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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.'"
If the opening is "The Light Before We Land" by The Delgados I'm totally calling foul.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
In episode 3 Echo downloads a music track and spends the rest of the episode evading the RIAA.
liqbase
But how many episodes before this invariably gets canceled?
I realize that serialized mystery/thriller/drama shows are all the rage (Lost, Prison Break, Life, Heroes). But its getting outrageous. How many malevolent companies/groups/governments/cabals can we be expected to tolerate.
First data point: Buffy
...
...extrapolating...
...
Second data point: Firefly
This show has already been canceled.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's refreshing to see a new series by Joss where the main character is not a girl with superhuman martial art abilities taking on nearly unsurmountable tasks while not being aware of the subtle manipulations of an unknown dark and nefarious nemesis.... Oh wait.
I am NOT going to watch another show just to see the best, most clever, smartest and funniest person die.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You mean Anya, right?
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
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.
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.
Uh, Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot) did this in his 1998 movie Dark City ; an alien race constantly wipes the minds of their captive humans, reshuffling them in order to better understand the human concept of a soul (so that the dying alien race can learn this trait and perhaps evade their fate). The movie is one of my favorites, but I don't expect Dollhouse to be anything but drivel.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Battered writer syndrome?
I don't have much sympathy for him - his Buffy and Angel runs show the guy knows how to play the game. Even if Firefly was killed a few seasons early, Buffy was killed a few season late. He's not really a rube walking into Fox's spinning blades of ineptness.
Sooner or later there needs to be an intervention and his friends and family need to tell him that, no matter what it says, Fox doesn't really love him.
Regards, Ian
Or it was Universal that made the film and Fox had nothing to do with it.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'm fairly certain something like this must already be happening. At least at my work. Its the only plausible explaination for people to constantly make the same bad decisions over & over again.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I disagree. I feel the last two seasons of Angel were the best. I never watched Buffy, but I feel that Firefly was as close to perfect as a show can be, and Serenity was pretty good for a man who's only ever done TV.
Out of curiosity, what didn't you feel made sense about Serenity's conclusion? I thought it was good.
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.
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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.
The series sounds like All My sins remembered by Joe Haldeman. An average citizen is conditioned through hypnotherapy to assume given roles for a time period until the mission is over. After that he returns to base, debriefs and is assigned another mission. Eventually the brain cannot take the strain of repeated wipes and reprogramming and by the end when he is not on mission he is a schizophrenic stew of previous programmed personalities (thus - All my sins remembered).
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
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.
Writer.
Don't get me wrong, I have the Buffy, Angel, and Firefly boxed sets and enjoy them all, but it is not accurate to say that Joss wasn't involved in the Buffy movie.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Yes a teenage vampire, why wouldnt everyone like that?
Serenity was good because it was libertarians in space. Buffy sucked balls because it wasnt true to the movie. I watched the first buffy episode but kristy swanson wasnt in it so who the hell cares. I mean they didnt even use donald sutherland! it was a big let down and I vowed never to watch it again.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I wish Firefly hadn't been canceled too, but c'mon, it cost a million bucks an episode to make and it was unpopular
Mmmm bullshit. You take a show that has to be watched in order, show it out of order, and constantly mess with the time slot, and it fails to pick up viewers? Who knew? The part that I don't understand is why greenlight the show and spend a bunch of money on it, only to deliberately run it into the ground so it gets canceled. Especially when they canceled Dark Angel because they wanted to use the money to make Firefly.
The last *two* seasons of Angel? Seriously? Season 4 turned Angel into The Connor Show, with that fucking annoying little brat ruining nearly every episode. Even the actor who played Connor was apparently sick of him, saying each episode was pretty much whine, beat up on Angel, whine some more, no character development. And then there was the annoying/fake Cordy, with the ickiness of Cordy/Connor.
Season 5, though...wow. Spike, plus Amy Acker as Illyria, plus great plots. And probably one of the best season/series finales ever made.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
What Minear actually said was: Gotta respect a man who makes the best out his reality.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
It's funny that he's being accused of blatantly copying the show's premise, yet nobody seems to agree who he's ripping off:
Gunslinger Girls
Dark City
All My Sins Remembered
Joe 90
AphroditeX
Neuromancer
Did all of those shows rip off each other?
Hopefully, this is part of some backroom deal so Joss can secure the rights to Firefly (which expire at the end of this year).
Because, otherwise... Joss, buddy, what the hell? You're like a hooker who keeps going back to her abusive pimp for another shot. What's next, you'll add a secondary character for Nathan Fillion, just to ensure that Fox will cancel it?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
This is just speaking for myself, but that ending was one of the very few times I've truly felt fear and suspense in an action movie. The standard trope goes something like: "Every one of Our Heroes is in mortal peril, and maybe the show plays it up by killing a Red Shirt, but you know that nobody you care about is going to bite it because they've got to be here for the next episode." Serenity was: "One fantastic character was actually killed, now another one's killed... dear God, this 'everybody might die' scene might actually end with everybody dying!"
If there had been a serious chance at bringing Firefly back to TV then I wouldn't think losing Book and Wash was worth the loss of Book and Wash, but for the movie's sake it was the right artistic choice to make.
"Firefly, fridays at 8", nope, it's baseball. Worse, it's baseball with an ad at 8:15 for firefly at 8. I kept fox on mute all night while I surfed the web... you know when firefly came on? Me neither, but it was after midnight, because I checked at midnight, and at around 12:10 I realized it was on.
The next week, it wasn't on yet at 12:10, but it came on later (mute, web).
They claim they canceled it because it got bad ratings, but they killed it. On purpose (showed the episodes out of order, including "to be continued" episodes, aired the first episode last, skipped weeks, changed the airtime without any notice, etc.).
So fuck you and your willingness to accept the official story, hook, line and sinker.
You can't take the sky from me...
If I remember correctly (say a 50/50 chance at best) Joss had signed a development deal with Fox and owed them 2 more series after Firefly. If so then if he wanted to do TV he might have to go back to FOX (right of first refusal perhaps).
Yes he does have good reson to be wary. They put his baby in the Fri-8pm time slot of death, showed it out of order, pre empted or moved it so often you never know when it was on, then canned it.
Fox has earned a reputation for quickly canceling genre shows. A lot of this seems to stem from a tendancy to greenlight plenty of unusual fare and then cancel it if it does not expode quikly, both the good (Firefly, Brimstone) and the "what were they thinking?" (Drive, lots of things no one remembers). Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.
Of course with the writers stike everything is on hold, and after the colapse of "Heros" clones it may never see daylight at all.
Bah, the movie was grade-b classic camp. The show was a completely different genre. If the show had a different name nobody would even connect the two at all.
Dont forget "Universal Soldier".