Some of you may have wondered about the slightly vague One Question thread I started last week. I didn't want to give out details in the event I was unable to "attend", but there was a press conference call with Tim Kring and Zach Quinto today and I was fortunate enough to participate.

It was a very exciting and informative experience. We learned some very interesting tidbits of information about the upcoming volume, Sylar and what to expect from the show.

At this time, I'm only going off of my slightly jittery notes I scrabbled together, but we hope to be posting a transcript of the call in the near future.

From my notes, general information that I don't believe is spoilery.

Tim:
The goal of this volume is to have 95% of the questions raised in it answered. It will be 13 episodes, a break, then 12 episodes. (I think, the call was a bit choppy on my end, so it was hard to be certain.)

The virus story was a casulty of the writers strike. That story was going to last 8 episodes dealing with the outbreak, followed by 4 focusing on "Villians". Volume three was essentially supposed to be the second half of the strike shortened season 2. That and Caitlin he referred to as a lost part of the Heroes mythology that may never return.

There will be more webisodes. 6 in the fall and 6 or 7 in the spring.

Nobody is ever really as dead as they seem due to the use of flashbacks, time traveling and other means.

He doesn't follow the X-men comics and has only seen one of the movies, he wasn't sure which one.

The upside of the writers strike is that Zach was available for volume three, so they didn't "lose" Sylar and continuity and that this volume is the story he wanted to tell.

Zach:
He was asked several questions about theatre acting and the new Star Trek movie. He tended to give kinda long answers, so my notes are...weak here. Also, he had to catch a flight and had to leave after about 40 minutes.

The theatre experience was a big plus that gave a great basis from which to work.

SciFi is very theatrical with an exciting group of fans and scripts that are more exciting and action packed.

He feels that Sylar's motivation is the need to feel special, not so much that he is evil.


*I'm still working on this, but I wanted to post some of what I jotted down. I'll add more over this weekend.*



Warning: Spoilery material ahead!

Tim:
By the end of the 3rd hour the audience will have a lot of answers to be able to move forward on this volume.

Kristen Bell/Elle is integral plays a very large part and we will see a lot of her this season.

This season will concentrate on the core characters. No "stunt" castings or new faces it would seem.

The story will emphasize the nature of dysfunction among family, specifically the Petrelli's and the Bennett's. Both families will be tested in ways we haven't seen before.

Malcom McDowell will be appearing in this season.

With Sylar, they are going to peel off layers of his motivation...to play off the duality of good vs evil. The audience will be torn as we explore the depths of pathos of Sylar and may even have some sympathy.

It sounded like this may be true of all (or most) of the characters as they (and we) learn who they really are and what is their base nature.

Sylar will have a series of very human relationships.


Zach: Sylar will be put in situations where he is manipulated to show restraint in ways we haven't seen before. There are a lot of unexpected turns for his character.

We will learn more about his background and how this drives his character.

EDIT: What's this over here? Oh, it's my scatter brain! I found it!

I forgot to mention that I was able to ask One Question. I didn't use any of the ones submited because by the time it came to me (I was second to last), most of those points had been touched upon. Ya'll did submit some very good questions.

I ended up asking about the symbols in Heroes, the helix, eclipse and the double helix of Pinehearst. I noted that those are obviously important and asked if they would be explored and explained in volume 3.

Tim answered that while they want to answer 95% of the questions in each volume, they do want to leave some ongoing mystery that continues throughout the show. There might be some answers to the symbols, but that there always can/could be deeper meaning behind them.

Aren't these things fun? I've done transcription work of the Heroes group interviews before, but worked from a copy of the audio. I sure hope you guys get a transcript. Shouldn't be too hard. NBC is good about releasing them...but sometimes they do have some mistakes in them. *sighs*

Three cheers for loose ends!

In all seriousness though, thanks, Wolfbro. I appreciate you doing this.

Thanks.

Thanks for this are we allowed to discuss this in Spoilers?

I don't see why not, the information came from Tim Kring himself and there was literally a score of folks taking part in the conference call.

Some of the Q and A from this press teleconference has been posted:

http://blog.9thwonders.com/modblog/

The rest will be posted some time this week.

Oh god...why didn't I believe it when it said "spoilers"? I was expecting some sissy softball spoiler questions (ones that I wouldn't actually consider spoilers) but jesus christ.

Why didn't I listen?!

*curls up into a ball and begins sucking thumb*

Luckily I only read the first question so hopefully thats only the big surprise of the first hour or two..

Thanks, wolfbro!

Part 2 is now posted! Some questions were left out, but I will post them below. (Hopefully I don't miss anything, but the transcript was 40+ pages long.)

Semi Star Trek Related:

(On Sylar vs Spock)

ZQ: I think there’s elements of the characters that echo each other but I think they echo each other from very different, opposite ends of the spectrum, you know.

Each of the characters employs a stillness and a sort of - a rich internal point of view that informs the way that they behave and the way that they relate to people around them.

And it’s, you know, it’s great fun to have characters that are rich and that are, you know, full of challenges and full of rewards. And both of those - both of these characters are clearly that.

So as an actor, you’re right - I mean, I don’t really approach a character as to whether or not it’s good or bad. I just approach a character as to where it lives in me.

And I think for numerous reasons both of these characters find - you know, these very different characters both find life in me.

Q: Yeah. Was it a relief to get back to that kind of freedom of sort of letting loose in Sylar after Spock?

A: Well I don’t really - see, I don’t see - I think that’s the thing. That’s the best - kind of one of the similarities. Both these characters are very contained and very controlled.

So I mean, letting loose in the sense of engaging in or indulging in these sort of instincts or impulses to murder and let loose in a violent kind of way, for me it was more like, you know, coming home when we came back to work on the show after going away on a new and uncharted excursion, you know, with the movie and the sort of scale and size of the franchise - and iconic nature of the character that I was stepping into.

You know, there was a tremendous sense of completion when I finished the film and a tremendous sense of familiarity when I came back to work on the show.


Q: This is for Tim. You know, when you had talked about some of the casualties of the strike and knowing at that time there might have been a conflict with Zach’s schedule with Star Trek, did a lot of the ideas for this season come out of having to kind of (take on the case) with what you’d do with Sylar or was it really - this (season) was the story you wanted to tell and you finally could because everything was calmed down?

A (TK): You know, the truth is we would’ve had to lose the character of Sylar for the better part of the season had the strike not hit. And so one of the upsides of it is that there will be a real sense of continuity for the audience when they pick up the show.

You know, it won’t - they won’t have that sense that when one of the major character dropped away for awhile. So in that respect, it was a huge - you know, sort of a huge advantage to have had the strike fall where it did in the whole thing.


Q: Did it change your storytelling at all in terms of what he’s doing this season or was this still the story you wanted to tell?

A (TK): Oh the - no, I’m sorry. This was the story that we wanted to tell. This was - this particular volume called Villains was going to be originally the third volume of the second season and we were going to be able to fold Sylar’s character in, you know, probably not in as big a way had we had to shoot it during Season 2.

But we would’ve found a way to have incorporated, you know, Zach into the - we very often, because of the modular way that we shoot the show, we’re able to drop a certain character’s storyline in, you know, afterwards.

In other words, we can shoot all of, you know, someone like Zach’s scenes and then - for multiple episodes and then drop them in. It’s one of the advantages of shooting a kind of, you know, big multi storyline show.

Q: I know you said you were not really planning on any guest stars this season. But I was wondering, you’ve had George Takei and Nichelle Nichols, and with Zachary appearing in Star Trek, is there any plan at this point -- even in the early stages -- to have something to tie in to Star Trek’s release in May?

A (TK): No there really is nothing - no, nothing has been planned or talked about in that respect. And, you know, the tie- ins with the Start Trek came out of Hiro Nakamura’s character who is a Star Trek fan and we found little ways to mention various, you know, star - iconic ideas in Star Trek.

And, you know, to bring on characters like George Takei - but no, we don’t have any real tie-in with the film in any way.