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Sevarius Jr. writes...
For some reason, some of my earlier questions were deleted, so here they are again in abbreviated format:
1. Was it your initial decision to have 2 species of Gargoyles (humanoid and "beast"), or did you just start with the humanoid form and only later decide to include a "beast" version, a la Bronx?
2. Should Gargoyles ever once again become a viable comic book property, which modern-day artists/writers would you enjoy working with on the project?
3. I know you are working on the new Starship Troopers series. Are you a Robert Heinlein fan, or at least are you a fan of the original Starship Troopers novel?
Once again, thanks for your time!
Greg responds...
1. Two species all along. Or at any rate, once we switched from the comedy to the dramatic development direction. It was in the first draft of the bible.
Unfortunately, your other questions are on different topics. Please resubmit them as separate posts.
Where have I been...
I can't believe I'm still answering questions from back in July.
Please have patience with me. I have been completely swamped working on a new series for SONY (makers of MIB & Starship Troopers) and the WB (the network of BATMAN BEYOND). It's called "MX1: MAX STEEL", and if I survive the production process it should be a pretty cool show.
Here's a little info:
I'm the story editor and one of the producers.
It's not the same job/responsibility/freedom that I had on Gargoyles, but it is the closest I've come to it since way back then.
The Executive Producers are Richard Raynis and Jeff Kline.
The other Producer (on the art side) is Bob Richardson.
Sue Blue is our voice director.
We've got an order for 13 episodes. Each stands alone, hopefully, but as usual with my stuff they'll play better in sequence. I hope they air in order someday.
As of today, the writing breaks down as follows:
1. "Strangers" by Greg Weisman.
2. "Sacrifices" by Greg Weisman.
3. "Shadows" by Lydia Marano.
4. "Sportsmen" by Jon Weisman.
5. "Seraphim" by Michael Reaves.
6. "Spear-Carriers" by Kevin Hopps.
7. "Snow-Blind" by Mike Ryan.
8. "Sharks" by Katherine Fugate.
9. "Sabres" by Cary Bates.
10. "Sphinxes" by Gary Sperling.
11. "Swashbucklers" by Jon Weisman.
12. "Scions" by Cary Bates.
13. "Shattered" by Kevin Hopps.
The voice cast is pretty impressive to, with quite a few names familiar to Gargoyles fandom...
Our five regulars...
Christian Campbell
Jacob Vargas
Shannon Kenny
Chi McBride
Lauren Tom
Recurring & Guest Cast includes (in order of appearance):
John de Lancie
Keith Szarabajka
Jean Gilpin
Martin Jarvis
Thomas Wilson (aka Matt Bluestone)
Edward Asner (aka Hudson)
Jason Marsden
Jeff Bennett (aka Brooklyn, Owen, etc.)
Julia Kato
Obba Babbatunde
Cam Clarke (aka Young Gillecomgain & Eric Sturlesson)
Thom Adcox Hernandez (aka Lexington)
Greg Rainwater (aka Natsilane & Coyote Trickster)
August Paro
Robert Cait
And that's just after having recorded five episodes.
The show is 100% CGI. We have high hopes.
In other news, I just attended what could be called my first GARGOYLE wedding. Marc Perlman (our music editor) and Laurel Whitcomb (our publicist) met at the Gargoyle Premiere Party in 1994. They've been an item ever since, and finally made it official yesterday. The wedding was great fun, and I was singled out as being responsible for bringing them together.
Geez, talk about pressure.
I loved it.
I will get back to answering questions as soon as I can. Hope this little update tides you over a bit.
*The Bride of Ringo* writes...
Hi again, just one quick question:
Before maggie was mutated we know she was living out on the streets with a bunch of bums and in all honesty she looked pretty messed up... if Gargoyles wasn't intended for kids, would you have made her be on drugs or an alcoholic or have some other kind of problems that people who live on the street very often have?
Greg responds...
No. Not Maggie anyway. It has nothing to do with Gargoyles being for kids, by the way. (Compare what we did in "Deadly Force" for example.)
If I wanted to do a drug or alcohol story, I'd do one. I'd try to be very responsible about it. But in those days, I could do so-called controversial material. But I don't do it for the sake of doing it, I have to have a great story in mind.
Maggie wasn't about that. I don't know what might have happened to her down the road if she had stayed on the streets without Sevarius' not-so-benevolent intervention... but she probably would have eventually admitted defeat and called her parents to wire her busfare back to Ohio.
Her problem wasn't drugs or booze. It was naivete. In my mind, as I think I've mentioned before, she was a would-be actress who came to NYC with her life savings. Maybe a couple grand, which she went through ridiculously fast, thinking that any minute she'd be discovered and become a Broadway star!
At least, that's how I figured her.
Airwalker writes...
For a long while Toon Disney was showing all of the episode in order (they omitted DEADLY FORCE but otherwise everything else was in correct order). But starting July 1, they suddenly started showing the episodes completely out of order, mainly the episodes of the second season. Do you know of any reason why they they would suddenly do that and how to get them to correct it so that they go back to the proper order?
Greg responds...
I know of no reason, why they'd start messing up.
I also don't have any immediate thoughts as to how to correct them. I did it once, when I still knew people who worked at Disney Channel. Those folk are gone now...
Let me ponder...
Airwalker writes...
I know that you were only involved with THE JOURNEY in TGC. But in the episode GENERATIONS, the story had Demona completely alienating Angela, with the ending of the episode indicating that Angela had completely given up on her mother. If you got the show back, how would deal with this, how would you fix this?
Greg responds...
I have and will continue to resist addressing these questions at this time.
Understand, GOLIATH CHRONICLES was very, very PAINFUL for me. Besides "The Journey" I watched each episode exactly once -- a bitter experience each time. (And note: This is not the fault of the people who produced those episodes.)
I have no desire to put myself through additional needless pain.
Now if the show were to come back, the pain wouldn't be needless. It would be worthwhile, and I would gladly watch, even study, each episode again, looking for loopholes, for what I could ignore, etc. etc. etc.
It may sound arrogant, but I have no doubt I could salvage my continuity in its entirety.
But for now...
The only Chronicle that exists for me is "The Journey."
Hope you understand.
Airwalker writes...
Do alternate/parallel realities (you know, worlds where history went a little differently like What if the South won the Civil War, stuff like that) exist in the structure of the Gargoyles Universe? Is it a Universe or a Multiverse?
Greg responds...
Multiverses are so much fun, but like unrestricted time-travel they are subject to massive abuse.
The short answer is, I haven't decided definitively, but I'm leaning toward a "NO".
I'd never want to, for example, cheapen the Magus' death by introducing the Magus from another dimension. And isn't our Demona quite enough fun, so that we have no need to meet the so-called Good Demona from a parallel world.
Of course, I suppose it could help explain GOLIATH CHRONICLES. Hmmmm....
CORRECTION
I can't believe I said I "wrote" ten episodes of Starship Troopers. That's flat out untrue.
I meant to say I story edited ten episodes of Starship Troopers:
16 - "No Substitute" by Jon Weisman
17 - "And Then There Were Two..." by Cary Bates
18 - "Marauder" by Michael Reaves
19 - "Liquid Dreams" by Greg Weisman
20 - "Heart" by Lydia Marano
36 - "Funeral for a Friend" by Greg Weisman
37 - "Spirits of the Departed" by Jon Weisman
38 - "Gates of Hell" by Lydia Marano
39 - "Circle of the Damned" by Cary Bates
40 - "Final Inferno" by Michael Reaves
As you can see I wrote two episodes and story edited ten. My apologies to Cary, Michael, Lydia and Jon.
Episodes 37 - 40 were the ones yanked out of production. And of course, the numbers listed above reflect their ideal airing order. There's little chance that they'll actually air in that order. At least not the first time through. And of course, SONY doesn't show the titles on SCREEN. So the best you can do is look out for the above five writers names. These are all scripts I'm VERY proud of. Hopefully, the episodes will turn out as good.
Greg
P.S. Now, watch -- I've probably made some new dopey error.
Where's Greg....?
Greg is up to his neck in work right now. Sorry.
Here's what's been going on.
As many of you know, I wrote ten episodes of the forty episode order of STARSHIP TROOPERS (now dubbed ROUGHNECKS: THE STARSHIP TROOPERS CHRONICLES (or something like that)).
My episodes were orignally slated to be #16-20 and #36-40.
My first arc (16-20) were set on a jungle planet. My last arc was set on Earth (36 in Colorado & 37-40 on Hawaii specifically).
Then all hell broke loose.
Two CGI companies were originally doing the CGI for the show. One of these companies bailed -- as I understand it they declared bankruptcy -- still holding onto five episodes worth of SONY's money. But Sony still had to deliver 40 episodes. And they didn't want to pay for 45. So now they've added three clip shows. And taken a couple of single episodes and made them two-parters. In the process they chose (at least for now) not to make my Hawaii episodes. Hopefully, they'll be made later for Home Video or a second season or something.
I've been watching the shows on my local channel. Missed the premiere episode. Then saw the next five. The first one I saw, (the second to air in syndication) was an episode from the third week arc (had to be 16, 17 or 18 in the original airing order) set on the planet Tophet. They followed that with the first four episodes set on Pluto in order. Then yesterday they aired the first episode for at least the second time in two weeks.
Obviously, we're having some delivery problems.
And all of the above, completely out of my control.
The good news is that the five episodes I saw kicked some major ass visually. And the stories were pretty great too. (And I had nothing to do with them.) Maybe that bodes well for the six episodes of mine that should get made soon.
Meanwhile, I've been swamped working on a CGI show for Sony that should air on the WB in January. It's on an inhuman schedule that's literally killing me, but hopefully you'll like the finished product.
Sorry if I haven't had much time for ASK GREG recently. But I love doing it, so I will get back to it as soon as I can.
I swear.
Greg
Airwalker writes...
Was it Brooklyn's constant talk in FUTURE TENSE about the Phoenix Gate and time travel that inspired you to come up with the idea of TIMEDANCER?
(I wonder because you said somewhere in the archives that you came up with Timedancer too late in the game to actually pitch it to any station.)
Greg responds...
No. It was the pure evolution of the characters of the Trio. I saw very clearly that they were going their separate ways. Writing "The Journey" cemented the idea in my head. I believe that Brooklyn, Lex and Broadway would never find better brothers, better friends than each other, but I also saw that the days when they acted as one were gone.
I wanted to visualize this. The initial Phoenix Gate story (the one that somehow melted into "Runaways" in TGC) came first. The idea of him coming back older, mated and with kids and a beast, was a great shocking ending. But I felt it would really demonstrate what I had in my head.
The spin-off idea was of course obvious after that. I mean he was gone for forty years. What was he doing all that time? But, as you noted, by the time I came up with that, it was too late. Disney had already made me feel unwelcome.
Hybris, on my part, played a big role as well.
Hindsight, whatchagonna do?
Airwalker writes...
How many upgrades do you see Cyoti ultimately going through? You once said that the various version numbers (Cyoti 2.0, Cyoti 3.0, Cyoti 4.0, etc) were a homage to Marvel Comic's Ultron. But Ultron stopped numbering himself at #13. Do you think Cyoti would exceed that or not?
Greg responds...
You're just way ahead of me. I had the robot plotted through 6.0. I hadn't plotted him out farther, though I probably would have brought him back in some form in G2158. I hadn't thought about what I would name him at that point. Maybe COYOTE-2158?
By the way, though I wish I had used the Bible's spelling, the fact is I didn't, so it's COYOTE, not CY.O.T.I.
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