Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book, Season Three, Volume 1 (v. 1) [Hardcover]

Various Authors (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2003

The seventh in Pocket Books' collection of complete Buffy scripts brings us to Season Three, widely regarded by many fans as the show's best-ever season. For several years now Buffy the Vampire Slayer has showcased the best of the television scriptwriters art. "Writing as good as Hill Street Blues, The Simpsons, or...Alan Bleasdale at his best" said The Guardian when the show first aired in the UK in 1999. "The dialogue unvaryingly slick and witty...the storylines brilliantly laid out" said The Independent in 2002. "The series has hardly wavered in the calibre of its scripts", affirms the Evening Standard. Season Three was a pivotal period in Buffy's development, introducing a major new character, Faith, the rogue Slayer; taking the show in a new and more adult direction; all the while maintaining a sublime balance between darkness, humour and angst. The seven episodes featured here run the full gamut of drama and comedy, from 'Anne', 'Dead Man's Party' and 'Faith, Hope and Trick', to 'Homecoming', 'Band Candy' and 'Revelations'.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074346835X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743468350
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,868,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More cut dialogue, inside jokes, and "BtVS" shooting scripts, July 14, 2003

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Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book, Season Three, Volume 1 (Paperback)

Given that I already have all of season three of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD, it is a legitimate question to ask why I feel the need to pick up "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book, Season Three, Volume 1" (along with the its half dozen predecessors and the "Once More With Feeling" script). My answer would be now that "BtVS" has sailed off into television history and Sunnydale is just a big old hole in the ground, if we are never going to have any more new episodes to watch, then we might as well go back and milk every last vestige of enjoyment out of the old ones.

The sources of enjoyment are twofold. First, these teleplays represent the original shooting scripts for the first six episodes from the third season. That means you get not only typos and misattributions, but dialogue and even full scenes that were not included in the final broadcast version of the show because they were cut due to length (but if you read along while you watch the episodes on DVD you will notice that sometimes there are additional establishing shots, a sure sign that the episode was running short instead of long). Second, there are stage directions and if there is anybody on the face of the earth whose stage directions you would want to read in a television script those would be those that escape from the fertile mind of Joss Whedon. True, he only writes one of the episodes of the half-dozen collected here, but it is well known that he is involved in editing the rest of the scripts.

Included in this volume are the scripts for: "Anne" by Joss Whedon, "Dead Man's party" by Marti Noxon, "Faith, Hope & Trick" by David Greenwalt, "Beauty and the Beasts" by Marti Noxon, "Homecoming" by David Grenwalt, and "Band Candy" by Jane Espenson. If you do not know that these are the episodes where Buffy comes back from her adventures in Los Angeles where she fled after killing Angel, that she receives a less than warm welcome from the Scoobies, and that Faith arrives in Sunnydale, then the final question is why are you looking at this volume? These shooting scripts are meant to be enjoy by those who have these episodes memorized, not newbies.