Dollhouse: Limitless Potential

So for the first time, I am presenting a world that has not yet premiered. About a month before the writers' strike began in November of 2007, an announcement was made that Joss Whedon was making his glorious return to television. His new show, Dollhouse, which premieres in 2009, will be the first show created by Whedon to air since Angel went off the air in 2004. Though Whedon has done other television work (he had a guest spot on Veronica Mars and directed one or two episodes of The Office), and has done work for both Marvel and Dark Horse comics (some has been phenomenal, such Astonishing X-Men and Buffy Season 8, while his Runaways run has been fair and plagued with delays), there is no doubt that his best works were the shows that bore the credit, "Created by Joss Whedon".

I am currently rewatching Buffy and Angel, and I am beginning to think that these two shows have taken the place at the top of my Favorite Television Shows list (it's a tie). Obviously they're not perfect, but what show is? And Firefly remains, in my opinion, the best show ever to last less than 20 episodes (which doesn't say nearly enough about it, since it is also leagues ahead of many shows that received 200). And so with Dollhouse, I was ready to jump onboard and proclaim it the best new show of next season without seeing a single frame of it, or any other new show for that matter, the moment I heard the announcement.

Now, six months later, I have heard the synopsis, seen photos and a trailer, and my desire to see this show has only increased. When it was first announced, the only details I knew were the title, the creator, the network (FOX), and the star (Eliza Dushku). The fact that Whedon was going to be working with Dushku again was icing on the cake. Her role as Faith the Vampire Slayer on both Buffy and Angel was incredible. The character helped make the third season of Buffy my favorite season, and her role in the incredibly dark fourth season of Angel took the character to incredible new places and showed off just how good an actress Dushku is.

Faith was a girl who wanted to be accepted and loved, but due to a rocky upbringing by an alcoholic single mother, she lacked the ability to trust others, making it very hard for Buffy and her friends to trust her in return. This led to a slew of personal problems for the young girl that eventually drove her to side with the season's villain. Oh, and she has super powers, which don't mix very well with a broken mind/heart. Her story was supposed to end in Season 3 of Buffy, but Whedon recognized that he had too interesting of a character to kill off, and after a few more appearances in Sunnydale, Faith relocated to Los Angeles, where, true to the central theme of Angel, began her journey towards redemption. I was extremely sad that she turned down doing a spin-off about Faith, but I can understand the desire not to be typecast (the show she did instead, Tru Calling was enjoyable, and seemed to be getting better and better when it was cancelled, but was leagues behind what a Faith show could have been).

As for the announcement that FOX would air the show, this made me a little upset. Even though all networks are guilty of cancelling great shows before they have time to build an audience, I particularly resent FOX for cancelling Firefly after poorly marketing it and giving it a bad timeslot. Joss Whedon said that he would never work with FOX Television again (I'm pretty sure that he was still on good terms with their production department, which produced Buffy and Angel despite them airing on a different network). However, he has said now that there have been massive changes with the "regime" (I think Futurama made this same joke in Bender's Big Score), and that they are now much more willing to let a show develop. This certainly seems true now, since Dollhouse seems to be getting some fairly good press as well as a timeslot leading into ratings powerhouse (and awesome-until-the-most-recent-season) 24.

So most importantly, what is Dollhouse about? Well, see for yourself:

Interesting stuff. Further building on the idea that the people in power aren't to be trusted and often are doing shady things that we probably don't want to hear about (see: The Initiative, The Alliance, Wolfram and Hart, Blue Sun Corporation, Twilight, The Powers That Be), it appears that the government is funding an illegal department that imprints memories and personalities into "volunteers" in order to fulfill missions. But these missions aren't only combat-related; it would seem that, at one point, Dushku's Echo (each of the Dolls AKA Actives seem to have names from the NATO phonetic alphabet) is tasked to be in love with a powerful person (I'm guessing politician). The government may not be the sole patron of the Dollhouse, and for the right price, anyone can have their own Doll, who believes whatever the customer wants.

In addition to Dushku, Tamoh Penikett, who plays Helo on Battlestar Galactica, and Amy Acker (Fred/Illyria from Angel) will also have roles. Penikett will be an FBI agent who is getting in trouble for pursuing rumors about the Dollhouse, while Acker's role is currently still relatively unknown (I'm pretty sure she's one of the higher-ups in the Dollhouse). With the talents of Whedon, Dushku, Acker, and Penikett here, there is no way I won't be watching next January.

Up next: Dreaming darkly...