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Anonymous writes...

Heya Greg. Remember we spoke in the chat room? I have several questions that I thought of after the chat... also a comment about said chat. Be warned... it's a lot of questions.
(1) Do you ever feel like a victim of your own su ccess? Well, with all the legal stuff that binds you and all.
(2) This is about the Pack. They all are legally named Fox, Wolf, Hyena, etc... besides Fox, any plans to reveal their birthnames (i.e. in that BAD GUYS spinoff)? And about Fox, has she completely rejected the name and identity "Janine Renard"? To phrase it better, does she always consider herself Fox and not Janine Renard... hope you understand.
(3) Another Pack question. Matt Frewer had a difference voice in "Thrill of the Hunt" than in other episodes (there was a strange accent I couldn't name in the first ep). Any reason for this?
(4) Have you had any substantial stories planned for Beth Maza? You don't have to go into detail.
(5) Is Nightstone Unlimited still around aft r "Hunter's Moon"? What fields does the company work in?
(6) Does Robyn Canmore get arrested after Hunter's Moon? At the very least, those weapons have to be illegal. :-) (7) Will Brooklyn hate Demona forever? He always has a hard spot for her.
And what was the thought process that brought them together in "Future Tense"?
(8) I didn't see "The Journey", so I'm not completely sure about this. But it seems like after having Alexander, Fox became... well, domesticated. She seemed to get kind of soft. Maybe it's just me. But will she do anything more like the old Fox? I hope you understand this question.
(9) You said before you had lots of plans for the clones. I just want to know if the clones will be anything like their counterparts (besi es the way they look)? Esp. Delilah, and Brentwood.
(10) Is there anything you can tell me about Thom Adcox-Hernandez? I've been hardpressed to find any information on him. All I know is what he looks like and that he was in Under Siege 2. Also what led to the choice of Brigitte Bako as Angela. Also if you can tell me anything about Haunini Minn (Sora)? Thanks.
(11) Here's a comment. Demona and Macbeth are immortal, and the Manhattan clan know it, right? Why is it that they think Demona died in "The Reckoning" and Macbeth died in "The Price"? (I know that it was a robot, but they still thought he died.) Did they forget? An explanation would be nice.
(12) I asked before if Capt. Chavez will have a family, and you said "She has a family now." When did you plan on showing them to us? Just asking.
(13) Everyone knows this already, and probably you've been asked this more than once, but I haven't found it in Ask Greg, so I just want to confirm it... _is_ John Castaway really Jon Canmore?
(14) In a certain episode (I think it was "The Price" but I'm not sure) the Manhattan clan pay a visit to Macbeth's house and are greeted by an automatic defense system. Macbeth was not home. Where was he?
(15) Judging from what I've seen in he show so far, male gargoyles' eyes glow white, while female gargoyles' eyes glow red. Except for Thailog.
Is this a correct deduction?
(16) From what I've seen in the show so far, Demona doesn't like Elisa very much. Except in "Temptation", when Demona says Elisa is "the exception that proves the rule", so now I'm confused. How does Demona feel exactly about Elisa?
(17) A question about Thailog. Did Thailog choose to dress himself up in that techno-gear after his first episode? Or was it creative decision on the part of the staff? Or both? Help me out here.
(18) A question about the titles. The TGC ep title "Dying of the Light" is kinda obvious. What I would like to know is the source of some of the titles in Gargoyles. Specifi ally, "A Lighthouse in the Sea of Time", "Ill Met By Moonlight", "Long Way To Morning", "Legion", "Shadows of the Past" and "The Reckoning". I already know some (i.e. Her Brother's Keeper) I know this is a lot of questions, take your time with the a nswers. Or if you don't feel like answering, just say "aardvark". (God, I love that word.) Thanks for your time.

Greg responds...

Hey, Ricardo. Unfortunately, I've just received your questions here in August and our chat was obviously sometime in June. So I don't remember the specifics of our previous discussions. Nevertheless, I'll do the best I can with these new answers:

1) No, not in the sense you mean. I keep trying to clarify this. Nothing legally binds me. I'm just taking common sense precautions to protect myself from a potential lawsuit. But the truth is, I don't mind. I have my own ideas about and for the GARGOYLES. They range from silly little things right on through to the pornographic. Reading other peoples takes on them, no matter how well done, would make me feel strange. Like someone's messing with my toys. That's not to say I begrudge people the opportunity to write fanfic based on the show. I'm flattered by it. But I have no burning desire to read it.

2) Fox will still answer to Janine, but she did legally have her name changed to Fox and that's who she considers herself to be. David calls her Fox. As for the other Packers, I never said they legally changed their names to Wolf, etc. I doubt they'd bother, frankly. I haven't bothered to give any thought to Wolf, Jackal or Hyena's real names. Coyote is Coyote of course, plus whatever number incarnation he's on. (That's an Ultron-V inspiration by the way.) Dingo's name is Harry Monmouth, unless I use that name somewhere else first.

3) I've never noticed any difference in his voice for that character from one episode to the next. Certainly, there was no intentional change.

4) I had ideas for Beth.

5) Yes, it's still around. It seems to specialize in bio-engineering, but I'm guessing it'll soon have it's hands in many different pies.

6) Yes, she very much does. We had to cut (for time) a tiny little partial scene near the end of "Hunter's Moon, Part Three". It comes right after Xanatos and the gargoyles fly off from the cathedral in David's helicopter, heading toward the Eyrie. Matt orders the cops to hold their fire. And then we dissolve to...
______
INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR - NIGHT

An exhausted Elisa sits on a bench opposite a guarded hospital room. Robyn, no longer in armor, but handcuffed and under police guard herself exits the room and approaches Elisa. Elisa raises her head. Robyn doesn't look happy.

After that silent exchange, Elisa and Jason have their scene beside his hospital bed. [Note the above scenelet was cut before it was sent overseas for animation. There's no lost footage.]

Of course, if the "BAD GUYS" spin-off had been approved, Hunter/Robyn would soon be out of prison and working for the mysterious Director.

7) Forever's a long time. Brooklyn still has some maturing to do. Plus some Timedancing. The Demona he meets in 2158 isn't going to be the same Demona he knew. As for "Future Tense", Michael, Robert, Marty and myself were simply going for shock value by pairing Demona and Brooklyn. So was Puck.

8) Fox and Xanatos have both "softened" some. That is, their priorities have changed. Love and family mean a lot more to them than either ever thought possible. But that shouldn't change their basic personality types or their M.O.s. The thing I most disliked about the Goliath Chronicles episode "Ransom", was that Fox was acting so wildly out of character. In my mind, Fox is just as tough as she ever was.

9) No. I don't think so. Certainly not Delilah. Brentwood might be good with technology, but don't expect a lot of similarities in personality.

10) I'm not sure what you want to know about Thom. He's a talented guy and extremely nice. He was a regular on one of the night time soaps, (Falcon Crest, I think, but I'm not sure). He's the voice of Snap (as in Crackle and Pop) and he was the voice for Felix the Cat. He's currently doing a voice for DreamWorks "Invasion: America" series which will premiere in January '98.

As for Brigitte, I wasn't familiar with her work until after she was cast as Angela. She auditioned for our voice director Jamie Thomason, as did a lot of talented actresses. Jamie narrowed down his choices to a half dozen great picks. Frank Paur and myself just thought that Brigitte had a certain timeless and placeless quality to her voice appropriate to a character raised on Avalon. She also had a nice range from naive ingenue to fierce gargoyle warrior. Her growling was a bit weak at first, but she caught on fast.
She's also an extremely nice person. But I didn't know that when we cast her.

Jamie cast Haunani Minn as Sora based on his reading of the script and a little bit of verbal descriptions from me. That recording is the one and only time I've worked with Haunani, since that's the only episode that Sora appeared in, but she seemed nice and she did a great job. Hope that helps.

11) All right, first off, the clan didn't know about the link at all until the "Avalon" trilogy. So at the time of "The Price" they had no idea. As for "The Reckoning" you need to keep two things in mind, one is that during the heat of battle and under death-defying and traumatic circumstances, it's hard to remember that a flesh and blood gargoyle has a touch of immortality.
Also, the gargoyles aren't exactly masters at magic. They don't know the extent of the spell or how thoroughly it might or might not work. Angela ASKS if Demona could have survived. She's not sure of the answer. Goliath responds that he doesn't know for sure either. He's not saying she's dead.
He's simply acknowledging that he can't know for sure. If we (the writers) emphasized their lack of expertise for the sake of upping the drama, I make no apologies. I don't see any inconsistencies.

12) When we got around to it. I like her a lot, but she's pretty far down on the screen time food chain. Some people complained that Lex didn't get enough screen time. We had a large cast. Goliath was the lead. Elisa was the second lead. Brooklyn, Lex, Broadway, Angela and Hudson were the main support characters. Next comes Bronx, I suppose. Major players like Xanatos, Demona and Owen/Puck. Fox, Matt and Alexander. Recurring villains like Thailog, Macbeth, Sevarius. Recurring allies like Talon, Maggie, Coldstone and Coldfire. The list is fairly endless. There are a number of characters I'd like to spend more time with: Chavez, Jack Dane, Vinnie, Jeffry Robbins, Morgan, Jason Canmore, Dr. Sato, Brendan & Margot etc. But it's tough to fit them all in.

13) Yes.

14) Under the Weird Sister's spell. Maybe en route to Avalon.

15) Yes.

16) She really, really hates her guts, and did so in "Temptation" as well.
If you listen carefully, you'll hear Demona struggle to make that admission in Elisa's favor. She only says that because she's trying to get Brooklyn on her side, and she knows that Brook likes Elisa. She doesn't share Brooklyn's feelings about the detective.

17) Both, of course.

18) "A Lighthouse in the Sea of Time" was, I believe a Brynne Chandler Reaves title (or maybe Lydia Marano). I think Brynne got it as part of a quote from the work of the late Barbara Tuchman, though Brynne's research indicated that the phrase did not originate with Tuchman. The written word is elegantly evoked in the title, which of course, was entirely appropriate to the episode.

"Ill Met by Moonlight" is a Michael Reaves title and a quote from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Oberon says to Titania: "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania". He's annoyed with her because she has a young boy, a human changeling, that she won't turn over to him. They're at odds and he isn't pleased to see her. Just as, in our episode, he's not pleased to see the gargoyles and humans when he returns to Avalon. Generally, I tend to favor one word titles (or one word plus the determiner "the"), but I specifically remember Michael saying he had a title he knew I'd like because it came from Shakespeare. (Everyone knows I'm a Shakespeare nut.) The funny thing was that my first reaction wasn't positive. I thought it was kinda hard to read. But it was so perfect, I talked myself out of that objection. However, everytime someone writes it as "I'll Meet by Moonlight", I wonder if my initial reaction wasn't correct.

I'm not 100% positive but I think "Long Way to Morning" was one of mine. I just liked the sound and the exhaustion it evoked. And it seemed perfect (in different ways) for both our main story and our flashback story in that episode. Hudson had to keep Goliath alive until they turned to stone in the morning. And Hudson had to recover the Grimorum before morning or the Prince would die. The resolution of both stories would take the whole episode.

"Legion" was also one of mine. I remember an old t.v. miniseries based on Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. At one point, the "monster" is put under hypnosis and speaks in the voices of all the various people who made up his bodyparts. That was Coldstone to a tee. The "Legion" name itself is a biblical reference to a demon named Legion or (interpreted another way) a legion of demons who possessed some poor biblical guy.

"Shadows of the Past" was a Michael Reaves title. I was tempted to shorten it to "Shadows", given my above stated preference for one-worders, but Michael's version seemed much more evocative of what was plaguing Goliath in that episode. In this case the word "shadows" does double duty. It represents Goliath's tortured memories, as well as the ghosts or SHADES who are haunting him.

"The Reckoning" was one of mine. Originally, the "Hunter's Moon" trilogy was supposed to be a direct to video movie. Back then, "The Reckoning" was scheduled to be a two-part series finale. A final reckoning, so to speak that would give us some open-ended closure before leading us into the video release of "Hunter's Moon". Long before "The Reckoning" was written, we found out that the "Hunter's Moon" video wasn't going to happen. So we broke it into three episodes and added it to the end of our schedule.
Unfortunately, that meant we had to cut three other stories out of our schedule. First, we cut "Reunion" (the original title of "The Gathering") down from a two-parter to a single episode. Then we combined Vinnie's pie- story with the Wolf/Hakon revenge story. Then we combined Puck's training Alex story with the Coldstone/Robot story. Then we realized that there was no way that the now retitled "The Gathering" was going to fit into one episode. So we brought that back up to two and reduced "The Reckoning" down to one, all before a single word of the latter story had been written.
Through all this, the original title stuck. It's not quite the final reckoning I originally invisioned, but it's still a reckoning for Thailog and Demona's relationship and most particularly for Demona and Angela's relationship. So I felt it still worked.