Turok-Han
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 The primitive Turok-Han |
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The Turok-Han vampires (a.k.a the "übervamps") are fictional characters from Joss Whedon TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They appear in the 7th and final season of the series, making their first appearance in the episode "Never Leave Me", when the Seal of Danzalthar is opened under the basement of Sunnydale High, over the Hellmouth. As watcher Rupert Giles describes it in the episode "Bring on the Night", the Turok-Han are to vampires as Neanderthals are to humans.
They are a race of ancient powerful vampires resistant although not invulnerable to crosses and being staked and otherwise stronger and fiercer than the regular vampires from the series, though holy water harms them and sunlight and beheading do kill them. Buffy calls them ubervamps.
Although the series' mythology initially claimed that the Turok-Han could only be summoned by pouring blood onto the seal, they later challenged this—in what some see as a continuity error—when several creatures unleashed themselves in the third-to-last episode of the series, "Touched". Yet it can also be argued that the Bringers raised some more Turok-Han with fresh blood offerings.
The name "Turok-Han" bears resemblance to "Uruk-hai", a powerful breed of Orcs in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Also the final battle in the show when Buffy, Faith and the Potentials look down at the army of Turok-Han is also very similar to the Urak-Hai's base as depicted in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
[edit] Appearances on Buffy
The First Evil, via its Bringers, first used Spike's blood to open the Seal, thus releasing the first Turok-Han on the series. Buffy's first encounter with the primordial vampire nearly killed her as she was caught off-guard, tired from two days lack of sleep and worried about the fate of her friends. She managed to kill it in the next episode "Showtime". The battle was "epic" in that Buffy staged the fight and she had to use every resource possible to defeat it.
The Shadow Men later show Buffy a vision, wherein it is revealed that there are actually thousands of Turok-Han, all living below the seal.
Eventually, more Turok-Han are released, as seen in the episode "End of Days". Still more waited under Sunnydale for the time when the First would be able to free them all.
In "Chosen", Buffy and the other Slayers go into the Hellmouth to fight the Turok-Han; in the end, all of them are apparently killed, including thousands by the amulet that traps Spike.
The Turok-Han army's performance in the final battle of the series is noticeably worse than the performance of the first Turok-Han (exemplifying the inverse ninja law). While the first Turok-Han was able to nearly kill Buffy, the later Turok-Han seem evenly matched against the newly activated Slayers and even normal humans such as Xander and Dawn.
