1.8 I, Robot... You, Jane

Plot Synopsis (Hide)

The computer science teacher, Jenny Calendar, is helping the techno-phobic Giles with a database for the school library. A couple of her students, Dave and Fritz are cataloguing some new books, and Willow is even scanning some of them directly into the computer. With one ancient-looking tome, the words leave the page as she scans, but she is concentrating on the results on the screen, and doesn't notice.

Later in the week, Willow confides to Buffy that she has met someone. Buffy questions her excitedly, and is startled to discover that Willow has no idea what her new friend Malcolm looks like - it turns out she met him on the internet. While they chat, we see a web-cam image of them, and Buffy's school record appears on the computer screen in front of Fritz with the words "Watch Her".

Xander and Buffy are a little concerned about Willow, but decide they are probably over-reacting. However, when Willow starts uncharacteristically cutting class, Buffy's concern increases, and she goes to talk to Dave. She asks about the possibility of tracing the origins of an email, and Dave is initially intrigued by the idea, but when he realises why she wants to know, he tells her to leave Willow alone. Suspicious, Buffy follows Dave after school to an industrial estate on the edge of town, where he enters premises branded "CRD". As he talks to some people wearing lab coats, a security camera pans over to where Buffy is watching and we see another message appear on Fritz's computer screen - "Kill Her".

The next day, Giles is debating the relative merits of computers versus books with Ms Calendar, and she notices the book with the empty pages. Giles says nothing, but looks rather worried. Later, Dave tells Buffy that Willow wants to see her in the girls' locker room. She looks sceptical, realising something is not right, but goes in anyway. Fritz has laid a deadly trap in the shower room, and Buffy is just about to be electrocuted, but at the last minute Dave runs in and shouts a warning, and she is able to leap to safety. Dave runs away, and we see him talking to a screen in the computer lab, saying he won't kill. The computer screen shows a suicide note being typed in, and as Dave backs away nervously, we see Fritz waiting behind him.

In the library, Giles shows the empty book to Buffy and Xander, and explains that books like that were sometimes used to trap the souls of demons, which would remain there harmlessly unless the pages were read aloud. Willow's scanner seems to have released one into the computer network, and Giles recognises it as Moloch the Corrupter, a deadly demon who seduces the impressionable with promises of love, power and knowledge. Buffy goes in search of Willow, but instead finds Dave's body in the computer lab, with the suicide note pinned to his shirt.

At her home, Willow answers the door, and is grabbed by Fritz who presses a pad of chloroform to her face. Arriving soon after, Buffy and Xander find she is gone, and assuming she has probably been taken to CRD, they go in pursuit. Meanwhile, Giles realises that although he has found the correct binding ritual for Moloch, he doesn't understand how to apply it to something in a computer, so he enlists the aid of Ms. Calendar. She seems remarkably unsurprised at his revelation that there is a demon in the Internet, saying there had been portents for days!

Willow wakes up in a lab, and is welcomed by "Malcolm" who now has a robot body. Breaking in to the premises, Buffy and Xander are spotted by Malcolm/Moloch and trapped in a corridor with gas seeping in while, back in the library, Giles and Ms. Calendar begin the binding ritual. Moloch is grateful to Willow for giving him life, but now she knows what he is, Willow rejects him. He reaches to kill her, but begins to feel the effect of the spell and staggers back in pain.

Buffy finally breaks out of the trap, and rushes in. Unable to fight a metal robot, she grabs Willow and they run. The binding ritual is soon complete, and Moloch is no longer in the internet, but Giles finds he is not back in the book as they had expected - instead he has been trapped in the robot body. In fury, he comes after Buffy, Willow and Xander. Although Buffy cannot overpower him physically, she manages to trick him into punching an electricity junction box. Sparks fly, and the robot body explodes into fragments.

Highlights

• Buffy and Xander getting worked up about their concern for Willow, culminating in Buffy's "Willow, axe-murdered by a circus freak!"
• All of the "computers vs books" conversations between Giles and Jenny. The chemistry between them, adversarial though it may be at this point, is already obvious.
• Jenny's description of herself as a "techno-pagan" when Giles says that computer science hardly lends itself to activities such as the casting of bones. Her next speech, "Wrong and wrong, snobby. You think the realm of the mystical is limited to ancient texts and relics? That bad old science made the magic go away? The divine exists in cyberspace same as out here." is sublime!
• Willow's break-up speech to Malcolm/Moloch while she attacks him with a fire-extinguisher
• Giles's "knowledge should be smelly" speech.

Firsts

First time we meet Jenny Calendar, who soon becomes a fairly regular character

First time a pop-culture reference is referred to as such

First time we see inside Willow's house

Pop Culture References

The name of the episode is a mixture of two references. Firstly, to the book "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov, an inspired collection of short stories about robots and their interactions with humans. The name also parodies the catch-phrase "Me Tarzan, You Jane" made famous by the Tarzan legend and popularized by the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

When Willow mentions the seemingly incomprehensible fact that she doesn't know what her new friend looks like, Buffy responds with "No, wait, I'm good at these. Does it involve a midget and a block of ice?"
She is referring to at least two famous lateral thinking problems, although there is little point in describing the problems, as Buffy has given both punch-lines away by her comment!

Buffy: "My spider sense is tingling" - does this really need explanation??
Ok, ok. This refers to the Spiderman character of Marvel comics, a newspaper photographer who, after being bitten by a genetically altered spider, developed super powers, including the ability to sense danger approaching.

Xander suggests that Dave's apparent suicide may have been achieved "with a little help from my friends" quoting a song of the same name by The Beatles.

When Giles suggest a computer virus could be used to disable Moloch, Jenny tells hims he has "seen way too many movies". This could be a reference to Independence Day, a film released in 1997, the same year as this episode, in which one of the characters miraculously defeats a malevolent alien race by introducing a virus into their computer systems. It could also be a more generic referece, as this seems to be a fairly common TV and movie theme, despite the fact that such separately developed computer systems would, in all likelihood, be completely incompatible.

Comments

We don't actually learn Jenny Calendar's full name in this episode, and on screen she is referred to throughout simply as "Ms. Calendar". In fact, according to the original transcripts, at this point her first name was going to be "Nikki". In the quotes section, I have referred to her as Jenny, as that is how she will be familiar to fans of the show.

What We Learn

• Giles doesn't like computers. No, wait, we already knew that!
• Willow lives with her Mom and Dad, who don't seem to be home much.
• Jenny is a techno-pagan.

Nitpicks

• When Willow is supposed to be scanning in the text from a book, she just runs the scanner down the centre of the page - surely she's missing a lot of stuff out??
• When Buffy's record first appears on the screen, her date of birth is shown as 24th Octbober 1980, however when the same record is displayed on Fritz's screen, it has changed to 6th May 1979.