Windham's involvement in the Star Wars universe has largely been freelance writing assignments, rather than his own story ideas. As such, he was instructed by Lucasfilm to include the Malevolence in the book. However, he did not want to ground the entire Secret Missions series into Season One's timeframe because the later book would come out long after that episode of the show. Frank Parisi requested that a BX-series droid commando be involved in the series. He was also told to include Savage Opress in the comic book tie-in, The Clone Wars: Strange Allies, by Lucasfilm.[2]