Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

The excitement over Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a fascinating new media phenomenon as, for many, it highlights the potential new path for television, in which TV ceases to be TV. The links with television are of course Whedon’s own successful career as a TV writer/producer. Dr. Horrible is seen by many to be Whedon’s return to television, pre-empting the upcoming broadcast of his new series Dollhouse (Fox, 2009-). Furthermore, Joss Whedon approached the streaming of Dr. Horrible as television. The serial, described by Whedon as a ’web mini-series’, became available for free streaming in three daily instalments, beginning on the 15 July 2008 (cited in Littleton, 2008). Making the programme available for free in those initial days, surrounded the serial with event status, much like television. You had to be in the right place and right time to be the first to see the next instalment.

But is this the future of television? In many ways, Dr. Horrible feels more multi-media than specifically televisual, tying in to the transmedia storytelling to which David Lavery refers. The sequences of Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) delivering his blog to a web cam in first person direct to camera address are completely in keeping with the internet aesthetic. But once the direct address is broken, we leave the blog space and enter his narrative world, shot with the intimacy of television through an emphasis upon close ups and medium shots and MTV style musical numbers. Interjected within this style are notable cinematic flourishes, such as the extreme long shots of a giant Dr. Horrible towering over and stomping through the city a la Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, Japan, 1954) (or in televisual terms the giant cat in British cult series The Goodies – BBC, 1970-81). In typical Whedon form Dr. Horrible is a curious hybrid.

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