365 Days-Day 56

WWBD? part 6

Season 1 Episode 8- I Robot You Jane

We open with a scene in the 1400's, in Italy. A demon promises everyone's wildest dreams if they promise to love only him. Once they give their pledge, he kills them.  A group of monks bind him to a book with a spell.
Present day, and we see Willow transferring copies of old books on demonology into the computer, unknowingly releasing the demon back into the world. This is the intro of the character Miss Calendar who becomes Giles' love interest for the rest of this season and half of the next.
We then see a sentence appear on the computer screen that says "Where Am I?"

The next scene, we see Willow walking through the school  a goofy grin on her face, as Buffy comes running up to her, asking where she had been the night before because she could not get a hold of her. We learn a full week has past since she scanned the book, and the grin is because she has been chatting online for days with some mysterious guy.
They walk into the computer class, and we see one of the other students online talking to himself saying that he'll do anything.  Then the teacher, Miss Calendar comes into the room and tells Buffy to leave. But before she does, she tries to warn Willow that having an online boyfriend might be dangerous. Unknown to them, the demon has taken control of the whole computer system in the school, and has checked the files of all the students, targeting Buffy. We then see another student get a message flash on his computer screen telling him to watch Buffy's every move.
We then see a random student working on their homework, only to find that someone has screwed around with their thesis report on Nazi Germany.
Xander then teases Willow about the new online boyfriend, showing some jealousy. Willow starts to skip school and peppers her sentences with "Malcom said you would feel this way."   Buffy then goes to talk to the first student that we saw talking to the computer, asking for him to track someone for her. When he learns that she wants him to hunt down Malcom, he gets weird. Buffy then tells Giles that something is wrong and he tells her to just trail the kids.
Buffy starts to follow the one student, and ends up at a computer factory. We then see the second student receive a live video feed from a security camera telling him to kill Buffy.

Back at the library, Buffy,Xander and Giles about the whole thing and we learn that the factory is suppose to be closed. Buffy and Xander decide to stake-out the place.
We then see Willow once again online with Malcom, who makes a comment about Buffy's past school records. This clues Willow into the fact that he's not all he's cracked up to be and starts to feel panicked.
Back in the library, Giles and Miss Calendar are arguing about how important computers really are. She then starts to flip through the pages of the book Willow had scanned and asks why he has a diary in the library? Giles then looks at the cover and walks away.
Meanwhile, the first student that Buffy had followed, tracks her down and tells her that Willow is in the girl's locker room looking for her. Buffy heads there and finds the second student tries to kill her. She survives, but the first computer student is considered a traitor and killed. Malcom has written a suicide note on the computer. Giles then confides to Buffy and Xander that he thinks Malcom is Moloch, who had been inside the book.
They then realize that the demon is in the computer system and try to delete the files, but are unable to. They see an image of him, and realize that he's able to do more damage online then if he were in the flesh.
They split up and start hunting for Willow. Buffy goes first to the computer labs and finds the dead body of the first student hanging with the suicide note. Buffy then tells Giles to get Miss Calendar to help him with getting the demon bound again, while she goes to Willow's. But Willow has been kidnapped by the second student.
We hear the news saying that criminals over the planet have been mistakenly let out their profiles wiped clean.  Giles tries to tell Miss Calendar about the demon online, and she just stands there saying she already knows.  We learn then that she is a Techno-Pagan, which seems to relax Giles.
We then see Willow in the factory, as a sort of sacrifice, and see Moloch in his now robot form.

Buffy and Xander break in before the sacrifice can be made, while back at the library, Miss Calendar goes online and calls up her coven. They form the Circle of Kayless, to help bound Moloch back into his book. Only, he doesn't end up back in the book, he stayed in the robot body. Buffy outsmarts him, and gets him to punch a fuse box, and gets fried.

We then see Giles visiting Miss Calendar in the computer labs, and she asks him why he doesn't like computers, and he tells her they have no smell. Smell being one of the things that effects memory.
We then see Buffy, Willow and Xander talking about how they have all managed to date some sort of demon, and that they are all three doomed to bad relationships.


The themes in this episode vary from be careful what you wish for you just might get it, to you never know who you are really dealing with.
We also have the foreshadowing of many of their ways of dealing with the demons as a group, not just the friends of the Slayer, but as honest heroes themselves.
Many of the side conversations about computers were ground breaking, when you look at the episode all these years later. (this would have been 1997 when the episode first aired.)