Dollhouse

Dollhouse, series one, episode one: A guide for the brain-wiped

Joss Whedon’s show has bikes, bondage, special agents and perfect bodies. But what exactly happened?

It was touch and go for a while, what with the American ratings not being great, but Joss Whedon’s new series Dollhouse has now been approved for a second season. More importantly, the first series kicked off on UK TV last night on Sci-Fi. So we thought we’d begin a weekly conversation and review each episode, with all the highlights, questions, favourite clips and points of irk. First up: series one, episode one: Ghost.

SPOILER WARNING (AND REQUEST)

OK, so this is about Dollhouse, episode by episode from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time. If you haven’t seen the episode we’re talking about, then here be spoilers.

If, however, you’ve seen the whole series already (through whatever means are available to you), then please don’t add spoilers in the comments. Got it? Good.

ONWARD

"Caroline ... Actions have consequences. I’m sorry you don’t understand what we’re doing here, but what we’re doing helps people ..."

So, the first thing we saw was a contract being signed. A young, attractive, slightly sweaty woman called Caroline seems undecided about whether to sign up for five years of service in some mysterious business.

Next thing we see of her, she’s riding a motorbike in some Akira-esque race through the streets. She’s met a boy, she’s fallen in love, done some filthy things with ropes, and had some kind of wild weekend.

But before we have a chance to revel in her good-if-slightly-foxy fortune, she’s taken off to some kind of facility – the Dollhouse, a weird mixture of scientist’s lab and spa resort – where she has her brain scrubbed in a reclining chair. While Echo might seem to be a fully conscious being, she suddenly appears to have a cast of puppeteers and no personality of her own at all.

Later in the episode – boy, bikes, bondage all forgotten – Echo’s suddenly a hostage negotiator with a dizzying amount of qualifications and a habit of conducting business dominatrix-style.

The three personalities – the wild girl, the negotiator, the innocent in pyjamas – are clearly completely separate, and we’ve got no idea who the real Echo is.

She does, however, suffer flashes of the brain-wiping process. Is this a general fault in the whole process? Does it mean the system doesn’t work? Or is there something extra-special about Echo?

In other news, the very last scene featured the suggestion of someone called Alpha ... who may, it was intimated, have some kind of thing about Caroline. Given that all the dolls so far seem to have been given names from the Nato phonetic alphabet (Echo, her kick-arse colleague Sierra) means that he might be the first doll. Or, at least, someone important.

There also appeared a special agent who seemed to be some kind of wild card, obsessed with the Dollhouse. What does he hope to discover? After all, these people are only trying to help, right?

Well, that’s one of the most striking things – the concept of "help" is an interesting thing here. Miss Dewitt, the Posh English Boss Laydee (or Pebble as we will affectionately call her) keeps insisting to various people – Echo/Caroline, Boyd, the client – that they are there to help. But then, in the very introduction scene, a different premise was suggested.

"I know, I know. Actions have consequences," said Caroline/Echo.

"What if they didn’t?" replies Dewitt.

But that’s what seems to be the crux of this first episode. Are they offering a service that will help people, like the hostage negotiation character taken on by Echo in the second half of the episode? Or is it just a really extreme form of prostitution?

When Echo’s handler tried to refer to Echo’s expeditions as "missions", he was beaten down by DeWitt, who insisted they be called "engagements" – which automatically sounds a little more, you know, grubby.

So is this any more than a high-class fantasy playground? And if not, can anything redeeming be found in the characters who would sign up for, run, or hire such a service? People who want to deal with not real people, but programmable brains in perfect bodies? How can that become a concept that is not just "quite icky"? And is that the point?

And more importantly than that, is it going to be possible to invest in characters when the point of the characters – the lead character particularly – is that they have no character at all?

We met:

Echo: Otherwise known as Caroline, apparently. Echo is an Active, able to take on any skillset or personality merely by having an "imprint" created in her brain. Excellent. Why would that be something people want? Well, maybe we’ll find out.

Ms Dewitt: In charge of the Dollhouse, apparently. In charge of recruitment, client services, personnel and security too, it appears, which is mighty multitasking, even for a woman. A British woman, at that.

Boyd: He’s the ex-cop handler who accompanies Echo on her engagements. Appears to have a conscience – at least as much of a conscience as somebody who works for a brain-wiping company can.

Topher: The cynical geek, brain-wiper, seems to have a very love/hate relationship with the dolls, their personalities and his own position in it all. "We’re all so misunderstood. Great humanitarians often are."

Agent Ballard: Looking for the Dollhouse? Whatever, he’s one of the only people we met from outside the Dollhouse structure, and he doesn’t seem to like it very much. Also: seems to be a bit of a maverick. And that never ends well, does it?

By the way, as Whedon is famous for his love of pop culture, every week we’ll probably try and keep an eye out for any references that occur during the episode, like this week’s: "I was expecting someone fatherly, like Edward James Olmos," from the client, referring to Adama in BSG.

Other things, no matter how vague or how specific – the Akira chase at the beginning, the Total Recall-ness of the process – could all be mentioned. Leave ’em in comment form and we’ll try and make a comprehensive list.

Anything else you spotted? And, most importantly, do you think you’ll stick with it long enough to spot anything else?