Limited time with Sarah

Sarah was shooting Scooby Doo. We knew for some weeks in advance what her schedule would be like and we were all very interested in accommodating that schedule because it�s great that Sarah�s going off to be a movie star and it�s great that she�s staying with the show. So, of course, we did everything that could be done to accommodate that.

But we had the second-to-last episode of the season and no Buffy. What do you do? Joss and I were both big fans of the Dr Strange comics. Dr Strange was a mystic magician who lived in Greenwich Village, New York and could leave his body. His astral self would go off on these adventures.

This episode scared me more than any other episode I�ve written. I was afraid that I simply couldn�t do it - that it was just too cerebral and conceptual and I didn�t know how to do it. Joss was great and Marti was great and they really helped guide me through it. David Greenwalt threw some ideas in there and really really helped me [too].

The girl cast as young Buffy was just heartbreakingly great. I think it�s one of our most unique episodes, it�s very action free - which scared me. I was like, "Hey, Stephen [DeKnight] got to write Spiral, to have knights, armour, fighting, stage coaches and Raiders of the Lost Ark and I�ve got a bunch of people walking around in people�s brains, talking.