What are your thoughts on the way Spike has evolved as a character over the years?

Dori: How much space have you got...?

I've been a huge Spike fan since School Hard. I knew from What's My Line 2 that this vamp was extraordinary; he could do something no other vampire was capable of, according to the rules of the Buffyverse - love selflessly.

In the scene where Spike brings Angel to Drusilla, the seeds for what we saw all through the last couple of seasons are tossed out in a split-second series of expressions on James Marsters' face - hurt to jealousy to understanding what she needed and being okay with it. I was completely blown away by that tiny moment, and I've been extremely happy with where they've taken Spike as a character, because I saw that potential in him from the beginning.

I adore stories about the redemptive power of love. Watching Spike struggle over the last few seasons to change himself when everything he knew, everyone around him, all his hundred and some years of experience with vampires told him it was impossible, hopeless, doomed, that he could never rise above his vampire nature, and then watching him do just that... Well, wow!

Of course, there are fans out there who think that Spike can never make up for all the bloodshed and horror and evil - and they're right. He can't make up for any of the things he's done, he can't bring those people back.

But I don't see redemption as a destination so much as a journey, and I believe Spike has been on that journey since Intervention. I believe that Spike's struggle toward redemption in the face of impossible odds is the important thing, that he keeps trying to make himself into something new. His love for Buffy is carving him out from the inside, changing his interior shape, and he's not going to be able to go back to being the same Big Bad he was before he loved her.

Ashley: Spike's an interesting contrast to Angel, and maybe some of it is due to the fact that the actor didn't know what they were going to throw at him as backstory! You really have to wonder how much of Spike is the inner William and how much is the demon? I think we're getting to see that now.

Marsters has gotten to play so many different characters in this one character, and find ways to connect them all, knit them all into one coherent image - it's just a treasure trove.

Dori and I don't always agree about Spike, either. I don't think he's necessarily been trying to change to make up for anything. He knows that what he did was wrong, but he was all right with it while he was doing it. The only reason he wanted to stop doing it was because it made Buffy reject him, not because he thought it was bad. He didn't have a soul, and I suspect that in this context "soul" kind of equates to "conscience."

But now we've got a new twist on it. With Season Seven he's got his soul back, and he's hearing the voices of the dead, and it's driving him crazy. And we're seeing a new Spike, a more mature one (at least in his moments of sanity, which I think are more than we've been shown). He's hearing voices, but the voices are real, after all.