Joss Whedon has been making the rounds in various media forms and chatting about the upcoming 2nd season of Dollhouse. I’ll talk touch on some generic issues then a little bit later. Beware, there’s a section marked spoilers, you can pass over that part and onto more good stuff with the skip/jump link I’ve included.
Joss truly didn’t expect to be working on a 2nd season of Dollhouse, but all the non-traditional ratings numbers such as DVR viewing added up and the idea that fans will gravitate to the show in such a way that the revenue stream from DVD sales and such won’t dry up were all factors that nudged Fox towards renewing the show.
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Even though some of the writers, Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft, that worked on season 1 headed off to work on the show Lie To Me, Joss nabbed the creators of Reaper, Tara Butters and Michelle Fazekas, to join the writing staff as replacements. Despite Reaper being as different as it was, Joss doesn’t think their past will affect the show adversely, but rather will be a boon as they’re very story-driven kind of folk.
As far as how they’ve approached season 2, Joss took note of how the audience responded to the episodes where they showed the inner workings of the Dollhouse and the development of the characters therein. Hence, we’ll be getting much more of that angle going forwarad.
He also said that even though he’s hard to pin down, we will be seeing Alan Tudyk next season. Sweet!
What Will be Coming Up? (SPOILERS IN THIS SECTION. Skip Link.)
- We’re going to be getting the dark, noir-ish tone that we had in the pilot.
- Sierra and Victor (Dichen Lachman & Enver Gjokaj) are going to go at it like monkeys. (Those were Joss’ words!) The actors are downplaying that much exuberance, but it will be there.
- Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) is now under an uneasy truce with Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) and is deep in the Dollhouse. If you can call working for the Dollhouse as deep. He’ll be acting as Echo’s handler.
- Echo (Eliza Dushku) has issues. The mind wipes after each mission aren’t erasing everything anymore. This will have its own side affects during missions. Some good and some not so good?
- We’ll get to see just how fearful Adelle DeWitt is of her bosses… the folks above her in the Dollhouse hierarchy. We’ll see why people are working for the Dollhouse.
The “More On That Later” Section
First you need to know that I’m jazzed that Joss’ show got renewed. I’m happy for him, his staff, the actors and the fans. I’ve missed his consistent presence of story telling on the tube.
But I have to be pragmatic about this and wonder out loud how this show got renewed over The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
In various, impromtu polls around the web, Sarah Connor seemed very popular with the masses, versus Dollhouse which didn’t fare so well.
In addition to budgetary concerns with the higher costs of producing TSCC, I think Fox feared the retribution if they cut another Whedon project off at the knees like they did with Firefly and totally ignored what looked like a massive wave of fan desire to have TSCC come back for a 3rd season.
Will this be a mistake? Probably not. Whedon fans like you and me will make up for it in the short and long run, I’m sure.
In the meantime, Whedon fans win while TSCC fans wander the endless wasteland of wishing and missing their show. Are there any TSCC fans out there that converted over to Dollhouse?
Dollhouse premieres Friday, September 25th.
Sources: IF Magazine, Sci Fi Wire
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6 Comments
I know what I’ll be watching in bed tomorrow morning :p
Can’t wait for the season premier, after Epitaph one, it’s gearing up to be a really good show.
Agreed. Epitath One was awesome.
I watched both TSCC and Dollhouse last season but overall I enjoyed TSCC more and would have preferred it if Fox had brought that back instead. I love Buffy, Angel, Firefly and other works by Joss Whedon, but something about Dollhouse’s first season never totally clicked with me. There was a point during last season where I started to let it build up for several weeks on the DVR like I had been doing with Heroes. Eventually though I went back to Dollhouse and finished the season, something I can’t yet say for Heroes. I felt that the season ended strongly and that ‘Epitaph One’ was easily the best episode of the series so far.
I really want the show to succeed and I think that it has a lot of potential, especially now that Tara Butters and Michelle Fazekas have joined the writing staff. Ultimately I find myself pulling for most genre shows because I’d prefer to see networks take chances on shows instead of adding CSI: to the front of every major city, presenting us with some new incarnation of 20-somethings playing teenagers or canceling a show and replacing it with So You Think Your Pet Can Dance.
The engagement of the week was one of the better ones considering all the horrible ones last season, but the highlight of the episode was Dr. Saunders. Amy Acker is so amazing and I’ll be sad to see her in only 2 more episodes. Echo and Ballard working together seems like it will work very well.
I liked the season opener. It looks like the show’s finally finding it’s ground, in particular the scenes between Saunders and Topher were fantastic. And can I say just how cool it was to see an Apollo/Helo smackdown. I’m not even a big BSG fan and I thought it was fun.
http://www.igp-scifi.com/dollhouse-episode-guide-2.html
I watched both TSCC and Dollhouse, but definitely preferred the latter. Although TSCC picked up in its last few episodes, I never really felt like it was getting anywhere.
I was thrilled when Dollhouse got renewed, and I’ll definitely be watching (and re-watching) every week.
BTW – “totally ignored what looked like a massive wave of fan desire to have TSCC come back for a 2nd season”
TSCC DID run for 2 seasons…I think this should read ‘3rd season.’
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