It Was the Age of ‘Gargoyles’

They don't make gargoyles like this anymore.

Welcome to And the Quest for Pop Culture, where I explore various movies, TV shows, books, and comics. Up this week: the animated series Gargoyles. Looking for a different topic or original fiction? Check out the navigation page.

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Mix Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Batman: The Animated Series and you get … Gargoyles.

I never watched it as a kid. Gargoyles debuted in 1994, at which point I was starting middle school and watching fewer cartoons. Had it debuted a couple of years earlier, I likely would have been obsessed with it. The writing, voice acting, hand-drawn animation—all exceptional, especially in the first season.

Gargoyles draws inspiration from the past to build its own mythology. And it’s quite a robust mythology. The premiere story needed five whole episodes to set everything up.

From the Past to the Present

The pilot episode kicks off in Scotland in 994 AD. Gargoyles guard a castle, but these are special gargoyles. They’re inanimate statues by day, living warriors by night.

Relations between humans and gargoyles are uneasy, with most medieval minds unable to accept the gargoyles as anything more than monsters. One day—and it must be during daylight—barbarians show up and smash the gargoyles all to pieces, killing most of the clan except the few who were away: the leader Goliath (the only one with his own name at this point), his aged mentor, three youths, and their equivalent of a dog.

A sorcerer casts a spell that traps them in their stone forms until their castle rises above the clouds. A millennium later, a wealthy businessman makes that happen. And now we’ve got six medieval gargoyles in late-20th-century Manhattan.

That’s a hefty backstory for a kids cartoon. Goliath’s voice-over narration sums it up nicely during the theme song:

The mythology only builds from there. The previously nameless gargoyles adopt New York–inspired monikers (Hudson, Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway, and Bronx). Goliath befriends a human cop, Elisa Maza. He learns his former lover has survived, too, but she’s gained a burning hatred of humanity as well as her own name: Demona. The wealthy businessman, David Xanatos, soon proves himself to be Lex Luthor with better hair. And he keeps that ancient castle atop his Manhattan skyscraper, which provides a memorable and whimsical visual (I wonder to what extent Les Miserables inspired the castle in the clouds?).

Teenage Medieval Warrior Gargoyles

At a glance, the characters parallel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Brooklyn, Lexington, and Broadway are basically teenagers, and like the turtles, they begin their cartoon existence defined by a dominant character trait apiece. Brooklyn has an attitude similar to Raphael’s. Lexington shares Donatello’s affinity for machines. Broadway, in the grand Michelangelo tradition, thinks with his stomach, but he’s less picky and will eat much more than pizza.

Hudson almost fills the Master Splinter role, but he’s passed on the mantle of leadership to his “Leonardo,” Goliath. And Elisa, of course, is the April O’Neil of the ensemble.

But the gargoyles quickly outgrow any Ninja Turtles comparisons. Ninja Turtles is a fun cartoon to watch at ages 6 to 8 before switching to Gargoyles at ages 8 to 11. The writers inject a bit more substance into the scripts than the typical cartoon of yore, and they keep the series appropriate for kids without ever talking down to them. It feels like series creator Greg Weisman and his team developed Gargoyles for themselves but made sure nothing would prohibit kids from watching.

And that may be the secret to writing good television for kids: Don’t write a “kids show.” Write a good show within the parameters of the TV-Y7 rating. It worked for Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Beyond, and Justice League, after all.

Gargoyles could just as well have been a comic book series. The initial 13-episode season is structured like one—a continuous sequence of smaller stories that build on each other to form a greater whole.

After the five-part premiere, which cements Goliath as the series’ lead, we get episodes that focus on each of the other four talking gargoyles, allowing them to stand out as distinct characters.

A Very Special Episode

The eighth episode, “Deadly Force,” highlights the quality of the show’s writing. Generally speaking, the episode’s topic is gun safety. This so easily could have resulted in a preachy after-school special. But writer Michael Reaves (an alumnus of Batman: TAS) fleshes out a complete story.

This is our episode to get to know Broadway (the ever-hungry gargoyle, not the place). Movies are still a novelty to him, and he’s hooked on a new Western. The gunplay excites his imagination. After the film, he visits Elisa in her apartment. While she’s preparing some food, he finds her gun and starts playing with it, acting out the Western. But to Broadway, 994 AD was only days ago, and he knows nothing about how to handle such a weapon. In his ignorance, he accidentally shoots Elisa. She spends most of the episode in critical condition.

Elisa was investigating a gangster, so the police and Goliath assume the gangster shot her. They pick up her investigation while Broadway struggles with guilt and anger. Goliath, thinking this gangster nearly killed his best human friend, comes close to exacting deadly vengeance—until Broadway confesses.

Goliath and Broadway visit Elisa in the hospital as she recovers, and Broadway apologizes profusely while Elisa accepts responsibility for her own carelessness in leaving a loaded gun out in the open. It’s not a subtle message, but the message comes about because the characters are behaving organically.

Still, Gargoyles knows better than to end the episode on its preachiest moment. Instead, it opts for a poignant beat—a shot of Goliath and Broadway, frozen in stone under the light of day, perched outside of Elisa’s hospital window, standing guard over their friend while she recovers.

The next episode shows Elisa hobbling around on crutches—an acknowledgment of the basic reality that you don’t recover from a gunshot wound in a single episode. You recover in two episodes, apparently, but that’s still one episode more than other shows would have given it. Plus, we see how the incident continues to affect Broadway. In future episodes, he becomes more protective of Elisa, and we know why he’s so eager to redeem himself.

Overall, somewhat weightier than the typical Michelangelo episode.

History and Wisdom

“Long Way to Morning” puts the focus on Hudson and leans into the show’s sense of history. Demona wounds Goliath, and it’s up to Hudson to keep his friend and leader safe until daybreak. Once the sun rises, they’ll all turn to stone, which will allow Goliath to recover. Lasting that long won’t be easy, though. Hudson is far past his prime, and he knows he’s no match for Demona, especially when she’s armed with a hi-tech laser gun.

As he tells Goliath, “I can face her. I just can't beat her.”

The episode intersperses the action with flashbacks to 984 AD, when Hudson was the leader and Goliath and Demona were his trusty lieutenants. These scenes show us how Hudson got his scar and when he knew it was time to relinquish command. We see the wisdom he’s learned through a long life of duty, and that pays off in the present.

Hudson: Give it up, girl. You can’t win.

Demona: I’m smarter, stronger, and I’m younger than you! Your pride will cost you your life!

Hudson: But I know something you don’t. Something that only comes with age. I know how to wait.

[The sun rises, and they turn to stone.]

The Real Castle Was the Friends We Made Along the Way

The season one finale, “Reawakening,” also connects the past and present, but in a more sci-fi/fantasy way. Xanatos and Demona team up to place the spirit of Goliath’s long-dead brother into a robotic body. Previous episodes have hinted at Goliath’s grief. From his perspective, most of his clan died only recently. The pain is fresh. But now this corrupted version of his brother has shown up, answering to the name Coldstone. Goliath needs to not only stop the threat but also save his brother, and all the while, he’s reminded what “home” truly means.

Throughout the season, the gargoyles always make a point to guard their home, whether it’s their old castle or the clocktower above the police station. Goliath consistently appoints someone to stay behind and stand guard. They’re conditioned to protect their domicile. It’s what gargoyles do. “A gargoyle can no more stop protecting the castle than breathing the air,” Hudson says.

At the end of the episode, Goliath realizes that the clocktower is “merely where we sleep.”

Goliath: This island, Manhattan, this is our castle. From this day forward, we protect all who live here, human and gargoyle alike.

It’s an excellent cap to the season, with the promise of future adventures.

How Many Star Trek Actors Does It Take to Voice a Gargoyles Episode?

Star Trek fans will appreciate the voice cast. The casting director certainly seems to have appreciated Star Trek. Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis—Commander Riker and Counselor Troi themselves—play the two main villains, Xanatos and Demona. Michael Dorn (Worf) voices Coldstone. All three characters even appear onscreen together in “Reawakening.”

Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) lends her voice to Elisa’s mother. Later episodes also include Brent Spiner (Data), LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge), Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway), and Avery Brooks (Captain Sisko). Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who voices Elisa, was even on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

It's not just Star Trek actors, though. Ed Asner rocks a Scottish accent as Hudson, and Keith David imbues Goliath with gravitas and strength. Gargoyles truly did not skimp on the voice talent.

And I missed it all because I just had to be slightly too old in 1994 … which, coincidentally, is about when I got into Star Trek.