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Greg, did Oberon erase every obvious trace of his presence in New York during the Gathering. I imagine he would show up on a few video surviellance cameras or in real time photos from overhead satellites.
No. I doubt he bothered.
What was Thailog thinking when he turned on Demona? He can't kill her and after all the quality time he'd spent with
her, he has to know that she can carry a grudge for centuries.
I think Thailog perceived Demona as the kind of loose cannon that he ultimately had to eliminate one way or another. If that meant chaining her in a funhouse basement, so be it.
In response to your Ramble, I suggest you forget about the Chronicles completely. I was repulsed by EVERY episode; I didn't even like The Journey very much. The eps got worse week after week and I didn't know why until I found out online that you left the show. I kept watching anyway because I couldn't keep away. I eventually saw one episode I liked -- more for the unique animation style than the actual story -- with Proteus finding his way to New York. All other episodes repulsed me.
In my mind, the series ended with the conclusion to Hunter's Moon. I suppose I was dissappointed with The Journey because I wasn't expecting so much time to have passed since returning to the castle.
The kiss shared by Angela and Broadway caught me off guard and I thought it was somewhat out of context. A courtship episode would've been nice, but I understand if you were trying to pack a lot of your ideas in before you left.
I also disliked the form in which John Canmore returned. He was really different from the way he was in Hunter's Moon. I hope you didn't plan for his "cause" to be the central storyline for the forseeable future. I probably would've been tired of it after two or three eps. That is, unless you brought back the Hunter armory, exo-suit, and foreign accent :)
Sorry, you didn't like "The Journey". I wasn't happy with how it was boarded or edited, but I think it turned out O.K.
(On the other hand, the Aladdin-style animation on that Proteus episode really bugged me. Like a different series.)
I don't think much time HAD passed between Hunter's Moon and The Journey. A few weeks at most. The Broadway/Angela courtship had been going on in subtle ways since they met. But that was their first kiss. You didn't miss anything. They found each other right there. As for Canmore/Castaway, well, the idea was that some astute viewers would recognize him as the same guy, but I didn't plan on revealing that right away. The Quarrymen would have been a significant subplot, but they wouldn't have taken over the series. And, by the way, John Castaway did have an accent. An English accent. (As opposed to Canmore's Scottish accent.) Personally, I thought Castaway in "The Journey" was kind of chilling.
Basically, I'd hope you would have trusted me to give you the same level of quality that you seem to have enjoyed during the first two seasons.
Hi, again, Greg!
How long do you suppose it would be (in years or whatever) before the ridiculous humans put away their predjudices and, worldwide, it was cosidered perfectly normal for gagoyles, New Olympians, humans, and Oberon's Children to be seen wandering down a street or in a dance club? I'm not saying all humans, or every member of the other races for that matter, will ever completely accept the members of the others (Margot, for example. That woman...!), but do you forsee basic equality for all the races in the future?
BTW, I have to put this in... I was reading through the archives and I came accross Celano's post. S/he's right! That gargoyle mother in The Mirror really did have a beard! I've always wondered about that too...
thanks for your time, Greg! You're my hero!
I don't remember any beard, and I've seen the episode about 50 times.
As to your real question, I like to think that as a species humans take two steps forward and 1.9 steps back. Meaning that eventually, we get where we should be going. But I'm not going to attempt to set a date on the end of universal prejudice. I'm not in the Utopia business.
Is there any logical reason that Owen did not include a giant iron bell in the castle defenses? I know this would have ruined the drama of the battle. But it is hard to accept the fact that it never occured to any of the defenders during the battle with Oberon.
I'm not sure that the bell solution is that obvious to Owen. I think it was very clever of Titania to come up with something that generally a fae would have little interest in exploring.
And where would Goliath and Angela found a big iron bell?
In Walkabout, would Titania have revealed herself and magically intervened if Goliath and Dingo had failed to reason with Matrix?
What could Titania have done against Matrix?
I started to wonder about the 'Future Tense' episode...
1. What would have happened if Goliath had indeed given Puck the gate? After all he was dreaming the whole thing - would the real-life gate have just disappeared and been taken by Puck or something? Goliath waking up and finding it missing?
2. That thing about Puck not being able to take the gate, he having to be given it - is that again a law of Oberon's or something inherent in the nature of the Gate and/or fae?
3. And if the former, why when in other cases the fae could use just any flimsy excuse to bend Oberon's law, this one was so strictly interpreted that even 'Here you have it, take the gate' wasn't sufficient for Puck to take it?
1. Goliath would have physically taken the Gate from his pouch, held it out and let go. Puck would appear to take it. All very real. But it didn't happen.
2. It's a law, but I don't know if it's Oberon's law.
3. I'm not sure that their excuses were that flimsy. We always made an effort to bend the laws with a real rationale.
Hello, Greg! In "Hunter's Moon: Part 3", at the very end, how come you had Demona throw up the vile into the air? I mean, right after Goliath said, "you can destroy all of us, you and me, the whole clan, and our daughter." When he involved Angela, you would think that Demona would do anything for her because she loved her so much. In "The Reckoning," Demona used Angela, but realized what she had done wrong, so she saved her from being killed. Now, Demona doesn't care? I don't understand. Is it maybe because Goliath destroyed the Praying Gargoyle that her spell wouldn't work anyway? So, out of frustration, she just threw the vile up in the air, because she knew that if Goliath didn't catch it nothing would happen? Thanks for your time, Greg! I hope I didn't confuse you with what I'm trying to ask. :)
I think that on one level, Demona was fairly confident that Goliath (or one of the gargs) would catch it. But I also think on some level, Demona's action was nihilistic. If the vile broke, so be it.
By the end of this episode, everyone is happy.
Both Goliath and Xanatos are afraid they've lost their edge. Both are convinced by the end that they've regained it. Both are at least partially deceiving themselves. [One of the little ambiguities that I love about the Xanatos tags is that one way to interpret them is that David is just full of it. He loses, but claims victory anyway.]
But David is just so lovable in this episode. You gotta love the villain who does NOT penalize his subordinate for beating him in a judo match. And he has such great audacious dialogue (kudos to Michael Reaves and Jonathan Frakes). A few approximate samples:
--"I'm the best friend you have."
--"If you're going to be picky, we won't get anywhere."
--"You're taking this much too personally."
And those were all in one scene. A scene where he's just standing out there awaiting their arrival. I mean, a guy as busy as he is... Is that confidence/arrogance or what?
And he's not afraid to get his hands dirty. Giving X the armor was essential. Up to this point, David had been only the brains. But to be a true reverse-hero, he had to be a warrior as well. Here we showed he had what it takes to mix it up. But always without being stupid. Question: How many of you knew the "red robot" was Xanatos in armor before the tag? Of course, now it seems obvious, but what about the first time you saw this ep?
And yet Elisa "Wouldn't want his karma." What goes around comes around. All that arrogance, had to receive some commeuppance. (Can anyone say Oberon?)
One thing that I thought was TOO OBVIOUS was the Steel Clan theft of the EYE OF ODIN. I would have preferred if that scene had been more ambiguous in Act One. Preferred that the audience maybe think that the Robot WAS Goliath, so that when Matt takes aim at the cliffhanger, we think he's going to shoot Goliath. The cliffhanger doesn't really play as is. Only Elisa is fooled, not the audience.
Everyone wonders why Xanatos donated the Eye to the Museum of MODERN Art. (Maybe because it had mediocre security, but adequate security cameras.) But what I want to know is whether or not Edvard Munch's "The Scream" is really at that museum?
Speaking of THE EYE, I may have mentioned that this was actually the idea of the Disney interactive video game people. We wanted to be synergistic, and I kinda liked the whole idea, so we put it into the show. It was another of our step-by-step additions to the continuity. Intro it as a minor maguffin. A dewdad for Xanatos. And build from there, with the eventual plan to actually make it Odin's eye. At some point in all this, we completely forgot that the idea came from the interactive people. We went back to see them months and months later and were reminded. Luckily the concepts hadn't gotten too far away from each other. But the design did. Unfortunately, our design wound up looking a bit Egyptian for my tastes. The Interactive design had a great Raven motif. (Oh, well.)
New characters (more or less):
A cameo by Derek.
The first mention of the Emir.
The first appearance of Travis Marshall. Michael and I worked this guy out together. He wouldn't be one of those fluff journalists. He'd be old school. He wouldn't whitewash David, just because the guy was a rich man. We always made sure to give Travis that edge. And still, I always felt we underused him. In this episode, Matt gives him a lift in Derek's chopper. Matt says, "You owe me one." Eventually, I'd like to see Matt collect on that favor in a story focusing on the two of them.
And speaking of Matt...
The first real appearance of Matt Bluestone. This guy was largely Michael Reaves' creation. (Although the "Bluestone" name was one of our earlier choices for Elisa's last name. After Chavez, Reed and Chavez, but before Maza.) At first, I admit I was dubious about him being a conspiracy nut. But it so worked. And this was the first time I ever worked with Tom Wilson. He's just so great. And so damn funny to have in the booth. (I love him in FREAKS & GEEKS.)
Matt & Elisa discuss the Illuminati, UFO's and Loch Ness. I love how dubious she is, with her inside joke: "Believe me, the world's strange enough as it is." Little does she know.
But my favorite thing about Matt is that ultimately he's a healthy influence on Elisa... "Maybe that's when you need one [a partner] the most." He's just a really good guy.
As usual, characters keep their promises. Matt vows to find out what those creatures (the gargs) are. And by God, eventually he does.
More on continuity...
Elisa's only JUST coming back to work. In cartoon terms, the fact that we waited this long after her gunshot wound, was a relative eternity. The height of cartoon realism. It doesn't seem like very long, but months passed between the original airings of DEADLY FORCE and THE EDGE.
And Chavez won't let her go back on the job without a partner. Michael conceptualized Matt -- after I mandated the creation of Elisa's partner. Cops have partners. It is one of the defining things about cops. When cop-shows show cops working solo, it always bugs me. I felt we got away with it for a bit. But it was time to make Elisa a more real cop. And that meant a partner. Not a bad guy. But someone who could potentially cause her trouble. And yet still really be her partner.
Broadway is still very solicitous toward Elisa. Taking the tv from her. It's sweet.
Random stuff:
The show is gorgeous to look at. (Thanks Roy, et al.)
I love Lexington's line when he regains consciousness: "We're still alive. How come?"
Watching the show this time, my daughter was very nervous that the Statue of Liberty would be damaged in the battle between our gargs and the Steel Clan. But when Broadway nailed one robot by impaling him with a metal claw from the other robot, Erin said, "Nice one."
Goliath is reading Dostoevsky. Are you?
Greg,
Another enormous fan of the show here. Gargoyles is truely the Babylon 5 of animation. (And if you haven't experienced Babylon 5, it's recommended. The reference is to the interlinking plot elements that gives the show a "big picture" quality.)
One of your ramblings asked for comments about blowing up the clock tower, moving back into the castle, etc. I think those were great moves, and fit well into the story. I always hoped they would make it back into the castle someday. Even the world tour eps were great, the only annoying thing was we went through several rerun cycles before getting to "The Gathering". On a straight run through of the eps, I don't think there were too many world tour eps at all.
Anyway, there needs to be a question here. In "Metamorphosis", the 'death' of the Sevarius was so convincing because just as Derek was about to get the antidote shot, the gargoyles burst in the door, threw Anton into the eel tank (breaking the antidote vial), and escaped. Now, this works out the way Xanatos wanted, but how could they have set it up so perfectly, with such wonderful timing? There was no way to tell when the gargoyles would make the rescue attempt, or which door they come through, or where they would be throwing people.
Thanks again for the show, and count one more vote that it comes back someday. (Speaking of which, using the net to ignore TGS and the time gap - I'd go for that.)
Re: World Tour. Yeah, reruns killed us. (Or at least maimed us.) But what could we do? We had been given way too little time to produce the 52 episode second season. We just couldn't get them all ready fast enough. And, unfortunately, the big delay took place during the Tour.
Re: Metamorphosis. Actually, if you assume that Xanatos and Sevarius knew exactly when Goliath, Brooklyn and Lex broke in, and had some covert way of keeping track of their progress, it wasn't too hard to rig the "death scene".
You asked in a recent rambling about our responses to a number of the "permanent changes" in the course of the series. In the case of the ones that you cited, I can't really recall now how I responded to them at the time (for example, in the case of "Enter Macbeth", my attention was more grabbed by Macbeth's entrance into the series - particularly on account of his name, since that's always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays - than by the gargoyles' forced relocation - and I was even more delighted in later episodes when we found out more about him and that he was *the* Macbeth).
However, I do recall two "changes" (if relatively small ones) that did startle me. The first was Owen's hand getting turned permanently to stone at the end of "The Price". The second was the destruction of the Grimorum Arcanorum in "Avalon", which particularly raised my eyebrows since that book had been around since the beginning of the series, so that I was astonished to see it go. (I might add that, from my subjective view-point, the end of the Grimorum came, in a sense, not so much when it self-destructed in "Avalon Part Three" as when the Archmage devoured it in "Avalon Part Two").
But when I did look back on them in retrospect, I found that I very much appreciated the changes. It was one of those things that gave "Gargoyles" a special feeling about it that I've so rarely seen in television animation. More like a televised novel, almost.
Thanks. That was the goal. I figure, hey, S**T HAPPENS. And some things you can't take back. Yeah, sure, I wasn't gonna leave all the gargoyles as humans for all the eps after "The Mirror"; after all, the show wasn't called "HUMANS". And of course, even the loss of the castle wasn't permanent, as Goliath predicted.
But some things can't be changed. Demona can't take back the massacre. History is immutable. And the Magus... well, he's gone. That's life. And death. And everything in between.
As for the two specifics you mentioned...
I wanted to get a rise out of all of you with Owen's hand. It was designed to shock. It was also a bit of a clue. And it flat-out amused the hell outta me.
As for the Grimorum, it honestly felt played out to me. (How many stolen spells could we pull out of our collective hat?) But I wanted to give it a memorable exit. I thought having it swallowed whole by the Archmage was pretty cool.
Hmmm, "HUMANS"... Maybe there's a spin-off idea there...
Hi, Greg!
I was wondering what Oberon did with himself during the thousand-year-long banishment? He obviously wasn't on Avalon because that's where Katherine, Tom, Magus and the eggs were... but he also seemed *completely* naive of the modern world- like when Xanatos or Elisa pulled their respective guns on him- he acted like he'd never seen such things before. Not to mention his comment in The Gathering, "Interesting what these mortals can acheive with their 'science'."
I think there's a big difference between his reaction to Elisa's gun and Xanatos'. With Elisa, he was reacting to the iron content in the weapon. With Xanatos, he was curious about its futuristic look and nature.
Likewise, I don't think Oberon had had much exposure to force fields. Have you?
I think Oberon was out and about all those years. He knew the modern world. But not everything about it.
Does any security camera footage shot during The Mirror exist? I'd love to see what the human cast members looked like as gargoyles.
Huh?
Okay, these questions sorta ended up essay form. I hope I didn't make things TOO complicated. (But they're all on one topic: 'The Gathering' episodes.)
*1* In The Gathering, Puck mentions he noticed Titania in human form and thought it looked like fun. Therefore, he created Owen. Obviously he knew about her, but did she know about him? I mean, he didn't reveal himself to anyone but Xanatos. And after being brought to see grandbaby Alex by Owen himself, when Puck is noticeably missing from Avalon, wouldn't she have known right where to look for him if she knew his human guise?
If she DIDN'T know, like didn't sense or anything (the way Oberon senses her once in the Eyrie Building) then that means she didn't reveal herself to Puck. Then how'd HE know ANASTASIA was TITANIA in the first place, if he couldn't sense it?
Did that come anywhere near making sense?
I'm adding this on as an afterthought sparked by Robby in the CR--perhaps it helps out the confusing mess I posted above:
*2* a) What if Titania DID know Puck was Owen, and kept it to herself (seeing that she'd had in mind it was likely the Xanatos family would get to keep Alex anyway). Was this what was mentioned in the infamous 'thing whispered into Fox's ear that made her smile'?
*2* b) If not, what WAS whispered by Titania into Fox's ear that made her smile? {Are you tired of this one yet? Hopefully not as much as the 'Which Weird Sister is which' questions ^_^}
~H\A~
All right for starters, the GATHERING info Puck gives assumes that he was watching Titania. Followed her at some point and saw her transformation to Anastasia. Then secretly observed Anastasia to find out what the fascination was.
Theoretically, Titania did NOT know. Owen certainly doesn't think she knows. So the question really is, do you believe Titania's implied statement that everything in GATHERING PART TWO went as she planned. That's hardly possible if she didn't know that Puck was available to act as a tutor that Fox and David would implicitly trust. So the question is, who do you believe?
As to the whisper... Well, I won't say what she said, but certainly it was nothing as Prosaic as "Listen, Janine, this all worked because I already knew that Puck was Owen."
Greg, can we make guesses as to the identity of the fifth member of the Ultra-Pack, or will those fall under the category of ideas?
(Prediction: We can guess as much as we want to, but the answer, like Lex's mate is and what Titania whispered to Fox,will remain mysteries forever)
On a scale, where the likelihood of my revealing what Titania said is a ten and revealing BROOKLYN'S MATE is a one (since I alreadly revealed that), I'd put Lex's mate at about a six and the fifth Pack Member as a four.
It's really pointless to guess, however. The character is brand new. There are no clues currently built into the cannon. Thus, as you surmised, almost every guess would play like an idea and Gore would have to boot them.
Hello Greg, A question in Future Tense Xanatos or Lex killed Demona... Wouldn't that be impossible. I know it was a dream and all...
Yeah. It was a trick.
In Temptation, when Elisa told Goliath to "act for the rest of his life as if he weren't under a spell", was that the actual way to break the spell, or was it the next best thing to actually breaking it?
Also in Temptation when Demona was controlling Goliath, if she got fed up with trying to reason with Brooklyn and told Goliath to just kill him, would Brooklyn have stood a chance against Goliath?
P.S. Sorry if these are dumb questions, i was just curious
Probably the next best thing.
Yes, because Goliath was basically in automaton mode.
Another episode by episode ramble. Feedback encouraged.
So here's where all that great continuity got us in major trouble.
The episodes were all designed to play in a certain order. But I didn't tell my bosses that in advance. I know it sounds sneaky, but it wasn't really. We wrote the darn things and sent them off in order. It never occured to me they wouldn't be able to come back and air in order. I mean, how could a newer episode get the jump on an older one? How could an older episode not be ready before a newer one? Then the footage came back on "Enter Macbeth".
This was the first episode not animated in Japan. And immediately we knew we were in trouble. I'm not talking about the version you all have seen. The one that aired. I'm talking about stuff you never saw. Much of the original footage we got was unusable. This wasn't about just calling retakes. This wasn't about us bitching how "Thrill" wasn't as well animated as "Awakening". This was a major disaster. So my bosses said: "Air the next one." And I responded, "We can't."
And not just because they were all designed to air in order. It was a horrible coincidence, but this episode, this episode that was unairable, was a tentpole. Yeah, if Thrill or Temptation had been reordered it would have been sad. Same with "The Edge" and "Long Way To Morning". But big deal, right? Better to get a new episode out and not make the audience deal with repeats this early in the season. (Remember, we had aired our first five episodes in one week. This was only week five. In those days, week five was considered way too early in the year for reruns.)
But this was the follow-up to Elisa's injury. It was important to us that we continue our policy of "repercussions". We put her on crutches to show that a gunshot wasn't something that was solved in twenty-two minutes. This was an ongoing recovery. If you pulled the crutches out by airing Edge next, you blew out the sense of repercussions.
But that wasn't the clincher. Of course, the clincher was the Clock Tower. This was the episode where the Gargs were "banished" from the castle and moved to the Clock Tower. That was a major shift. If we cut straight to Edge, the audience would be lost. Fortunately, Gary was convinced. In a way, I was lucky that our first crisis of order came on such a pivotal "tentpole" episode. We couldn't reorder these. So we went with reruns. But it was a lesson learned. And it would effect the way we approached the second season.
But meanwhile, we had the problem at hand. We couldn't reanimate the entire show. So we picked shots to redo judiciously. There are still some awful looking scenes. When Goliath says, "How Dare You?!" to Elisa, he looks like an Animaniacs parody of Goliath. And that sarcophogus/iron maiden thing that Goliath follows Macbeth through looks like a prop out of CHIP N DALE'S RESCUE RANGERS. (Another perfectly good series, but with a slightly different art style, if you know what I mean.) Or how about the GIANT remote that Macbeth pulls from his duster in order to summon his ship? "Enter Macbeth" is still, as aired, the worst looking episode of the first season. And that really killed Frank and I, because we both really loved this story. We were sure that the bad animation would kill any interest in Macbeth. The fact that generally, the character did catch hold of fandom's collective imagination is a true testament to the work of Steve Perry, Michael Reaves, John Rhys-Davies and Jamie Thomason. And, oh, yes... William Shakespeare.
The weak picture forced us to use a lot of little tricks to get a final cut. One thing we did, which I regret, is reuse dialogue. Elisa says "You aren't safe here" like three times. And it isn't three different takes. It's just the exact same take reprinted and reused. Lex & Brooklyn also reuse lines to get Bronx to find Goliath. That sort of thing drives me nuts.
There is one really nice moment in the animation. When Macbeth chooses his sword off the wall, the reflection effect is quite sweet. And I also like the down shot of Bronx running right down the middle of Broadway (the street not the gargoyle). I also love how Goliath makes no attempt to hide. That really spoke to the Gargoyles attitude about living among humans. They wouldn't hold press conferences, but they would not cower.
Anyway, we ran reruns. Awakenings. And obviously all five episodes on five consecutive weeks. That might have been a good thing for people who had heard about the show by word of mouth in week two or later and needed to catch up. But for anyone who had been following the show from its premiere, it was a long time to wait for new episodes. By the time we came back, so much time had passed since "Deadly Force" that we felt the need to put a "Previously on Gargoyles" at the head of the episode. Another trick I cribbed from HILL STREET BLUES. Cartoons rarely did that sort of thing. Sure multi-parters had to. But single episodes... For some reason, it made me feel very grown up. (Which only proves how immature I really am.) The "Previously" also allowed us to cut 30 more seconds of bad looking footage out of the episode. That little bonus was something I'd remember for season two as well.
HOME
As we pushed guns in the previous episode, this one is laced with the imagery and language of home. What is it? What makes it? What price is one willing to pay to keep or secure it? There are four homes depicted. Well, really five. The Gargoyles' castle. Xanatos' prison. Macbeth's mansion. The Clock Tower. And the Castle again, once it is reclaimed by Xanatos and thus becomes a very, very different place.
I tried to make sure, as much as possible, that every episode had that kind of underlying theme. (I recently tried with very limited success to do the same thing in MAX STEEL. Someone asked me once, why the one-word S-Titles for all the Max Steel episodes. They were my attempt to make me and the writers focus on the theme of each story.)
And how do all these homes turn out? Macbeth is so obsessed that he loses his home to a fire. Xanatos finally gets out of prison. (Not on Halloween by the way, or that would make the dates depicted in Double Jeopardy innacurate. Obviously, Halloween was circled on his calendar because the guy just loves Halloween. And after all, Owen specifically says in a LATER scene that Xanatos has one week left before he gets out. The wall calendar had shown only a few days.) The Gargoyles lose the castle, gain the clock tower, but realize that home is literally where the heart is. And Xanatos... well all other concerns of Grimorum and gargoyle of destruction and competition pale next to the simple pleasure of being back home.
And how many of you were suprised that the Gargoyles lost the castle? That was supposed to be another pretty shocking development. I mean, sure, Batman might lose the Batcave for an episode, but for 56 episodes? When Goliath said "We'll be back to claim that which is ours" at the end, did most of you think he'd be back next week? Next month? By the time, the gang finally did return in chapter 65, did anyone still remember Goliath's vow?
MACBETH
I've discussed this before, but Macbeth's origins (at least in terms of our series) were (ironically) an early attempt to play the notion of THE HUNTER. I was looking for someone human who could physically take on the Gargoyles as prey. Someone smart, with an agenda. We actually started with the notion of trying to create our own KRAVEN THE HUNTER type character. But it quickly moved in its own direction. Frankly, away from Kraven and more toward BATMAN. In those days, we were constantly being told that we would be accused of ripping off Batman. So Frank, Michael and I decided to create a villain who, at least in M.O. would be our Batman.
I had a semi-separate idea to add a human to the cast who was from Goliath's time. Thus creating a good thematic nemesis or opposite for him. (The key to creating a good villain, in my opinion.) But this villain would have lived through the centuries. So that he was familiar with the very latest in technology. This dove-tailed with our anti-Batman, and was also exactly how we viewed Demona. So it soon became clear to Michael and I that the two characters must be connected in some way. That suggested that he shouldn't merely be 1000 years old. He should be Scottish as well. All that was left was a name. And given my love of Shakespeare, I'm surprised it took me so long to figure it out. Our nemesis was Macbeth himself. An immortal Scottish King. What Scottish King was more immortal than Macbeth? More mortal too for that matter.
This was the beginning of countless Shakespearian references that I would either slide (or force) into the show, or that the writers would stick in knowing I was a sucker for them. And I love the little exchange between Lex & Brooklyn...
[dialogue approximate]
LEX: "Wasn't "Macbeth" the name of that play by that new writer Shakespeare that Goliath was talking about?"
BROOKLYN: "Have you read it?"
LEX: "No. Have you?"
BROOKLYN: "No. But maybe we should."
This was my little way of trying to encourage our viewers to read or at least learn about the play. If they wanted to know who Macbeth was, it wouldn't hurt to go to the primary source.
And at the time, Shakespeare was my primary source for Macbeth. This was long before Tuppence Macintyre and Monique Beatty did all their research for me for "City of Stone". Back then, the only Macbeth I knew about was Shakespeare's.
We gave him a sense of honor, but a twisted one. And we gave him a very interesting motivation. I didn't yet know the particulars, but this guy was after Demona in a major way. He had stained glass windows in his home depicting the two of them. He was the man who named her. It was all pretty intriguing stuff to me. I love the exchange between him and Goliath. Goliath is a pawn. Mac wants the queen and believes that endangering Goliath is the surest way to ensnare Demona. And how does Goliath respond? By gum, if he doesn't laugh -- MANIACALLY!! And watch how the tables turn. Macbeth is not infallible and suddenly Goliath has him on the defensive. Goliath even uses a MACE!! Great stuff.
Incidentally, we had in the script described Macbeth as wearing a thin layer of exo-armor. And Goliath was supposed to dig his claws into it. Macbeth would escape by detaching from the armor. Instead, the artists did the bit with the duster coat. But I remembered the claws in armor thing and eventually found a place for it... in HUNTER'S MOON, PART THREE.
Finally, watching the episode tonight, my five year old daughter said she spotted the Mona Lisa on Macbeth's wall. I didn't see it. But I believe her. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the original. Too bad about that fire.
Since you mentioned Thor in your last batch of responses, that reminded me of something that I'd been meaning to ask you for some time. You mentioned that the Eye of Odin came from a "Gargoyles" computer game (and added that you thought that the folks who did the computer game had a better, more Norse, design for the Eye than did the series). I read that in the computer game, they had a "Thor" robot as an opponent for Goliath at one point, armed with a high-tech hammer. Was the hammer an at least partial inspiration for the Quarrymen's hammers in "The Journey"?
If so, it was pretty subconscious. As I don't remember the Thor robot or the hammer, even with you mentioning it now. Of course, I never played the game.
But frankly, I think the hammers were a natural extension of the whole Quarrymen/Freemason idea. What's a gargoyles natural enemy? A hammer.
Sometimes a hammer is just a hammer.
Okay, I realize this is a very insignificant question, but it has been driving me nuts for quite some time. What is wrong with Banquo's eye? If memory serves me, it's his right eye that is sometimes drawn open, and other times closed, like it's been injured (at first I thought it was missing). Is there any reason why that I'm just missing? Thank you for your time.
Banquo is Popeye's second cousin once removed.
To be perfectly honest, I think the model sheet showed him squinting, and the animators assumed that he was missing an eye or something and gave him a permanent squint. But from scene to scene the squint shifts. We didn't notice the problem until after "Lighthouse" and it was too late to fix it.
Allan Cumming was the voice of Castaway in "The Journey"? I thought it was Scott Cleverdon. Why the cast change?
Scott was massively unavailable at the time. So was Marina Sirtis, forcing us to recast Alan in the roll of Jon Canmore/John Castaway and Tress MacNeill in the roll of Margot Yale. Both Alan and Tress were terrific, but I must admit I was sorry we weren't able to use the originals.
Thank you for being open to questions again.
One thing that annoyed me in the episode "Outfoxed" was that every one kept saying "wiped out" around 4 or 5 times regarding CyberBiotics failing. That repetition really felt juvenile and beneath this series. What happened? Did the writer forget a certain reference guide called a thesaurus?
Jeez, Kenneth, you'd be a fun boss.
Anyway, I suppose you can blame Cary a bit, but every script went through me, so I'll take the heat. I don't remember this little detail, but for all I know, Cary may have only used the phrase once and I might have added in the other times. I don't remember. Sorry if you were disappointed.
Another ramble as I review the entire series. Comments welcome.
"Deadly Force". I have to admit. I never liked the title. It always sounded too generic to me. Michael Reaves pointed out how appropriate it was, but "Temptation" had already given me a taste for one word titles. I came to prefer those, unless I was given a damn good reason not to.
The third episode of our trio tryptich. Broadway. Broadway and Goliath. Broadway, Elisa and Goliath. But this episode represents so much more.
If you were watching the series in '94 during it's original run, and you didn't already think, "Hey, this is different." Then by the end of Act One of "Deadly Force" you knew. I don't know if there's ever been a cartoon like "Deadly Force". A mainstream media production. We had had up to that point a few fairly shocking cliffhangers, a few fairly shocking events, but what equals Broadway pulling that trigger, the suddenly "empty" kitchen and Elisa lying in a pool of her own blood as we fade to black and cut to a commercial?
Where do I start? With pride, I guess. I am extremely proud of this one.
Guns. My personal stance on gun control isn't an issue. Not in this episode. This is about something that I think every even vaguely intelligent person can agree on. Guns aren't toys. Guns aren't "cool", no matter how they're depicted in the media. Guns demand respect. Elisa is at fault. Broadway's massively at fault. Because neither held enough respect for the weapon. (Now one might argue that Elisa lived -- nominally -- alone. It didn't occur to her that she needed to be more careful with her weapon. But it should have. She's a cop. She should know better.) As I write this, as I watched the episode tonight, my head is of course filled with thoughts of the six year old boy who yesterday took his uncle's gun to school and shot a six year old girl, killing her. And I don't want to sound arrogant. But I am angry. And I feel like this episode could really help people. That parents should HAVE to watch this with their kids. Required viewing. And the fact that Toon Disney won't even air it...! I'm furious. Simply furious.
Guns are the least of it. We wanted to send a message about repercussions. Real world repercussions. I wanted our series to be ABOUT repercussions. Demona and the Captain betray Wyvern. There are repercussions. You can't fix things. You can't go back and change it. That's why time travel in the Gargoyles' Universe has such STRICT laws. Without those laws, you remove the dramatic law of repercussions. The real world law that actions have repercussions. This episode was our ode to repercussions. The guns were just our means to an end.
Still, guns would be our medium and the episode is laced with them. With gun imagery. With gun language (e.g. Chavez referring to Dracon's alibi: "He's bulletproof.", etc.). I don't think the episode is too pedantic. I hope it's honest. Probably the most dishonest thing in the story was that Elisa DIDN'T die. Forgive me for that. But I couldn't let her go just then. Still, I think we gave our audience a bigger scare in this one then in most of the other episodes combined. Maybe she would die. There's a sense of scary (again real world) vulnerability in this. And we tried to make her injuries and suffering as realistic as possible. We weren't doing E.R. (or St. Elsewhere, since E.R. didn't exist back then), but we did try to make the medical stuff play true.
All this makes me proud. Proud of what's on the screen.
But there's a whole other side to the making of this show that makes me proud. For what isn't visible on screen. For teamwork. This is a story that seemed to need to be told. Most of the springboards for the 66 chapters came from me, but this one was waiting for us. My bosses Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston were behind the story from the start. Michael Reaves wrote an amazing script, and my God the thing is beautifully made. No one balked. Not our S&P executive. Not our bosses. No one. Think about how amazing that is? We had one of our young heroes pick up a very REAL gun and shoot our female lead in her own kitchen. That's pretty intense.
And fairly rewarding. Even our publicity department saw the value in this one. They got advance copies and sent them out. We had (always had) phenomenally good reviews. But this episode brought us praise from the kind of parents groups that most action cartoon shows usually fear. People got it. They got it. Dr. Madeline Levine wrote a book called "Viewing Violence". It's a fairly sobering study of the effect of modern media on impressionable minds. Disabused me of a few notions, I'll tell you. But she praises GARGOYLES, specifically this episode, in her book. People got it. But not TOON DISNEY people, I guess. They show a huge lack of respect for everyone who worked on that show. Everyone who did or might benefit from it.
(Re: The pool of blood. When it first came back from Japan, the pool of blood was much larger. We pulled it back by calling a retake. This wasn't cowardice on anyone's part. This was us trying to get our message across. We didn't want kids goofing on the pool of blood. Interested in the pool for the pool's sake, so to speak. We wanted enough blood there to make it real. To scare everyone. But we didn't want the pool to be distracting. And also we didn't want to imply that Elisa had already bled out.)
CHARACTERS
Broadway - First and foremost, this was still designed to showcase Broadway. All our nobler aspirations wouldn't matter if you walked out of this episode still thinking of the big guy as an eating machine and nothing else. So let's start by praising Bill Faggerbakke and voice director Jamie Thomason. Bill's performance is wonderfully poignant without falling into bathos.
And man, who is the scariest gargoyle when angered? Goliath? Demona? How about a vote for old Broadway? Guilt and anger tear him apart, and no one's safe. He PALMS Glasses for God's sake. He's young but maturing fast. I only had vague notions of Angela at this time. And I sure didn't know they were destined for each other. But I can see it here. The child who's done something so bad he's afraid to go home, ultimately taking responsibility for actions too horrible for most of us to face. Amazing strength of character.
Elisa - A secondary purpose (tertiary?) was to demonstrate that Elisa was a real human being, with real connections. A real life. She has a boss (introducing Maria Chavez), an apartment (introducing the loft), a cat (introducing Cagney). And she wasn't born a twenty-something police detective. She has a family. A father (introducing Sgt. Peter Maza), a mother (introducing Diane Maza), a brother (introducing Derek Maza) and a sister who's away at college (we even get a photo peak at Beth Maza). This wasn't some cypher who existed only to facilitate things for the Gargoyles. This was a woman whose life extended beyond their reach. A woman who now lived in TWO worlds. With two sets of hospital visitors.
Elisa's ethnic/racial make-up parallels actress Salli Richardson's, who has both African American and Native American ancestry. This is where serendipidy played a roll. We'd later get stories out of her multi-racial background. And it paralleled the inter-species romance we were preparing to build slowly. Sometimes, everything just goes your way.
Goliath - He says he'll find the man who shot Elisa and "Make him Pay". We didn't have to say "kill" there. Again, because this early in the series, we could all easily believe that Goliath could kill. And in fact, when Broadway tells Goliath that he "can't" kill Dracon, Goliath's response is: "You think not?" All the gargoyles had an edge of danger. We may have lost some of that along the way. It's natural. You get to know characters, you stop feeling tense around them. But here, both Goliath and Broadway go a little berserk. And we don't know how they'll act.
And Goliath already loves Elisa. It's so clear to me. The way he touches her hair. The way he reacts to her being shot. He loves her. He doesn't know it yet. But it is SO there. That moment when Goliath tells Broadway that they should go see Elisa, and Broadway is thrilled because he thinks that means that Elisa survived. And then Goliath stops. Because he realizes he isn't sure if Elisa is still alive. It slays me.
And meanwhile, Goliath is adapting fairly fast to the modern world. He clearly got his head around the idea that Xanatos was put away for possessing "stolen property", so he leaves the busted gun in Dracon's lap to make sure Dracon goes away too. He says as much. Not bad for a medieval gargoyle.
And this whole episode is a character-fest. Besides the above mentioned Family Maza, etc. We bring back Bruno, head of Xanatos' security. This was intentional. Establishing that the commandos from episode 2 were just Xanatos' security team being given an unusual assignment.
There's Dracon (pre-stripe) with Glasses and even Pal Joey. Rocky Caroll really brought Glasses to life. I like him. And Dracon, well, I just love his old-fashioned "noive". Calling Elisa "Honey" and "Sugar". Sending Glasses off to sell guns right in front of her. He's pretty fun in this episode.
Owen is incredibly cool. You can really see the Mr. Smithers influence in this one. Times ten. He fights, he negotiates. He manipulates. He's a phenomenal proxy for Xanatos. A true trickster with a low burning flame.
We also introduced Doctor Sato. I always planned on using him more. We just never found the story. Too bad. I liked him a lot.
And we cameo Matt. Originally, Chavez's driver was going to be Morgan. But we had already started work on "The Edge". We knew Matt was coming. So we decided to preview him here. Just a nice little touch for anyone paying attention.
MISCELLANEOUS STUFF
I'd love to know a little bit more about the movie "Showdown", a black and white western that was premiering in 1994. A score by Ennio Morricone (channeled through Carl Johnson -- a guy who doesn't get enough praise for the stunning work he did on the show). And the movie seemed to be a hit. Go figure.
And what about that movie theater. The balcony is closed. But they're storing bags of pre-popped popcorn. How old was that stuff?
Finally, Owen is very specific about the 37 missing weapons. Early on, I tried to keep count. To allow Broadway to eventually account for every one of those guns. But that was one detail that got away from me.
[More rambles on individual episodes. As usual, I encourage you to post your responses here.]
Part two of our trio tryptich. Brooklyn looks pretty cool in this one. I have to admit, I didn't realize what a break-out star Brooklyn was back then. I mean I liked him, but I didn't yet realize how much he would really capture a huge chunk of fandom's imagination. (Of course, back then the show hadn't aired yet, so there wasn't any fandom.) But seeing this episode in hindsight, you can sure see how cool this guy was. Good-looking with the hair and the muscles and everything. Even the snout adds to the look.
And he's so sympathetic too. Yes, he gets "turned" by Demona. But he immediately realizes that what she's doing is wrong. He admits his mistake and tries to correct it. He's such a good guy. Later, of course, I'd recognize the star power and attempt to give him his own series: TIMEDANCER.
Back then, of course, I had really modeled the ensemble nature of the show on HILL STREET BLUES. Goliath was my Frank Furillo. Everyone would get their own stories, but Goliath carried the weight. So, although the tryptich was designed to deepen the characters of the trio, you can see that each episode also prominently features Goliath. THRILL: Lex & Goliath. TEMPTATION: Brooklyn & Goliath. DEADLY FORCE: Broadway & Goliath. (And later, LONG WAY TO MORNING: Hudson & Goliath.) Don't get me wrong, I don't regret this at all. I think those are all great stories, and without Goliath they would not have worked as written. But I think the design of them betrays a bit of insecurity. We weren't sure if the other characters could carry their own episodes alone. The nice thing about the tryptich (and LONG WAY) was that it proved to us what a strong ensemble of characters we had built.
Lex has some real attitude here: "You rode a horse once, does that mean you could build one from scratch."
The motorcycle is interesting. It was one of three toy driven elements we consciously put into the show. (The others were in "Her Brother's Keeper" and "Eye of the Storm".) It was a rare moment of Kenner and Disney being in semi-synch. And the toy actually looks like the motorcycle. But of course, what the hell were we going to do with a motorcycle? How could we make that an on-going element in the show. Sure Batman has a batmobile, but the garg-cycle just sounds silly. So we put it in, but Michael, Brynne, Frank and I are so subversive that we blow the thing up before the end of Act One. Kenner never said anything. I'm not sure if they ever saw the episode. (But we weren't being very good partners.) But what goes around comes around. I'll tell the flip side of this when I ramble on Keeper and Storm.
S&P required that Brooklyn wear a helmet when riding. That was fine with me, but I wanted to make an effort to make it organic. Brooklyn puts it on because it's "All part of the look." Helmets make it cooler. Thus helmets are cool. Thus kids will wear their helmets. Aren't we sneaky?
Also, Brooklyn loses yet another pair of sunglasses.
Morgan's back. But he litters. That always bugged me. Talk about setting a bad example.
And is that Margot Yale's actress sister on the television sitcom saying, "Who do you think you are... Elvis?" [Add laugh track here.]
CONTINUITY
"Kindred Spirits" - Brooklyn quotes Lex from Thrill and attempts to make the same kind of connection with the bikers that Lex attempted with the Pack. With similar results. Later, Demona refers to Lex's little adventure with the Pack. This was the moment when Michael Reaves and I decided to attempt to treat the series as episodic but sequential. The order of the episodes would matter. Yes, you should be able to enjoy any individual story... but viewing is enhanced when you see the shows in order. This was not an obvious decision. Most shows REQUIRE that episodes are airable in ANY ORDER. We had that requirement too, up to a point. But we wanted to add something more. To play with continuity. With evolving lives. This wasn't an issue in the pilot five parter. Of course, that had to air in order. And then there was Thrill. Just the first one we made after Awakening. That aired next. But we didn't think about it. But here, we had to decide. So we opted for an episodic but sequential series. (My favorite kind.) We referred to previous conversations. (Elisa's still pestering Goliath about the Xanatos-ticking clock.) And we laid pipe for future episodes, by having Demona rip a few spells out of the Grimorum. (At the time, I didn't even know what those spells were for. But I knew she had them. I knew we'd use them.) We had Demona admit she had lied about how she had survived to the present. Etc. Anyway, all this continuity would later bite us on the ass a bit. (I'll talk more about this when we get to "ENTER MACBETH", which forced us to slightly change our M.O. for season two.) But again, I have no regrets; I think it's one of the things that makes the show special.
Meanwhile, how did Demona know about the Pack & Lex? Although the pact with Xanatos clearly hasn't been broken yet (not till CITY OF STONE, obviously), she also doesn't exactly have free run of the castle. She has Brooklyn steal the book. Of course, she wants Brooklyn complicit. And it's hard to sneak around the castle, when the Gargoyles (at least think that they) are the proprieters. I just always wondered whether Demona might not have been following Lex & Goliath around throughout that entire Pack battle. Or whether, Xanatos just phoned her and told her. Obviously, the former is much more interesting.
ANIMATION
Another great looking episode that we didn't fully appreciate at the time. Lots of great little touches. I love when Demona casts her spell, and then closes the Grimorum with one last flash of magic. So cool. And, as I said, Brooklyn really looks great throughout.
But there are a couple things...
The bikers approach Brooklyn. They get very close, and he's not in shadow. But they don't notice he's a "monster" until he takes off his helmet. What?! The snout didn't give it away?! That scene continues to drive me nuts. I just hate how it was staged.
And when Elisa's lecturing Goliath she is wagging her index finger in his face. That's annoying enough. But worse, the finger seems to get longer (like Pinocchio's nose) the more she wags (or nags). It's sorta mesmerizing. In that scene, I can't see anything else.
CHARACTER
I love how Marina Sirtis' voice bristles when Brooklyn mentions Elisa to Demona. Demona/Marina forces herself to say that the Detective may be "The exception [to human evil] that proves the rule." It seems sincere, but I really hear the hatred underneath.
Elisa tries to talk Goliath into leaving again. This time, she's got an idea where he can go. (So although that seems to be a repeat of their conversation from THRILL, we actually advanced that plot too. Weren't we smart?)
[And yes, I realize that all these rambles sound incredibly arrogant and immodest. I'm sitting here praising me and my team's own work. But what can I tell you? I do really like it. And I figure you guys might still be interested in my -- totally biased -- observations.]
Anyway, I love how what Elisa's saying to a very close-minded Goliath plays right into what Brooklyn heard from Demona. Brooklyn tries to argue Elisa's point. Putting Elisa and Demona, ironically, on the same side. Kudos to Brynne and Michael. It's a great little scene. Of course it ends with Brooklyn and Goliath turning to stone mid-argument. Just like Lex & Goliath did in the previous episode. Frank came to me and warned me not to do that again. Twice in two episodes was enough. At least for a while.
I also love Goliath's lines about "half-truths that [Demona] has thoroughly embraced."
LITTLE TOUCHES
Goliath just loves saying "Joy-Ride". It seems so pleasant.
Lex's double take reactions to finding out the motorcycle was blown up.
Elisa's "Thanks, I think." reaction to Brooklyn saying that he knew that she at least was a worthwhile member of the human race. Brooklyn still isn't quite free of prejudice. A work in progress.
The DEAD BODY. I held my breath on that one. We've got a chalk outline. And a corpse in a body bag. I was sure S&P would balk. But Adrienne was great. She saw that it was important to the story. And since we didn't dwell on it or explain it, she figured little kids wouldn't get it and/or be traumatized. As you can see we had a great working relationship with S&P. I mean, a DEAD BODY! It still shocks me.
Did Demona pay that family to perform their little scene for Brooklyn? I didn't think so at the time. But now I'm suspicious.
Brooklyn has a perfectly innocent line about the Cloisters being a place like the "world we came from" or something like that. Meaning of course, the medieval time that they came from. Once this aired, I immediately start seeing e-mails claiming this as evidence that Gargoyles are from another planet. This misapprehension may be one of the reasons I so quickly got involved with fandom.
Did we cheat? Elisa solves Goliath's slave-spell problem by using the spell to unhex him. I love that little bit. But Michael Reaves and I had a long back & forth discussion where we debated whether we were cheating the audience. (I seem to recall that at different times he and I both came down on both sides of the argument.) We finally decided to go for it. And again, no regrets. I do think it worked. And we sort of both promised each other that we wouldn't pull that kind of thing again. (Airwalker, I think there's a mention of this in the City of Stone memo I sent you.)
More musings on individual GARGOYLES EPISODES. As usual I welcome reactions and responses posted here based on both your original impressions from when you first saw the episode and later thoughts from repeated or recent viewings.
After the semi-epic "Awakening" multi-parter, Michael Reaves and I consciously set about creating a tryptich to develop each member of the Trio. Lex up first.
In hindsight, we probably didn't do enough Lex episodes. (I think this is Thom Adcox's favorite. He said "Leader of the Pack" at the pro-chat the other day, but the more I think about it, the more I think he was describing "Thrill".) We tried to give each member of the Trio equal coverage, but down the road, Lex might have been cheated a bit. But not here.
I love the fact that Lex is RIGHT. Sure, he's wrong about the Pack, but he was so right about taking chances on people. And I love that as stubborn as Goliath is, he's capable of admitting his mistakes, giving Lex full credit for, uh, rightness. Practically quoting back to Lex everything Lex had said to him.
You may notice that starting with this episode and running through the end of the first season, the writer's got their credit at the beginning with the title of the episode. This was a function of the Disney Afternoon. Michael Reaves rightly objected to the "gang credits" at the end of the two hour block. It had never been an issue before, because annually each new series, i.e. the one with original episodes, had always aired last with its credits immediately following. But in Gargoyles' first season, we aired on Fridays at 4pm, a half-hour before the last show. That meant that the writers' credits didn't appear until a half hour after the show ended. Gary Krisel agreed to make an exception and display writer's credits at the head of the episode for that one season. I wish I had fought to make that rule permanent. I didn't. Mea culpa.
I think Thrill is important right off because it established a few things which today we take for granted, but which I think were, at the time, fairly unusual for a cartoon series.
CONTINUITY.
--Xanatos was still in prison. He hadn't just "somehow" gotten sprung between the end of Episode 5 and the beginning of 6.
REAL RAMIFICATIONS.
--The Gargoyles won the Awakening war. And the castle still wasn't theirs to keep. At every turn, Michael and I just tried to make things play in a slow, steady logical progression. I wasn't trying to change the world in every episode. Not because I'm against world changing, but because each new situation was fascinating to explore. But we wouldn't let the world stand still either.
Early on, you can still see signs that to the creators, the audience AND the other characters, the Gargoyles themselves were still a wonderfully alien species. (And I don't mean that literally. Geez.) We tried to maintain the perspective of creatures out of their time. Goliath is stubborn, even dense and condescending toward Elisa, when she tries to convince him to leave the castle. But I think from his POV, his responses were perfectly natural. Xanatos was banished. The castle was theirs. The concept of ownership was sketchy for the Gargoyles at best, but if they did understand it, they understood it in the "Possession = Ownership" sense. The notion that Xanatos could still "own" the castle after an embarrassing defeat was completely ALIEN to Goliath.
Likewise, look at Fox's actions at the end of the episode. Can you imagine Fox in any later episode crudely taking a hostage? It seems like she checked her brain at the door. But it works for me because at that time, she (and we) didn't truly know what an angry gargoyle was capable of. Maybe Goliath would dismember her. Our boys got so borderline cuddly as the series progressed that I had to remind everyone just how dangerous they could be in HUNTER'S MOON. But Hunter's Moon wouldn't have worked back in Season One. Because in Season One, no one would have been shocked by Goliath's desire for Demonaesque vengeance. Maintaining that edge was always very important.
But if Fox wasn't acting her brightest here, I think Wolf was. That scene with Susie and Billy, where he pretends the Gargoyles were monsters sent by the evil ninjas, is about as smart a move as we ever see Wolf make. When you think about it, it's pretty darn clever. For him anyway. In later episodes, I think I got too big a kick out of making him dumb. I could justify it after UPGRADE. But if I got back, I think I'd give him a bit more of a mental edge.
And speaking of Wolf and Fox, how about that Pack? Their first appearance. The thing I was most struck by in viewing it here is how great they were cast. Clancy Brown, Laura San Giacomo, Matt Frewer, Cree Summer and Jim Cummings. Man, what a great ensemble. Hats off to casting and voice director Jamie Thomason. Time and again, he assembled great, great people for us.
There are a lot of little touches that make me smile. Jim Cummings "narration" during the appearance at Madison Square Gardens is priceless. We were consciously trying to do a professional wrestling meets (the hated) Power Rangers thing, and it amuses me to no end. There's that very anime shot of the Pack standing absolutely still (a held cell) while spotlights pass over them. It's very cool.
I even like that we got the notion of the Daily Tattler into the episode. That was something I wanted to expand on more. The Gargoyles never made any real attempt to keep themselves very hidden. Oh sure, they weren't holding New Olympian style press conferences, but they didn't sweat it if they were spotted. But we figured that the more of an urban myth they became, the less the majority of the population would believe in them. And once stories about Gargoyles started regularly appearing in the Tattler, people would be sure the whole thing was faked. I'm not sure we mentioned the Tattler again until Hunter's Moon, which is too bad. Though it does show how consciously Michael and I were echoing first season concerns and contrasts in that final mini-series.
Fox and Lex. Their relationship is established in that one moment when she strokes him under his chin. Even I didn't know that down the road they'd become flat-out allies thanks to Alex. Hell, back then I didn't know Alex was on the way. Didn't even know that Fox and David were an item. The characters were just beginning to teach me who they were and what they wanted.
Action-wise this thing is taut. The Pack just keeps coming and coming. The Gargs never have a chance to catch their breath. And, then, suddenly, they do. And the tables turn fiercely. And the Point of View, as well. We are ALWAYS on the side of the hunted. When it's Goliath and Lex, we get very little of the Pack. Just snatches of them attacking. The gargs struggling to stay alive. But up on that roof, we abruptly switch POV. Suddenly, we're following the Pack. Even, dare I say, sympathising with them. Not that we want them to win. But we begin to identify with them as they battle these strange creatures. I love that.
It's hard to believe, but when Frank Paur and I first saw the animation on this episode we were crushed. I look at it now and think its gorgeous. But we were so spoiled by the Awakening animation, we thought this was a debacle. Later we'd get some truly mediocre animation and learn to appreciate the good stuff more. But back then... we were idiots.
Those tv lines were my idea. I love television. I mean I really, really love it. And I hate when people attack it. I think on a percentile basis, there's more good work being done in television than any other medium. Doesn't mean there isn't a lot of crap being done. But that's true in everything. But still it's fun to poke fun. To bite the hand that's feeding you every once in awhile. One of the trio says: "The Pack is just like us. They fight evil. And they do it on television." (I just saw the episode half an hour ago, and I can't be sure who said it. That's pathetic.) Of course, whoever said that didn't mean to say that the Gargoyles were also on television. That was an afterthought. But it's a bit of an in-joke for us and our audience, because the Gargoyles are just like the Pack. I just like to think they had a better show.
But my favorite is Hudson's line: "Maybe we shouldn't believe everything we see on the television..." A lesson we all should live by.
And finally, "Thrill" contained the first of what would soon be a Gargoyles Trademark. The Xanatos Tag. Our favorite manipulator snatching partial victory from seemingly overwhelming defeat. Again, something vaguely revolutionary for a cartoon. You gotta love the guy.
In Enter MacBeth, after Owen tosses Broadway and Hudson around, he pulls a gun on them. Does Owen normally go around armed, or was it something he started after Dracon snatched that shipment of particle beam weapons right in front of him the episode before?
I assume Owen is as prepared as Owen needs to be. The guy does not get flustered often.
In that eppisode, why didn't you keep everyone as gargoyles? It would have made an excellent season.
I assume you're talking about "The Mirror". It would have been less fun than you think. The cool looking characters would be commonplace and boring. Our guys would look like humans and THAT would get very old after awhile. And frankly, it would have so divorced the series from reality that our ability to relate to their world would have been severly hampered. It would have KILLED the show, I'm quite sure. Not that we ever considered doing that for a second.
Hi Greg,
It's good to see that you're answering questions again - just take your time, you'll get through them! I have a question I would like to ask of you, It probably seems stupid, but...
In the episode 'Mark of the panther' (I think that's the name) , when Fara Maku transforms, his Necklace is not 'absorbed' by the magic spell. Was this just to distinguish the two were-panthers, or was there another reason?
See, told ya it was stupid!
Anyway, thanks.
P.S. Am I the only Irish gargoyles fan? If not please mail me at oberons.child@oceanfree.net . I'm dying to meet other fans! Thanks again for your time. Oh, and Have a happy X-Mas!!!!
I hope there are other Irish fans, but I don't think posting here is the best way to meet them. Try a chat or comment room.
As to your question, I think you need to look at it like Hudson's sword. If the jewelry is regarded mentally as something other than clothing, then it probably doesn't change with the spin of Anansi's spell. Anansi might just like decorative things.
More tidbits and observations...
The first appearance of the Steel Clan. It's a silly little thing, but at the time I was ridiculously pleased by the name "The Steel Clan". It just seemed so right. Cool sounding, tough. And yet original and appropriate to the series. It was one of those early moments that made me feel like I was really tapping into the Gargoyles Universe.
Also the first appearance of the Eyrie Building Lobby Security Guard. The one that Oberon will later do his Obi-wan number on. I never forget a minor character.
One reason some of the editing is different between the video version and the tv episodic version has to do with when the two separate products were due. (I'm not referring to the TV movie version that's been appearing recently. I have no idea who edited that one. Or when. Or why.) As I've mentioned before, the video version was not originally created for video. It was created for our world premiere on two big screens at the movie theater multiplex on Pleasure Island at Walt Disneyworld. That premiere was in September of 1994. But the series premiere was almost a full month later. While I was supervising the editing of the movie version, Frank was (relatively speaking) taking his time on the five episodes. In my editing bay, we didn't have the luxury of waiting for all the retakes to come back before we had to complete OUR edit and lock picture for sound design. In fact, sometimes we were editing to pencil test animation. That's animated pencils without background paintings or ink or paint. It can sometimes be very hard to read at all. But we had to make decisions based not soley on "ART" but also on what we likely thought we'd get back in time to get the two prints made for the Florida premiere. Sometimes we cut little pieces that wound up turning out fine and making it into the episode.
Generally, I think the animation in this episode is just stunning. A few examples.
--Hudson lifting Bronx off that train.
--The whole scene with Xanatos, Demona and Owen standing beside the Steel Clan robots while they are covered with sheets. Some incredible shadow work. And the character stuff is so sweet.
--Some gorgeous battle stuff with those robots.
--The castle tower blowing up, crashing and falling apart.
This and more can still take my breath away.
I love all the Demona-Goliath-Elisa triangle stuff. It's all spelled out in the confrontation when Goliath wants to go keep his appointment with Elisa, and Demona's trying to stop him. If Demona hadn't been so bloodthirsty aboard FORTRESS-1, would Goliath have even remembered his appointment with Elisa? Or would he be off cuddling with his long-lost love?
Anyway, that whole conversation is just full of delicious irony -- all working against Demona. Goliath says, "I cannot make war on an entire world," completely unaware that that's exactly what Demona wants to do. He says, "Doesn't Xanatos prove that some humans can be trusted?" But of course, Demona knows that Xanatos absolutely cannot be trusted. Every statement Goliath makes pushes Demona toward further extremism. And he isn't even trying. Finally, after Demona reminds him of the Wyvern betrayal and Massacre, he says that the ones responsible for that "have been dead for 1000 years." Now putting aside that the Captain and Hakon aren't quite as dead-dead as Goliath thinks, this has got to push Demona over the edge. Deep down she knows her own responsibility. Again Goliath is wrong, because the traitor is standing right in front of him. My hats off to Michael Reaves. What a great scene! "So be it." she says. Goliath won't know it until VOWS. But they are DONE. Right there.
Cultural Differences 101: Elisa is trying to convince Goliath not to trust Xanatos. I don't remember the exact line, but she says something with the word "three" in it. (Maybe refering to the three disks or the three Cyberbiotics installations...?) Anyway, to indicate three she holds up her index finger, her middle finger and ... her thumb. It still looks totally goofy to me. I don't know anyone who wouldn't use their ring finger with the other two, using the thumb to hold the pinky down. Does anyone know if in Japan the thumb is preferred?
When Demona's destroying FORTRESS-1, Goliath is standing around stunned. She tries to get him to leave, but he refuses. Finally, she pulls him out. What was supposed to happen was that the tilting ship was supposed to dump him out the hatch at the same time Demona was pulling. So that he was more unwilling to abandon the crew of the ship. But it never animated with the tilt going the right way.
In our original development we planned on making a lot bigger deal of all the various Xanatos Enterprises sub-divisions. You got a taste of that with PackMedia Studios and Gen-U-Tech (a.k.a. Gen-U-Tech Systems or G.U.T.S.). But we were also going to make a bigger deal of his robotics division, which was going to be called the Scarab Corporation. (Thus the scarab design that appears on the transmitter.) But Xanatos wound up being even more hands-on then I anticipated. Less Lex Luthor. More his own glorious self. So Scarab never got much of a spotlight because Xanatos handled those kinds of adventures himself and/or the robots handled things themselves (cf. Coyote in Leader of the Pack). For those of you who have been to one of the Gatherings and seen the original Gargoyles Pitch, you might recall a giant chrome cockroach climbing up the side of a building to attack Goliath. That was going to be a Scarab Corp. creation.
Isn't Xanatos just too cool:
"Let's let them play out there little drama, shall we?" He's so amused. He can't resist watching the confrontation. And for once I don't feel like it's cause he's a villain stupidly giving the hero time to turn the tables. He's sincerely entertained by the show.
"Without me you'd still be gathering moss." Nuff said.
There's another great little dialogue editing moment. Real subtle. When Demona says: "The plan was perfect." Goliath whispers "Plan?" She says something else and then he completes his thought "What Plan?" That little overlap wasn't scripted. It was another product of me having the luxury to really nurse those dialogue edits on those early scripts.
There is good and evil in all of us. Human and Gargoyle alike. Hey, Lexy, there's another major theme of the series. No one group has a monopoly on either attribute.
One thing that never quite worked for me, was the reveal of Demona's name. She makes such a big deal of it. But the name (at this point in the series) just doesn't have enough resonance for me yet. Later, sure. "Demona". We all sit up and take notice. But there. "Demona". Yeah, so? Did that moment play for you guys?
Goliath is about to toss Xanatos off the building. Elisa begs him not to. That'll make you just like Demona she says. Then Hudson pipes in and says, "She's right, lad. Is that what you want?" I intentionally instructed our voice director Jamie Thomason to direct Ed Asner to read that line with ambiguity. Hudson DOESN'T care whether Goliath tosses David or not. He simply wants Goliath to make an informed choice.
And yeah, yeah, David & Goliath. Perfect opposites.
Elisa: "Maybe, we'll catch a Giants' game."
Goliath: "Giants?"
Were any of you surprised when a Giant Oberon attacked the castle?
As usual, I encourage responses posted here, on either your original feelings when seeing the episode for the first time and/or newer more recent observations from repeat or recent viewings.
More random observations...
Jogger's first appearance.
Cyberbiotics first true appearance.
Bruno (aka the Commando Leader) gets a bit of character development. I remember when voice director Jamie Thomason asked Jeff Bennett to do that voice. Jeff asked what Jamie wanted and Jamie said something like: "Do a George C. Scott/Patton thing." I don't know if that's what I'm hearing, but I like the end result.
We see Vinnie for the second time. Of course, we still didn't know that was Vinnie yet. His nose is HUGE. He must have had a little work done between this show and Metamorphosis. (Not the smartest way to spend money when you're out of work.) One of my favorite bits in "Vendettas" is the reveal of how exactly Vinnie was knocked out by Goliath aboard the airship. In Awakening IV, Goliath lifts Vinnie out of the shot. We hear a loud <SMACK> and Vinnie falls unconscious. The implication being that G knocked him out. But in Vendettas, Cary and I showed what was previously off-screen. You see that the <SMACK> came from G hitting his fist against the wall. Vinnie wasn't knocked out. He fainted.
Elisa looks damn good with her jacket off. I wish we had had more opportunities for costume changes with her. They always work so well.
I always thought that the tranq the Commandos used on Goliath in parts III and IV was pretty unreliable. It seems to knock him down. Then he's up again. Then he's staggering. All very story convenient. You could look at it as a flaw in the episodes. Or you could justify it by saying that they had never had the opportunity to test the stuff on Gargoyles before. It had strange effects.
Owen has one line in the whole episode: A very effective clearing of his throat. You gotta love a character who can be so memorable with so little.
The Commandos seem to be pretty bad shots, until you realize in episode V that killing Goliath isn't really what they're after. In my head, they were told NOT to kill him if they could effectively put a scare into him. Elisa was probably much more expendable. Bruno's discretion.
This seemed like the first episode to use the "CLAW WIPES"... but I'm not sure. A Wipe is one means of moving from one scene to another. Other methods are straight CUTS or DISSOLVES, etc. But Japan started doing these very dramatic CLAW WIPES, where a Gargoyle hand seems to be tearing the old scene away with his or her claws. It wasn't called for in early scripts, but after we had seen it a few times, we started to call it out.
Elisa puts the transmitter on a dog she calls Rover, a dog that's scrounging through garbage in the park. In the very next scene, Hudson is watching TV and a dog that could easily have been Rover as a pup is seen starring in a dogfood commercial. How the mighty have fallen.
There's a few great moments with the trio in this show. Maybe not the obvious ones. I love their exchange of dialogue to Hudson when they come back from their night on the town. We had the opportunity to really edit the dialogue with multiple overlaps and rhythms before it went to Japan. The scene really snaps. In later episodes, we wouldn't always have that luxury.
The scenelet where they fly away from the castle on their way to the Cyberbiotics Tower is also very cool. A combination of animation, editing and sound, that really gives SNAP to their departure. I love it.
Of course, the naming scene is great. Names are so addictive.
And I still like the character development in our love triangle here. Goliath doesn't trust Elisa even yet. Hasn't told her about his daytime vulnerability. And he might not have, if he hadn't been caught outside. But her loyalty and steadfastness really impresses him. I feel the connection very strongly. And I think she does too, when she asks if she can see him again later tonight. It's not just curiosity about a new life-form.
And Demona. I love that wing hug when she and Goliath are reunited. But you have to wonder about that reunion from her point of view. Yes, she's scheming here. But she must be thrilled to see him and the other gargs awake and alive. THRILLED. All those years of lonliness and now her true love is awake. But she never hesitates to prioritize her scheming. All those years of bitterness have stunted her emotions even more.
Finally, lots of people keep telling me that Elisa says "Damn" in the boathouse in at least one version of this thing. But it's not true. We never even recorded her saying Damn. Why would I? No way it would get by S&P, so why bother. Didn't even occur to me. She does grunt right before she says "Empty". And I suppose that grunt might sound a bit like the word "Damn." I mean, I don't think so, but it's the only explanation for this myth that I can come up with.
I was recently re-watching the tape that I'd made of "The Silver Falcon" one evening, when I suddenly thought that it reminded me a bit of a story in Herodotus. Herodotus told a story about a queen in ancient Babylon named Nitocris, who left a message after her death that any future ruler of Babylon who needed money could help himself from her tomb, provided that he really needed it. When King Darius of Persia came to power in Babylon, he decided to enter the tomb and help himself to her wealth, but instead of treasure, found only an inscription stating, "If you were not so consumed with greed that you would stoop to anything to gain wealth, you would never have considered robbing the dead."
Was this story in Herodotus a partial inspiration for the denouement of "The Silver Falcon", or a matter of "parallel ideas"?
Probably the latter. I've never read Herodotus, but I had a couple of great ancient history teachers (thank you Mr. Ackerman and Dr. Johnson) and they might have imparted this story to me in either ninth or twelfth grade. I don't recall it. But it might be down there in the depths.
But Cary Bates and I came up with this story together, and I am sure Herodotus never came up.
HI GREG!
you said that when you wrote avalon part one it was to long so some of the scenes were taken out. what were those scenes about?
First off, I didn't write Avalon, Part One. Lydia Marano did.
I'm sure it was too long. (Most of our scripts were.) But I don't have it with me at this moment, and I don't remember anything in particular that was cut. Probably there were a few little trims here and there. No major scene cuts.
Avalon, Part Two had WAY more cuts.
Watched this with the family half an hour ago...
More random observations...
RE: Our supporting cast...
Who knew that Brendan & Margot would wind up being so important? Credit Marina Sirtis, for making Margot so gloriously bitchy.
And then there's Vinnie's first appearance on that motorcycle. Of course, no one knew Vinnie existed back then, which is thoroughly appropriate to his character.
And credit Keith David with breathing real life into Morgan the cop. Morgan didn't even have a name then. He was just a place holder, someone for Elisa to respond to. But Keith made me interested in him.
Little things still bug me. Xanatos' floating ponytail in the scene where he and Elisa first meet.
In the Kitchen, the Freezer door was supposed to have one of those easy to open latches on the inside. The irony being that Broadway could easily extricate himself, if he just knew how to operate the latch (or even what it was). Something a kid could do, assuming the kid was born in the 20th century. But BW has to bust down the door.
In the original script and the recording of that script, it's Brooklyn who says "So many wonders..." and it's Broadway who says "Goliath said not to let anybody see us." But in those early days, lots of people in L.A. and in Tokyo kept confusing their names (and Bronx's) so the animation came back as you see it. And it was easier to re-record the voices then to reanimate. (Or am I getting all this totally backwards? I just saw the show again half an hour ago, and already, I'm confused.)
(CAVEAT: In all these little things, I'll probably be pointing out animation errors here and there. But please understand, I think most of the animation we got, particularly from Walt Disney TV Animation - Japan, was brilliant. I think those guys did a great job and don't get enough credit. But anecdotes generally come out of when things go wrong, not when they go right, so it may seem like I'm talking about mistakes more often than not. Sorry, in advance to Roy Sato or anyone else who might take offense.)
When Elisa is first being checked out by the Trio, there was a scene in the original animation where Brooklyn seems inordinantly interested in her behind. We had to call a retake, cuz the guy was practically drooling. I wonder if that's where I got the idea that Brooklyn would fall for anyone in a skirt (or with a tail).
Also, after Goliath saves Elisa from falling off the building we have a point of view shot from her. It begins at Goliath's feet and pans up to his face, as she takes him in. In the original animation, the pan started at his head and panned down. That seemed less effective, so we had our editors reverse the pan, without calling for a retake.
At the end of Act Two, the door slides open revealing Demona in silhouette, clearly plotting something with Xanatos. That always really bugged me. I didn't want to give away that she was alive in this episode. I didn't want to know who Xanatos was talking to. How did you guys react to this? Did that spill everything? Did any of you not know that Demona was alive? Did any of you, by this point, not know that she and Xanatos were the bad guys?
Elisa says something like "This is where Dracula shows up." when she's walking through the corridors of the castle. If you take that literally (and you might as well), then you gotta figure that someday, Dracula will be roaming that very hallway.
Elisa loses the first in her series of guns, when Goliath crushes it near the end of Act One.
Goliath tells a joke: "And please, don't fall off the building this time." Goliath tells a joke. Can you believe it? It wasn't bad either. We should have let him tell jokes more often.
Elisa's surprise that Goliath can talk is indicative of what I thought a 20th (or 21st) century initial response to the gargs would be. That's why Goliath Chronicles' trial episode bugged me so much. I don't think humans would take for granted sentience. And I think most humans, those less open than Elisa, wouldn't even buy talking as enough evidence that the gargs weren't just beasts. (Cf. Margot Yale.)
Goliath is a pretty begruding hero. That's somewhat unique for cartoons. Elisa asks if there are more gargs, and Goliath responds: "Barely." He cuts her very little slack. But already you can see their relationship developing. I still think Hudson's expression after Goliath sweeps Elisa up into his arms is just priceless.
In that same scene, Hudson gets named for the river. I love that scene, as I loved the scene where Tom, Brook and Lex are talking about names. Of course, the desire not to name most of the gargoyles until we got to NYC '94, was mostly pragmatic. It allowed us to use those fun, cool NY names for most of the characters. But once we came up with the rationale for it, and once I managed to explain it to everyone, I really fell in love with the concept. Hudson's lament, here, that humans don't think something is real until they've put there stamp on it, is, to me at least, so damn true. And Elisa's response is so feeble and circular. "Things need names." Pathetic. But I'm no different. <SIGH> I'm such a human. But I aspire to gargoylosity. Anyway, after Hudson points to the river, and Elisa basically tricks him into taking that name, she used to have a line, as I may have mentioned before, where she said (under her breath) "Good thing we weren't facing Queens" -- implication being that Hudson nearly ended up being called Queen, I guess. It was always funny, but S&P didn't care for it, and I couldn't really defend it. So out it went. We tried another version, where she just says, "Good thing we weren't facing East." But it didn't play. So out it went too.
The thing that struck me most, however, was the almost thorough lack of action in this episode. After all that Viking stuff in Part One, and Vikings and a full act of commandos in Part Two, Part Three is a mood and character piece. Sure Elisa falls off a building, but that was a problem easily solved. Until the commandos' Central Park attack in the last seconds of Act Three, nothing else happens that could genuinely qualify as action. That was mostly a result of what was once a four-parter being turned into a five-parter. The reason we made that change is because Michael Reaves wrote a brillaint four-part script. It was amazing. But it was WAY too long. I was faced with either having to make drastic cuts (as I would later have to do in Avalon and Hunter's Moon) or expand it. Fortunately, Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston saw the wisdom of expansion. For one thing, it would save us money. But also, it made sense because we could run the five parts across a whole week of the Disney Afternoon like a mini-series special event. It wouldn't require us to re-program one day of that first week. So we were all agreed, the four parter would become a five parter.
But that meant adding act breaks, and redividing everything. The episode that most benefited was Part One. In the orignal version, Part One covered all of what is currently part one, plus the first act of what's currently part two, i.e. ALL the Scotland stuff. The episode ended with Goliath's "suicide". A great ending, but we would have obviously had to cut a TON out of the flashback. This way we were able to expand into part two and preserve almost all of the story.
So Part Three winds up being nearly action-free. And by the way, I love that. I still think the episode works great, and it proved to me that the charcters themselves could really hold the audience's attention. (I'm such a proud papa. Unashamedly so. It must be pretty obnoxious.) I wish we had always had the luxury to be so... well, luxurious. To expand and play character. But generally a half-hour format makes it tough. I'm very sick of writing half hours, actually. But the powers that be in Animation believe that kids can't or won't sit through an hour long show.
As usual, I welcome posts here responding to this episode. Both your original reaction to seeing it for the first time, and your current reaction if you've seen it again recently.
Watched the episode again last night.
Little things....
My two year old son is fascinated with Tom. And misses him in the second act after he's gone. Misses him in other episodes too. Kinda puts the lie to the strongly held belief I've always had that contrary to Network Executive Dogma, kids don't need animated shows to be about kids. Of course, my son is just two. My five year old has no problem with their being no "little girl" in the show.
Goliath says "What sorcery is this?" for the first time. We wound up using it over and over in the series, til it became something of an in-joke. But the truth is, we could never come up with a better line that said the same thing.
Goliath's "suicide" at the end of Act One, is still one of the most startling things I've ever seen in a cartoon. That was Gary Krisel's idea (my boss Bruce Cranston's boss). And I've always admired him for it. It's also the reminder I use to keep me humble when I'm listening to notes from the higher ups. Michael Reaves and I were just going to have the Magus offer to cast his spell on Goliath as something of a consolation prize. "Best I can do" kinda thing.
Love that Chernabog moment where Goliath says "I've been denied everything, even my revenge!" Man, Keith David is great.
The way it's edited you'd never know the problem the last fight in the Viking's camp caused me vis-a-vis Broadway. As you may recall from Part One, during the Viking's initial attack, Broadway stopped for a snack, and then opportunistically used the turkey leg to bonk a Viking. A nice little comedic beat. Well, in Part Two, we wanted to contrast that by having Broadway land in front of the roasting spit by the fire -- so that the audience again thinks he's just thinking about his stomach. But that after the massacre, the much more serious Broadway immediatlely starts using it as a weapon. That's pretty much what you see. But that's not what we received in Animation. What we got was a virtual replay of the scene from Part One. Broadway lands with a big grin and starts to eat. Then he gets attacked and uses the spit as a weapon. It took judicious editing to keep Broadway from feeling too one-dimensional. And even then as the series progressed, we started to downplay Broadway's appetite (another good Gary Krisel suggestion). We brought it up again in Hunter's Moon, Part Three to show how far the character had come. Yeah, great kitchen, but an even better library. That kind of thing.
We had a similar problem with Hudson's sword. We were supposed to make a big deal of him using it for the first time in the battle at the Viking camp. But some of the animation in both Parts One and Part Two showed him using the sword and/or having it by his side before that. That's what retakes are for, I guess.
Xanatos' first appearance... I'm really curious to know how many people, seeing this for the first time knew that Xanatos was the bad guy. I thought it was a little too obvious myself. There's a look he gives Goliath when he's taking the gargs' questions in the Great Hall that I thought absolutely tipped his hand to the audience. But we did try to create a guy who looked like he should be the hero of the show. Handsome athletic Bruce Wayne type up against scary monsters. And Jonathan Frakes is terrific.
(There was a while when Gary Krisel thought maybe we should have Xanatos -- or another rich guy, a pre-Renard if you will -- actually be the gargoyles modern benefactor. I'm glad that's one bit of advice I didn't take from Gary.)
We also get the first look at Owen. Jeff Bennett. Man. What a great cast we had. Wasn't Owen just fascinating from moment one? I didn't know he was Puck way back then, but I sure did know there was a story behind him.
Love that moment when they all Shatter out of stone near the top of Act Two. The sky spinning behind Goliath. The rotating camera for the others. Bronx leaning into the foreground. Still gives me a little thrill. Don't disappoint me Xanatos said. Well, it worked for me.
The first time we got the animation back on that sequence, their stone skins didn't really EXPLODE off them. In fact the first version of the footage had no stone at all. Those of you who have been to the GATHERING have seen that footage. We really had to push to make that concept of them exploding to life every night play visually.
There's an intentional this-ain't-Batman moment during the fight with the Commandos. Goliath gets tossed off the building. He's falling and he grabs for a flagpole, just like Batman would. But Goliath is so heavy, he rips the flagpole right off the building, and he has to use his claws to save himself. Back in those days, everyone was terrified that GARGOYLES was going to be perceived as a BATMAN rip-off. I actually had to write up a memo for the Marketing Department, listing all the significant ways the shows were different. This flagpole bit was our (me, Frank, Michael's) conscious reaction to the constant comparisons.
There's a moment during the fight where Goliath is facing a Commando, and from off-stage Xanatos rescues Goliath by firing his laser at the wall and dumping the masonry on the commando. But that scene gave us nightmares, because it looked like the laser beam was coming from Goliath's eyes. Like he was Cyclops of the X-Men. This made us nervous, because the concept was so new, we were afraid that the audience would think that maybe Gargoyles have all sorts of "cool" super-powers like that.
One line got cut from Part One that would have helped a bit in understanding Lex's character. In Part One, during the initial battle with the Vikings, we had Lex investigating a catapult, fascinated with how it works. That little scenelet got cut from the script for time. But I still miss it.
Anyway, please feel free to post your own responses here on the episode. Both how you felt when you first saw it, and what strikes you now looking at it again.
My kids and I have started watching the 66 chapters of Gargoyles from start to finish, so I thought I'd give a shot at rambling on each episode as we view them.
So starting at the beginning...
Random thoughts:
In the original script, there was a bit that came right after Princess Katharine reprimands the Captain for inviting the Gargoyles into the Great Hall. She says something to the effect of: "To allow beasts in the dining hall..." Right then, we were supposed to cut to a shot of one of those hounds that you can see milling about in the initial establing shot. The hound was supposed to grab a chunk of meat off of one of the nobles' plates. This would further establish Katharine's hypocracy, but also embarrass her further, lending believability to the things she says and does thereafter. I recall that the scenelet got animated, but not well. Frank refused to include it in the final cut. He may have been right, given what we had to work with. But I still miss the moment I envisioned in my head.
Katharine and the Magus are so nasty in this episode. Boy, did they go through some changes.
I'm also struck by just how much the Trio grew from this first appearance. They're kinda medieval ninja turtles here. But they show potential. I still love their exchange with Tom as he tries to get names out of them and they are baffled as to why names would be important.
I do wish we could have seen more Gargoyles flying around. (It really would have been nice to catch a glimpse of the Coldtrio, but frankly, they hadn't been designed yet. We knew they were coming, but we didn't have time to design them before they were necessary.) But it would have been great to see more beasts, more females. More young and old. But I guess we did all right.
The cliffhangers are interesting too. In both, the threat is the Gargoyles themselves. Princess Katharine says something nasty about gargoyles, just as Goliath enters the Hall. He growls, clearly having heard her statement. And we go to commercial... I could never have gotten away with that by even episode 2. But this early on, we didn't know the gargs well enough to know how they'd react. Clearly they had our sympathy. But would Goliath go berserk? Obviously, not. But that was the tension in that beat. Same thing happens between Acts II & III. The threat seems to be from Brooklyn, Lex and Bronx. Of course, they're bluffing. Annoyed with the humans, they are simply trying to put a scare into them. But the audience doesn't know that yet, so I can get away with the second cliffhanger being a Garg threat as well. Of course, by the end of the episode, we know just how noble they are. And that's a great cliffhanger I think. Goliath roaring to the heavens filled with grief over the death of his "Angel of the Night". 'SCool. (But how many of you really thought she was dead?)
There are also moments that are fairly mundane to us now. Elisa pulling up in her car. Goliath first breaking out of stone. Demona stepping out of the shadows. I'd be curious how all those moments made you guys feel the very first time you saw them, particularly those of you for whom this was in fact the first episode you ever saw.
I invite you to post your comments here on Awakening, Part One.
I guess this is sort of a reference question. My favorite quote comes from Gargoyles (Awakenings I). Goliath says, "It is the nature of mankind to fear what they do not understand." I'd like to quote that in a college essay I'm writing, but I don't know who to attribute it to. Did you guys come up with it, or is it some famous quote I'd never heard of?
Thanks a lot for all your time and effort, and good luck with the new series.
Although I'm sure similar things have been said over and over by multiple people, I'm not aware of a specific source for the quotation. If you want to be absolutely certain, you'd probably have to ask Michael Reaves, the writer of that episode.
Hi there! Me again.
Here's a Q that's been rattling around in my head for some time. We all know NOW that the cloaked figure riding out to meet the Vikings in "Awakening: Part 1" is none other than the Captain of the Guard. However, he speaks in a voice that sounds like Jeff Bennett's (sp?). In fact, I'm quite positive that was Mr. Bennett's voice. This, as well as the robe being white, make me think that suspicion was intentionally being thrown on the Magus.
1) WAS suspicion being intentionally thrown on the Magus?
2) If so, why?
Thank you!
First off, that's not Jeff. That's Ed Gilbert doing Jeff, because...
1) Yes, we were intentionally trying to throw suspicion onto the Magus.
2) Why else... to fool you.
Something that I've been wondering for some time about that secret passageway that Demona used to sneak into the great hall of Castle Wyvern in "City of Stone Part Three". How did she manage to conceal it from everyone else when the castle was being moved from Scotland to New York? I'd think that it would be extremely difficult to have hidden it while the castle was being transported stone by stone.
I think so too. Maybe the transport wasn't quite as stone by stone as it looked to be. Or maybe in the replacing of stones the supervisors of the reconstruction didn't put two and two together and realize that by attaching stone A to stone B they were creating a secret passsage, and so neglected to alert Xanatos or Owen.
Just out of curiosity, was MacBeth's Paris home based on an actuall house? Thanks.
Not that I'm aware of, but it's possible that our layout artists used some reference for it.
One of the scenes that most intrigued me, was the final action of Demona in the Hunter's Moon incident: throwing the container in the air, a deed through which she risked the annihilation of not only humans but her own race as well, including her daughter.
I always considered this a very nihilistic action of hers (I hope I'm using the term correctly) as if she was saying "I won't choose to destroy the world myself, but if the glass breaks and the virus escapes and we all die, so be it." Others in the fandom see it as just a way for her to buy some time and manage to escape. If so it was a very risky way indeed...
Your thoughts (and Demona's thoughts) on the issue?
I can't put either argument any better than you just did, so my answer would have to be: ALL OF THE ABOVE.
when demona told brooklyn about what she did during the centurys what did she tell him,did she tell him about macbeth?
In "Temptation"? No. I think people have the notion that Demona and Brooklyn had a lot going on off-screen and/or between scenes of that episode. (Again, Christine, I've heard the rumors.) But it ain't true in the cannon. What you saw was largely what took place.
Something else that I've been wondering lately, about the betrayal of Castle Wyvern by the Captain of the Guard and Demona. There was one snag in it (aside from the use of the common enemy as allies in settling an internal dispute - always a Very Bad Idea) that I found myself suddenly noticing. Demona and the Captain's plan was to have the Vikings take away all the humans while the gargoyles were absent (foiled by Goliath deciding to pursue the Vikings with only Hudson), believing that then the gargoyles would have the castle all to themselves. But - did those two *seriously* believe that Goliath would, upon coming home to find that the castle had been sacked and the humans taken prisoner, just say "Well, that's that," and do nothing about it? I certainly can't imagine him just letting the humans be led away by the Vikings and do nothing about it, even if the massacre of the bulk of his clan hadn't taken place.
I think that was a miscalculation.
But I believe that Demona believed that once the humans were gone -- long gone -- she could convince Goliath not to send the clan. The danger of being more than a night's glide from the castle was too great -- as proven by the Viking's ability to sack the place while they were all away.
I think she and the Captain were, of a measure, kidding themselves. But all that self-delusion is hardly out of character for either of them.
Goliath probably would have sent a small expedition. Himself, Hudson, Coldstone. Left Demona in charge back at the ranch. Anyway, that's my guess. We'll never know.
Is there a special story behind the flute of Puck that was seen in "Gathering, Part I"? Or the harp seen in "Lighthouse in the Sea of Time"? Were you planning to do stories on either or both of the two?
I had planned on using the flute in THE GATHERING, PART TWO -- and it's probably a mistake that I didn't. I wanted Puck to use it to temporarily subdue Oberon, but it got away from me somehow.
But yes, the flute definitely interested me, and I would have done something with it eventually.
The harp, I hadn't given any real thought to. But it could probably come into play down the road in Pendragon.
Something that I've recently been wondering about Demona's genocide attempt in "Hunter's Moon". The plague that she used the Fulfillment Spell and Sevarius's carrier virus to create would have wiped out all of humanity if released, and the entire gargoyle race as well were it not for the protection of the Praying Gargoyle. Since humans and gargoyles are clearly not very closely related from a biological standpoint, a plague capable of wiping out both species must be very far-reaching in its range. So, if Demona had released her plague, would other species (say, most mammals) have been killed by it as well? Or did it only work on sentient species?
I think it was limited to sentience. How that would have effected chimpanzees, gargoyle beasts, dolphins, whales, etc. I'm not sure. Hard to say what a combination of science and sorcery would consider sentient. But I think rats, cats, dogs etc. were safe.
1) What are the Matrix's abilities? Can she simply replicate nano-robots inifinately? Or can she crank out toaster ovens, listen in on police broadcasts and surf the WWW?
2) Does the Matrix really want to do good, or does she think that the "law" that Dingo told her about was merely a missing peice of her programming?
The most interesting thing about your questions to me is that you identified Matrix as a she. This never occurred to me, since Matrix was voiced by Jim Cummings in "Walkabout" and by Jeff Bennett in "Bad Guys". Also, Matrix's basic body shape was male, i.e. there's no sense of female mamary glands in the design. Still, even with all that there's no particular reason to identify it as male. Hmmmm.....
1. Yes.
2. At first, just the latter.
In "The Price," after Hudson escapes Xanatos's dungeon, Xanatos bitterly comments that he now has no one to test the Cauldron of Life's magic on. Ever the good servant, Owen volunteers and sticks his hand into the cauldron without a second thought.
Now, I know Xanatos isn't the most practical being on Earth, but couldn't he have just dipped one of his little lab animals into the brew, or even one of his lower-level lackeys?
Owen didn't give him the chance. I think Owen was feeling a little jealous of Xanatos' praise of the Macbeth robot. He dived right in, so to speak.
Of course, both men knew that "Owen" really had nothing to lose by dipping his hand. That's why both had such mild reactions to Owen's hand turning into stone.
Hi Greg,
Hope you're alright and survived the GWT well. ;)
Here's my question: it's about the aging of Gargoyles. We all know they live longer than humans, but e.g. in "Awakening", the whole Clan Wyvern is seen, but there's no Gargoyles as old as Goliath and Angela look in "Grief". Do they die fighting before they get that old, or do they never after all?
Thank you for your time!
In the Dark Ages, it was rare that a gargoyle lived into old age. It was a violent time. But also, lets remember that Wyvern had a clan of about 40 gargoyles and beasts. We didn't get to see them all. We barely saw a quarter of them.
Probably irrelevent, but... In Reawakening, when Xanatos says "It's alive! Aliiiive! I've always wanted to say that." does Demona know what he's talking about, or does she just think he's being goofy. In other words, does she get the reference?
It's probably funnier if she doesn't.
Hello mr. Weisman!
In "Eye of the Beholder", Xanatos used put a transmitter on Goliath to find him. Does that mean that Xanatos knew that the Gargoyles lived in the Clock Tower, since the transmitter was still attach on Goliath until the next day?
I'd have to look at the episode again, but I think you have the timing off. I think he planted the transmitter earlier Halloween night.
In watching Bushido, I noticed among other things that the village/town of Ishimura seemed to be located in a fairly flat area of Japan, not located among many hills or mountains. Living in the country for a while, it seemed to me that a tiny away place like that would be somewhere up in the mountains...
Therefore I was wondering how much researching of other countries was done for these Avalon-traveling episodes?
Quite a bit, but I don't know that I agree with your assessment of Ishimura's locale. Gary Sperling wrote and researched that show. Not everything makes it onto the screen, but we try...
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