or plot-important. Zechs and Noin are shown debating whether the Tallgeese is worth fixing. Treize is sitting around with birds. The early show, aside from the events of our Episode 2, is very Heero/Relena centric. They’re the two characters the plot revolves around. This means that the show’s other main characters aren’t available, because none of their plots can start until after they all meet at New Edwards base. And before we can get to New Edwards base, we have to kill Relena’s dad and have Une attack a school. This is a rigid order of events.
While I believe the school dance can carry an episode entirely by itself (Ep.4 has long been Blue’s favorite episode we’ve made, actually!) I’m not so sure Darlian’s death can in the same way. Yet if we try to combine the two to get through it faster— we are abridging the show, after all— I feel like the school dance doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves. We’d also have to heavily condense the interactions between Duo and Heero to get him back to school as quickly as possible, and I personally think that setting up their antagonistic friendship is too important to gloss over.
What Would I Do Differently?
This is something I’ve pondered for years, actually. Because I’m not sure! When we decided that remaking our first eight episodes to get them back on Youtube was worth the effort, there was a particularly loud voice in my head saying “REDO EP.3/EP.4!” But that just opens up pandora’s box, and I felt it was better to preserve what we’d made already— not to mention, much more expedient. We want to make NEW episodes, and committing resources to re-recording old episodes runs counter to that.
But let’s run with this hypothetical. If I could go back to 2017 and start Ep.3 over from scratch, what would I do…?
- First, despite all my explanation of why combining the death of VFM Darlian and Party Night into one episode is a bad idea… I’d probably do that. The episode wouldn’t be titled, “Goodbye my Darlian,” but something more focused on the high school dance. That’s the selling point of this episode now.
- Events would largely happen the same way, though Ep.3’s scenes would be significantly cut to make room for Ep.4’s. We’d probably skip Treize and Une meeting at the beginning, Howard might not be mentioned at all, and the Doctors’ scene would probably be cut too. Dre’s conversation with Relena would be significantly shorter, with Relena’s confrontation with Heero sharing the load on exposition duty. (“You’ll never believe what Dr. Dre told me…” and then proceed to say it there.)
- Une’s assassination attempt wouldn’t have so much buildup, and VFM Darlian’s death wouldn’t have as much fallout. There was an idea we had extremely early on of Une not even being in the meeting at all, but just showing up and yeeting a bomb through the window. I think we could run with this by making Une’s complete lack of subtlety a more emphasized character trait, as she follows up the bomb throw with attacking a high school with five fully armed mobile suits.
- Episode 4’s ending, with the Gundam boys all gathering to assault New Edwards, wouldn’t be included. It would instead be saved for the beginning of Ep.5. We structured it that way originally out of necessity because Ep.4 was such a short episode, and we wanted to take advantage of the spare time to start Ep.5 right in the middle of the action.
This combination of episodes would be similar to our Ep.1, which combines Wing’s first and second episodes to tell the complete story of Heero and Relena’s first meeting. This time, it would be the complete story of Relena’s arc from innocent school girl to fully in on Operation Meteor, as well as Heero’s story of how he escaped, got his Gundam back, and saved the day. (Go Archangels!) Une would be the singular villain throughout, giving the whole episode a distinct through-line that connects the two plots together. It’d probably be well over 20min long, but we’ve done that plenty of times, right?
Really I just think “Party Night” is a cool episode. Sue me.
And there you have it. While Ep.3 has always been my least favorite episode we’ve made, I’m still proud of it. And I think that my grievances with it helped me as a script writer going forward. It also taught me that getting an episode done right is more important than getting it done fast. We put a huge emphasis on getting Ep.3 out before the end of the year, since Ep.2 had taken so long, and I personally think that it shows. But maybe I’m just too critical of my own work.
If you guys have any other burning questions about the show’s process, let me know in the comments and I might just answer yours in a future blog post.
See you next Wing Wednesday… whenever that’ll be!