Comic-Con ‘08: Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse Panel

Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku (Tru Calling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)  and Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica) attended the Dollhouse panel and they went straight to audience questions after the very cool preview of the show.

Joss was asked if there was anyone outside the Whedon-verse cadre of actors that he might be interested in bringing into his shows.  Joss pointed to Tahmoh quickly!  He touched on the fact he’s got a bro-mance with him and wanted him on the show.

He was also asked if it was a pessimistic attitude for different folks already starting websites to save the show, considering his past experience with the Fox Network.  He appreciates the enthusiasm behind the ideas, and he feels the wariness is much deserved.

Whedon pointed out that this will not be a simple role for Eliza as she’ll have to tackle a range of roles she’ll experience in the show and warned us there will be a lot of pain with Echo.  (Echo is Eliza’s character’s name.)

Eliza has varied interests, and as we found out, elk hunting was one of them.  She capped that revelation with “I was elk hunting, sorry PETA. It’s a part of life. I eat what I kill.”

Some brave soul from the audience at the microphone called the trailer for Dollhouse mundane compared to Buffy or Firefly.  The crowd jeered the inquirer so loud, we almost lost the rest of the question.  Eliza responded that she will “..bring some Faith down to the floor“!  In all seriousness, Joss said the show is about people.  Not monsters, spaceships, etc. and that everything he does is about the people.

He later noted that we will be seeing Amy Acker cross the set of Dollhouse as a guest and Eliza piped in to bring that Fillion guy over!

One question was posed as to who he’s going to kill off first and he said he doesn’t have any deaths planned right now, but it may come down to who p***es him off first. 

Eliza was asked about her work on Tru Calling and she said there was an awful lot of work filming the same scenes from different angles and it seemed hard on her, from the way she responded.  She said it was a great experience, but it felt like GroundHog Day with the filming process.

On a lighter note, Tahmoh was asked if Eliza’s spine glows and he said he doesn’t know.  Joss Added “Yet!”  Eliza got a bit confused because she didn’t understand the reference. Tahmoh leaned over and whispered in her ear what the reference was  (The female cylons in Battlestar Galactica spines glow red during sex), and suddenly Eliza’s eyebrows popped up and said, “Oh!”

He touched on the news about the pilot being reshot, to allay some concerns of the audience.  He said that the original effort jumped right into the story line and reshooting just created more of a background to bring the audience into the story a little bit better and emphasized that nothing was removed from the show, just rearranged.  (Don’t fret yet Fox bashers!)

Joss also said that the series will be accented with webisodes for filler details… cool!

From the panel, a few off subject comments came up, giving us a bit more insight into Joss Whedon:

He feels that the movie AI is a terribly underrated movie.

He’s incredibly honored that his writing is reviewed under certain academic programs.

He’s influenced by writing from the 30’s and 40’s.  He’s a big buff of pre 50’s material.

(Thought you’d like to know that.)

Look for the show in January, they’re contracted for 13 episodes.  If you want to see what we’ve said about Dollhouse, plus see the cool trailer they played at Comic-Con, check out our post about Joss playing with a Dollhouse.