Greg responds...

How many would they give me? How long will I live? I promise I would never have run out of stories. Hell, I have the damn thing laid out beyond the year 2158. It would be fun to meet up in the middle. Plus there was a lot of interesting stories in the past that still needed to be told. (Ever wonder how Wyvern Hill got it's name?) And as the "gargoyles universe" expanded and added characters, that gave me even more stories to tell.

Greg responds...

Define "peace". Is white and black America at peace with each other today?
I don't think we would have seen an end to racism, but overt discrimination would be a thing of the past by the year 2158. Yes, 2158. I can't say for sure how fast each step forward would have come. The point of a "Master Plan" is to know the general direction and have specific tentpoles, without tying one's hands thus allowing for creativity and serendipity.

Goliath Chronicles did go a bit fast for my taste. They skipped a lot of steps even within episodes. The trial of Goliath is a fascinating idea that I had had myself, but I would have done it quite differently. Beginning with the notion that most of humanity wouldn't think about putting Goliath on trial for a crime, anymore than it would occur to them to drag a dangerous mountain lion into a courtroom. Before you can agree to have a trial, you have to agree that what your trying isn't a beast, but a sentient individual. I don't think Margot would have made that jump very quickly.

Ironically, I believe that the presence of Gargoyles would have done a lot to help real race relations between humans. Nothing like something even more different to make people realize how much they have in common with each other. In "The Journey" I tried to show that the Quarrymen appealed to a multitude of human "races".

Greg responds...

What are you basing your analysis of their characters on?

I've heard a lot of complaints about the Weird Sisters. At first they struck me as odd, but now I think I know where the confusion came from.

A. People took the way they presented themselves in "City of Stone" and in "High Noon" at face value.

B. When they saw the Sisters again in "Avalon" and "Ill Met by Moonlight", people didn't like the way they were behaving as much. The Sisters weren't as mysterious or powerful or something. So they rejected the "face value" version that was presented in those episodes.

C. People were less enamored of the Archmage than I was. When we first used the Archmage in "Long Way to Morning" I was phenominally impressed with David Warner, the actor who voiced the part. The character was just a cliched sorcerer, but I felt David added a level of menace that was irresistable. So even though we had killed off the character, I was determined to bring the Archmage back in a way that would let David go to town, and make the cliched Archmage into the near Satanic villain I envisioned he could be. That was what "Avalon, Part II" was supposed to accomplish. David didn't let me down. His dual performances as both versions of the Archmage was a true tour-de-force. But perhaps I failed David. The "Archmage-plus" was supposed to be all-but-omnipotent and all-but-omniscient. Once he had the Grimorum, the Eye and the Gate, he was supposed to be much more threatening than any villain we had encountered up to that point, including the Sisters. His fatal flaw (demonstrated in parts two and three) was his unwavering arrogance. He could have finished all his enemies off instantly. But at heart, he was still this cliched guy who had to toy with his enemies and make them suffer before he wiped them out. That gave the good guys time to rally and defeat him. I'm sure most of you basically got this, but you didn't FEEL it enough, so the Archmage didn't seem tough enough to boss the Sisters around. So everyone assumes that the Sisters are using HIM in some way.

D. Part of the reason for this is probably due to the fact that the final script for "Avalon, Part II" was WAY, WAY too long. We had to cut a lot of stuff before we shipped in order to get the show down to the correct length.
You didn't miss any important info, but I do think we lost a bit of the scope of the Archmage's plans, as well as some nice character moments and a bit of helpful expository stuff.

E. People didn't get the Sister's constraints vis-a-vis Oberon. Their hands were much more tied than people seemed to realize. They couldn't enter Avalon of their own volition. They were banished to the barge to guard it. The Archmage's commands gave them their excuse. And they wanted that excuse. So let me make something clear here: THEY ARE A VENGEFUL TRIO OF WITCHES. They wanted vengeance. But as immortals, they could afford to be patient. It didn't matter whether vengeance came in nine days or nine centuries. So, they were using the Archmage. Using him to extract their vengeance. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have eventually turned on the Archmage to get him off Avalon, but that would have been some fight, let me tell you.

F. Having said all that, don't imagine that helping the Archmage is the only thing they did for a millenium. They didn't follow Demona and Macbeth around every minute. They do have other things going on. Other plans. And I'm not saying that what they did for the Archmage doesn't dovetail with these other plans, but that doesn't mean they didn't sincerely want revenge on the Magus and his friends.

G. And they still do. The Magus may be largely beyond their reach, but Goliath and the others aren't. They still need to tread carefully because they can't risk Oberon or Titania's wrath, but believe me, they've got something up their sleeves.

I'm sure this "answer" raises a lot more questions. I can probably predict some of them, but it's much more fun to wait for you guys to ask them.

Greg responds...

Masquerading isn't really the correct word. They sort of possessed Desdemona briefly, splitting her image into the three facets of their personality. Keep in mind, that Desdemona didn't exist in bodily form. She was just a wisp of soul inside a crashed computer. The Sisters stepped in for one brief moment. Desdemona was there the whole time, and it was all her in every other scene she appeared in. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Greg responds...

I feel like I've answered this one too, but I'm not as sure, so...

Do you want the "Story" answer or the "Behind the scenes" answer?

The story answer to your question is "yes".

Behind the scenes, Frank Paur was not satisfied with the designs that we had in "Metamorphosis", but we had run out of time. So he had to run with what we had. After "Metamophosis" shipped, he had time to revise them for "The Cage". So he did. This was o.k. with me because I could easily believe they were still mutating. Also, I didn't think they'd spend their lives dressed in the tattered clothes they were wearing when they were first injected.

Greg responds...

Define "mate". Define "make". New gargoyles would have been introduced.

Greg responds...

Appearances can be deceiving. Una is all gargoyle. Gargoyle's lay eggs.

Greg responds...

1. Yes.

2. That's not a quick question. Well, at any rate, it's not a quick answer.

3. I don't remember exact numbers. The first season was promising, especially considering we were only on once a week. The second season was solid but disappointing to many Disney executives, because they had high hopes that once we went daily, we'd start kicking butt. Instead, we placed 2nd consistently, usually to Power Rangers. Third season ratings weakened even more, or so I'm told. I never saw any numbers for either the reruns or for the Goliath Chronicles. There are a lot of mitigating factors, the biggest being FOX's overall strength in kid's programming, but it doesn't change the fact that we didn't put up winning numbers with any consistency.

Greg responds...

I'm struggling with three or four year old memories here, but I think this is what happened. When we had finished casting the lead characters, my development associate, Paul Lacy, made some phone calls to a number of tribal reps and got a bunch of different Elisa surnames for us to choose from. (We were initially leaning towards "Bluestone". We even recorded the first couple episodes using the "Bluestone" name. And that's after we had already recorded those same lines using the name "Chavez".) My boss, Gary Krisel, chose "Maza", which was fine with me also. We were under the impression that "maza" was the Sioux word for "iron". That appealed to me. (So we rerecorded again.)

Later in the season, when Elisa was shot, her parents made reference to her sister Beth who was in school in Arizona. That was my mistake. No real Sioux population in Arizona, as it turns out. Brynne Reaves and Lydia Marano found that out pretty quick when they started doing their research for what would eventually be titled "Cloud Fathers". I had recently read Tony Hillerman's novel COYOTE WAITS, so I suggested a Navajo connection, but by the time the story was done, we clearly had a Hopi ritual. (Or maybe Zuñi. Even now, I certainly don't pretend to be an expert.)

To top things off, Michael Horse, the voice of Peter and Carlos Maza, read the script and gave us a few tips. He also told us that "Maza" was not a Sioux name, so we got that wrong too somehow.

So the long answer is... I screwed up. And it pains me, because we had such good intentions. Next time, I'll be much more careful.

The short answer (the explanation) is that Carlos Maza's ancestors are largely, but not exclusively, Hopi. This is some consolation to me, since (1) it helps us understand the interracial marriage that Peter and Diane have (not to mention Elisa's interspecies attraction) and (2) it offers us the possibility of exploring more Native American legends while simultaneously exploring more of Carlos, Peter, Elisa, Derek and Beth's ancestry. Trust that if I ever get the chance to do these further stories, I will research the hell out of the whole thing before I even begin.

Greg responds...

Inspirations, I think I've discussed. If you read the archives and have a more specific question about what did or didn't inspire me, let it fly.

As to who the characters were based on... well, no one was based on anybody specific from my life. Though all of them came out of my life experience and (I'm sure) the life experiences of the other writers, editors, artists and producers who worked on the series.

[It's an inherent danger of this whole ASK GREG set-up, that it always comes off as if I was working by myself. Let me state again that a LOT OF PEOPLE contributed a lot of extremely creative material to this show.]