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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?
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.
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.
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.
How many malevolent companies/groups/governments/cabals can we be expected to tolerate.
Given how many we tolerate in Real Life, I expect we'll tolerate a bunch more of them on TV.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
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...
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.
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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?
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...