Buffy the Vampire Slayer Forums

I have watched 'as you were' again and tbh it bugged me. It made no sense and seemed to have raised more questions than answers.

Spike is supposed to be 'The doctor' a powerful international weapons (?) dealer for terrorists (or something like that) who harboured demonic eggs. Now we only know that Spike had the eggs downstairs in his cave, not that he was actually the doctor.At it's worst it shows that Spike is a shady guy in shady buisness and could well be holding the eggs for a 'friend'. Not that he is the doctor.

1. one of the main reason I had problems in believing he was the doctor is that he had no phone...and there is no powerful international dealer in the world without a phone! And he sure as hell aint making long distance phone calls from a pay phone.

2.Spike is very much reviled/hated/disrespected in the demon world. With the exception of Clem and maybe 1 or 2 demons, he has very little friends.

3. The name 'The Doctor'.. why would he name himself this? Didn't The Doc push him off the scaffolding, bleed Dawn- Incidents that resulted in Buffy's death.

4. The demons are extremly dangerous and can wipe out the whole of Sunnydale- why was he sitting calmly on his bed reading a book...More importantly why weren't the eggs frozen? isn't this how The Docter is supposedly reported to have been storing them? Instead the eggs are sitting happily down stairs waiting to hatch.

4.11: Why would he WANT to wipe out sunnydale?

5. Why was there no follow up- Spike in trouble- in debt over the destroyed eggs?

Spike really needed the money, so that would explain his little habit for harboring strange demonic things.

It's pretty obvious since "Tabula Rasa" that Spike was doing things pretty risky and unknown to our and Buffy's eyes.

In Sunnydale you don't need telephones to do dealings. You usually do it by word of mouth. That's how it's been done since Season 2 for the show. And when you hear it by word, word travels, especially to human and nonhumans alike, because there's a fascination.

"The Doctor" really makes sense in a way, since "Doc" sort of did the weird dealings in Season 5, so maybe the name Spike thought he'd use the name for his own alter ego character, plus if Buffy got word of such a person she wouldn't automatically assume it was just Spike.

That's all I have for now.

My guess is Spike was not the doctor, he was just holding the eggs for the real doctor. He probably did it for the money, I mean how else was he paying for all the stuff in his crypt. Spike not storing the eggs correctly was just incompetence, I seriously don't think he would have put Buffy and Dawn in that much danger.

I also don't think he would name himself after doc, it would remind him too much of his pathetic attempt to save Dawn.

Sorry, but I think there is a bit of over-thinking here.

Let's start with the facts:

1) Riley says "Money's been exchanged. There's a dealer in town, calls himself the, The Doctor."

That is all that we know. A "dealer" is just someone who has a product that other people want. Being in Sunnydale, Spike would have an easy time finding the occasional demon egg (he did this for Dawn in Forever if you'll recall) so perhaps he sold them occasionally to interested parties. He was not trying to take over the world, he just wanted cash. No dedicated phone means that it's harder to trace you, and it's not needed for something like this. I've known a couple "dealers" in my sordid past. One was "professional" and had a cell phone. The other sometimes got a little extra and sold it to friends or acquaintances. The first one is now in jail, the second is now teaching High School. The moral is that phones are not necessary for illegal transactions, and can even be a liability.

This all fits in just fine with Spike being hated by the demons. He's killing them and/or stealing their eggs, after all.

Fact 2) Riley says "We're going to need more weapons. Spike screwed up. You didn't keep them frozen, did you... Doctor?"

Clearly Spike was just incompetent here. He didn't plan to destroy Sunnydale, and he certainly didn't plan to destroy his own crypt. He just didn't know that you had to keep the eggs frozen. Heck, he may not have known how dangerous the creatures were. He might have simply heard that they were valuable, made a contact through the black market, and arranged to sell them without ever knowing or caring what the buyer would use them for. Remember, he's still evil and soulless at this point.

The Doctor was never reported to be freezing the eggs, Riley just assumed that he would be because that is how it should be done. Also, he was never called powerful or well connected, just a "dealer".

As for the name, it may well have no connection at all to "Doc" from season 5. And if it did, then perhaps Spike used it (consciously or not) as a reminder of his failure. Think of Malcolm Reynolds calling his ship "Serenity".

And as for not getting in trouble/debt: if we assume that Spike has learned a little more about dealing with underworld/black market types since Tabula Rasa, then we can assume that everything was handled through middlemen. So that leaves the simple task of shifting blame to (or killing) the middleman and everything's fine.

Anyway, in the final analysis I see no reason to think that Spike wasn't "The Doctor." It makes sense in relation to the storyline and to the character, and I can see no contradictions anywhere.