Aired as part of the Disney Afternoon back when there was one; now airs very late at night on Toon Disney.
Possibly the animated series that best captures the feel of a modern comic book, Gargoyles follows the last survivors of an ancient Scottish gargoyle clan. The gargoyles are "stone by day, warriors by night," winged creatures with no names of their own (except their leader, named Goliath by humans). In 994 A.D., humans and gargoyles had a wary partnership protecting a castle built on ancestral gargoyle land. Human treachery led to the slaughter of all but a few gargoyles and Goliath. A subsequent magic spell turned them to stone forever -- "until the castle rises above the clouds."
Jump ahead 1,000 years, where Evil Industrialist David Xanatos has learned about the spell and transports the castle -- lock, stock, and gargoyle -- to the top of his Manhattan skyscraper. The terms of the spell being fulfilled, Xanatos hopes to use the mighty beasts as pawns. His plans ... don't work out.
65 episodes of Gargoyles were produced with Greg Weisman at the helm. Disney commissioned 13 more for ABC's Saturday morning block of cartoons, but Weisman didn't feel good about the editorial interference Disney wanted. Another story editor took over, and the show drifted away.
The original 65, however, stand as mostly self-contained yet serial stories that tackle just about every major world mythology. One standout episode, "Deadly Force," looked at gun safety -- complete with blood -- very seriously. (Predictably, this is the only episode that Toon Disney will not air, even after 11:00 p.m.)
A number of Star Trek actors provided voice talent, including:
Goliath was voiced by Keith David, whose powerful baritone can be heard as the voice of HBO's Spawn and in TNT and Cartoon Network promos, and played an imam in the movie Pitch Black.