Okay, I haven’t written much about Dollhouse since we first heard the news, mostly because I was just waiting on more to come out about it and also when shows like this are in pre-production, news trickles out almost every other day.

But now we have a pretty firm grasp on what Dollhouse is going to be about, what people are saying about the first episode’s script and who the heck is going to be acting in the things.

To get it out of the way, I’m totally pumped about this show and the fact that Joss Whedon is returning to television once more. The downside is that it’s Fox once again, and we all know what happened last time he worked with them (RIP, Firefly).

And now, let’s get into the details of the show. The pilot episode is called Echo, which also happens to be the name of the lead character.

The show is being written by Whedon, Elizabeth Craft (The Shield, Angel), Sarah Fain (The Shield, Angel) and Tim Minear (Drive, Firefly, Angel, X-Files).

It stars Eliza Dushku, as Echo, and co-stars the following: Amy Acker (Drive, October Road, Alias), Olivia Williams (X-Men), Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica), Harry J. Lennix (24, The Matrix) and Reed Diamond (Journeyman, wooo!). There are some other minor roles which you can see over on IMDB.

The plot, directly from FOX:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody’s fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, languageâ€â€?even muscle memoryâ€â€?for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignmentsâ€â€?or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo’s burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

The script for the pilot was leaked and a lot of people have read it. The responses I’ve seen have been nothing short of “amazing.”

Here are some links to reviews that call it “fabulous“, “brilliantly evocative“, and another who calls it “wordly goodness.”

The pilot already started shooting on April 23rd, so they are probably close to done with it. I love the idea of the show. It has a weird Matrix-Battlestar Galactica vibe in the “this has all happened before, and will happen again” kind of thing. Maybe not in the same way as those two references above, but the fact remains that she will be learning things about who she really is as things reset and start over again and again and again.

Should be fun. This Fall’s TV schedule is just looking awesome.

Television
amy acker, dollhouse, eliza dushku, harry j lennix, joss whedon, olivia williams, reed diamond, tahmoh penikett

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