Joss Whedon

After months of delays and re-shoots Dollhouse will be a difficult one to get off the ground but knowing Joss and his successful C.V. I’m sure he’ll pull a masterpiece out of the bag once again. Let me review Joss’s new project and look back at some of his creations that have kept me warm on chilly winter nights.

Late in 2007 Joss pitches a new Sci-fi series called Dollhouse to the Fox Network. It’s about a group of people who are devoid of all emotions and memories, just empty shells waiting to be downloaded with their latest mission; a group of people who can be anything you want them to be with the right kind of money from assassins to sex slaves, the possibilities are endless. Plug and play then delete. Plug and play all over again! The dolls don’t know anything about what’s happening to them. That is, until the main doll, Eliza Dushku of Buffy fame, begins to get her memories back.

The problem Joss faced was that in order for a pilot to be successful one needs the audience to relate to the characters through their emotions and actions in that first scene. The viewer has to get to know the characters quickly so they are able to follow them into the next episode and so on and therein lay the problem, because the pilot is full of drones devoid of all thoughts there aren’t any characters to relate to as such. But Joss is a great writer and knows what he’s doing. He scrapped the original pilot because it didn’t look or feel right and went back to the drawing board. So instead of starting in September like other new shows you’re getting it now.

Toy Story. Ok, Joss was not the creator but the one that turned the story into a script and let’s face it, who doesn’t like Woody and Buzz, bring on Toy Story 3 summer 2010.

Alien Resurrection. I love the Alien Quadrilogy. When Ripley died at the end of number three I cried in my soup thinking there would be no more Alien. Then Joss decided to write Alien Resurrection at a time when the ethics relating to the cloning of animals and humans and how it was ’messing with nature’ was front page news. Joss embraced this concept, put it into the future and in cloning Ripley also cloned the Alien. The moral of the story is don’t mess with nature. Genius.

Buffy. The movie was pure cheese but we all loved it so Joss took the cheese out, brought in Sarah and BANG! you have the most successful series on the planet, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This altered Joss’s status from genius to Godfather of Sci-fi. What’s not to love about this series? Vampires, monsters and cheerleaders. Sexy and humorous with a hint of horror.

Angel. I liked Angel more than Buffy because the tone was darker and grittier, like Supernatural. Not many people can pull out a spin off show and be successful. The Network were fools to decide to cancel mid season making Joss quickly re-write the final episodes to provide an adequate finale. Congratulations to Joss for writing excellent episodes in a short amount of time. One negative observation however is that when Buffy ended the tone of Angel lightened somewhat, whether this was intentional in order to hang on to Buffy fans who knows? Maybe Angel becoming too similar to Buffy was a factor in the network’s decision to cancel! So even Joss can’t be perfect all the time.

Firefly/Serenity. Unfortunately I never had the honour of watching Firefly. After it was cancelled it was a bad time for Joss, but his fans rallied around and he wrote Serenity the movie, which I did see, and was quite impressed with the layout and richness of it. If I could describe the film in a couple of words it would be Star Wars but with only Han Solo and everyone loves Han Solo.

Dr Horrible Sing along. This was for all you bloggers out there. Every Godfather of Sci-fi must take a knock or two so just dust yourself off and come back fighting which is exactly what Joss did with this one. With the Internet becoming faster and able to screen videos the musicals are back with a vengeance and this couldn’t have come at a better time. This is not the first musical Joss has written; he once did it with an episode of Buffy. Dr Horrible was funny and beautifully made and if this was the first course for Joss I can’t wait for the main dish, Dollhouse.

Dollhouse. To begin with I would like to say how much I enjoyed Vicky Gordon’s review on Dollhouse, straight to the point, that’s how I like them. I am however, very jealous that she received a secret copy beforehand! Everything there is to say is all there so go check it out. There isn’t much for me to add because Vicky has already said it, but I will add this:

I hear that the ratings were poor and the show was not that well received in America, so where are all you Whedon fans, you should be ashamed of yourselves, and while you’re at it get your friends and family to join in and boost those ratings! Secondly, I will admit that the pilot wasn’t all action and looked just like a regular show, but don’t be fooled and switch off. Stick around because I guarantee it will get better. Dollhouse gives us a lot of unanswered little parcels that I can’t wait to be unwrapped in future episodes.

I leave you with this thought, some of the greatest shows have had dodgy pilots e.g. Star Trek, X files, Stargate, Buffy and Lost and some of the poorest shows have had great pilots but then fade away, so I say to you Network people don’t cancel it, let it mature and you will see. Joss and others can see a great ending were others can only see a great pilot.