Whedon: More Buffy in the future

[Viking Bastard]

I found Season 6 to be refreshing in it's darkness, it's about growing up, but I think
Season 7 flunked. Season 7, to me, seemed to be about passing the torch to the
next generation, but somehow it lost it's mark. The season started out really light
hearted, much like the first seasons, but now with Buffy and The Scoobies in the
role of the Giles/Angel/etc-like mentors and the Recruits in Scoobies' shoes. It just
never materialized and went into a more gloomy serious direction. I think if they
had maintained that campy tone throughout the season it would have been much
better. A better, more satisfying conclusion to Buffy's Journey. She went through
the fire and dark times and came out stronger.

I think this is what they were aiming at, but missed.

I liked the finale, though.

 

[drothgery]

I actually liked Andrew (but season six and seven for me are among some of the best episode wise). How can we not like the only character in the series who played dungeons and dragons.

Xander clearly has played (and so has that multi-millionaire from Angel). And Amanda the potential-Slayer didn't seem at all confused by the D&D-esque board game that she, Giles, Andrew, Xander, and Giles were playing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

that was the part I didn't like about his character evolution. :\ I mentally maintain that the two chicks were slayers and he was just escorting them somewhere as part of his watcher duties.

I think that's probably true, myself. Him appearing with the women was clearly just a gag bit IMO.

 

[JimAde]

I think that's probably true, myself. Him appearing with the women was clearly just a gag bit IMO.

And don't forget that Andrew is allegedly in the closet. He was obviously trying to hide his preference when he was with his friends. Maybe he was just putting on a show.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I found Season 6 to be refreshing in it's darkness, it's about growing up, but I think Season 7 flunked. Season 7, to me, seemed to be about passing the torch to the
next generation, but somehow it lost it's mark.

I tend to agree. I really enjoyed Season 6, myself, though a lot of people seem to have objected to its dark tone. In the context of the series as a whole, though, I think it is even stronger than it was when it aired.

Season 7... meh. I thought it started out very strong, and I know part of my disappointment comes from the fact that I was subjecting myself to spoilers at the time (stupid me!)

Like you say, though, I got the sense the theme was "passing the torch", yet it too quickly lost its focus that way and found itself centered on Buffy too heavily for such a theme. If it was supposed to be about her learning to share the responsibility, she should have, and we should have seen the pain and reluctance from her to let that responsibility go. Instead, we got too many episodes of lectures and Buffy getting beat up and recovering to beat the baddies herself. (Not saying we should have had less Buffy, mind, but more of her angst over turning over the responsibility. I don't know, maybe they felt they'd done that in Season 3 with Faith- in which case, why do it again.)

Plus there were questions left unanswered, chiefly "why did the First Evil pick now to attack? What exactly did it mean when it said there was a weakness in the Slayer line?" Despite answers outside of the show (fan and official) this was something that really needed to be addressed in the show itself.

Haven't picked up S7 on DVD yet, so maybe it will work better when viewed in its entirety. Season 3 was that way for me, for sure.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

I found this over at E! Online:


"And Good News for Angel Fans! Amy said Joss Whedon has spoken with her about resurrecting her role as Illyria. 'He has mentioned it a couple of times,' she told me. 'I mean, the last time, I talked to him a couple weeks ago and said that I had heard that Tim Minear was gonna write and direct the Spike movie, the Spike-Illyria movie, so he said that they want to do that still. I think he's just overwhelmed a bit right now with the press for Serenity and everything!' She said she and Joss have stayed close, and he gave 'the best gift ever' to her eight-month-old bundle of joy, Jack: 'He had a woman come in and teach him how to sleep through the night.' Always a miracle worker, that Joss."

 

[glass]

Or, heaven forfend, he might do something in the Buffyverse without re-using characters. Because we all know that Joss lacks for imagination, and would need those old characters as a crutch for his work...

I'm sure Joss could come up with something great without using any existing character, but selling it to the networks might bw a bit tricky.


glass.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm sure Joss could come up with something great without using any existing character, but selling it to the networks might bw a bit tricky.

There have been plenty of times that Hollywood wanted to go with a more youthful version of a franchise. Attempted adaptations of genre material into mainstream Hollywood projects are rife with such stories.

By the time a new Buffyverse TV series were to get on the air, it would be the 2006-2007 TV season, at earliest. More realistically, it'd be a spring 2007 replacement series (just like Buffy was, so long ago) or 2007-2008 TV season show. Three years after Angel went off the air is an eternity in TV land, especially with the huge glut of genre shows on TV this year, thanks to the runaway success of Lost, which looks unlikely to crash and burn this year.

While I can certainly see an Angel/Illyria TV movie for, say, Sci-Fi, I don't see executives greenlighting a new series with any sort of real links to a show that aired three or more years ago, and probably on a different network. Network execs aren't in the business of selling someone else's DVDs.

More likely, I can see them saying "yes, well, we like the Buffy vibe, and you could certainly have those folks on as guest stars during sweeps, but we'd like to start fresh." Joss' ending to Buffy works brilliantly in this regard, as the possibilities for a world of Potentials becoming Slayers without Watchers or with the help of neuvo Watchers who don't have the support of a world-spanning organization are endless.