Dollhouse

Playing with Dolls an Exclusive Spotlight on Joss Whedon

M any die-hard fans of Joss Whedon, the visionary genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, rallied around him and his new FOX TV series Dollhouse with "save Dollhouse" campaigns all over the Internet - more than eight months before the show debuted. Their knee-jerk reaction was the result of FOX cancelling Whedon’s beloved yet short-lived Firefly series, which aired in 2002. This time around, fans wanted to launch a campaign to save a Whedon show before it debuted on FOX, February 13, rather than after its cancelled as many did with the aforementioned Angel and Firefly (although the latter produced the 2005 motion picture Serenity due to strong fan support). Whedon talked about these campaigns, as well as other aspects of Dollhouse, which has a first season order of 13 episodes, during a recent interview.

INTO THE HOUSE OF DOLLS

"Usually, words of calm in these situations lead to panic. If you say there’s nothing to panic about, somebody says, ’he said the word panic.’ Basically, we found the show. My concern isn’t whether the show gets saved, it’s whether these fans who are panicking about it love it. They may get over their panic. They may see it and go, ’you know, actually, we’re okay.’ The network should do what they think is right," said Whedon. "Ultimately, the support is very sweet, and the fact that people care and they want to see the show get a chance. That’s important to me too, because it really is a show that finds itself as it goes along. But at the end of the day my biggest concern is that I give them something worth panicking over."

The Dollhouse is a clandestine operation run by the enigmatic Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) where "Dolls" or "Actives" are imprinted with a different number of new personas, who can be anything or anyone - the perfect assassin, the perfect date, the perfect whatever - as long as the client has the money to pay for what they desire. Once the mission is fulfilled, the Dolls are then mind-wiped into a docile, child-like state and live in the Dollhouse until their status is reactivated for another mission, complete with a new persona. With the main character of Echo (Eliza Dushku), the mind-wipes aren’t 100 percent and she’s retaining fragments of the various personas downloaded into her brain. As the series goes on, Echo becomes more and more self-aware.

"My biggest concern is that I give them something worth panicking over." Joss on his Dollhouse fans

"Somebody said, ’how come things go wrong with the Dollhouse?’ So that we can have a show. Obviously, something is going to go wrong, or strangely, right in every episode," Whedon answered matter-of-factly. "Echo’s progression is a constant in the show, her search for herself, so that’s something that is being spun out episode by episode. It’s just different little aspects. She takes a little memento away from every engagement." Asked who would win between Echo and Faith - the best known character on Dushku’s resume - Whedon responded, "Faith would win, unless of course Echo had been imprinted with Faith’s personality, which is I’m going to call it a tie."

Investigating the Dollhouse is lone-wolf FBI Agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett). Despite standing orders from his superiors, who believe the Dollhouse is an urban myth, Ballard won’t let it go. He’s not shy about knocking many noses out of joint to learn about the Dollhouse, even if they belong to very powerful people. "Paul Ballard is going to be hunting the Dollhouse, and - obviously - he’s going to be one step behind them for awhile, but every now and then he’s going to come up against them in a rather abrupt fashion. He’s not going to be the reporter [Jack McGee] in The Incredible Hulk, always five feet behind."

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