Dollhouse, Episode 1
I watched the first episode of Joss Whedon’s new “Dollhouse” TV series the other day. While it wasn’t particularly exciting in itself, and it doesn’t really sell the raison d’etre, I can see some good SF potential.
It posits a pretty big SF idea: that it’s possible to read and write memories and personality, and even fuse aspects of memory and personality from several people.
In the first episode, this is used purely for imprinting expertise onto people (Echo, the main character, gets to be a motorcycle-riding hottie and then a hostage negotiator). Whedon makes a strong effort at selling why people would pay for an artificial hostage negotiator rather than a real one:
“Nobody has everything they want. It’s a survival pattern. You get what you want, you want something else. If you have everything, you want something else. Something more extreme. Something more specific. Something perfect.”
…which is nice, but not quite compelling enough. However, there are plenty of reasons the Dollhouse might appeal to people with the right amount of money.
A government wants a perfect spy/infiltrator against an Enemy. A Doll is uploaded with a genuine Enemy-sympathising personality. They join the Enemies. Time passes. When the time is right, the Doll is uploaded with the Spy upgrade.
A hypothetical billionaire wishes to swap their sex for a day. They upload their own memories and personality into a Doll. The Doll-billionaire does stuff for a day. The billionaire downloads the memories from the Doll.
A hypothetical billionaire is old and wishes to not die. They pay a great deal of money, and upload their memories and personality into a Doll.
It seems unlikely that these scenarios will be played out. They highlight the society-changing aspects of the underlying technology a little too much, moving the series too far away from the initial concept. It’s very unlikely, however, that Whedon is unaware of these possibilities, and he may play around the edges of this. What’s more likely is that we discover limitations of the Dollhouse technology – perhaps the memory imprinting only works for a short time (which would gel with the stated position that Echo will get aspects of her own personality back), or that prepping to be an imprintee is time-consuming/requires surgery/only works on certain people.
Joss Whedon has opened a big world of possibilities with the first episode of Dollhouse. It’s as though somebody had invented a time machine and is using it as an alarm clock. Perhaps it has hidden limitations, and an alarm clock really is the best use for it. Time will tell.
March 18th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I’ve now watched up to Episode 5, and it continues to not-quite-work. The second episode was quite good, and there have been interesting bits, but it keeps throwing up interesting ideas and then not following through in interesting ways.
For example, we saw Echo infiltrate a cult compound as a true believer – wonderful, a good use for the Dollhouse skills! And then it backfired as the watchers lost their ability to see through her eyes. At that point, there were many, many interesting things that could happen. Echo, as a true believer, could be the hardliner, the one to encourage the cultists to make a stand. Oh, she was the voice of reason. Huh. It could have gone so deliciously wrong! And we wanted to see it, because we could get some satisfaction from Echo being Frankenstein’s monster at this point.
The cultists were really not very exciting at all. The episode spent some time setting up that they were doing something unknown, and in the end, it was a small weapons cache, of which two weapons were, in the end, used. No drugs? No sex? No secret plans to infiltrate the FBI and assassinate the president?
And the whole thing about the singing and smiling: dropped. But still, it continually felt as though there were interesting things about to happen. Could Echo have remembered any of her thieving skills from the previous job where she didn’t get properly erased? How kickarse would it be if she led the cultists into an escape! They could have gone on the run under her command as the new cult leader!
Oh well. The world of possibilities continues to swirl about the characters, but I’m beginning to wonder whether they’ll ever latch onto any of the really interesting ones.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I’ve read (somewhere that I’ve presently no link for) that you should consider the first 6 episodes as the pilot for the series, and that after that things will start to become more Wendion.
Or so I’ve read. But I’d say at least give it the 1st season. Most shows take the 1st season to work out where they are going. And I can guarantee you that no matter what heights it doesn’t rise to, it will still be better than anything on Japanese TV. Worst. TV. in. the. world.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:49 am
I’ve been continuing to follow Dollshouse, of course, and I’ve just finished watching #7. Still pretty good, still not quite following through on the premise. A repeated note recently has been “Oh no, the handler is out of action and the dolls are running on automatic.” I like that the dolls follow through on their programming (eg. in the most recent one, mischieveousness results in the russian guy being an NSA agent and outranking his handler, so the handler can’t order him around.) But they don’t follow through *enough* for my taste; there’s always something that prevents it from going completely messed up (eg. the cult compound). One suspects they’re saving this moment for later in the series.
I heard that Japanese TV is bad – but what makes it so bad?
March 31st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
The 4 biggest problems with Japanese TV are the ironically named talento, the over abundance of “comedians”, the over-exposure of everybody and that many shows are unscripted.
Talento are fresh-faced one-trick ponies who get discovered and thrown up onto the screen despite having little to no talent outside of ‘that thing they do’. And what they do is generally very limited. They might be a pretty but vapid (nay, stupid) young girl or a boy band member, etc., but rather than just having them on to do their thing, they will suddenly be reading the weather, hosting a show, starring in a drama… Japanese TV thrives on talento – sucking them up, chewing on them and spitting them out. And the thing is, only a tiny proportion of them can’t act. Can’t act at all. If you think that acting is a job anyone can do, come and watch Japanese TV and you’ll quickly learn that when any one is given the chance to, they fail.
And they’ll fail for 12 weeks in a TV drama or love story that has been built around them. Being supported by other talento that also have no idea. Group scenes are especially funny, as when a talento isn’t saying their lines, they have no idea how to act, so just stand around vacantly in the background. I wish you could see “Rescue” which is currently on. It is meant to be about the trials and tribulations of a group of trainee firefighters. Plenty of potential for human drama, yes. It is in fact a bunch of singers and wannabes who are so young and scrawny that they look like they are playing hooky from high school, oh so desperately trying to emote something. I’m not sure what it is, but I think its constipation.
I feel sorry for young Japanese actors who are studying acting. They have no avenue to move into TV or movies. There is NO such show as ‘Lost’ or ‘Friends’ that went out assembled a team of writers (very little thought is given to script) and then found unknown actors to bring the characters on paper to life. Dramas here operate the other way in that they write a vehicle for the current face-of-the-moment. You’ll never, and I mean never, see an unknown ACTOR starring on TV.
“Comedians” come in two varieties. The first are similar to talento. Their comedy is an a repetition of the same joke. They last about 6 months, and may even rise to the height of a TV commercial where they’ll repeat the same joke to sell a product. The second variety are the old-timers who also fall into two varieties. There are those who make comedy by being physically abused – you know the one’s who’ll set their testicles on fire for a laugh. They’ll appear in those famous torture game shows. The second type don’t actually tell jokes anymore, but walk around making witty observations about everyday life. As to how witty they are, well that’s always tempered by my complaint of over-exposure.
You’ll see the same faces everyday, on any channel. A talento might appear on a morning show as a guest, sell lipstick on the shopping channel in the afternoon, and then helm a drama for the evening. This just gets them to become old news fast. For comedians, there is the added pressure to come up with something funny all the time on unscripted shows. When the only thing you can do that’s funny is repeat the same joke, then you and your audience quickly have a problem.
One interesting point about Japanese TV is that because it is unscripted, and because everyone is desperately clinging on by doing that one thing they do, it relies totally on kayfabe. Nobody ever plays themselves. And nobody contradicts anybody or calls them out on their character or weird behavior. If you’re the guy whose shtick is to repeat “It has nothing to do with me” while pumping your arms and legs (I’m not making this up), then by others on TV that is seen as a perfectly ordinary way to act in public, and they will play along with it, safe in the knowledge that when its their turn to pretend to be a cat, they will reciprocate and not blow your gig.
I watch a lot of DVDs.