Hey, I just thought of a weird question, and I kind of need to know general opinions for an update I'm working on...

In canon, did chipped Spike ever have the opportunity to hit souled Angel?

I can't remember a time they came into contact at all while he had the chip, actually. But I was wondering about humanity, and the chip's reading, and whether or not Angel would register as demon or human...he had a demon, but also a human soul....

What are your thoughts on this, guys? Any thoughts at all on it? I'd love to hear your opinions.... :)

*hugs*

DoS

Okay, in canon, chipped Spike never came into contact with Angel. 

And interesting question...

I think that the human soul is irrelevant.  It's about the physical- the chip reads cells, apparently, which is why Spike's chip couldn't read Buffy's "cellular tan" when she was resurrected.

Hope that helps :D

(Added)  Though it's odd cause Slayers' cells should read differently, since they are imbued with a demon spirit... Weird.

Come on, Scarlet.  You don't think that there are PLOTHOLES in the chipped Spike idea, do you? ;-)

DoS: I don't think that the soul would have anything to do with the chip.  As Scarlet said, Buffy had a soul, but he was able to strike her with her cellular tan.

He never actually hit Angel while chipped. The last time they fought was In the Dark, before Spike got chipped. Then, they don't interact again until Spike pops up on AtS.

Whether or not he could... I don't think the chip would go off. Angel is still a vampire, and the soul doesn't make him human... it just makes him feel human, morally or whatever. If it doesn't even consider Buffy (who also had a soul) to be human after her resurrection, I can't imagine that Angel's soul would override the demon.

Personally, the chip makes no sense to me. How does something that's in Spike's brain know whether the thing he hits is a human or a demon - or, for that matter, an inanimate object? Does it send out some sort of radar signal that bounces back a certain way if it's a human?

I know, the whole chip thing never fully made sense, so it's really one of those ideas you can use either way I suppose, however it suits the fic you happen to be writing :P lol...

I first wondered, anyway, because in one of the Buffy books (I can't remember which one) they were in this alternate universe and not sure if Spike's chip was still working, so he hit Angel to test it out...and it *was* still working, and went off when he hit him!

At the time, that seemed odd to me, but I thought that was a pretty big error for the producers and such to allow to slip by, since the books are kinda sorta supposed to be not conflicting with canon, right?

Anyways, the chip did register intent as well, so it appears to me that somehow it was supposed to be tied in to more than the physical...I don't know...I suppose there's many different ways to interpret the whole idea :)

The "official books" are FILLED with plot holes and errors!  I stopped reading most especially as most don't "get" Spike at all.  The only one I truly enjoyed (and e-mailed the author, who responded the same day!) was "Blackout".  It was set in 1977 NYC and he clearly had Spike as the killer of Slayers he was in canon but also managed to show his "softer" side regarding Dru...his selfless love and bravery.  He made the battle with Nikki one of two warriors not some evil killing demon and the heroine.  You liked Nikki but it was clearly a battle in a war not murder.  He got it right.  Most others make him some variation on soulless, chipless Spike all snark and evil thoughts...even if it is after the soul!

Personally...I don't take the books as canon at all because they have too many holes in them.  Rather like the new comics...best left ignored to preserve sanity (not to mention continuity).  Now some of the stories in the Angel and Spike comics (different company and not Joss written) actually have some merit to them but I still don't take them as complete canon.

Kathleen

OOOOooo the original question.....*G*... I agree with everyone else..it should have let him wail on Angel because he is a vampire and "dead human flesh" technically.  I don't think the Initiative even knew what a soul IS (much like ME and Joss LOL) much less fine tune the bugger to seek one out to decide if the chipped demon could hurt/kill an opponent.  I just assumed it read demon for the non-huminoid types and detected lack of heartbeat or something of the sort for vampires.  As for Angel registering "human"....babe to me that wouldn't be the case if he were LIAM or Shanshued Angel! LOL

I've never read the books, but considering how many plot holes are in the series itself, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that the books, even the official ones, are swiss cheese-like. I got the impression that Joss, or someone else at ME, had some sort of vague approval of the books for them to be considered "official," but that the stories didn't come from Joss and weren't scrutinized too carefully for canon inconsistencies. Having never read them, I obviously don't take them as canon. :)

As for the chip itself, it seems to me that, since it's in Spike's head, it should only react to information in Spike's brain. In other words, it *should* fire based on intent, if his neural processes or whatever indicate violence. But that still doesn't explain how it can distinguish violence intended against humans from violence intended against demons and inanimate objects, unless it has some sort of sensor/receptor thing. And it also seems to fire even if Spike unintentionally causes pain - but if it's in Spike's head, how does it know the *other* person is in pain? lol

It's the kind of thing that, when I was watching the show, I went, "Oh, okay," to the explanations, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes....

In canon, Spike can't point a toy gun at humans.  But later in FFL, they clearly bend the rules so he can "fight" with Buffy.  Unless, his chip was always less harmful to her because of the demon spirit thing, and he just never realized it.  The only time he fights with her post chip and pre resurrection (excluding FFL) is in "Something Blue," where he lands a direct hit, and it fires.

Angel's demon territory, and if you wanna base it on skewed canon, Spike should be able to somewhat fight (or at least play defense) against Slayers because of their origins.

And forget the books, cause they are *so* not canon ;)

Scarlet, he also tries to bite Buffy in Out of My Mind, and the chip goes off. Not sure if that helps or hurts your theory, lol. 

The chip was wacky right from the beginning, though. In The Initiative, Spike not only fights the (human) guards during his escape, he also manages to tackle Willow and pin her to the bed without the chip going off. It's not until he tries to bite her that he discovers it. And yet, later, you're right, he can't even point a toy gun.

Hey Eowyn,  I think in the commentary for the Initiative the writer (or whoever it is doing the commentary) points out that the firing of the chip is inconsistent.  They needed Spike to be quasi-heroic*, so they had him doing some things during the escape that later on they depict him as unable to do on account of the chip.  ME just never was going to let details like that interfere with their main story-telling interests. 

* The commentator definitely talks about the desire to explicitly portray Spike's escape as 'heroic' even though he was still a black hat. They use heroic music, include the heroic slide under the closing door and so on.  Interesting foreshadowing of what he would come to be.

Ah, yes E, but remember- he also tackles her to the ground first, lol.

And... yeah, his escape is quite heroic.  The Initiative was evil and needed to be destroyed (we also see a slow mo Spike in the second to last eppy of season four, beating up demons and so forth as he makes his way through to the Inititative to get out, and then saves the Scoobies...), but it would have been a bit more heroic had he been able to help other demons escape, or at least, not thrown that vampire who begged for his help to the soldiers to be staked, lol.  But he needed a diversion, and it just wouldn't have been Spike (at the time) to risk his own skin for someone who wasn't Drusilla.

That's a good point, Maggie. I haven't listened to any of the commentaries in a while, but it makes sense from a story-telling point of view. Not just the foreshadowing, either - I mean, you have "bad guy escaping from ambiguously evil guys' captivity." The audience is like, "Uh... I don't know how I feel about this..." so they make Spike heroic, so you know who to root for. :)

Ah, yes E, but remember- he also tackles her to the ground first, lol.

Oh, for God's sake! *throws hands up in the air* I give up! Joss is just trying to make my head explode, isn't he?

Well, that's why we go for "the chip was still modulating itself to Spike's brain" for that episode, since ME never thought about all the science that could go into the chip.

I think the chip is hooked into both Spike's sense of the external, and his internal rhythms. We can record different brain waves for different kinds of thoughts, so it probably measures intent based on that. It has to have it's own processing unit, since the programming has to be able to interpret Spike's thoughts. By smell, sight, sound, and temperature, he knows what's human vs. what's demon. Which......leads me to wonder - by sight, Buffy is still the same post-resurrection, and she still has a heartbeat, so.....it's either her scent or her body temperature that's different enough to the chip...maybe both at the same time. With a "deep molecular sun tan", does she now have an altered scent from the cells shed in her sweat? Or would her blood show that she's 98.5% human instead of 99% like before? Or........is it that she's so firmly different as a resurrected person in Spike's subconscious, that the chip can no longer interpret how he feels about her as "standard human"? Oh, oh......on that track, maybe it's Spike's love and desire so stirred up by those kisses that confuses the chip, hmm? LOL

Have I made anybody's head spin, yet? :D

I think we're all missing the most important issue here.

In season 7, when Spike had both a chip and a soul, if he punched himself, would the chip fire?

Well, he did gouge himself.  But we only saw the after-effects of that.  Maybe the chip fired so bad that's why he was so crazy!

LOLOLOL

Maybe that's why the scratches on his chest weren't that deep - he couldn't get far before the chip knocked him out!

This is fun.

 In season 7, when Spike had both a chip and a soul, if he punched himself, would the chip fire?

If a tree falls in the woods, does Angel brood?

I do remember him commenting in FFL that the chip didn't fire cause he wasn't trying to hurt her. When she gave him the questioned look.

smlcspike

He also wasn't trying to hurt anybody when he was swinging the toy gun around, but the chip still went off when he pointed it at a human. 

I'm pretty sure Doug Petrie mentioned in the commentary for FFL that it was a crappy excuse, but he really wanted to do the scene that way, so they had to work around the chip.

He could have told the story without Buffy stepping in to participate in the sparring - it always looked like to me that she stepped into Spike's moves as he was talking, not that he was play-attacking her. Like she wouldn't just let him demonstrate.

And sparring doesn't have to hurt, especially between two people with high pain thresholds.