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:: EXTENDED BUFFY IS MUSIC TO THE EARS ::

THE LONG AWAITED Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode Once More with Feeling aired on UPN on 6th November in a time slot spanning 68 minutes, with the story itself lasting eight minutes more than standard, forcing follow-on show Roswell into a curtailed 58 minute segment and impacting rival Fox Network's launch of 24. Featuring a demon called Sweet, who has the power to make anyone. reveal their innermost thoughts through song, Sarah Michelle Gellar reveals it to be "my big emotional turning point for the season". This will be the only time UPN will air the episode in this form, subsequent screenings to be edited down, although it is highly likely it will play in full on the eventual DVD. At this point it is too early to determine how Sky One or BBC2 will treat it when it comes to their screenings next year. Apparently the overlong story was not something planned at the outset, but had to be negotiated with UPN when it was discovered how severe the editing would need to be to fit the usual hour slot. According to both Joss Whedon and composer Christophe Beck, there are plans to issue a sound track of the 16 tracks on CD, although Marti Noxon says it may be a while as Twentieth Century Fox wishes it to be released on its own label rather than on Joss Whedon's Mutant Enemy.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, quoted on website The Watcher's Web, says, "I'm not a singer, and I hated every moment of it. It took something like 19 hours of singing and 17 hours of dancing in-between shooting four other episodes," while Michelle Trachtenberg reveals, "I am more nervous about singing than dancing. The singing was a little bit nervewracking but I went to some singing lessons... and it was very much fun." Anthony Stewart Head, who makes one of his recurring appearances as Giles, was the happiest, having already sung in Season Four episodes Where the Wild Things are and Restless and having previously appeared in a number of stage musical. Everyone appearing in the episode has to sing, including Marti Noxon, who makes a cameo. Christophe Beck claims, "The episode is not for everybody... but I've seen it, and I happen to think it's a thing of brilliance. I consider it an honour to have been involved," while Whedon himself says, "It's the most fun I've ever had... Boy, after all this effort, I sure hope you don't all hate the thundering crap out of the show. That'd be oops."

Regarding the season to date, Marti Noxon told Sci Fi Wire she has been trying to strike a balance between dark and light. "We're in sort of a dark space with Buffy, but I think we're doing a lot of funny stuff too. We're trying to find that balance between farce and humour and some of the darker issues that we're going into this year," she says. "I think we're striking a pretty good balance so far. The villains help that, because they're a little bit lighter this season. At least they are for now. The thing is, Joss is really smart, and he is the one who came up with the idea for them, and they're just a very different direction. So it's like we're not trying to top last year's run, you know, trying to top a god. We're just going in a really different direction, and our characters are a little more relatable."

Viewers have been wondering why, if Buffy was dead, another Slayer was not sent to take her place, as happened previously after Season One with Kendra. "We actually have an answer for that," says Noxon. "It's a technicality. The reason is that when she died the first time, a Slayer was called, so she's already had her replacement Slayer. It doesn't happen twice. You only get one, and Buffy already did... It would take Faith dying for another Slayer to be called and since we can't get [Eliza Dushku] on the show, the odds of that happening aren't big."

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