Question I'm confused about the change in the way demons are dealt with on Angel vs Buffy

[nivea]

On Buffy, Angel kills demons all the time. They fall into the "evil" and "to be slain" category, so it was always fine. And in Angel, sometimes that happens as well. In "The Prodigal," Angel kills, or at least hits hard enough so he suffers some pretty serious damage, the demon that was inhabiting the boy, despite the fact that he wasn't causing any of the destruction and it was the boy himself who was burning everything. But then in "The Ring," Angel refuses to kill the demon he is fighting, and only kills him by accident. Suddenly, every demon life is precious, despite the fact that some of these demons could be "evil" and if they were in Sunnydale he might have killed them without a second thought.

So what exactly, do you think, causes Angel to change his mind about demon life? And what exactly makes a demon "okay" to kill or not kill?

tl;dr: buffy demons are killed a lot, in angel suddenly they have souls or something. huh?

 

[Black Eye Guy]

Yeah there is a slight demon difference between the shows, but there are similar demons in Buffy.

The shark head demon didn't seem, evil evil, just kinda evil. Or even Clem, he wasn't bad.

I'd say it could have something to do with Sunnydale being on a Hellmouth, drawing more evil demons in, whereas in Angel there's a lot more demons just trying to get by day to day in LA.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

I think it only seems quite inconsistent on the surface. But consider that actually:

We only see Buffy fight demons about whom she knows enough to decide that they are evil. In other words when Buffy fights a demon, it's either attacking her, or Giles et al have reason to believe it's attacking/destroying, etc. Buffy goes after demons with specific knowledge of their intent.

When she knows that a particular demon is harmless, (Clem, other guests at Anya's wedding), she leaves them alone. So actually that's consistent with ATS; both shows actually tell us that "evil" demons are the rule but there are plenty of exceptions.


Vampires, however, are another issue. Buffy kills them as they rise from the grave, before they've even thought about killing anyone--merely assuming that they will. Morally speaking, that is very problematic. But that's another issue altogether!

 

[Lyri]

Vampires, however, are another issue. Buffy kills them as they rise from the grave, before they've even thought about killing anyone--merely assuming that they will. Morally speaking, that is very problematic. But that's another issue altogether!

I think that has more to do with the blood lust than anything. Vampires NEED to feed, there's no two ways about it. Spike explains in 'Pangs' what happens to vampires when they don't feed, and we saw the effects of it when Angel was trapped at the bottom of the ocean. They literally go mad, which could possibly cause a massacre when they can't stop themselves anymore.

And yes, I know that vampires don't NEED to kill when they feed, but that's the nature of the beast. A vampire rises with the desperate need for blood and chows down on the first human it can find, draining them dry. And once they have the taste for it, what actually is there to tell them that they don't need to kill? They don't have souls or a conscience to tell them otherwise, if they have a sire who hangs around and waits for them, they're not going to say 'well, actually, you don't need to kill the guy, just take a few pints and we'll drop him off at the hospital. And if they don't have a sire, then they are literally on their own with no one to explain anything.

And so Buffy stops them before they get the chance.

 

[white avenger]

Something else to consider is that demon hunting/killing is Buffy's job, and the hellmouth seems to draw the evil ones like iron filings to a magnet. In Sunnydale, Angel is part of Buffy's demon hunting team, so he hunts and kills demons.

Angel Investigations, however, is in the business of helping the helpless, and that doesn't necessarily involve the random killing of demons or the averting of occasional apocalypses. In fact, to be effective in his job, Angel has to be on pretty good terms with various members of the demon community. When they interfere with his business or threaten his clients, Angel kills or otherwise disposes of demons, but, beyond that, it's not really his job anymore.

 

[salustra]

Also David Greenwalt, who created the character of Angel in the first place, was largely responsible for running the show over on Angel. He had, as was obvious from his creation of Angel, a very different view of demons and vampires.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

And yes, I know that vampires don't NEED to kill when they feed, but that's the nature of the beast. A vampire rises with the desperate need for blood and chows down on the first human it can find, draining them dry. And once they have the taste for it, what actually is there to tell them that they don't need to kill? They don't have souls or a conscience to tell them otherwise, if they have a sire who hangs around and waits for them, they're not going to say 'well, actually, you don't need to kill the guy, just take a few pints and we'll drop him off at the hospital. And if they don't have a sire, then they are literally on their own with no one to explain anything.

And so Buffy stops them before they get the chance.

I mean I completely agree with you, and I understand that ultimately it's safer for everyone if she kills them before they have the chance to do what they're compelled to do.
BUT the issues I have are, first of all, that morally speaking the notion of taking a life in order to punish or prevent something the victim literally has not done is very problematic and is for me something that's hard to ignore.
Then, to add to the questionable ethics, canon actually tells us that that some vampires, (the two vampires with whom Buffy herself has intimate relations), are sometimes harmless. Now of course the vamps had to first emerge as evil fledglings in order to experience that which made them so, (capture and chipping, Gypsy spell). But what if that wasn't the case? For all Buffy knows, there is a group out there, similar to the Initiative, who's discovered that a far more effective alternative to having to capture a vampire before chipping it is to instead acquire a dead body presumed to have been bitten by a vampire and chip it BEFORE it rises. Meaning that upon breaking ground, that vampire can't harm a soul no matter how much it wants to. And that's just one example. What if a vampire rises with some sort of deformity and can't bite? For all we know, it happens all the time.

I totally understand that where Buffy is concerned, preemptively killing these vamps is not only her calling but actually the most sound form of protecting the living. So maybe, as it stands, she has no choice. But I'd like to see her question it. I'd like to see her do some research, (Giles too for that matter), to ensure that there wouldn't be some reason for which more than 2 vampires are harmless. Most importantly, I'd like the show to have addressed this issue via the scoobies; maybe Willow tries to work on some sort of spell that guarantees that a body won't become a vampire. Or maybe she drives that new chipping plan I described above. I guess the bottom line for me is: let's talk about it a little, you know?

 

[Lyri]

to ensure that there wouldn't be some reason for which more than 2 vampires are harmless.

But those two vampires AREN'T 'harmless' and didn't start out that way. They've killed hundreds of thousands of people between them and tried to end the world on three separate occasions.

Is it better if Buffy says 'oh, no, I can't kill them because maybe, at some point in the future, they could get a soul or a chip, or something else that stops them from being evil and killing people, so I should just let them rise in peace and feed on innocent people until that time comes'? Is it better to sacrifice hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of innocent victims just on the off chance that there MIGHT be a way to render them harmless in the future?

In my mind, we have to judge this issue on the facts were presented with in the show/comics - which is that vampires rise from their graves hungry and blood thirsty and start killing straight away and don't stop. Don't want to stop, more to the point, because they have no moral compass to tell them that it's wrong. Even Buffy herself, when she was turned into a vampire, felt the blood lust.

 

[Gum Gnome33]

But those two vampires AREN'T 'harmless' and didn't start out that way. They've killed hundreds of thousands of people between them and tried to end the world on three separate occasions.

Sorry, I was unclear. I didn't mean they were always harmless of course and if Buffy'd met them as fledglings certainly she should have killed them on sight. No question. What I meant is that since we know that it is physically, mystically, magically, etc possible for a vampire to be and do good in spite of its nature--even though such goodness has to be manufactured by an outside source--this fact alone should make it more difficult for Buffy to kill vampires on sight. And while, again, I agree that she has to--I'd rather that she'd come to that decision after more research/discussion/consideration.

Is it better if Buffy says 'oh, no, I can't kill them because maybe, at some point in the future, they could get a soul or a chip, or something else that stops them from being evil and killing people, so I should just let them rise in peace and feed on innocent people until that time comes'? Is it better to sacrifice hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of innocent victims just on the off chance that there MIGHT be a way to render them harmless in the future?

Of course not, as I said I do think that Buffy has to do what she does. But I would like her to question it, and to consider whether it is absolutely certain that some new spell/initiative isn't in place which might make new vampires harmless. Like I said, all it would take is a simple plan to chip vamps before they rise and VOILA, Buffy is killing creatures who've never harmed a fly and in spite of their newfound bloodlust, can't. And that would be a problem.

In my mind, we have to judge this issue on the facts were presented with in the show/comics - which is that vampires rise from their graves hungry and blood thirsty and start killing straight away and don't stop. Don't want to stop, more to the point, because they have no moral compass to tell them that it's wrong. Even Buffy herself, when she was turned into a vampire, felt the blood lust.

I agree with you, but again I think there needs to be, at the very least, a lot of discussion on the subject. Like I said, Willow could start researching preventative tactics so that while Buffy has to slay indiscriminately, there could come a time when they could actually prevent vampires from killing living things, (as the Initiative had tried to do).

 

[salustra]

As far as vampires and their need to feed- self-control must be possible, and not just to rare vamps. The entire vampiric staff of the Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles branch has to go on a 'no human blood' policy or be executed, as we see in the episode 'Harm's Way'. So the possibility exists that there are perhaps large numbers of vamps who for whatever reason don't go about killing people.