Gargoyles (TV series)

One thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night, We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken, and we live again! We are defenders of the night! We are Gargoyles!

— Goliath's Opening Narration

The series features a species of nocturnal creatures known as gargoyles that turn to stone during the day, focusing on a clan led by Goliath. In the year 994, the clan lives in a castle in Scotland. Most are betrayed and killed by humans while petrified and the remainder are magically cursed to sleep—i.e., be frozen in stone form until the castle "rises above the clouds." A thousand years later in 1994, billionaire David Xanatos purchases the gargoyles' castle and has it reconstructed atop his New York skyscraper, the Eyrie Building, thus awakening Goliath and the remainder of his clan. While trying to adjust to their new world, they are aided by a sympathetic police officer named Elisa Maza and quickly come into conflict with the plotting Xanatos. In addition to dealing with the gargoyles' attempts to adjust to modern New York City, the series also incorporated various supernatural threats to their safety and to the world at large.

A total of 78 half-hour episodes were produced.

The first two seasons aired in the Disney Afternoon programming block. The first season consisted of 13 episodes, including a five-part opening story. This season's episodes were almost entirely written by Michael Reaves and Brynne Chandler Reaves. The second season featured 52 episodes, and a long mid-season story arc dubbed by fans as "The Gargoyles World Tour" in which the main characters travel the world, encountering other Gargoyles and confronting various mystical and science-fictional dangers. The writing staff was greatly expanded for season two.

The third and final season aired during Saturday mornings on ABC as Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles.[3] Behind the scenes, the animation producers and writers had almost completely changed from seasons one and two, while on-screen, the Gargoyles' relationship to the world changed considerably.

The voice cast featured several actors who are alumni of the Star Trek franchise, including Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes (respectively, Deanna Troi and William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation), who were featured regularly as principal cast members.[5] Other Star Trek actors had recurring roles on Gargoyles, including Michael Dorn (Worf on TNG and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Kate Mulgrew (Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series),[5] and Brent Spiner (Data on TNG);[5] while Avery Brooks (Benjamin Sisko on DS9),[5] Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien on TNG and DS9), and LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge on TNG) made guest appearances.[5] Meanwhile, Salli Richardson, who played Elisa Maza on Gargoyles, had a dual guest star role in a second-season episode of DS9.

The series bears no creator credit, though there were several people who are responsible for the show's format. Michael Reaves, who wrote the first six episodes and was the primary writer/story editor of the show's first two seasons has described himself in respect to Gargoyles as "in on the ground floor [of] creating something iconic".[6] Greg Weisman also describes himself as one of the creators of Gargoyles.[7] Weisman, a former English teacher, was working as a Disney executive when early versions of Gargoyles were pitched by himself and others as a fast-paced light comedy. The show was eventually developed by the writing staff into something much more complex and dark.

The series' first season was almost entirely written by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Reaves and Brynne Chandler Reaves, who wrote 12 of the 13 episodes; the remaining episode was written by Steve Perry. Weisman officially joined the series as a co-producer with episode 6 (though he also oversaw earlier episodes in his capacity as a Disney executive), and did not have any writing credits on the show until the third season.[nb 1]

According to Weisman, the first season was developed on a sliding schedule; each phase of developing the thirteen episodes, such as writing, storyboarding, and animating, was given a ten-month period, with significant overlap.[9] After they had delivered the first thirteen episodes, they asked Buena Vista Television to pick up a second season with another thirteen; the show had not yet aired, but Buena Vista agreed for them to start work on six more episodes.[9] Once the show started its weekly syndication run in 1994, it was quickly seen as successful both as a television program and for promoting toy sales, and Buena Vista pushed on the show's team to make the second season 52 episodes so that they could run it daily starting in the 1995 television season.[9] Weisman stated they were not prepared for this given their production methods and the lack of timing to get those episodes ready for a fall 1995 premiere, despite telling Buena Vista this several times. When Buena Vista refused to back down from the 52-episode order, the team decided to expand four-fold to handled the additional episodes.[9] The writing staff grew to include Reaves, Chandler Reaves and Perry, as well as newcomers Lydia Marano, Cary Bates, Gary Sperling, Adam Gilad, Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, amongst others. For this season, story editing duties were handled on a rotating basis by Reaves, Chandler Reaves, Bates and Sperling. Storylines expanded beyond the Manhattan setting and more characters were added to help creating stories to fill the episode count.[9] Weisman said that he had discussions with Michael Eisner of using Gargoyles as a starting point for an action-oriented universe within Disney, comparing this to how Warner Bros. owned DC Comics, and some second season episodes were used to set up potential hooks for these.[9]

The third season was reduced to thirteen episodes and moved to a Saturday morning slot. This was a result of two factors according to Weismen. The first was changes within Disney itself. Fallout from the death of Disney president Frank Wells led to the divide between Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Katzenberg left to form Dreamworks. Weisman's bosses, Gary Krisel and Bruce Cranston, that had been supportive of Gargolyes , also left with Katzenberg for Dreamworks. Further, internal pressure on Eisner from Roy E. Disney forced him to treat Gargoyles as part of the studio's older works, thus dropping the larger action universe plans, leaving the show without any support.[9] Secondly, as the second season aired, the highly-publicized trial of O. J. Simpson drew audiences away from Gargoyles often due to preemption from the trial's coverage. By the time the trial was over, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had become more powerful as a brand.[9] At this point, the show staff did not think they were likely to get a third season, but as Disney had just bought Capital Cities, the owners of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network, they needed programming for its Saturday morning block, and had the Gargoyles team develop thirteen more episodes for it, now calling the series The Goliath Chronicles. Because this was on broadcast stations rather than syndication, the show had to meet different Broadcast Standards and Practices which Weisman stated drastically limited his creativity. While he wrote the first episode and spoke of his concerns to Disney, they had removed him from the team and assigned the rest of the show's run to Nelvana.[9] Because of this shift, most of the writing staff was new to the show, although returning writers included Marano, Gilad and Bates.

Many Shakespearean characters and stories found their way into the show's storylines, particularly those from Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream.[10] The series was also influenced by medieval Scottish history, as well as television shows ranging from Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears to Hill Street Blues.[11] The latter in particular inspired the ensemble format of the series and the 30-second "Previously, on Gargoyles..." recap found at the beginning of later episodes.[12][13] The former was an influence on the original comedy development of the show, which was subsequently made darker and more serious by first season writers Reaves, Chandler Reaves and Perry.[14]

New York artist Joe Tomasini brought a suit against Disney, claiming that his copyrighted screenplay and character designs had been copied during the development and production of Gargoyles.[15] The case was ultimately thrown out, after it was proven that Disney did not have access to Tomasini's creations.[16]

The series originally aired in the United States in Syndication from 1994 to 1996 with the third season being shown on ABC from 1996 to 1997.

The first two seasons of Gargoyles aired in the Republic of Ireland on RTE Two on weekday afternoons from January 6 to April 1997.[17]

IGN ranked Gargoyles 45th place on its 2009 list of top 100 animated series, stating: "A decent success at the time, Gargoyles has maintained a strong cult following since it ended more than a decade ago".[27] Hollywood.com featured it on their 2010 list of six cartoons that should be movies.[28] UGO.com included it on their 2011 top list of legendary medieval and fantasy TV shows.[29] Doug Walker, also known as the Nostalgia Critic, praised the show: "But in secret, I would be watching every one of them, because it was just that good. I don’t know if it really changed anything in terms of kids' shows like Batman or Animaniacs, but it was certainly a welcome detour from what Disney usually did. It really stood on its own and created some really wonderful and really unique stories. Gargoyles is a blast from the past that is sure to live on in the future."[30] Less favorable assessments of the series came from animation producer Bruce Timm, who dismissed Gargoyles as "kind of namby-pamby... with all that Celtic fantasy crap" in a 1999 interview[31] and the animation blog Cartoon Brew, which cited the series as an example of the sort of "juvenile mediocrities" that are beloved by the nerd community.[32]

In July 2011, David Elliot and Paul Lovett of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra were hired to pen a film adaptation of Gargoyles.[33] In June 2018, Jordan Peele pitched his own film version to Disney.[34]

Various merchandise released for the series included a series of 22 five-inch action figures (along with two vehicles and a castle playset) released by Kenner in 1995. A collectible card game, Gargoyles Stone Warriors Battle Card Game, was published by Parker Brothers in 1994.[42][43] Other licensed merchandise included numerous other toys and figures, collectible trading card and sticker series, and a wide range of clothing items, books, art supplies, kitchen and bathroom items and supplies, clocks and watches, etc.[44][45][46] A world based on the television series was initially considered for Kingdom Hearts, but the idea was scrapped.[47]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Gargoyles

• Official website
• Gargoyles at IMDb
• List of Gargoyles episodes at TV.com
• Gargoyles at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
• Gargoyles at Inducks
• Gargoyles at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Gargoyles at epguides.com