Dollhouse news recap: trailer, clip, new story details

Posted by fanshawe

May 19, 2008

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Joss Whedon and his crew have recently finished filming the pilot for the new series, Dollhouse, and promotional materials have hit the web in big style this past week.

The series’ launch date is set for mid-January. The episodes will air at 8 PM on Fox, right before the new season of 24.

The episodes order has been increased from seven to 13 and might yet be expanded to 22 later on. On top of that, Fox is using Dollhouse to test a new, “Remote Free TV” model, with only five minutes of commercials, so each episode will be longer than episodes of TV shows generally are; reports say at least 50 minutes per ep.

Joss Whedon’s old partner in crime Jane Espenson, who is still working on the final season of Battlestar Galactica, might eventually come on board if the budget permits it.

Reed Diamond (Homicide: Life on the Street, Journeyman) is now among the names credited for the show’s pilot, “Echo.” No word yet if his role will become a recurring one.

Most of the Dollhouse regulars can be seen in the trailer, released last week.It is available at Dollverse.com.

New story details, mostly related to the premise of the show, have also been revealed. The episodes will mostly be stand-alone, with an ongoing subplot of an MIA doll.

The story is set at some point in the future. The organization behind the Dollhouse is a corrupt, top-secret government agency that works with a high-tech brain institute. The Dolls are supposedly volunteers who traded five years of their lives for a insane sum of money once they leave the facility.

The Dolls, or Actives, receive a “personality imprint” that consists both of regular memories and muscle memory when they go on missions. The missions are not supposed to last more than 10 hours and the Actives are monitored and protected by Handlers. Once a mission is complete, they feel an immediate urge to go back to the Dollhouse, a state-of-the-art facility where they live, sleep, eat and train and where their memories are wiped clean after each mission. The clients are thoroughly checked before they can use the Dolls and they pay a lot for the privilege.

Eliza Dushku, who plays Echo, will go through three to four entirely different personalities in each episode and the show’s premise will apparently not pose many obstacles to Joss Whedon’s creativity either. He recently said: “The other day I shot scenes for a 1940s musical dance number and a Mexican spaghetti Western – just for the pilot episode.” Sounds like there is fun to be had.

Dollhouse is not the only project Whedon has been working on. There is also the 40-minute online musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as the bad guy and Felicia Day as the love interest.

In Joss’ words: “It’s about a low-rent supervillain who’s trying to get into the Evil League of Evil and defeat his nemesis, Captain Hammer and work up the nerve to talk to the pretty girl at the laundromat… It’s an idea I had a while ago, that I thought would be just right for a weird little Internet venture. I wrote it with my brothers and my brother’s fiancée and somehow got the best actors I know to just jump in, which was very scary for all of us.”

Dr. Horrible got its own IMDb page and will most likely be premiering on the Internet as soon as they figure out the right venue and work out the details.

Finally, to go back to Dollhouse, Joss has also addressed the fears of his fans, who remember all too well how his last show, Firefly, came to an abrupt end at Fox, the same network that is producing Dollhouse.

He said: “Everyone knows that my last experience here was devastating, and remains so. But the support for Dollhouse has been nothing short of amazing.”

I leave you with this clip, which, along with the trailer, gives you some taste of what’s to come. Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett goodness follows:

Dollhouse: New Cast, Casting Sides, Buffy Alum Rumours

New Cast, Characters Revealed for Whedon’s Dollhouse

Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku Talk about Dollhouse