A demon called Eyghon which possesses dead or unconscious people arrives in Sunnydale. It’s after Giles, who helped to summon it many years ago during a rebellious phase in his college years. He regrets his dark past when Eyghon puts both Jenny and Buffy in danger.
| Airdate: | 10 November 1997 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer: | Dean Batali + Rob Des Hotel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Director: | Bruce Seth Green | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cast: |
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Xander: "A bonus day at class, plus Cordelia? Mix in a little rectal surgery and it's my best day ever."
Behind the Scenes Trivia
Possessed Jenny
Robia LaMorte said at a Buffy Convention (The Harvest, London, June 2003) that she didn’t like playing Possessed-Jenny in The Dark Age because of her religious beliefs, but that it was fun to be sexy for a while. She also hated playing the First Evil in Amends and really didn’t want to come back unless her character was good.
Sid Vicious
In The Dark Age, we see a photo of a young Rupert Giles holding a bass guitar. The production crew faked the photo by superimposing his head onto a photo of Sid Vicious.
TV-14
The Dark Age was the first episode since Prophecy Girl to be rated TV-14.
Cast and Crew Trivia
Stuart McLean
Stuart McLean, who played Philip Henry in The Dark Age, also played ‘X-Ray Tech’ in several episodes of ER. He has appeared in episodes of Nip/Tuck, Silk Stockings and Babylon 5.
Character Trivia
Deirdre Page
Deirdre was a member of the student chaos-worshipping group that Giles belonged to in his youth. She was killed and possessed by the demon Eyghon during which time she murdered her former friend Philip Henry.
Philip Henry
Philip was a friend of Giles when he was student, who also helped to raise the demon Eyghon. He was killed by Deirdre Page, while her body became possessed by Eyghon. He in turn became possessed by the demon and transferred Eyghon over to Jenny Calendar whilst she was unconscious in The Dark Age.
Randall
Randall was a friend of Giles in his youth. He induced possession by Eyghon one night, but lost possession of the demon and it killed him. Giles told this story in The Dark Age.
Continuity
Dark side erupting
In The Dark Age, Xander says, “No one can be wound as straight narrow as Giles without a dark side erupting.” This can also be applied to (early) Willow in a way. She is so shy, and up-tight, but evenutally tries to end the world in the episode Grave.
Giles and Magic
Giles casts a spell against Catherine Madison in The Witch. He says this is his first but we discover in The Dark Age that he has a history using magic. It’s the first time we see him using witchcraft.
Giles’s place
The first time we see Giles’s home is in The Dark Age. In Band Candy, a courtyard outside Giles’s apartment can be seen where there once were stairs. His place became the focal point for the Scoobies in season four. The final time we see Giles’ apartment in the series is in the episode Forever.
Slamming doors
Buffy and Giles both slam a door in the face of the other at some point in the series: Giles does it to her in The Dark Age and Buffy does it to him in Lies My Parents Told Me.
Uncle Rory
Xander’s Uncle Rory, who was a “stodgy taxidermist” by day and at night it was “booze, whores and fur flying”. Mentioned in The Dark Age, The Zeppo (when he lent Xander his car), Fear, Itself, Gone and As You Were. We finally got to meet Uncle Rory when he was a guest at Xander’s wedding in Hell’s Bells - and he didn’t disappoint. He pretended to be electrocuted by a toaster and hit on a waitress at the wedding, pretending she was his date. He then explained the finer points of taxidermy to her.
Music Trivia
Mythology Trivia
Eyghon
The demon Eyghon came to Sunnydale to find Giles in The Dark Age. It possesses victims who wear his mark as a tattoo and attempts to kill them. The demon can only pass from one unconscious or dead person to another. Angel defeated Eyghon by taking the demon into his body, which fought with the demon already there. Eyghon is also known as the Sleepwalker.
References
And the rest is silence
In The Dark Age, Giles says, “And the rest is silence” after Buffy turns off the music she was exercising to. The same line was spoken by Merrick, Buffy’s Watcher in the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer as he lay dying. Buffy (Kristy Swanson) also says the line to Lothos towards the end of the movie when she realises what it means.
Anywhere But Here
‘Anywhere But Here’ is a fantasy game where each person says where they’d rather be. In The Dark Age, Buffy, Xander and Willow play this game in an attempt to pretend they’re not in school. We discover that Buffy wants her feet massaged by Gavin Rossdale of band Bush; Willow prefers the idea of dinner in Florence with actor John Cusack; while Xander (always) wants to go out with Amy Yip to the water park.
E.M. Forster
In The Dark Age, Giles lent Jenny Calendar a first edition of a novel by British author E.M. Forster (1879-1970). His most famous works include A Room With A View, Howard’s End and A Passage To India.
Lost Weekend
Buffy says to Giles in The Dark Age, “I care from you Lost Weekend-ing in your apartment!” The Lost Weekend (1945) is a film about the effects of alcoholism on a man’s life. It was based on a novel of the same name by Charles R. Jackson. The movie won Academy Awards for best picture, best actor (Ray Milland), best director (Billy Wilder) and best screenplay (Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett).
When Faith is channel-surfing in Angel’s apartment in Sanctuary, one of the films seen is The Lost Weekend.
The Bay City Rollers
Giles reveals in The Dark Age that he’s a fan of The Bay City Rollers. They were a 1970s band, famous for wearing tartan. Their biggest hit was ‘Saturday Night’.
The Prisoner
In Halloween, Ethan leaves behind a note on the counter of the costume shop which says, “Be seeing you.” When Eyghon leaves Giles’ apartment after first possessing Ms. Calendar in The Dark Age, it also says, “Be seeing you.” The phrase is a reference to 60s cult paranoia drama The Prisoner.
The Sound of Music
After being possessed by Eyghon, Jenny says to Giles in The Dark Age, “I mean, I’m not running around, wind in my hair, ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ fine, but… I’m coping.” This is a quote from the title song of the musical The Sound of Music (1959) written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. It was made into a movie starring Julie Andrews in 1965.
Buffy also mentions the song in Beauty and the Beasts when she says, “Three-dimensional, Sensurround, The Hills Are Alive…”
In That Vision Thing, Lorne says, “You’re Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”
Goofs
Seen at 02.27 minutes:
Deirdre Page, who has been taken over by Eyghon, has lots of corpse-like make-up on her face and hands, but not on her legs.
Seen at 13.40 minutes:
When Giles calls everyone involved with Eyghon, he crosses out a girl’s name and puts his glasses down near the notebook. The camera zooms in on the list of names and the glasses are now on top of the notebook.
Seen at 17.13 minutes:
Cordelia tells the others that she saw Giles in the library with the police talking about a homicide. But, she came in after the conversation and left before anything else could be said. How could she know what they were talking about?
Seen at 21.46 minutes:
When Phillip escapes from the cage in the library, Buffy goes to kick him with her left foot but in a quick cut to the next shot, she’s kicking with her right foot.
Seen at 35.44 minutes:
When Ethan uses sulphuric acid to burn the tattoo off his arm, steam comes off his skin before any liquid leaves the bottle.
Seen at 37.14 minutes:
Jenny/Eyghon pushes Buffy against a dresser with the table and Buffy falls to the floor. When Giles tells Buffy to leave, they show her standing up against the dresser as if she never fell.
Quotes
Xander: "Giles lived for school. He's actually still bitter that there are only twelve grades."
Buffy: "I'm not gonna lie to you. It was scary. I'm so used to you being a grownup, and then I find out that you're a person."
Xander: "A bonus day at class, plus Cordelia? Mix in a little rectal surgery and it's my best day ever."
Jenny: "Did anyone ever tell you you're kind of a sexy fuddy-duddy?"
Buffy: "Giles? Who counts tardiness as, like, the eighth deadly sin?"