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| | Guest Starring: | |
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| | Amber Benson: | |
| | (Tara) | |
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| | Clare Kramer: | |
| | (Glory) | |
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| | Charlie Weber: | |
| | (Ben) | |
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| | Wade Andrew Williams: | |
| | (General) | |
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| | Karim Prince: | |
| | (Dante) | |
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| | Todd Duffy: | |
| | (Murk) | |
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| | Lily Knight: | |
| | (Gronx) | |
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| | Justin Gorence: | |
| | (Orlando) | |
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20. Spiral. |
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Glory finally works out that Dawn is the key. She and the knights of Byzantium, both in pursuit of Dawn, run the Scooby gang out of town. |
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Great quotes: |
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- Anya has a plan to beat Glory: "We should drop a piano on her; it works for the cartoon rabbit."
- Buffy: "We're not going to win this with spells or stakes or pulling out some uranium core!"
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Fantastic moments: |
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 | | The Knights of Byzantium. |
- At the start of the episode Glory finally gets to use her god-like powers. She runs very fast and can only be stopped when a truck hits her. This leads to some confusion when Dawn tells Giles that Buffy beat Glory with a truck, "You threw it at her?" Anya asks, "... err..."
- Buffy's battle with the Knights on the roof of the camper van is a piece of great action and is well directed. In fact, the whole chase sequence is spectacular; not only because it is a new thing for BtVS but also because action sequences are always better when they're at high speed.
- Willow's mystical shield is very cool, also the clerics that the Knights of Byzantium produce to try to break through the shield are reminiscent of the 'holy hand grenade' sequence from 'The Holy Grail'.
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Duff Bits: |
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 | | Spike looks well cool in his goggles. |
- Why do all the Scoobies leave town? Why not just Buffy, Dawn and Giles?
- Buffy finally kills a Human. The knights of Byzantium are all Human (we know this as Glory can brain-drain them) and Buffy pulls no punches in taking them out with a massive sword on top of the camper van.
- The episode is clogged up with a lot of inconsequential exposition. Ben argues with Glory's minions, then Buffy interrogates the general twice. Ben's bit does advance his arc (will he kill Dawn to save himself?) but all the general does is tell us about Glory's history. Telling the audience that this year's bad guy is the biggest, baddest, maddest and evilest thing in the multiverse is a flaw of trashy sci-fi which BtVS had managed to avoid until this point.
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Dean's comments: |
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| |  | | Buffy's not looking her best. |
This 'chase and fight' episode has a lot of good action sequences, but once again suffers from season 5's problem, that it forgets that humour is an integral part of the series. There is lots of good (possibly great) action going on here, notably Buffy's rooftop sword battle. People who had been paying attention to the online media were aware that Giles was not going to be in season 6 and so his spearing looked like it could be fatal, but it all seems rather tame as Glory is so powerful that no-one can stand up to her and by the end of the episode it doesn't look like Giles is in any serious danger. Is Ben really that good at first aid? The 'knights of Byzantium' are totally unnecessary, all they do is chase around and get in the way. Also it makes no sense, if all you had to do to get rid of the key was to kill it in Human form then why didn't the monks turn it into a fly and swat it? They try to explain what all the 'key' stuff is about but it's all a bunch of gumph, they should get on with the story instead of trying to mesh all the diversities of the plot together now. Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to do a Trekkie style nit-pick. All I think is that if the writers are going to design a silly plot mechanic or MacGuffin then they shouldn't retrospectively try to come up with a coherent explanation, rather they should just get on with telling the story. | |
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| | 5/10 | |
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