Joss Whedon Back on TV

tokenhillbilly writes "Joss Whedon of 'Buffy' and 'Firefly' fame has signed on to do another TV series on Fox starring Eliza Dushku (Faith from 'Buffy'). The series is going to be called Dollhouse, and the story surrounds a group of people 'programmed' to do missions out of a sort of high-tech dorm. '[The series] follows a top-secret world of people programmed with different personalities, abilities and memories depending on their mission. After each assignment -- which can be physical, romantic or even illegal -- the characters have their memories wiped clean, and are sent back to a lab (dubbed the "Dollhouse"). [The] show centers on Dushku's character, Echo, as she slowly begins to develop some self-awareness, which impacts her missions.'"

Comments

Sounds somewhat like Gunslinger Girl.

[Dorceon]

If the opening is "The Light Before We Land" by The Delgados I'm totally calling foul.

Let's hope it's cancelled after 15 eps

[Sciros]

Joss Whedon usually has just about enough good ideas for not-quite-one season. Buffy started great, and ended terribly (though its first 3 seasons were decent). Angel started awesome as well, but then went down the toilet. Firefly was all sweet... except Serenity where Whedon got a chance to once again show that he doesn't understand his own characters well enough to make a sensible, logical conclusion.

Whedon's strength is his sarcastic dialogue, which I find enjoyable to an extent. He also has cool characters (which sometimes become totally uncool but at least they start off well) often enough. I just want this show to suffer the same fate as Firefly so it *doesn't* slowly go down the toilet the way Buffy and Angel did and leaves us with a permanently good impression (I try to ignore Serenity).

Re:Let's hope it's cancelled after 15 eps

[RedWizzard]

http://imdb.com/name/nm0923736/otherworks
Though that says he wrote an unused draft, many of his lines appeared in the film, e.g. "Do you know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning?" Whedon claims only two lines were used from his script and the "lightning" line was not intended to have the style of delivery that it ended up with.

Re:Joss Whedon and Fox

[owlnation]

He did. But the difference here is that Eliza has the deal with Fox, and she's hired him (and Tim Minear). At least they have 7 episodes guaranteed. It's more than Drive ever got.

Whedon ripping off Joe 90?

[Anonymous Coward]

He could have at least done one of the good marionette shows like "Thunderbirds."

Re:Joss Whedon and Fox

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Just what I was thinking. I like most of Whedon's projects, but the guy sure knows how to whine. I mean, I wish Firefly hadn't been canceled too, but c'mon, it cost a million bucks an episode to make and it was unpopular (until the DVDs came out AFTER it was canceled). They even sprang for a feature film, which in turn lost money... and Joss wouldn't stop talking to the press about how much it sucked working with Fox. Dude, they footed the bill! They risked a tens of millions of dollars on a feature film for a canceled TV show!

I'm guessing there's a REASON that Whedon keeps coming back to Fox... and it's that despite all his complaints (many of which I'm sure are valid), they're the only ones with enough cash and enough interest to buy what he's selling.

hybrid shows

[fermion]

Although most writing is just rehashing of old ideas, only changing sets or characters, it seems that we are getting more straight hybrids, with little else change. For instance, the so-called bionic women seems more a hybrid of Alias and perhaps some young women show, maybe gilmore girls, though I realy don't know. No new writing, just put it in a blender.

The sad thing is that really out there ideas, those that are not rehashes, are not popular. Stuff like Salvage I. I guess people want what they want. This show, however, seems like a surrender to the status quo. After years of trying to be out there, the show is a realization that money is only made when we give people what they want. Firefly made no sense, and was sci fi, so it was dropped, thought it was still more realistic than friends. Oh well, like goes on.

Re:Not a troll

[Phroggy]

Buffy was painful, but funny enough that I enjoyed it anyway, and the crazy stuff they did (an episode without dialog, an episode without music, an episode with the dialog in Swedish, an Rodgers & Hammerstein style over-the-top musical, a dream sequence where a character is walking between sets in ways that seem impossible, killing a regular character in the middle of a season, introducing a new character who "had always been there" with no explanation whatsoever until several episodes later, etc. etc.) is what made me a big fan.

Angel was just as painful, but tried to take itself way too seriously. Had good moments, but nothing that really hooked me. Firefly was brilliant.

Hit and miss with me.

[pavon]

All his shit feels the same and looks the same I can't agree with this, as I have reacted differently to everything he has done. Roseanne, Buffy, and Firefly are each very different shows.

I was always fairly indifferent to Roseanne, it was funny sometimes, and annoying sometimes, but for the most part didn't do much for me. But what people did like about it was that it was very down to earth and completely non-PC. Then you have Buffy, which was practically the opposite. The dialog, while often irreverent, was delivered in a very liberal-arts pseudo-intellectual manner, which I absolutely hated. And then he turns around and makes Firefly. I absolutely loved that show - the premise, the characters, the mix of comedy and emotion, everything.

But most importantly, none of those shows were the standard run-of-the-mill sitcom - they all did something different, some of which I liked, some of which I didn't. My impression of Joss is that he is a good writer that takes risks, unlike most of the formulaic crap on TV. His type of writing will never appeal to everyone all the time, but the people who do like it *love* it. I'd much rather have more of that on television, and so I'm curious to see what he does with this new show.

No extrapolation needed

[fm6]

You're making a joke (and not a bad one), but you pretty much describe what happened to Firefly. The decision to buy the show came from a top, but there was a huge faction at Fox that hated the idea of putting on an "anti-Star Trek" and did everything they could to sabotage it. These are your standard network suits who hate Science Fiction (especially "space opera") because it costs a lot to produce and only targets a narrow audience. They much prefer reality shows and sitcoms, which are cheap and popular.

They did a lot of stuff that at the time I attributed to simple corporate ineptitude, like promoting the show with really badly designed web site, and putting out this really horrible souvenir poster (featuring a common housefly with a lightbulb up its ass!). Then they forced Whedon to water down the scripts, showed them out of order, and finally scheduled the premier on a night where it was sure to be delayed in many markets by late-running baseball games. I usually hate conspiracy theories (speaking as a former "conspirator") but here it's hard to avoid having one.

On top of all that, Joss Whedon is notoriously bad at corporate politics. So yeah, it's quite possible that his new show has already been cancelled.

Re:No extrapolation needed

[_Sprocket_]

Then they forced Whedon to water down the scripts, showed them out of order, and finally scheduled the premier on a night where it was sure to be delayed in many markets by late-running baseball games.

I watched the series in the as-aired order (the fact that I never saw them when they were on the air is a different but very important point). I liked the "out of sequence" ordering. I had no problem jumping in to the action. Watching the fur fly... noticing that there were personal interactions between these characters... and wondering what the story was. By the time the two-part "original first episode" shows up in this sequence, I found it all a treat to finally get to see who and what these people were. I'm not so sure I would have been as interested if it started with character introductions first.

Clearly there are a number of people who disagree - episode order always gets mentioned when bemoaning the failure of Firefly. Maybe its a matter of sensibilities and preference. I'm not so sure it was sabotage. At least on this point.

Re:Not wanting to be overly cynical

[Sancho]

Here's my rant on this one.

--snip--
The show, however, is going to be on Fox. And Fox has a history of screwing up. A list of my fears:
- The show is called Dollhouse. No one who will be interested in the show is going to see it in their cablebox guide, wonder what it is, turn it on, and get hooked. The people who are going to turn it on and get hooked are 8 year old girls and soccer moms. And maybe people who saw Welcome to the Dollhouse. This means that the show must rely entirely on promotions and word-of-mouth.
- Fox tends to under-promote shows. Fox also tends to move new shows to new timeslots constantly in an effort either to mitigate the damage of an apparently failing show, or to try to get new viewers. Neither of these is good for shows.
- Fox tends to stick genre shows in a dead time slot. Friday nights at 8 is the norm for sci-fi. Every time it happens, I visualize an executive at Fox saying, "Hey, this is a show for geeks. Geeks have nothing better to do on a Friday night than to watch TV. Let's not clutter up the schedule by putting this somewhere where it might get a wider audience, let's just toss it on Friday." They also forget that geeks tend to DVR shows or buy them on iTunes/Unbox/Video-Site-du-Jour. This is a deadly combination that leads to devastating viewership when combined with a crappy rating system like Nielson.
- It's Joss Whedon and Tim Minnear. They are cursed when it comes to Fox.
- It's Joss Whedon. He commands a fairly high salary, and Dushku probably does too. The show sounds like it's going to be rampant with special effects and stunt work. This means it's going to be way more expensive than your typical hour-long drama, much less a reality show that could fill the same spot and rake in tons more money.
- Did I mention that it's called Dollhouse?
--snip--

I'm wary of this one. Joss tends to have good writing, even if you don't care for the content itself. He's smart, snappy, and witty. But there's a lot going against this show, and I'm not sure it's going to last much longer than the last Tim Minear project on Fox.

Re:Bets on how long it lasts?

[tm2b]

Nope.

What Minear actually said was:

If I end up being some little Americanized BBC, churning out limited series for DVD, and the people who employ me want to keep handing over 20 or 30 million dollars for me to do that, then I'll be perfectly content.

Gotta respect a man who makes the best out his reality.