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Was the Idea to Make the Voice of God a Woman, a Deliberate One?
Neil Gaiman: It was absolutely deliberate. But it began in a way of just looking what I’d made in terms of what the scripts were and going, “Oh, it’s pretty male!”. We have some fantastic women in here. We have Anathema, we have Madam Tracy but overall it is very male and there are a lot of men in it all the time. I want a female voice, just for balance and it’s all very very English so let’s have an American voice for balance. So balance was the beginning thing. Honestly, I’ve enjoyed very very much discovering that the sort of people who would not like Good Omens anyway don’t like Francis McDormand voicing God. So I think it’s great that the first thing that happens on screen is Francis McDormand talks and we see Adam and Eve and they are black, because if anybody has problems then we are only four and a half minuted in and they can stop watching that.
EPISODE 1
By the time Gaiman and director Douglas Mackinnon had finished cutting together Episode 1, it was about 75 minutes long, “which meant that we needed to lose 20 minutes,” Gaiman said. “And that 20 minutes was really hard to lose, because it was 20 minutes of beautiful material.”
Among those cut minutes was an extended scene of Crowley disabling the London mobile phone system, as he later reports to the demons in the graveyard during his evil deeds-of-the-day rundown.
“We built a huge set in South Africa for the BT Tower,” production manager Michael Ralph said. Crowley enters the lobby and tells the security guard he’s been sent from Rataway Pest Control to do a preliminary inspection. He’s taken up to the top floor, which is infested with hundreds of rats — rats summoned to do the demon’s bidding. (The rats were animated.) Crowley walks over to the computer room and tips tea from a thermos into the network controller, which makes the lights flicker and go out. Mission accomplished!
The scene then included people on the city streets experiencing the interruption in their mobile service at the worst possible moments (when they need to close a deal, arrange a pickup, or stave off a breakup), and Crowley walks away smiling. “We shot the whole thing, including helicopter arrivals to the BT Tower,” Ralph said. “There was a massive amount of work involved there,” cinematographer Gavin Finney agreed.
“What we wound up doing as our solution to bringing Episode 1 into focus was throwing out anything that was not directly part of the story,” Gaiman said. “We wound up with something that’s incredibly fast-moving and feels very full, but also runs just a hair over 50 minutes.”
EPISODE 3
The most elaborate sequence — a 30-minute cold open — is not based on anything from the book per se. “It’s an exploration of the characters that [are] in the book in its heart,” Mackinnon said, “but it needed to be externalized. It needed to be shown.”
The trick was that it was rather expensive to cover about 6,000 years of history, with different looks and locations, and the production had to get creative to keep it viable. The spot in South Africa used for Noah’s ark in Mesopotamia in 3004 B.C. is the same location used for the crucifixion in Golgotha in 33 A.D. — just from a different angle. The crucifixes, Ralph noted, were the hardest part; he had to make them oversized so they would have an impact on camera, and he used a river of red cloth on the ground to suggest an abstract river of blood. Ancient Rome in 41 A.D. was built in the same studio later used to double for a dungeon during the French Revolution in 1793.
A location scout for the camp for the kids’ playground gave the production the idea of where to stage Arthurian Britain in 537 A.D. — a valley in Surrey where a castle turret was visible. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be fantastic in the mist?’” Ralph said. “We didn’t need to build anything. We only needed to add the fog.”
“A ridiculous amount of fog,” Finney agreed. “We were just riffing on ideas from Excalibur and Monty Python there.”
The next period of history, Shakespearean London in 1601, brought a bit of luck — Good Omens got to be the first fictional production to shoot inside the Globe Theatre. The catch was that they could only shoot for five hours, which wasn’t enough time to manage a shoot with 500 extras in period costume. The solution? Turn a full Globe Theatre into an empty one, and make Shakespeare’s play a flop. (“It’s funnier,” Gaiman said.)
Revolutionary France brought its own set of difficulties. Ralph researched how to make a working guillotine, and had the perfect spot to set it up – at the University of Cape Town, which was filled with architecture reminiscent of 1793 France. “I was going to build a platform and have hot water washing the blood down and steam coming up,” the production designer said. “But we ran out of time to do it before the university opened.” They came up with the solution to hear the guillotine outside a dungeon cell (built in the studio) instead.
Somewhere within this sequence — perhaps after Shakespearean England but before Revolutionary France — was supposed to be one more time capsule: Aziraphale opening his bookshop for the first time. Gabriel shows up to tell Aziraphale that he’s been promoted and can go back to Heaven, but Aziraphale doesn’t want to go. Crowley turns up with chocolate and flowers to congratulate Aziraphale, and overhears the conversation, so he instead turns around and sets up something where Aziraphale needs to intervene, to prove to Gabriel that Aziraphale’s appearance on earth is vital. “It was really funny,” Gaiman said. But his justification for taking it out was that it didn’t push the story forward as much as the other moments did.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is used the most, particularly in the first episode, with the demon Crowley (David Tennant) arriving at his meeting to discuss the coming of the Anti-Christ as Freddie Mercury sings that “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.” Snatches of the song can also be heard as Crowley receives his orders on where to deliver the infant Anti-Christ and his arrival at the hospital. The song shows up again at the end of episode 5 and the start of episode 6 (though different clips are used) when Crowley dramatically arrives at the USAF base where the end of the world starts, at the wheel of his burning Bentley.
Episode 2 plays “Bicycle Race” in the background of Crowley’s car, as he gives a lift to bicycle-riding witch Anathema Device, after the two collide with one another. Episode 5 opens with Crowley racing through the streets of London to “You’re My Best Friend,” as he tries to reach the book shop run by his best friend, the angel Aziraphale. When Crowley discovers the shop is on fire and concludes that someone has killed Aziraphale, he emerges from the flames to Queen’s gospel-inspired hit “Somebody To Love,” having finally come to grips with his feelings for the angel.
“Another One Bites The Dust” is used in episode 5 of Good Omens, as Crowley becomes stuck in traffic on the M25 freeway around London and “I’m In Love With My Car” blasts forth as Crowley drives through the wall of fire surrounding London. Queen’s power ballad, “We Will Rock You,” plays as Crowley and his flame-engulfed Bentley “rock the world” of an unfortunate neighborhood watchmen in the village of Tadfield, whom Crowley asks for directions while seemingly unaware that his car is on fire. Finally, a brass band can be heard playing “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon” as Crowley and Aziraphale meet in the park just before their respective abductions.
Since I’m still
in Information Mode here—yep, Bones has a pinky ring! It’s not
super easy to get a good look at it, since the camera never
particularly focuses on it, and sometimes he seems to be wearing it
with the stone turned inward to be less conspicuous. But once you
start looking for it, you’ll see it.
[ID: Three shots of McCoy; in the top left one he’s looking off to the side with his hand touching his chin, in the top right one he’s taking a drink from a glass, and in the bottom one he’s holding a futuristic-looking visor to his eyes. In all three pictures a ring is visible on his little finger.]
As far as I know he’s always got it on. He even seems to still be wearing it while he’s working on the Horta, which, I mean, that’s dedication, man.
[ID: 1. A shot of McCoy standing in a cave next to the Horta, looking down at his tricorder, showing the ring on one hand. 2. McCoy holding up his hands with the cement mixture all over them, with the shape of his ring visible underneath.]
Like I said, nobody in the main show ever mentions it, so there’s no Watsonian explanation for why he has it (though I would bet that it comes up somewhere in the EU, because everything comes up somewhere in the EU). But the real-life story behind it is quite sweet. The ring belonged to Kelley’s mom, who he was very close to, and after she died he kept the ring and wore it in memory of her. When he wanted to wear it on TOS, Roddenberry initially said no—because he didn’t want any of the cast wearing modern jewelry is the explanation I’ve heard, although Uhura’s wearing earrings all the time so, I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway, Kelley told him that if he couldn’t wear the ring he wasn’t going to be on the show, and Roddenberry wanted Kelley in the cast more than he wanted the no-jewelry rule, so he acquiesced.
It must have been pretty dang important to Kelley, because that’s pretty much the only story I’ve heard of him ever pushing for something like that (the only other instance I know of is when he and Nimoy refused to have McCoy and Spock betray Kirk as initially written in ST V, because, as they told Shatner, that is nonsense). I’ve heard stories of Shatner making demands and of Nimoy insisting on things, but no other cases of Kelley doing anything like that aside from those two. I mean, obviously, I wasn’t on set, I don’t know, but he just doesn’t seem to have been the kind of guy to make a fuss about something unless he had a really good reason to.
I would presume he wore it on his little finger either to avoid giving the impression that it was a wedding ring, or if it was a woman’s ring it just might not have fit on his ring finger. Or possibly he just did it for the Look.
Personally, I’m glad Kelley insisted, because it’s such a nice little touch of character. Roddenberry had a problem with getting so focused on making sure his characters adhered to his idea of what people in the future should be like that having them actually come off as real, relatable people tended to take second place to that. The ring is a small thing, but it’s a sign of a character that exists outside of the immediate situations we see him in. In-universe we don’t know if the ring is personally significant to McCoy or if he just likes it as an accessory, but either way, it points to a little bit of history and personality that’s not there to serve any function for the plot or to make any kind of significant point, it’s just there because people have little bits of history and personality like that.
He’s still got it in the movies, incidentally.
[ID: McCoy in Wrath of Kahn, laying on the floor with his head propped on one hand, gesturing with the other hand, showing the inner band of the ring on his finger.]
But sadly it doesn’t appear to have made it into TAS.
I am shocked, SHOCKED that a series with such IMPECCABLE attention to detail as TAS somehow missed a thing like that.
[ID: A shot from Star Trek: The Animated Series, with McCoy sitting in a chair opposite a brownhaired redshirt woman, both hands visible with no ring present.]
However, if you’ve ever noticed that McCoy is wearing a ring in the AOS movies…
[ID: A shot of McCoy in Star Trek (2009), standing next to Sulu and gesturing with one hand; on the other hand, tucked against his side, is a large silver ring.]
..it’s because Karl Urban knew what he was doing.
whatwecanfic asked:
So you mentioned that Aziraphale's referring to “velocipede” was not a call-back to Michael Sheen’s character on 30 Rock, but I'm curious. Was Crowley's ice cream with the flake a call back to Tennant's previous characters in Broadchurch and Blackpool?
neil-gaiman answered:
No. It was a callback to a joke Terry used to make about a Mister Whippy with a Flake.
bisexualchemy asked:
I saw a post that pointed out the bikes Pepper and Adam were riding at the end and how Pepper’s bike wasn’t the one she described as having gotten before (which she was upset about because it was a girl’s bike with a basket) and Adam’s had a basket like the one she described. Did Adam trade bikes with Pepper to make her happy?
neil-gaiman answered:
That was my theory too.
tween me from over a decade ago has been losing it over the fact her fave book finally got adapted
arcticflakes
