Krishna's warriors - particularly Satyaki!

In all the episodes that have battles taking place, from the ones w/ Jarasandha to Rukmi, they always show it as being just Krishna, Balarama and Akrura. But there were more characters that they could have used.

First, there was Sini, grandfather of Satyaki. Granted, his story is only there in the Mahabharat, and not any of the others. But given how this serial morphs into the Mahabharat for a while they could have used him, particularly during Kansa's persecution of Vasudev.

B/w Sini and Satyaki was his son Satyaka, who is never mentioned. He's one more that they could have inserted for Krishna's wars w/ Jarasandha and the Rukmini abduction. Same w/ Hriddhika, the father of Kritavarma.

IMO, one of the biggest shortcomings of this serial is the non-existence of Satyaki, despite being a Satwata general. For starters, he was the #3 greatest warrior on the Pandava side, after Bhima and Arjun, and held his own against the likes of Drona and Ashwatthama. He was also a pupil of Arjun, and in Mausala Parva, Vasudev does mention to Arjun how his pupils Pradhyumna and Satyaki started the fratricide. So they could have shown Arjun training Pradhyumna and Satyaki during his stay at Dwarka.

Bottom line - there were a lot more to Krishna's military allies than Akrura!

Nobody answered this, but last night, I watched the Syamantaka gem episode where Krishna married Jambavati and Satyabhama. In that, Satyaki was introduced as a character, but surprisingly, he was never used in the Mahabharat track, despite being their #3 greatest warrior, after Bhima and Arjun.

Was there a big break b/w this episode and the Mahabharat episode (not in terms of #episodes, but rather the show migrating b/w channels) that whoever played Satyaki wasn't available for the war? Or was it just that the latter directors became even more careless? Incidentally, Ramanand-ji was pretty active here: he introduced the story of Jambavati and Satyabhama w/ his narration, while introducing them

Like I mentioned before, I'm not too well versed in the latter portion of this show, but I do remember wishing the character of Satyaki was there. He was one of my favs from the book (esp Krishna Dharma's translation of MB) but hardly any shows have him.

The weird thing about this serial - from what I've seen so far - is that Satyaki first makes an appearance during the Syamantaka gem episode, where he's one of the socialists demanding that Satyajit be made to part w/ the gem. (Incidentally, the serial gets it wrong: Satyajit got the gem as a boon/gift from Surya-dev, not from a mining operation in his backyard.) The second time Satyaki makes an appearance is during the Paundrak episodes, when Paundrak's messenger reads a message that infuriates Balarama, and Balarama orders Satyaki to cut off the messenger's head (which is indigestable, since Balarama too was an avatar of either Vishnu or Sesha, depending on how one looks at it).

So bottom line: Satyaki did exist in this serial, but for some bizarre reason, they left him out of the Mahabharat war, which is where he stood out as one of Krishna's kinsmen. After all, not much has been said about him anywhere else of major note, but he was #3 in the Pandava army after Bhima and Arjun. Given how this serial morphed into a meld b/w Krishna's story and the Mahabharat, it's unbelievable that Satyaki was totally left out of the war. He played a major role in day 2, lost 10 of his sons to Bhurishrava in day 5, penetrated Drona and killed Bhurishrava on day 14, saved Dhrishtadyumna on innumerable occasions, killed 2 of Krishna's enemies - the rulers of Avantika Vinda and Anuvinda, and on day 18, captured Sanjaya who had briefly joined the war and threw him out of it. He was one of the 7 survivors of the war, alongside Krishna and the Pandavas.

So leaving him out of the war, given his presence in the serial, was a major oversight by the production of this serial