"Beg your pardon?"
"Obviously our friends' conflict with Glory is coming to a head. Shouldn't we stay, when we might be able to help when the confrontation comes?"
The Doctor shook his head over the console. "Much as my enemies - and my friends - may disbelieve it, I do know when not to meddle. This is Buffy's battle, to be won or lost on her own merits.
"In fact, if you were to travel with me long enough you'd learn that Buffy's challenges tend to coincide with her school term. I don't know why."
"Actually this isn't the only place and time I've noticed a, a kind of building tension right now," said Padme. "On Voyager, with their increased contact with home and their losses of Neelix and Lt. Carey. There's something in the air in Greece, when we see Xena and Gabrielle, and in Washington with Fox being fired and Dana's baby due ..."
"You're right. There are times when I feel forced to believe much of the universe runs on a unified, pantemporal cycle of conflict and resolution whose cause I do not, perhaps cannot percieve."
"Does it happen to you?"
"No. Oh, it seemed that way, sometimes, when I was younger: great spurts of apocalyses followed by long periods of relative ease." He shrugged. "But it must have been my imagination as it certainly doesn't happen now."