Spike's Chip

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LizzieRainbow

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Okay im currently rewatching season four and i am watching 'the Initiative'. One thing that i noticed was when spike breaks out of the initiative he fights with the scientist guys and it doesn't hurt him at all, but he must have the chip in then as he doesn't get caught by them again before attempting to bite Willow at the end of the episode. So i am wondering why does the chip not affect him while he fights with the scientists?
 
I just thought it was because they'd just put the chip in and it wasn't the kind of thing that just worked right away.
 
Maybe the chip had to be activated by a remote signal of some sort, and they hadn't bothered to do it until after he escaped. Alternatively, the chip was powered by the electrical impulses of the brain itself, and it just hadn't had time to build up its initial charge before Spike escaped (and no cracks from the Spike bashers about it taking longer than normal due to low activity in Spike's brain, please)
 
laianna
laianna
You phrased it better than me... That's what I meant though. =)
Well, when I watched it, I'm fairly certain that he was using other demons to hurt the scientists (I'm pretty sure I remember him pushing the demons into the scientists to knock them over). I will try to rewatch tonight, but I'm certain that was the way round that particular issue.
 
That's always bugged me, and then they go ahead and make it an even bigger error in The Killer in Me in season seven:

SPIKE
I don't know. (digs through the dirt) Worked pretty good when the Initiative held me captive here. Every time I'd get a little...rambunctious, the chip'd kick in. I feel like my head was gonna explode. They'd dope me up, and everything would be all daffodils and teddy bears. For a couple of hours anyway.
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When clearly in The Initiative he first finds out that he can't harm humans when he tries to bite Willow. Bad continuity!
 
laianna
laianna
Hmm yes, bad continuity there. =(
Spike's chip!? Can I chew him? 😛 Wait, you mean, chip in the head, right? I was gonna say like what White Avenger said. I agree with him. Plus, I think those scientists were dumb. They could just activate the chip rather then fight/try to capture him.
 
Maybe the scientist was a demon...okay major long shot there.
It probably was something to do with it needing activation...or maybe the writers just don't think about these things as much as we do.
Also, I thought the same as caitaintdead that he was using other demons to push the scientist around but might be wrong. Haven't seen the episode in a while.
 
xaphania said:
That's always bugged me, and then they go ahead and make it an even bigger error in The Killer in Me in season seven:



When clearly in The Initiative he first finds out that he can't harm humans when he tries to bite Willow. Bad continuity!
Click to expand...

It's possible that he didn't make the connection between hurting humans and major headache until trying to bite Willow.

They'd just just a major brain surgery on him; he was bound to be in pain when he got "rambunctious." Perhaps the pain intensified when he was fighting the scientists, but it may not have been something he noticed.

And there's a possible explanation for why he was able to fight his way out...maybe he'd just been doped up, and couldn't feel the pain.
 
I just figured that the chip wasn't activated until he had completely escaped the complex. I always saw it as being activated around the same time that the Initiative guys are looking for him, when they identify his location as Willow/Buffy's room. As it was something for behaviour modification, they wouldn't necessarily have activated right away, as Spike or any other demon for that matter, were a threat whilst he was in his 'cell', but once he had escaped they would have wanted to know pretty darn quickly whether it was successful or not.

And maybe Spike was just referring to how it felt at that time. As far as he was concerned, he had no idea what was happening to him or why, so he would have just connected head pain with feeling 'rambunctious'? Maybe...?
 
You know, come to think of it, there is the possibility that the scientists, or at least the few that Spike had to fight to make his escape, actually had been injected with some sort of demon dna in order to enhance their performance (require less sleep, heightened senses, the sort of things that would help them with their work) the same as Riley and his teammates were, though probably of a different sort, since whatever the soldiers had didn't seem to set the chip off. (And how's that for a run on sentence?)
 
^ But then, the chip shouldn't go off when he bites people. Because he's not necessarily trying to hurt people, he's just trying to eat. And it shouldn't go off when he's defending himself, either, or trying to get information out of someone, or for any of a hundred reasons why it goes off when it does.
 
The_Final_Cylon said:
Maybe the scientist was a demon...okay major long shot there.
It probably was something to do with it needing activation...or maybe the writers just don't think about these things as much as we do.
Also, I thought the same as caitaintdead that he was using other demons to push the scientist around but might be wrong. Haven't seen the episode in a while.
Click to expand...

I do think that is a possibility both points by both you and Cait. For your point the soldiers were taking god knows what from Maggie Walsh so the scientists could have been taking the same meds or worse. And for Cait's point i understand he was not causing direct harm so maybe the chip did not recognise it.
 
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