Highlander
Transcripts:
DVD Extras

Ken Gord (Producer):

I've got a few favorite Quickenings, but I would say in no particular order, a few of them would be, uh, what was the--? "Duende."

Clip from 5x14: "Duende":
[DM uses both daggers to behead Consone. As Consone falls, his sword is pulled from DM's body. DM falls to his knees as Quickening begins.]

[Quickening continues split-screen.]

Which was the one in the-- at night in the rain, huge pyrotechnics, where Duncan MacLeod kills Anthony De Longis. And I knew that was going to be a great Quickening because the special effects guy in France, whenever we described it, what we wanted, the more worried he got, I knew that the better it would be, and boy, he was-- when we explained that one, he was just, he looked down, he was shaking his head, he looked really like he was going to be sick, and it worked out to be one of the best ones.

Clip from 5x14: "Duende":
[Fireworks and flames dies down as the Quickening ends.]

"The Vampire."

Clip from 2x16: "The Vampire":
[DM beheads Nikki Ward.]

[Quickening continues split-screen]

Yeah, "The Vampire" was the racetrack, that was a great Quickening. That was a Quickening where I had a big argument with the director, Dennis Berry, because Dennis insisted that we shoot that Quickening and the sword fight at night. And this was a racetrack and it was an exterior, which means you've got to shoot at night for night. And it would have been an all-night scene, and up to this point, after-- that was the first show-- first French show of year two, so I'd only done fourteen episodes, so we had never had to do an all-night show, and I wasn't going to do it here. And I said that--

[voice-over] --this Quickening would look great in this location because it was kind of shadowy, and we could throw a whole bunch of stuff into it, and Dennis argued and he was not shy either. And I ended up winning the argument. We ended up shooting it in a day. I think it was one of the best Quickening. I think the pyro was beautifully contrasted and we threw a bunch of other stuff into the mix and-- [Quickening ends.]

--the post work was great. I like that one a lot. I can still watch that one.

Dennis Berry (Director):

"I don't have a favorite Quickening. I have-- my favorite concept for the Quickening that I couldn't deliver was the "Samurai" Quickening. In other terms, I wanted to do-- I always dreamt of doing a great ecological Quickening. And we set up this way to have waves explode from the sea. But as the tide was going up and we was losing time, the special effects guys got a little bit screwed because the explosions didn't take place as closely as they were supposed to because the tide moved the explosives. And the waves didn't go as big.

[Quickening in split-screen.]

But as the concept, you know, I always wanted there to be like trees collapsing in earthquakes. And that's the closer I got to what I would call an ecological Quickening. And that was my favorite one as a concept.

Clip from 3x01: "The Samurai":
[Waves splash over DM, drenching him, before Quickening ends.]

Elizabeth Gracen ("Amanda"):

Oh gosh, I've had a lot of those. I don't know. Maybe the first one. It's the first one, because everyone-- well, that was the first season and they were-- everyone on this was saying--

Clip from 1x18: "The Lady and the Tiger":
[Amanda takes Zachary Blaine's Quickening.]

[voice-over] --"Oh, you're going to love your Quickening. It's so exciting. And this is going to go off and all these fireworks, and the wind's going to blow you." And I said, "What is it like? Is it like an orgasm? Is it like a-- What is it like, you know?

[Quickening continues in split-screen.]

"Well, it's sort of, you figure it out yourself. But, you know, it rocks your world." And it was. It was very exciting. It's hard to say they've become blasé after a while about it, but...

Clip from 1x18: "The Lady and the Tiger":
[Quickening ends.]

Adrian Paul ("The Highlander"):

Oh, difficult. "Revelation Six-point-Eight".

Clip from 5x12: "Revelation 6:8":
[Double Quickening spiral of light connects MacLeod and Methos as they take Kronos's and Silas's Quickenings.]

Or, uh, "Revolutionary", again.

Clip from 3x03: "The Revolutionary":
[MacLeod takes Paul Karros's Quickening. The Quickening causes the munitions to explode, creating some impressive fireballs.]

Or, uh, "Vampire".

Clip from 2x16: "The Vampire":
[MacLeod takes Nikki Ward's Quickening.]

Stan Kirsch ("Richie Ryan"):

You know, I guess I'd have to say that first one as well, in the department store.

[Quickening in split-screen.]

Again, nerve-racking, but exciting, you know, because of all the buildup and having watched Adrian do this twenty-some-odd times.

Clip from 2x12: "Under Color of Authority":
[Richie takes Mako's Quickening.]

Richard Martin (Director):

Favorite Quickening? Uh, that would be a tie between the one in "Duende"--

Clip from 5x14: "Duende":
[MacLeod takes Otavio Consone's Quickening.]

[voice-over] --which was just operative and huge and, uh--

--and the very final Quickening in "Not To Be"--

[Quickening in split-screen.]

--which was shot in the Bercy tunnel and it just went on forever. Oh, that was just quite amazing.

Clip from 6x13: "Not To Be":
[MacLeod takes Liam O'Rourke's Quickening.]
[Unknown singer - "Amazing Grace"
but now I see.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
I was blind, but now--]

David Tynan (Exec. Script Consultant/Writer):

Favorite Quickening was, I think, the end of "Finale, Part Two", when--

[DM beheads Kalas in split-screen.]

--MacLeod is on the Eiffel Tower, which acts as a giant lightning rod. Uh, it was spectacular.

Clip from 3x22: "Finalé, Part Two":
[Quickening begins, hitting things and causing explosions.]

[Quickening continues in split-screen.]

Donna Lettow (Associate Creative Consultant):

Well, I think it probably has to be the Eiffel Tower because it's the most unusual. Um, it's certainly images we never thought we'd get. And most of it is put together from the long shots, from CGI, and the fact that the Eiffel Tower turns its lights off every night at two a.m. And I don't know whether it was Ken or the director who knew we could play with that and time that as the moment the Quickening starts.

Clip from 3x22: "Finalé, Part Two":
[Finally, the Quickening ends, and the Eiffel Tower lights go dark, then come back on.]

I guess similarly, the season two episode, um, with the Quickening in the amusement park, and it's timed so well with the ride starting--

[Quickening begins in split-screen.]

--and the sound effects of the ride starting, I think is what really makes the scene. It just gives it such strength and... an unnatural feel like Quickenings should have.

Clip from 2x10: "Epitaph for Tommy":
[MacLeod takes Anthony Gallen's Quickening.]

Stephen Geaghan (Production Designer):

The Dark Quickening was tough to do, because it had to be an extremely large event. And there was a lot of discussion between Mike Blacklock's special effects and the director and myself and the producers about how to do this. And we did it underneath one of the bridges in Vancouver. The city engineers were extremely concerned about the extent of the explosions, and they wanted to make sure that there was sufficient water that was around. So we put water pipes up the sides of the columns of the bridge, the supporting structure, and charged them from the hydrants. And I believe that Mike had the help of the Vancouver City Fire Department to get the pressure where we needed it. We had an awful lot of propane that was involved in this, and propane pipes laid around the columns and up behind Adrian when he was doing his Quickening.

[Quickening begins in split-screen.]

And then we had a lot of series of pipes in the background that went -- these are pipes for propane that were buried just beneath ground level -- and they went back quite a distance -- so, God, forty or fifty feet behind the actual posts of the supporting structure of the bridge.

Clip from 4x13: "Something Wicked":
[MacLeod takes Coltec's Quickening.]

[voice-over] So when all this stuff went off and you got the fire going up, it went up a good sixty feet. Nearly to the bottom of the bridge. At that point, once it was reaching there, we turned on the water to start cooling off everything. The water that we had put in the pipes, that we actually had there for the show, looked like burst mains that were coming off the bridge and the water squirted in and helped give that a much more complete look. It also helped to quench the fire once we were done with our sequence.

[Quickening continues in split-screen.]

Just the sheer amount of work that went into laying all the propane for all this. And then on top of that, in post, they put in the lightening which rounds it all out and gives it that unique Highlander look. It was a big event. We knew it was a big event then, and when I saw it finally on film, when it was all edited together, it hit our expectations, dead on.

Clip from 4x13: "Something Wicked":
[Quickening ends, fires are quenched.]

David Abramowitz (Creative Consultant):

Favorite Quickening... favorite Quickening, definitely the Quickening at the end of "Revelation"--

[Quickening begins in split-screen.]

--in the underground -- used to be it was a submarine warehouse -- where we had a Double Quickening where MacLeod took Kronos's head and Methos--

Clip from 5x12: "Revelation 6:8":
[MacLeod takes Kronos's Quickening and Methos takes Silas's Quickening.]

[voice-over] --took the big guy's head. That was, I thought was fantastic.

Clip from 1x13: "Band of Brothers":
[MacLeod takes Grayson's Quickening.]

[voice-over] I also like the one in, uh--

[Quickening continues in split-screen.]

It was the first year, the first episode in Europe -- right before the first episode in Europe -- at the sulfur piles. I thought that was a great Quickening also.

Clip from 1x13: "Band of Brothers":
[Quickening ends.]

F. Braun McAsh (Sword Master):

The favorite Quickening, I think the most spectacular one, was--

Clip from 4x02: "Brothers in Arms":
[MacLeod takes Andrew Cord's Quickening, as the back wall of the warehouse is destroyed.]

[voice-over] --where we literally blew the entire wall off the side of a building. Michael Blacklock--

--our special effects coordinator at the time, had put det cord--

[Beginning of the Quickening in split-screen.]

--around the entire side of this massive warehouse that we were in. So basically within a couple of seconds, we went from an interior shot to an exterior shot, without actually moving the cameras to do so.

Clip from 4x02: "Brothers in Arms":
[Quickening continues. Warehouse wall is destroyed. Quickening ends.]

A lot of them were really spectacular. The Quickening shot at the end of the Liam O'Rourke / MacLeod fight in "Not To Be" was probably the largest and most complex one in terms of pyro.

Clip from 6x13: "Not To Be":
[MacLeod takes Liam O'Rourke's Quickening.]

So some of them were spectacular. And of course, the CGs... I mean, the Quickening for the Eiffel Tower, where things that we never actually saw when we were doing the fight but came in afterwards, made the entire thing really incredible to see.

Clip from 3x22: "Finalé, Part Two":
[MacLeod takes Kalas's Quickening.]

Hal Beckett (Composer/Music Editor):

Favorite Quickening. Hmm. Oh, they're all so wonderful. What can I say?