|
Virgin have been publishing
guides to what the BBC would probably call "cult TV" for several
years, and given Buffy's success in the UK, perhaps
this book was inevitable.
Slayer doesn't deviate
too much from the usual Virgin formula, with each episode in the first three
seasons (as well as the movie and the unscreened pilot)
analysed over various categories. Whilst some of these cover similar
ground to the ones in The Watcher's Guide, the
tendency for them to be ludicrously named rapidly becomes annoying, as does
their over-reliance on exclamation marks. . The concentration on the things such as skirt-lengths (or
otherwise) soon becomes rather trying as well. Awesome!
it ain't.
Admittedly, there is useful
information in some of them, but because of the relatively low episode count
compared to series covered in some of Virgin's earlier guides, the space
devoted to each episode has to been increased to compensate. So not
only are there more categories than usual, but whereas other guides might
have highlighted just one or two lines of cracking dialogue, Slayer
seems to regurgitate whole chunks of the script. It's also apparent
that merely taking an episodic approach isn't always the best. Want to
know what the songs in a particular episode are and it's fine but if you're
trying to track down which episode a particular track featured in and the
approach taken in The Watcher's Guide proves to be the
superior one (and one which works for both methods of looking up a song).
Two other
features may start to buy you after a while as well. Although spotting
continuity flaws and goofs can be fun, this approach isn't confined to the
show itself.
So, for example, Buffy
apparently airs in the UK on a channel called simply Sky.
Maybe it is pedantic, but when the author gleefully picks up on any errors
within Buffy, anyone reading Slayer
is entitled to point out that it actually goes out on Sky One.
(Although Virgin's guides tend to make a habit of getting channel info wrong
since in The Avengers Programme Guide, the same author
repeated the old myth that Thames TV was formed by a merger
of ABC and Associated-Rediffusion -see here
for the truth.)
The book's other slightly
annoying feature is the tendency to throw in facts that aren't really
relevant. So, for example, some of the pop-cultural references picked
up are pretty dubious (such as the possible reference to Danger
Man when the author then acknowledges that it wasn't even called that in
the US, so any intended reference is probably unlikely) but appear to be
included because the author wishes to try and impress us a little.
As well as the episodes
themselves, there are a couple of short essays and a look at Buffy
on the Internet. Planet Buffy is one of the three UK sites featured,
although the e-mail I received from Sky's James Baker saying that he was
bringing back Buffy is listed under another site.
As a handily-sized reference
for annoying stuff like cast details, Slayer proves
useful, but the approach taken (you can almost imagine the author watching Buffy
frame-by-frame in an attempt to complete his checklist for each episode)
prove an irritation when looking up anything else.
Back to
the top
|
