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I, Robot... You, Jane

episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S1 E8)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ2748630 ↗
Source-derived summary

"I, Robot...You, Jane" is the eighth episode of season 1 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode was written by staff writers Ashley Gable and Thomas A. Swyden, and directed by Stephen Posey. The episode originally aired on The WB on April 28, 1997.

In this episode, Buffy and Giles face a demon spirit who has been trapped since the Dark Ages and is unleashed into cyberspace. Meanwhile, Willow has fallen for a cyber-beau whom she met online and Xander and Buffy are wary of who this anonymous wooer may turn out to be.

Plot

In Cortona, Italy, in 1418, a circle of priests trap a horned demon (Moloch "the Corruptor") in a book using a magic ritual. The book is sealed in a box, with the head priest expressing the hope that the book will never be read, lest the demon be released upon the world. In the present, the book is delivered to Giles and added to a pile that Willow is scanning into a computer.

Willow tells Buffy that she has formed an online relationship with a boy named Malcolm. As Buffy tries to warn Willow about the dangers of rushing into a relationship with someone she has not seen, Fritz, a geeky student, is instructed by Moloch, via the computer he is working on, to keep watch on Buffy.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “I, Robot... You, Jane” as episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S1 E8). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 1418—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1997-04-28. The account is most persuasive where Robot, Jane and episode can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S1 E8). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2748630. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 1418.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “I, Robot... You, Jane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.