Has any character returned to life more effectively than Buffy Summers?

Has any character returned to life more effectively than Buffy Summers?

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I will quote this from a Canadian on miata.net who has an American business partner:

"Regarding the disease that must never be mentioned: While on the road, my US business partner failed to check in with his daily call, but I was too busy to reply. On the way home he called in to tell the story. We have been trying to get him to vaccinate for the first year, and by that summer he broke down and made an appointment. Before he could get there, he came down with full blown symptoms. Has been on oxygen at night ever since. Has been having dizzy spells and occasionally blacked out, so they put a heart monitor on him. He was cleaning up reports at the office 2 Saturdays ago when he had another spell. The phone rang and he was told to say put as they had a room for him at ER RIGHT NOW. When they had seen his monitor (downloaded to them earlier) they saw his heart had stopped for nearly 15 seconds on more than one occasion. He has a pacemaker now. Message: DON"T FOOL AROUND WITH YOUR HEALTH, take the facts as you can get them seriously. What you do or don't do can have serious consequences."

Heart stoppage for 15 seconds at a time several times in one night? Forget fiction, this guy must hold some kind of record for number of times died and brought back to life unattended.
 
Thanks for these very diverse and interesting replies, with loads of great examples. One thing I think with Buffy is it did well to bring her back with such tragic consequences and depression when she'd already died before, and she largely felt like she was in a better place by the end of the subsequent episode. It could so easily have gone wrong!
 
Doctor Who; his death/regeneration soft-reboots the show in a very inventive way and keeps it somewhat fresh and entertaining for the audience.

Though the 'quality' of the deaths tends to vary, ranging from the tragic or the heroic to the lame. Personally I like the 5th Doctor's death, because it was so dramatic and selfless and it was for his companion, not the world.

I also liked the 9th Doctor's death, probably the only one of the revival series that didn't seem self-indulgent.
 
NotASlayer
NotASlayer
The Doctor Who invention of regeneration in order to deal with William Hartnell's poor health really was a work of genius.
Tenth Doctor was a good meditation on the life of the Doctor, and him coming to terms with the world surviving him. Everything else is having a 1-Up Mushroom.
 
Well..... Buffy's resurrection and reintegration did go wrong. I thought Whedon and Noxon and Co did a bad job of it. I could see Buffy the Trauma Queen, not, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Whedon and Noxon forgot that when you go Darker and Edgier you also must be Better. S6 failed that test miserably. Not sure what meandering around, constantly dropping into various pits of despair was supposed to accomplish, but, it did lead to a huge drop in viewership. I guess that is something.

TLDR - There is too much wrong with s6 to even summarize. Resurrection storyline badly done and rest of season not much better.
 
NotASlayer
NotASlayer
S6 wandered around like a drunk next to a canal, stumbling from one miserable, depressing thing to another, then at the end it fell into the canal and drowned.
NoShip said:
Well..... Buffy's resurrection and reintegration did go wrong. I thought Whedon and Noxon and Co did a bad job of it. I could see Buffy the Trauma Queen, not, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Whedon and Noxon forgot that when you go Darker and Edgier you also must be Better. S6 failed that test miserably. Not sure what meandering around, constantly dropping into various pits of despair was supposed to accomplish, but, it did lead to a huge drop in viewership. I guess that is something.

TLDR - There is too much wrong with s6 to even summarize. Resurrection storyline badly done and rest of season not much better.
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I ha heard they kept pushing back key plot points like Normal Again and Tara's death cause like they didn't actually want to get rid of Tara and Alyson didn't want to go full villain. So Buffy would be doing better post Normal Again. But personally I think Willow as a villain and the characters being better emotionally doesn't make sense to me
 
garfan said:
I ha heard they kept pushing back key plot points like Normal Again and Tara's death cause like they didn't actually want to get rid of Tara and Alyson didn't want to go full villain. So Buffy would be doing better post Normal Again. But personally I think Willow as a villain and the characters being better emotionally doesn't make sense to me
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You are absolutely right about the timing and rationales.

One of the biggest problems with s6 was Marti Noxon. She never got the other writers behind her storylines and Whedon never cut the proverbial umbilical.

So..... all kinds of chaos as Hannigan went to Whedon to get changes and Whedon did force the changes and lots of other chaos because most of the writers and cast and crew knew that Noxon was not really in charge and took full advantage of it.

Also, Noxon wanted to do stories based on her personal experiences which were not what had come before on Buffy and the audience did not enjoy the changes.

So..... Lots of Egos. Lots of Agendas. Lots of Powerplays. Lots and lots and lots of confusion and frustration and anger. And, after all the hellishness, nothing really meshed. And WE got the s6 that EVERYONE knows and loves.
 
IIRC, they really wanted to avoid a deus ex machina with Buffy's revival, and felt the giving her depression was a way around that. I appreciate it, by that point Voyager had killed the entire cast at least once. but unexpected renewal is a decent reason to revive someone.
 
because being sad about it means she hadn't just gone from being dead for three to five months. And life hadn't been created from nothing just a year before

And I think by the point they killed her they had known about season 6 for while. They didn't want to deus ex machina her back to life they shouldn't have killed her
 
garfan said:
because being sad about it means she hadn't just gone from being dead for three to five months. And life hadn't been created from nothing just a year before

And I think by the point they killed her they had known about season 6 for while. They didn't want to deus ex machina her back to life they shouldn't have killed her
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IIRC Buffy was picked up by UPN in Jan-Feb 2001. So 2-3 months before The Gift was filmed. I remember Whedon being torked with 20th and UPN talking about the network change before The Gift aired because it took away the heartbreak of Buffy's death.

Also... the original title of The Gift? Chosen.
 
P.S. My solution to the issue is have a Psychopomp show up around episode 7, and ask Buffy if she is still happy with her decision to leave. Like, she wasn't ripped from heaven, she volunteered out of love for her friends to return, and she can go back at anytime, bodhisattva style. Osiris just provided the opportunity. This way, Buffy gets to own her decision, Willow gets partial forgiveness, and everyone can move on to to the next third of the season.
 
Among the more effective returns to life, we have Col. Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1. This was a popular series that spawned a successor, Stargate Atlantis.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
Among the more effective returns to life, we have Col. Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1. This was a popular series that spawned a successor, Stargate Atlantis.
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It also spawned Stargate Universe. Or do we never speak of that? 🙂
 
Plasma
Plasma
Is that their ridiculous streaming service lol
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