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Anonymous writes...

Just two questions, as everyone else seems to be asking the questions I want to be answered :-). Anyway, one thing that has bothered me from episode to episode is languages. In 10th century Scotland the clan would have been speaking 10th century Scots Gaelic, yet when they awaken in New York in 1994 they understand and speak perfect Modern English (North American dialect, noless!). Then, when they travel around the word via Avalon, they encounter Japanese gargoyles, Guatemalan gargoyles, and so on.
They communicate with them flawlessly. Now, while I can understand off-screen reasons for this (having to have them learn a new language or something every episode would get unwieldy and ridiculous), my disbelief's bridge of suspension starts to quiver and tremble when a North American who apparently speaks English and probably Hopi communicates effortlessly with the inhabitants of a small Japanese fishing village, maybe one of whom would speak English well, and with an accent you could cut with a spoon.
Second question: You said in a previous post that Demona knew that Puck == Owen. Ummm...How? Is this something that might have been revealed in, say, TimeDancer? Anyway, thanks for your time. Sean simpson_s@scsu.ctstateu.edu

Greg responds...

1) Yeah. The language thing. Well, you got me. We knew we had a problem with the Gaelic to Modern English thing in "Awakening", but we obviously didn't want to deal with it. It is one of the reasons Scotland was chosen in the first place. I wanted a country where English was presently spoken, so that the "error" wouldn't be smacking the audience in the face. England was obvious, but I wanted something that felt rougher around the edges. Scotland summonded the right feeling for me. So we went with Scotland, crossed our fingers and ignored the Gaelic problem, which worked all right with most people. Sorry, it didn't work for you.
As to the World Tour, that is less problematic, so it surprises me that you had more of a problem with it. We toyed with the idea of using sub-titles and dealing with the language barrier in four episodes: "Golem", "Bushido", "Eye of the Storm" and "The Green". Some of us felt the episodes would be enriched by the inclusion, but others disagreed. Particularly my bosses, who pointed out that the youngest members of our audience didn't know how to read and would be missing out on any subtitled dialogue. I felt we could make things clear enough for that percentage of the audience, but there were other arguments that did weigh in very strong for me. 1) It would bog down the stories, wasting precious screen time on problems of objective communication.
2) It would involve substantially more work for my writers, story editors, board artists, film editors, post supervisors etc. Not that we hid from hard work, but we were on a very tight schedule, and this issue didn't seem to merit the extra effort.
3) English, in the modern world, is such a universal language, it doesn't at all bother me that the citizens of Ishimura, Prague, Guatemala and Norway spoke it.
I didn't much like that they spoke it among themselves, however. So even after we had decided against dealing with this (our Gaelic decision, perhaps setting a precedent), we revisited the problem after we did the voice recording of "Bushido". Frank Paur, who had initially felt that we shouldn't deal with the language barrier, changed his mind. He didn't mind that Kai spoke English, but he didn't want Kai (or anyone else) to start speaking English until he heard Goliath and/or Elisa and/or Angela speaking English. At which point, Kai (and the others) would start speaking English out of courtesy. I agreed that that would make the episode better. Problem was, we had already held the voice recording. Rerecording would have doubled that episode's voice expenses. I was prepared to do this and make up the money somewhere else, but my bosses still weren't to thrilled with the idea and said no.