zakhur writes...

Was the archemage influenced by someone, apart from his future self, to take the three talismans and his plans to take over avalon and the world? sorry if this is a weird question, but I was wondering about that for a long time

Kelly L Creighton/Kya White Sapphire writes...

Just got done reading the Greg Weisman section of the archives. Time for a LONG rant.

I wanted to tell you at the gathering, but I forgot. which angers me to no end, because i went on and on about this at work for months before i left for LA. in awakenings, elisa makes the number three on her hand. you said how odd it was that the japanese animation studio had her make three in that particular way, with the thumb, index and middle fingers. the reality is that thats the PROPER way in AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE to make the number three. they must have looked it up to see "how americans do it." what people usually do as three, with the thumb holding down the pinky, is actually "six" in sign language. and the thumb holding down the index finger is "nine" (with the middle being eight and the ring finger being seven.) a 'hitchikers thumb' is ten. :)

speaking of awakenings, the "nice mask" comment isnt in the "movie". i was mad. i pouted all night last night.

re: goliath and elisa needing help to have a child
technically, theyre closely related enough that they prolly could have a child. that child would not be fertile tho. a Stallion and a female donky can have a hinny, a Mare and a male donky can have a mule, but neither a mule nor a hinny can have offspring. though, in your book, a garg and a human may be way farther from eachother than a donkey and a horse. despite the fact that donkeys and horses arent nearly as related as they look.

I know you dont think this way, but humor me for a second. if you were an animal, what would you be? Tore (my fiancee) would be a polarbear. he likes red meat. he likes the cold. he LOOKS like a polarbear, even when hes not overweight. he acts like one. people give him the respect of one. and he's all white collar(fur) on the surface, and blends in with the crowd(snow) but underneath hes jet black(covered in tattoos, a closet freak ;P) it took a long LONG time to find an animal for me. im nocturnal. im cute. im mostly herbiverous, but not completely. i like florida's hot and muggy weather. i sleep a lot. we went through many rodent and lemur species before settling on flying squirrel.

on the topic of what names mean (oh wise one :) my full name is Kelly Leigh Creighton. Kelly started as a gaelic name, i think spelled calleach, pronounced ka-LEE-ack(phlem sound here). Then the irish clan the O'Kellys took the name. and they were a big factor in the liberation of ireland. so it became fashionable to name boys Kelly. then in 1958 i believe, there was an actress named Kelly. so it became okay to name girls kelly. which is more the case now. anyway, Kelly means "warrior of the king" or "female warrior" Leigh is an english word still used today (in britan) which means "meadow". my last name, Creighton, started as a scottish name, and then spread to england and ireland, where it took many diversion such as Crichton, etc. my family roots have been traced to scotland. it means "near the creek." so fully, my name means "Female warrior of the King, in the meadow near the creek." i always wonder if i will find a meadow near a creek with some unmarked grave in it or something.

along the same track, have you seen the gargoyles code? its a long string of letters and symbols that, if you know how to read them, describes one's character. part of the code is for real life, and asks how obsessed you are. the maximum obsession is defined by one who would be willing to be a test subject for a mutagen that might make them a gargoyle. im one of those silly people. are you? doubt it... (thats not meant to be offensive, i just doubt youre that kind of person :)

at the gathering, while talking about all the spinoffs, specifically i think you were talking about 2198, you said "and its really sad that im still working on this." actually, i dont think its sad at all. im pretty happy about it. because it really is something special. and we all believe in you. its pretty cool that youre as obsessed with your own shows as your fans.

i also recently learned that you dont drink, and think smoking is pretty haneous (sp?). that rules. its nice to see other people out there like that, not just in the fandom too. its really rare these days. not that i didnt respect you before, but i really respect that, and in a way, appreciate it.

i read about how you fell out of the bunkbed when you were little. that reminded me of my bunkbet gymnastics. i hate using the ladder, since i can never find it when im sleep walking. (i sleepwalk a LOT). so ive trained myself to grab the bar on the side of the bunk, or if there isnt one, the lip underneat the bunk, and flip over the side to land on the floor. thing is, if i lose my balance i land on the edge of the bunk below, instead of the floor, and wake whoever is sleeping there. usually, though, since im sleepwalking, i wont remember that i did it unless they confront me about it in the morning. so no guilt ;P

on sleepwaling: i have recently discovered that any time someone tells me im dreaming, i get very angry at them and insist im not, even if i am. i have instructed my parents (specifically my mom, my dad did it anyway because he thought it was funny) to just agree with me, pretend i make sense, and send be back off to bed. o_O

ive wanted to tell you about my religion for some time, but ive been a little nervous to, because its a touchy subject with some people. but after reading your views, i feel like i can at least give you a short version, and it shouldnt be too bad. basically i believe that there are an infinite number of universes, all connected by a void. everything is true, in some universe or another. and some things can travel thru the void into other universes. so basically all religions are true, because there are an infinite number of universes. i simply choose to pray to an alternate set of dieties than the normally accepted ones. which isnt to say i put any less faith in God or Budda (sp?), etc. I just choose not to pray to him/them. which i think this kind of falls into your beliefs anyway, since you belive in alternate universes, and that all things are true. which is basically what my religion preaches. so youre Raptorian and didnt even know it ;P

theres actually scientific evidence coming to light to support the "theory" of alternate universes. cold dark matter, morphic fields, time as a fourth dimension, the possible non-existance of time... its fascinating. this thing that i knew all along is now getting proved by science. basically, the theory of cold dark matter states that there is a force in the universe that is more powerful than gravity. but it only partially exists in this universe, so it is hard to see and study. and most of the force it exerts is exerted in another universe, so were not even getting the full effect. morphic feilds is the theory that everything in the universe is connected by lines of force. this explains why when an atom is split, and two electrons go zinging away from eachother at high speed, one can look at the north/south orientation of one electron and know that the other electron is the exact same. because they are connected. which is why dogs know when their owner is comming home, even if the spouse does not. which is why people can sometimes instinctively know that something is wrong with a loved one, even if miles away. why twins, if separated, can still sense what the other is doing, even if they dont have a twin. why sometimes we can predict the future, or get flashes from the past. morphic fields trancend even time. there is also a theory that states that time is the fourth dimension. basically, since were three dimensional creatures, we can see the EDGE of things in TWO dimensions (meaning you can see the edge of a planar surface), and we can COMPREHEND things in the THIRD dimension (you cant see the edge of a 3D object, a coke can for example, the edge curves away from you and you cant see it. technically, it has no edge). fourth dimensional beings could see our EDGE, and comprehend the fourth dimension. we, as 3d creatures, can only measure what we think is the passing of time. a two dimensional creature could only measure the third dimension. of course there is another theory, who's own creator admits that its just a neat theory he came up with and doenst actually believe in. he said that maybe time doesnt exist at all. maybe we think time passes, just like when we watch a movie we think the pictures are going by, but its just many still frames. as in there is an alternate universe for each second in time. and we only think there is motion because at each second, we have the memories of all the things that have passed before. its an interesting theory, but im more inclined to think of time as the fourth dimension.

anyway, im done rambling for the night. please feel free to comment as you see fit, or not at all :)

hbkholic writes...

What is the famous words used to activate the Phoenix Gate?

JEB writes...

If the past is fixed in the Gargoyles universe, how does that affect those that can see the future? Can they change something that has yet to happen or are any efforts they make futile?

Lexy writes...

Hey Greg!:)

Brooklyn TD's to 2198 so he knows some things that are going to occur. But by him being in that time line, and not gone TDing doesn't that change things? I guess with Goliath and Griff the events that had to occur did, they just came about in different ways, because Goliath was there to change things. Is this correct?

By the time Brooklyn returns from TDing would he be resigned to letting things happen as they would?
Just keep his mouth shut, and let things occur?
Or at least warn ppl if he felt it necessary?
(IE: They can't stop a bomb from dropping, but they can at least be prepared to deal with it, in the very least, emotionally?)

I hope this wasn't too messy..

Lord Sloth writes...

Future Tense:
1 Why didn't Goliath just let Puck have the Phenix gate?
2 Why didn't Puck just ask for the Phenix gate?
3 What would be so bad about Oberon having time traval acsess?
4 How was Goliath able to create the phenix flame above him instead of around him?

Entity writes...

Hi Greg,

You refer to Demona and Macbeth as "foot-soldiers" in the context that the Weird Sisters used them for (or sought to use them for). Isn't that a bit of an under-title for them? Why go through all the trouble of obtaining Demona and Macbeth if only to use them as "grunts"? First off, isn't the entire purpose of foot-soldiers/grunts to have a lot of them? Merely two suggest specialization, and indeed, they seem to have been chosen because they were special. What was the Archmage's motivation behind obtaining these two in particular, and any two in general? Did he just not want to have to get his hands dirty with "menial" tasks? Did he want the ego boost of having underlings? Were Demona and Macbeth candidates because they were "the best" and therefore more of an go boost?

Jim R. writes...

Just watched "Vows" and I have some questions:
1. Demona breaks the Phoenix Gate in half to share it with Goliath. How is this possible? I would of thought the Gate, being forged on Avalon, would be indestructable since it is of pure magic. But how can a mortal such as Demona simply break it as if it were a cracker?
2. Stupid questions: Can the gate still work being broken in half? How much more can it be broken?
3. Does Goliath explain the whole situation to Hudson about how they turn to stone for a 1000 years, when Hudson first sees him after he has arrived from the future? I wouldn't think so, but I was thinking that Hudson might be a bit curious about Goliath's time-travel story. And Hudson, being a wise garg, would think twice as to whom this future Goliath could possibly be.
4. Why was castle Wyvern still burning when future Demona brought her past self to see what would become of their kind? Goliath and the rest of the gargs were already turned to stone to sleep for a 1000 years, and I would have thought that the castle fires would be out by then.

Justin writes...

Ok forgive me if this is confusing but this is the only way I could figure out how to word this question. You have mentioned that a Time Dancing Brooklyn would be a character in 2198. Now, since Brooklyn come home eventually, wouldn't a ver old Brooklyn also be present? or at least Nashville and Tachi? What I am asking is during his Time Dancing wouldn't Brooklyn encounter older versions of himself, Katana, Nashville and Tachi? Seeing as how they do come home, thus are a part of the timestream from 1996 on?

Thanks again!

Anonymous writes...

I know that you hate most of the time traveling in Star Trek so what did you think of that episode where Kirk goes back to WW2?

Axem Gold writes...

I know where the Phoenix Gate really came from. It came from the writer's of the Gargoyle Animated Series.

Anonymous writes...

Were you inspired in someway by Quantum Leap while making Timedancer?

Bruno writes...

Hi Greg,

There is some kind of 'End of Time' place in the Gargoyles Universe? A place that is out of the timestream.

Bruno writes...

Hi Greg,

Thoughts about time travel:

There is a little controversy about time travel vs. free will. If the past is unchangeable -and also the future, for consequence- then there is _no_ free will?

On the contrary; The events in the past can't be changed, but they WERE and ARE done by us. That's easy to guilt the others or the timestream, but, quoting Rorschach, from Watchmen:

"That's not God who kill the children, nor the chance who shred they, nor the destine who feed the dogs with they. They're us. Only us". (I'm translating to english from a translation to the portuguese. :-)

Plus, on the contrary of the common sense, change the past is not use free will, but kill it: Demona betrayed Wyvern. If she came back and change this, she should be obstructing her OWN free will. And her responsability, to boot. And responsability is one of the series' themes.

This is a paradox, but, with time travel, what else did you want? The unchangeable past universe IS the free will universe. :-)

Oh, well, now back to my time travel questions:

1- Roughly, when was the Phoenix Gate "created"? Meaning when it droped in Avalon, starting the time loop.

2- If the Phoenix Gate is a "steam valve" and it exists among two time points (??? or before and 2198 or after), what was the steam valve before the Gate? And after?

Ps. I just wanted to say that I fully understood the time loops in Vows, Avalon II and M.I.A. and I loved then. Vows and Avalon were amazing and smart, and M.I.A. was just too fun: Goliath couldn't change the history, but he was so smart that he could trick it! Great work.

Jim R. writes...

Greg,
I'm no physicist but your theories of time-travel are different than others that i've heard. I bet you've seen the "Back to the Future" trilogy, so why is it, that things Marty and the Doc did back in the past change the outcome of the future for them, because it was obvious that the past couldn't be altered until the Doc invented the time machine in the present so they could go back to the past. So the future they were familiar with when they were in the past was different when they finally came back into the future (present). (Say that ten times over...)

So, my point is, in Gargoyles, Goliath says "Time is like a river, unchanging in its course." Basically that says anything they did in the past using the Phoenix Gate did not effect the future at all? Which is confusing, because if I were to go back and save JFK, that would certainly alter the future for me and anyone else that came back with me...

On Star Trek they believe in infinite possibilies for every outcome and decision.
I know, I know...Just answer my question about the Gargoyles part. We would need Einstein to explain this quantum stuff. Hey, maybe I'll jump in my time machine and go get him. :)

matt writes...

Jim R., i think that Greg explained time travel pretty well and it makes sense to me. if you were to go back in time to save JFK one way or another you failed cuz JFK was assasinated! its like Xanatos said, "You won't, because you didn't. Time travels funny, that way." you wouldn,t succeed it saving JFK because you obviously didn't save him, he was killed despite what you would do. another example is "M.I.A." Goliath knew from meeting Leo and Una that Griff didn't come home that night so when he went back in time even if he did everything to keep Griff in his time something else would have happened. Griff would have been killed etc. time is like a river and any attempt to change it will end in failure because if history had been changed you would never had wanted to try and change it in the first place! does all this make sense?

DrFaust writes...

Re: Working time paradoxes.

I must confess, I've always liked "changing the past" time travel stories. I was indoctrinated by "Back to the Future" at a young age. <shrug>

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a book with Heinlein's "All You Zombies." All the libraries around seem to focus on his monumental novels that hammer home the same points over and over. (Annoying nit I feel obligated to mention: all his characters have the same vocabulary and speech mannerisms. Drives me nuts.)

So, er, about the paradox thingy. Wish I had more to comment on it. There is a certain sense of balance and rightness to a self-fulfilling paradox. Makes for a neater and cleaner story. The first time I came across it was a short story by someone I can't remember called "Up By His Bootstraps" (or something similar). The idea blew me away.

It's almost a kind of aethestic, I think. While there is the appeal of a neat paradox, some people like the messy timeloops. Take Lawrence Miles' Faction Paradox ("Alien Bodies" and "Interference"). One of their forms of punishment is for a member to kill his or her's younger self.

Of course, Simon Bucher-Jones suggested in "Ghost Devices" that a self-cancelling paradox would loop over and over, variating slightly each time until some sequence of events occurred that allowed the universe to go on. Sort of like that mythical first time around that Vashkoda suggested.

Aesthetically pleasing as it may be, I always thought this kind of history was somewhat depressing. How do you *know* it was free will? If there never was a first time, and you've always been doing a particular action, then there's nothing to you say you could change. Which you can't.

Anyhoo, just a thought or two buried in all that.

"...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."

The Mighty Thor writes...

That was an instereting explanition.

But what then is to distinguish between the world of choice and the world of fate

Say I go back in time and tell said driver to turn left instead of right, what then happens to the video of the right turn? Or does he still turn right?

What I really don't get is, Gargoyles "appears" to be a world of free choice. But the whole phinoex gate thing has shown that there is a predetermined way of things.
Call me crazy but doesn't it seem kinda pointless when no matter what you do the outcome will be the same?

Todd Jensen writes...

One thought of my own about the "fate/free will" argument. Somebody cited Demona in "Vows" as an example of this, arguing that because her future self who visits her in 975 is evil, Demona's doomed to become evil herself regardless of what she does.

Actually, my own thoughts on this was that the seeds of Demona's future character are already present even before Demona-1995 meets her. After all, she's already working for the Archmage, and stealing for him, suggesting that she'd started down that path already.

Aris Katsaris writes...

Time travel yet again!

Vashkoda> Ah, I think I get better now what you are talking about... I think I had a couple similar ideas when (pre-Gargoyles) I was trying to explain to myself the "working-paradox" of the Star Trek episode Time's Arrow. It's the episode where Data's head is discovered (among other things) in an archaeological dig, which leads Enterprise back in time to discover what happened, which causes Data to lose his head, etc, etc. I had then thought that perhaps once upon a meta-time (or "cycle" of time) , the Enterprise went for a different reasons in the past, there Data lost his head, etc. That's similar to your "missing origin" scenario, I think, right?

But the thing is that the butterfly effect still tears this down. In a sense there can be *no* small adjustments in the timestream, because there's no scientific distinction between "small" or "great" - the tiniest change in the combination of my parent's genes (a literally microscopical change) creates a individual which looks more like my brother, rather than like me. I really feel that a universe which has Xanatos in poor clothing go back in 975 couldn't possibly create a Napoleon (or Xanatos himself) the same way that a universe with Xanatos going back with rich clothing would... *Any* change means *huge* change...

(The Earth without Data's head buried in it couldn't have realistically spawned the same Picard/Riker/Data/Enterprise as the Earth *with* Data's head... Therefore the former idea of a "missing origin" must be disproven...)

The Mighty Thor writes...

Timeline:

Ok here goes nothing, the gargoyles timeline is uninterupted and no actions made by travelers from the past have and effect on the future because they are already part of the time line. Right? Right

This would then make the gargoyles world a fate based world. Because no decision could change the outcome of the future. Now call me crazy but doesn't that seem very out of place in this universe? I mean most of the characters choices come from another of the characters reminding them of their ability to choose between good and evil.
To say that Demona could not change after "Vows" just because she wasn't fated to.

Also, to have a fate means that there must be some higher power that writes everyone's fate and governs it. But with the introduction of Nokkar and the Space Spawn, the sphere of influence has widended to cover the entire universe!

While this sounds like ramble i actually do have a question.
Was this you intention? To have a world deviod of choice?

Vashkoda writes...

Hey Aris. Well, the argument about missing loop origins is moot since Greg says there are none. Now I'm more interested in -why- these loops even exist. But I guess I'll explain more what I was thinking when I brought up the "missing origins".

What I reasoned was that for a certain period of time (lets say the first few hundred cycles of time), time was new and malleable and could be "experimented" with. So if Xanatos got his hands on the Gate in the 1990's and then decided he wanted to go to the 900's, he -could-, and yes, it -would- mess with the timestream, but that obviously would have been his intent if he wanted to send himself the coin so that he could be rich. And yes, that would mean that the Xanatos he once was would never have existed because his actions would change his own history (hence the "non-working paradox"). But lets imagine that this situation happened to hundreds of individuals who tried to alter the timestream, and lets say that for the most part, they cancelled themselves out so that they never happened. But for a -few- individuals, maybe their altered history does -not- prevent their getting the Gate and going back in time as they had originally done (even in real life, some people do get their cake and eat it too). Except of course now, the Xanatos who travels back in time is not the same as the Xanatos who originally went back (this one's richer, for example). So small adjustments are made in the timestream, but nothing as drastic as when Xanatos first appeared in the 900's (now the Prince might notice that Xanatos is dressed nicer than before, but at least Xanatos's appearance itself doesn't trigger anything new). So as time as a whole repeats itself, adjustments are made and wrinkles are ironed out until finally everything -works- and makes sense. Sure, it might take hundreds of cycles, but at some point every predicted event will be accounted for and the timestream, at last, becomes "immutable".

And as for the butterfly-effect, who's to say that there originally was a Macbeth, Napoleon, or Kennedy? Maybe they're all the result of Xanatos or some other traveler going back in time? The way I see it, the present as it is now could just be the final result of all the alterations made in time. So it's not a coincidence at all that Goliath still exists when Xanatos comes back from his trip (for all we know, Goliath still exists only -because- of X's trip).

Aris Katsaris writes...

Vashkoda, you said: <<I had hoped that there indeed was a "missing origin" to the time loops, as the presence of such loops would have made a lot more sense to me. >>

This discussion interests me, so I hope nobody minds if I take part in it:

I've read and seen a *lot* of time-travel stories, and I have to say that the "missing origin" concept of time-loops, the idea that there can be time-travel which *does* change history, seems much more filled with plot-holes than the kind of time-travel we saw in Gargoyles.

For example consider your own scenario: That there was once a 975 which *didn't* contain Xanatos as time-traveller. Let's assume that history otherwise goes on as normal and creates a Xanatos which for some reason wants to go back to 975 and change history. Let's assume that he can.

The problem is that if he goes back to 975 he will change history *entirely*. By simply being there for a single second, he will displace certain molecules of air, which (the butterfly-effect) will displace more molecules. After ten years a couple storms will occur which wouldn't have occured, other storms which occur won't. More importantly among the millions of possible gene-combinations for every single child, surely a different one will be made at every conception. *No* individual conceived after Xanatos' arrival in the past will be the same as before his time-travel. By going to the past, Xanatos won't have just erased his own birth from history, he will have erased the births of Macbeth, Napoleon, Lincoln, Kennedy, etc...

The only way to have Xanatos go back to the past, *and* be able to return to an even remotely recognizable world, would be if all the trillions of changes that will take due to his being there are already part of his world's history - aka if there's no "first loop" aka if history is unchangeable... But having someone *both* to be able to change history *and* at the same time change it in such a limited way as to influence only a limited amount of events, is wanting to have your cake and eat it also... Atleast the "unchangeable history" is just illogical for our sequential minds - one could even go metaphysical and say that it's God who put the loops there... The "changeable history" version may be logical, but it's also impossible... :-)

Vashkoda writes...

I had hoped that there indeed was a "missing origin" to the time loops, as the presence of such loops would have made a lot more sense to me. My problem is not with grasping the concept of pardoxes, but with understanding the reasoning behind them. When I thought that there had been an actual origin to the loops, the loops made sense because they were initiated by individuals who had access to the Gate and the desire to alter time. But by telling me that these loops have always existed, I begin to wonder why they exist in the first place. Were they made intentionally, meant to serve a particular purpose, or is the timestream just "flawed" (well, maybe flawed isn't the best word, but the presence of random paradoxes certainly make me question the efficiency of who/whatever created the timestream). If the loops are intentional, it begs the question of who arranged for them to happen, and why. Because of its nature, one can't help but think of a time loop as a means to rectify a mistake or improve one's situation (saving yourself from a fatal fall, making yourself rich, etc). But if you're saying that the characters themselves aren't responsible and that loops were always present in the timestream, then one has to look at it from the timesteam's point of view, and what it has to gain from them. Some characters have greatly benefited from the loops (Griff and Xanatos, for example), so does that mean that the timestream is somehow biased to favor certain individuals? (but you'd still have to wonder why the stream went to the trouble of creating a *paradox* to make Xanatos rich or save Griff's life). Or was the timeline "drafted" with errors, which were then fixed via paradoxes when the timestream was finally created? For example, although Xanatos is a New Yorker from the 20th-21st century, the timestream may have goofed and placed him briefly at a Scottish castle in the late 900's. Then, to explain his presence, the stream sent in the Phoenix Gate and placed him in a situation where he would have access to it (this use for the Gate does in fact fit with your description of it as a kind of "pressure valve" for the Timestream--here, acting to fulfill events that were fated but can't otherwise happen within the normal constraints of time and space).

So is the presence of these time-loops intentional (and if so, who is responsible and why?), or is the timestream just "flawed" (for lack of a better word)?

Ed writes...

'VOWS' - what an episode. So many twists, so much drama, and some brilliant comedy from the Xanatos family. The thing that always occurred to me when watching this is: who on earth in Shari Goodharz? She only wrote the one episode that I recall and yet this is one of my favourites, if not my favourite outright. And yet she never did anything else. I guess looking at your outline she had a lot of dialogue to work in but even so, it was pretty damn good.

Actually, it always seemed like quite an intense episode to put before a multi-part story. I didn't watch it in order properly until I knew the whole season ('CITY OF STONE' aired at the beginning of the season here in two back-to-back weekends: accompanied with some stunning preview adverts of Demona blasting the stone humans).

Just one reply:

You said…
"But the gate stays open long enough for him to go with. Did it ever occur to her to go somewhen else other than 994? I guess part of it could be chalked up to dim memory. It was over a thousand years ago. And Demona lived through that 1000 years. Even for a very significant event in her life, it must still be very hazy."

Apart from the shock factor of the castle still burning (in this episode) and Goliath in stone, I think this would have meant most to Demona. But another possible explanation is in your outline:
"But choosing requires incredible concentration. Otherwise, the chooser's emotional or mental whim of the moment may cause the gate to drop everyone off at Burger King instead of Fort Knox."

Seeing as how Demona claims to have a clear memory of Goliath's 'inspirational' presumably this is the thought that would have dragged her to 994.

I really like your explanation of the Gate's changing size as being due to its 'time valve' function. Was this something you ever planned to develop or at least mention out loud in the series? I guess we'd get some hints from what you've told us about 'TIMEDANCER' so far.