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.