The Price

"The Price" is the thirty-third televised episode of the series Gargoyles, and the twentieth episode of Season 2. It originally aired on October 12, 1995.

• Director: Dennis Woodyard
• Writer & Story Editor: Michael Reaves
• Based on Comic Book Material by Lee Nordling
• Animation by Walt Disney Animation Japan
• Backgrounds by Tachiku Kimura, Jade Animation Productions
• Additional Production Facilities: Nakamura Production, Studio Robin, Light Foot, Studio Cats, Takahashi Production, Jade Animation Productions

Continuity

The Cauldron of Life is introduced in this episode. In "Cloud Fathers", we learn that Xanatos has melted the Cauldron down to rebuild Coyote.

Xanatos reveals his desire to become immortal in this episode, although there were hints of that ambition in "City of Stone Part One".

Owen Burnett's fist is turned to stone in this episode, and remains stone for the rest of the series.

Hudson keeps the piece of his fake statue self until the Clock Tower blows up in "Hunter's Moon". It is unknown if Elisa was able to recover the memento from the wreckage or if it had shattered to pieces in the explosion.[1]

Tidbits

"The Price" was initially aired out of order, on October 12, 1995, between "Outfoxed" (which initially aired on September 28) and "Revelations" (which initially aired on October 26). A side effect of that was the jarring effect of seeing Owen with a normal hand in "Double Jeopardy" and "The Cage", which appear in this schedule to be taking place afterwards. Disney's YouTube playlist for Season 2 maintains the incorrect order for the episode.

This story was inspired by the Lee Nordling's Gargoyles story "Stone Cold" from Disney Adventures, which used the core concept of a gargoyle in stone sleep being kidnapped and replaced by a lookalike statue (though the gargoyle in Nordling's story was Goliath).

In the original screenplay, Goliath and Lexington, during their visit to Macbeth's mansion, had a run-in with Banquo and Fleance (both feeling perturbed by their employer's mysterious absence). This scene was changed in the televised version to Goliath and Lexington facing Macbeth's automated defenses instead.

Hudson makes the only reference in the entire series to bathroom functions when he calls the Cauldron of Life an "oversized chamber-pot".

It is fitting that a vital ingredient in the Cauldron of Life's spell is a piece of gargoyle stone skin. Gargoyles do not age during their stone sleep. Bathing in the Cauldron would thus allow the person to "live as long as the mountain stones", effectively locking them into a permanent gargoyle stone sleep, where they do not age, but are solidified. So Owen's fist is not stone, but more accurately the same organic substance resembling stone that gargoyles become every dawn.

Goliath's punch that goes through the chest of the Macbeth robot is largely edited out of the Toon Disney broadcast of the episode. In their edit, it seems as if Goliath barely touched the robot.

While trying to convince Xanatos of the folly of wanting to be immortal, Hudson refers to himself as a "stranger in a strange land", a quote from Exodus 2:22, "And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land" and the title of the 1961 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein.

DVD Release

• Gargoyles: Season Two, Volume One

Links

• First Draft Script
• Final Draft Script
• Greg's Ramble
• Extensive Synopsis and Review
• Official episode upload on Disneyshows

<< Previous Episode: "The Cage"

Next Episode: "Avalon" Part One >>