Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

’Dr. Horrible’ speaks! Talking to Neal Patrick Harris about Joss Whedon’s smash-hit Interweb thingie

Here at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, the assembled media types are supposed to be covering television, which we’re dutifully trying to do.

But on many of the laptops in the room – and across the land – a revolution has been taking place. While we sat in a stuffy ballroom, Joss Whedon (“Buffy,” “Firefly”) helped reinvent TV for the digital age.

Badhorse Whedon’s internet musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” which was released in three installments this week, is one of the freshest and most delightful projects I’ve seen in ages. (At left, Dr. Horrible receives an urgent missive from Evil League of Evil head honcho Bad Horse.)

Apparently many others agree: The 45-minute film, which Whedon filmed during the writers strike, was so popular that drhorrible.com crashed July 15, the day the first installment was released. The traffic problems have since been smoothed out, and it’s been the No. 1 TV download on iTunes all week.

“I got an e-mail from Joss that said, ‘Gang, we broke the Internet.’ That’s all it said. Which is awesome,” said “Dr. Horrible” star Neil Patrick Harris, who I talked to at a CBS party on Friday.

Even Whedon was surprised by “Dr. Horrible’s” runaway success, which he created with his brothers Jed and Zack and Maurissa Tancharoen.

“We had this home-baked idea that we love and we’re proud of," Whedon told USA Today. "We made this on the understanding that we’d never make a dime. But it’s blown up beyond our expectations."

"[W]e were just hoping it would build over time, people would start to spread the world and people would enjoy it," Jed Whedon said in an interview with the fan site DoctorHorrible.net. "We didn’t expect everybody to try and see it at once."

“Dr. Horrible” chronicles the life of an aspiring super-villain, Dr. Horrible, and his desire to join the Evil League of Evil (a fearsome body populated by the likes of Fake Thomas Jefferson, Professor Normal, Dead Bowie and Bad Horse). Dr. Horrible is diverted by his unrequited love for a beautiful do-gooder (Felicia Day) that he meets in a Laundromat, and he does battle with his nemesis, arrogant superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). In the tradition of fine musicals everywhere, the characters break into song frequently.

“Once I actually downloaded Jed singing the [unfinished] tracks, I had trouble not listening to it,” Harris said. “I listened to it all the time. Partly because I had to sing it, partly just because I think the songs are really, really catchy… I’ve watched the three parts probably seven or eight times each. And I was in it! I gain nothing by doing that except I think that they’re really clever.”

Captainhammer The project was shot over six days in the spring, and cost in the low six figures, according to the L.A. Times. (At right, Harris, Fillion and Day in "Dr. Horrible")

“While we were filming it, I thought we were sitting on something unique and good, and I know that Joss cared about it enough that he wouldn’t [mess] it up in editing or change its trajectory,” Harris said.

Whedon, who’s currently working on the mid-season Fox show “Dollhouse,” has a lot of plans for future “Dr. Horrible” projects (by the way, streaming ends at midnight Sunday, so get it free while you can). An online comic has already been released, a graphic novel is planned and the commentary track on the DVD release will all be sung by the cast and creators. There could be a sequel as well, Harris said.

“Joss has some strange, giant master plan that includes much more than a sequel,” Harris said. “Joss thinks on a great many levels, so when he was pitching it to us, he said, ‘And this will take over the world, and there will be sequels and musicals on stage and feature films and we’ll get our own television network and they’ll name awards after us’ and things like that.”

But Harris, who returns to work on the CBS comedy “How I Met Your Mother” in three weeks, added that there were no concrete plans in the immediate future to film another “Dr. Horrible” episode (Web-isode? Minisode? Horri-sode?)

“I think we’re all giggling like little schoolgirls for about a week or so, then he’ll figure out what he wants to do next,” Harris said. “You’ll probably have to ask him.”

I plan to do that, if I can corner Whedon at the “Dollhouse” set visit on Tuesday. But before I let Harris go, I had to ask him some critical questions.

So, if his “HIMYM” character, Barney Stinson, and Dr. Horrible met, what would happen, and if they fought who would win?

“Well, I would suspect that Barney would be very dismissive of Dr. Horrible,” Harris said. “He’s a bit nerdy … But I think Dr. Horrible would probably win the fight just because Barney probably represents all the guys that laughed at him when he was younger. And he’s got a Freeze Ray gun, so that probably gives him a leg up on his foes.”

Horrible Finally, “¿Quién es más awesome?” Or, who is more awesome, Barney or Dr. Horrible?

Harris: “Dr. Horrible on a scale of one to 10 is a 10, and Barney’s, like, 27.”