Greg responds...

The organization that would eventually be known as the Illuminati was founded a century after the "death" of King Arthur.

Greg responds...

I don't know if Disney "officially" knows about the Gathering.

Greg responds...

I need to let Producer Tom Jacobson decide what information he wants "leaked". It's his movie. I'm just along for the ride.

Greg responds...

I had a lot of control vis-a-vis Disney Management. The executives largely left me alone to do the stories I wanted to do. Only one story ever got rejected, and even I have to admit it was a pretty risky endeavor.

But keep in mind, I didn't produce the show alone. Frank Paur was my equal partner from day one. Also Dennis Woodyard and Bob Kline had producing duties as well. We all worked together.

I also like to think we were open to input from anyone on the staff. A lot of great ideas originated from other sources.

But I did get to tell the stories I wanted to tell. 66 of them at least.
And I was the one guy who had been on the project from the beginning of development through the end of post-production, so I had a more comprehensive point-of-view.

But no, no matter how much it might have pleased (I mean embarrassed) me, no one ever referred to me as "God".

Greg responds...

I've read a lot of Arthurian stuff. The Mary Stewart books. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Roger Lanclyn Greene. Thomas Berger. T.H. White. John Steinbeck. Goodrich. I've skimmed Thomas Malory. These off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others too.

Although I know others disagree, for me adding Arthur was a natural step. I couldn't imagine going to Avalon and not seeing him there. The way we created the "Gargoyles Universe" everything was interconnected. Locked together by fate. The eggs are connected to Avalon which is connected to Arthur who is connected to the Illuminati which is connected to Xanatos who has a son whose grandmother is the queen of the fair folk who live on Avalon with the eggs, etc. How could I not include Arthur?

The Pendragon series would have featured King Arthur and Sir Griff. It would have begun with the Quest for Merlin. There were plans for one more regular: a female acquaintance of Arthur's from his past. The Illuminati would have played a prominent role, particularly the enigmatic Mr. Duval.

Greg responds...

Elisa's apartment wasn't targeted. They spotted Goliath there and investigated. But certainly Castaway wouldn't have had much trouble making the Elisa/Gargoyle connection. Moving really would not have been the answer -- not if she intended on keeping her job. And I can't imagine Elisa quitting the force. Precautions would have to be taken. But, heck, Demona's known where Elisa lives for over a year. Sometimes that information isn't enough.

Greg responds...

Jason is a parapalegic. Why must he have fully recovered in order to go on a date? I think Jason was released on probation. In my mind, he spends a lot of time failing to save his brother's soul.

Greg responds...

Ever is a long time. Not for centuries at least. Oberon isn't exactly forgiving.

Greg responds...

Merlin isn't Duval. And Arthur's been asleep for some time, so he isn't presently on any kind of terms with anyone from his past.

Greg responds...

"Future Tense" the episode or the proposed spin-off series?

I had a lot of plans for the clones, too many to relate them all here. As you all may be noticing, when I'm asked a question THAT large, I'm less likely to give a worthwhile response. I'm not saying you can't ask, just that this Q&A format may not be the best forum for questions that require novel- length responses.

Greg responds...

Good question. I'd have to ask them, but I'm pretty sure we're looking at an only child. And a handful.

Greg responds...

1) We tried to make it clear, but I can see how it would have been tough to catch it. Phoebe is the blonde, pleasant one. Seline is the raven-haired hardcase. Luna is the silver-haired mystic.

2) Carefully.

3) A lot. (Actually, I think someone did ask this, and I gave the same response. Well at least you got one worthwhile answer.)

Greg responds...

You can't reach your mother who has an apartment in Manhattan. You drive into the city. Traffic is at an absolute standstill. It isn't barely moving -- it's flat-out stopped. You begin to worry about your mom so you abandon your car. You move toward the car in front of you. It's empty, because the person in front of you had the same impulse. But what's really weird is that the car in front of that car has a stone statue sitting behind the wheel. What is this, some kind of gag? You keep going, heading for a subway station. Cars are either empty or filled with statues. For a second, you ask yourself if these could be people turned to stone. But come on, that's just too crazy. There are a few other people running around the streets in a similar state of confusion. Some of them are hysterical. You get more determined to reach your elderly mother.

You head down into the subway station. Loaded with stone statues. No people. No trains. You wait. And wait. But it's damn creepy down here at night with all these statues. You decide to walk. It's twenty-nine blocks, but if that's what it takes....

The further into the city you go, the fewer people you see. The fewer non-statues you see. The conclusion is inescapable. Everyone has been turned to stone. Just then a woman runs up to you. Clearly homeless. You like to think of yourself as open-minded, but you can't help having a visceral reaction to her odor. You're nearly overwhelmed by the unwashed urine-soaked smell. She yells something about "the T.V.'s". And runs off.
She's the only living human in sight, and still you can't help being relieved that she's gone.

Finally, you reach your mother's apartment building. Now, you know. There's Joe the Doorman. You've known Joe for fifteen years. He's a sweet old guy, who never drinks on the job, except a nip now and then when it's really cold. And he's a statue. That face. That twinkle in his eye. It's Joe. And he's stoned -- literally.

Fortunately, Joe's frozen on the job. He's holding the door open for you.
You swallow hard and enter. There's a little girl in the lobby with her parents and a poodle. They're all stone statues. You press the elevator button. The doors open immediately. There are five statues facing you calmly. One of them is Mrs. Vasquez, you're mother's neighbor. Suddenly, you realize that you are more pissed off than frightened. With a new determination you get on the elevator and press the button for the eighth floor.

The doors close. You've had to squeeze in, because the five statues aren't exactly making room for you. You turn to Mrs. Vasquez. "Nice weather we're having," you say grimly. Finally, the elevator opens. You squeeze out, struggling for your key ring.

Your hands are sweating. You have trouble getting your mom's key into the lock. Then it slides in. You mentally prepare yourself. The odds are good that Mom is a statue. You turn the key. Enter the apartment. The television is on. You move into the living room. There are tears in your eyes, even before you see mom, sitting with a bemused expression on her face in front of the t.v. She's frozen in stone on the chair, which seems to be buckling under the weight. You suddenly panic that the chair will break, that your mother will fall to the floor and... and... what? Break?
Shatter? You can't take the chance. You dry your palms on your shirt and then ease her frozen body out of the chair. She seems to weigh a ton, but YOU WILL NOT DROP HER. Slowly, you lower her to the ground, on her side, still frozen in the sitting position.

It's only then that you focus on the sound coming from the t.v. Gibberish?
You turn to look. There's some kind of... creature, speaking, what? Latin, maybe? You move closer to the t.v. Suddenly, the video skips and the image repeats from the beginning. And that's the last thing you remember.

In the morning, you help your mother up off of the floor. She's extremely confused. Did she pass out? Have a heart attack? How'd she get on the floor? When did you get here? You don't want to worry or panic her and even as you start to form the words, it all seems too crazy to say out loud.

The television is still on. Travis Marshall is on, reporting on how everyone in Manhattan seems to have experienced blackouts last night. Your mother mumbles something about pollution in the water. A woman is interviewed. She says that everyone in Manhattan was turned to stone. You can hear your mother snort, but you don't dare look at her now. The reporter looks at the woman. And you know what that look means. He asks her dubiously why she wasn't effected. She responds by saying that she never watches television. Marshall, nods. A nod that clearly means that he thinks she's nuts.

Interviews follow with government officials, psychiatrists, hypnotists, etc.
Every theory in the world is offered up. But no one else says anything about stone statues.

So what kind of person are you? Do you make it your life's work to make sure everyone knows the truth? Do you try to convince yourself it was all a hallucination? Do you just shut your mouth and keep it shut? You're mother offers to cook you breakfast. She'll cut the french toast into a little house with a chimney, windows and a door. Just like she did when you were young. "Yeah, Mom," you say, "That would be nice." While she's cooking, you go into the bathroom and throw up.

As to why Xanatos and Demona didn't cast their spell over the whole world, the answer is simple: They couldn't.

Greg responds...

New.

Greg responds...

Right.

Greg responds...

1) Exactly.

2) To some extent. Puck was on trial as well, and he knew it.

3) N.A.

4) At the time of the choice, Xanatos knew. Although by then he had known Owen for some period of time.

5) Why would he?

6) Not unaided. Maybe not at all. I'm sure Sevarius might like to "help".
Prospero too.

7) N.A. (What are you trying to do, trip me up? :))

By the way gang, Gore has informed me that we've had to kick a number of good questions because they were posted with questions that contained the kind of ideas that I warned I couldn't look at in Guideline #2. If you want your questions answered, please be more careful.

Greg responds...

If your talking biological relationships, no.

Greg responds...

Hmmmm. The show had much the same set-up: tenth century gargoyles put to sleep for a thousand years by a magic spell. Their castle was moved to the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan and they woke up and tried to adjust to 20th century life. The gargoyles were all diminutive, kinda like Gummi Bears with a modern edge. The whole development went through a number of changes over time, and I won't attempt to list every permutation but here's the basics on the characters. The name that heads each paragraph is the name the character ended up with in the show that you guys ultimately saw on television.

Demona - Dakota was the leader of the gargoyles, and she was, in a word, boring. Too straight to be the leader of a comedy ensemble. So we changed her name to Demona and turned her into a traitor working with the enemy....

Xanatos - Xavier was a human descendent of the wizard who had cursed the gargoyles a millenium ago. He was rich, powerful and petulant. Very Captain Hook.

Owen Burnett - Mr. Owen was Xavier's assistant. In the first episode, he got hit by a magic spell that permanently tranformed him into an anthropomorphic aardvark.

Brooklyn - Amp became the leader after we changed Dakota into Demona. He was a little guy who looked more like Lexington than Brooklyn, but he had Brooklyn's out-there adventurous personality.

Broadway - Cocoa was a heavy-set female gargoyle with artistic pretensions and a great love of food. This always made us uncomfortable, which is why she eventually became a he.

Lexington - Lassie looked a little more like Brooklyn than Lex, but he was the closest thing we had to Lex. He was an idiot savant, fascinated with technology. He could spend hours working on a computer. He could also spend hours watching a traffic light change colors.

Hudson - Ralph was the couch potato gargoyle. A bit older than the others.
Content to stay at home and watch tv.

Elisa - Morgan Reed was a human school teacher who befriended the gargoyles.
She was also a firefighter for awhile. And a museum curator. And an archeologist. And Xavier's former partner. She had a daughter for awhile too. For awhile we played it like she was Princess Katharine's descendent.
We had the Gargoyles move onto the roof of the apartment building where she lived and cause a lot of trouble for her.

There was no parallel character to GOLIATH. After the comedy development was rejected, Tad Stones (Producer of Darkwing Duck and Aladdin: the Animated Series, among others) suggested adding a dramatic male lead. We came up with Goliath and put the whole show through the prism of who Goliath was. That was the turning point, obviously.

I still maintain that the original comedy development would have made a great comedy-adventure series. Something to be proud of. That's not to say that I don't greatly prefer how things turned out, but it's apples and oranges.

Greg responds...

Yes. Exactly. It would have been something for King Arthur and Sir Griff to follow up on after their quest for Merlin -- IF we had ever done the PENDRAGON spin-off. And because we "promised" it in "Sentinel", Elisa and Goliath would have had at least some minor involvement in the quest.

Greg responds...

As I said, the script for the movie hasn't been turned in yet. All I know is that Goliath is the lead.

Cops have partners. It didn't seem realistic for Elisa to be an exception.
Why make her life that easy? We all have connections which enrich and complicate our lives. Elisa has parents, siblings, a boss, a cat, gargoyles, supervillains... and a partner.

Greg responds...

She seems to be Hopi or Zuni to me in the series, though I don't pretend to be an expert. I can't even remember if "maza" is the Sioux or Navajo word for "iron". As you can see, we weren't tremendously consistent on Elisa's paternal ethnicity. That's mostly my fault. I should have done a better job on research. Part of the problem was that different people gave us different advice as the series progressed. But that only compounded inconsistencies that we had already built into the stories. I'll try to do better in the future.

Greg responds...

O.K. Once again, GARGOYLES had no censors. We had one Disney Standards & Practices executive. We also had our own sensibilities as guides. Goliath Chronicles had ABC's Broadcast S&P staff to worry about also. I don't know if they had problems with the Goliath/Elisa relationship. On the one script I wrote for Chronicles, they didn't seem to have any trouble with any of the romance stuff I wrote. The one thing they did object to was Elisa punching Banquo in the face, off-camera. That surprised me, because we had done that sort of thing all the time during the first two seasons. Again, you'd have to ask Eric Lewald or Scott Thomas if the Chronicles had substantial S&P problems at ABC.

Greg responds...

Angela and Broadway will ultimately have three biological children: Artus, Gwenyvere and Samson. None of these characters have been designed yet, and I don't want to paint/write myself into a corner, but in my head, Artus bares a strong physical resemblance to Hudson & Broadway; Gwenyvere looks quite a bit like Angela & Demona; Samson looks very much like Goliath. But they won't be carbon copies, and each child should inherit at least a little bit from each parent.

Greg responds...

Coldfire is her name now. She had no name in the tenth century, since naming is a human, not a gargoyle, trait. However, those of us who worked on the GARGOYLES series are all humans, so we felt the need to name her in scripts and in the credits. So we called her Desdemona. But that name was simply a convenient designation for us. She would not recognize it as her own. Neither would anyone operating within the universe of the series.

Greg responds...

When Puck transforms into Owen, he transforms into a human being, with all a human's weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Now Owen can transform back into Puck, but he can't perform magic as Owen. And Demona caught Owen off- guard with a spell that affected his all-too-human form. I suppose Owen could have transformed back into Puck in between the two nights of the curse, but that would mean he couldn't help Xanatos at all. Remember their deal: one wish from the Puck or a lifetime of service from Owen. Xanatos chose Owen.

As for "The Mirror", Xanatos went without Owen for a few hours. Who knows whether he even noticed.