Ah, Buffy! The original tiny helpless blonde girl who turns out to be actually quite fighty. Without you, there would be no invincible cheerleader in Heroes, no Veronica Mars, no Rose Tyler. And not only would the world be at least four feisty blondes down, kid’s TV would be a whole lot less funny. Doctor Who writer, Russell T Davis, has made his debt to Buffy clear from the outset, saying "“[Buffy the Vampire Slayer] showed the whole world, and an entire
sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the
world isn’t hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised
the bar for every writer—not just genre/niche writers, but every single
one of us.”

With episodes like the extraordinary, Emmy Award-winning Hush (when the the whole population of Sunnydale was rendered speechless by floating Moby lookalikes), and Once More With Feeling (Buffy, the Musical, which includes the killer line "his penis got diseases from the Shumash tribe"), this was a show that proved you could be both dumb and clever at the same time.

Slayer Slang has insinuated itself into everyday speech (I wrote "fighty" at the start without even thinking about it), glib remarks
in times of crisis have become the norm in TV shows, and and killing off major characters just when you least expected it has become almost commonplace (Lost would be a whole different show if it had the "faceless Star Trek extras" vibe you got pre-Buffy).

With Whedon about, you knew that your favourite were-wolf, vampire, demon or witch could get offed at any moment, which is what filled Buffy with almost as many teary moments as funny ones. Oh, and how many teen TV shows had shown a genuine, loving lesbian relationship that wasn’t simply there for the titillation of teenage boys?

This was a truly supreme show, which managed to finish without the slightest whiff of anti-climax, and which had remained reliably brilliant throughout its seven-season, six-year tenure (so long as you gloss over the whole Adam and Riley thing). It’s 10 years since it first aired in the US, and four years since it finished, leaving a perky, blonde shaped hole in every geeks’ heart.

Russell Davies quote via Whedonesque