Dollhouse

If people aren’t familiar with the show or only checked it out once or twice last season, what’s your pitch to get them to watch the show?

On the surface, if you hear about the show — you know, Eliza Dushku, unbelievably hot girl, with different personalities every week — it doesn’t necessarily represent the undercurrent and the dark stuff that we get to. And I guess we already got to in 
"Epitaph One," but nobody saw that [laughs]. We get to explore a lot of dark things and the premise lends itself to extremely heady explorations into human tendencies. Not that that’s a good selling point — that just sounds complicated [laughter].

As you see the show initially, it obviously has a client-of-the-week feel to it, but as we get deeper into the season, it gets darker and stranger and much more fun for us and for everybody involved.

Was there a conscious effort with Season 2, coming from the writers or requested by the network, to have more client-of-the-week episodes again at the start of the season?

It’s something we wanted to do. One of the things we’re suffering from a little bit is that people didn’t see "Epitaph One." If you are aware of that and aware of where things are going — the potential for the technology and how bad things can get — it adds weight to standalone episodes [in Season 2] that maybe new viewers aren’t getting or don’t know about because it never aired.

We did consciously try to do [more standalones at the start of Season 2] because we want to earn the large, arc-y stuff that we’re only hinting at in those first couple of episodes. We want her transformation to someone who is self-aware to be gradual. But we end up getting there pretty quickly.

"Epitaph One" is a great episode, but do you ever think, "Gosh, we’re kind of hampered by that now," because it takes things in an interesting direction, but now you’re sort of backtracking to get there?

Well, it creates an interesting challenge on an already challenging show to write. But we like that. We’ve had a lot of fun with it, and we haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve said, "Oh God, we’ve really painted ourselves into a corner." It created an interesting problem for us, but it’s very fun to solve it.

Halfway through the season, it starts to inform the show and help it in a really cool way. We kind of love that we [made that episode] around here. We kick ourselves a little every now and then too. "Well, we know that doesn’t happen in the future."

Well, there were no jetpacks in that future. Ripoff.

There are no jetpacks on "Dollhouse." That’s one of our rules. No jetpacks in the future. The other rule is, we spell The Future "Da Fyoocha."

Is it your expectation that you will get to finish making the 13 episodes that Fox ordered, and if you do, do you have an idea for an end point? Would you be able to supply a satisfying conclusion, if there is one?

Well, last season, we decided we weren’t going to hold anything back at any point. We think it’s a better thing to come back and have nothing fresh in the tank than the other problem, which is, "We saved so much good stuff that no one will see." Our feeling is that we will be able to make all 13. Obviously, everything is subject to change, but we really think we’re at least going to be able to make these 13 and we’re just going to go crazy. When we’re coming up with stories, we’re saying, "Why not do whatever we want?" That’s really fun.

Is there still a tension between supplying more standalone episodes and more mythology-heavy ones? I know Joss has said he always wanted there to be some standalone episodes. Is that still a balancing act for you guys? Would you prefer to be doing one or the other?

I think it’s important in terms of the rhythm of the season [to have variety]. You can’t just be hitting people over the head constantly [with the mythology]. You want to vary it. One of the things we want is to have episodes to feel different from each other. You don’t want every meal to be hamburgers. So we do try to keep it feeling fresh with the standalones, but as you get deeper into the season and relationships solidify, it ends up becoming more arc-based anyway.

One question I have — why is Whiskey allowed to know that she’s a doll? Why does November still know she was a doll? Isn’t that very dangerous for the Dollhouse?

Oh, it’s going to be very dangerous and must be monitored very closely. Yeah, it’s just more interesting if they know. It makes it more interesting for us, selfishly.

Yeah, I thought, when I saw Amy playing those Dr. Saunders/Whiskey scenes in "Vows," I thought, "Well, hmmm…. On one level, I get it."

Yeah, having those scenes is the main reason.

Can you talk about what might be happening for other characters? I’ve gotten some complaints on Twitter along the lines of "Where’s the rest of the cast?"

They all get their stuff. We’re giving them all good stuff. One of the interesting things about the Dollhouse is that it started with everybody very separated and very unconnected, other than this place where they all work or live, or work at the FBI and are obsessed with. This season we’re seeing them come together and the relationships started rather complicated and are becoming almost simplified in terms of how they relate to each other and how well they know each other.

So, Michael Hogan is in Friday’s episode. I’m a big fan. Should I sort of restrain my expectations — is he not in the episode very extensively or is it a big role?

He sort of pops in. He doesn’t have a big [role]. But he’s great. And we have Keith Carradine in "Belonging" [the Oct. 23 episode], which we couldn’t be more excited about.

He’s a busy guy.

He is. He’s in everything. He calls himself a "show ho." [Laughter]. We’re very excited about "Belonging," we really love it a lot.

Is that the one Jonathan Frakes directed?

Yeah.

What did you feel he brought to the episode? That’s a question from Twitter.

He’s obviously great with actors. He could not be more fun on set. We have so many great guest stars. It’s like the total geekfest over here constantly.

I can’t let you get away without asking you about the "Dr. Horrible" sequel. Do you have a time frame for shooting it or a plot? Where are you at with it?

We definitely have lots of concrete stuff. There are even songs. But we’re very busy. We try to squeeze in time to work on it. So it’s going slower than we perhaps would like, but the ball’s already rolling. This pesky day job just gets in the way. But yeah, there’s songs, there’s stuff written. It’s coming. Maybe not quickly, but it’s coming.

Is it going to be hard to corral the cast for the next one, given everyone’s schedules?

No, I mean, we made the first one so quickly, we feel we’ll be able to work around everyone’s schedules. Obviously everyone is very busy, so maybe we’re wrong to assume that. But we’re just going to write it and then figure it out.

So is the time frame to shoot it the first half of 2010?

I don’t know. We have to write it first.

Do you want to hint at all about the plot? Does it center on the Evil League of Evil?

I will say this: Dr. Horrible will be in it.

Whoa! Spoiler alert!

[laughter] There will be Evil League of Evil. I think everybody will make an appearance.

So is there going to be a musical episode of "Dollhouse"?

Season 3.

So Alan Tudyk is returning as Alpha on Nov. 20 — is he going to be in a few episodes?

We’re still fleshing that out, we’re not sure [the show is currently shooting Episode 7 and the writers are working on outlines for Episodes 10 and 11]. We’ve just gotten to that point in our story-breaking. I’m really excited about that episode, I think it will be special. Besides him, we’ll get to see a lot of people dealing with each other in ways that they haven’t before, and that should be fun. We’ve got the [overall] arc of the season mapped out and we’re sort of fleshing out the details right now.

So the Felicia Day-Adair Tishler scenes that were going to be in the Season 2 premiere, are they now going away or are they going to show up later in the season?

We moved it to later [in the season]. We decided for various reasons that tracking both timelines was going to be distracting and difficult and a lot to digest. We really love how we sort of hit everyone with it in one episode last year. To try to parallel two stories and thematically make them work — we abandoned those reasons, but we will definitely get back to it.

I’ve heard rumors of perhaps other "Dr. Horrible" alumni coming on the show — aside from Felicia Day.

Yes, you’ll see a little bit of someone else who was in "Dr. Horrible."

And that person is...

It’s Maurissa [Tancharoen, another "Dollhouse" writer and a "Dr. Horrible" writer/performer].

So regarding Whiskey — Amy Acker is only in three episodes this season?

We think it’s around three but I’m not sure of the exact number. We’re saving those for later [in the season].

You and Maurissa wrote the Oct. 23 episode, "Belonging," right? Can you talk about that?

It’s sort of Topher and Sierra-centric, and it involves Sierra’s story and how she got into the Dollhouse and the ripple effect that has on the Dollhouse and how it affects various people’s lives — the truth of that coming out. [Carradine plays a Rossum bigwig in the episode].

It seems like part of Paul’s obsession is a love thing for Caroline or Echo. Would you all ever take things in that direction or would that be too obvious?

It’s not something we’d be against. They’re both attractive. Echo is a blank slate so I think Paul initially has some issues with that, but she does become more self-aware, so who knows. I actually do know [laughs], but let’s just say, "Who knows?"