Tell us about the alien monster.
My father is an astrophysicist at Harvard and he has disowned me based on that episode (laughs).
No, he actually just requested a tape of so he could play it in his lecture. It isn’t based on anything. I think the mythology came out of Jane Espenson’s brain.
I think the alien mythology is just about myth, and I think it was Jane Espenson,’s idea - those specific phenomena occurring- just a blob monster.
Goo as well.
Goo, dangerous goo. [It’s a] slug monster from outer space. Yeah, I said it.
I think what’s interesting about that [episode] to me is there’s two different kinds of life-threatening things happening. Every episode of Buffy has something life-threatening - or it wouldn’t be interesting. But what happens when you have a blob-like slug monster that can suffocate you with slime, and then you have a tumour?
They’re both terrifying and they’re different kinds of terror. You don’t want the slug monster to be less scary, but there’s something really scary about our real monsters and the things that could really happen to us. I think it is a delicate balance, but you have to keep them within the same reality where both of those things are frightening and they can cross paths and play off each other.
