Dollhouse: Epitaph 1

This Friday, Joss Whedon's excellent science fiction thriller Dollhouse will begin its second season boasting an impressive cast and pushing forward with a little extra confidence now that the infamous axe of Fox's cancellation policy isn't dangling overhead. The episode we saw as the Season 1 finale was the twelfth of thirteen episodes, the actual finale getting the network boot and living on as the most excellent DVD extra in history. With Dollhouse: Season 2 on the horizon, I decided to feature "Epitaph 1" on this blog.

Joss Whedon likes doom. Whether it's impending, past or currently happening, it's certainly his M.O. "Epitaph 1" jumps ahead ten years to a world that has been torn apart by the imprinting technology pioneered by Rossum Corp. and the Dollhouse itself. A series of achronologic flashbacks only hint at what happened, but it's clear that the technology went wireless and completely rogue. Personalities get erased, people go crazy and the whole world is at war with itself as a result.

Cue Felicia Day and some other familiar faces treading through the urban wastelands of Los Angeles and stumbling upon the Dollhouse in 2019. What begins as a whole party of survivor "actuals" quickly dwindles to a bizarre nuclear family consisting of Day, her trigger-happy male companion and a little girl with the imprint of a full-grown man. Whiskey, aka Dr. Saunders, shows up to be creepy and give our one-time protagonists clues about how to find a safe haven in the apocalypse.

By the end of the episode, we see bits and pieces of how the Dollhouse fell apart, how Caroline turned into a commando and just how dangerous the imprinting technology actually is. The big question that remains is, does "Epitaph 1" make any modern-day developments meaningless? I don't know if this unaired, thirteenth episode is considered canon, but if it is, it has major implications for the rest of the story.

Ultimately, I don't think a huge, impending disaster would be all that bad for Dollhouse. The danger of the show's premise is that it so easily reduces itself to completely episodic storytelling. Making it about something bigger may just turn this show into one of the great sci-fi epics of our time.

More than anything, I'm hoping to spend more time with the "actuals" who serve as Actives in the Dollhouse. I want to know who Sierra, Victor, and Whiskey are under all of the creepy technology. "Epitaph 1" hints at a covert operation Paul slips into Echo's imprints, so there's the possibility of seeing a lot more off-radar behavior among the Dolls. I'm also interested to see what Whedon does with Summer Glau. There have been promises floating around that she'll actually be playing a functional human being, which is a first for Glau's TV career.

Season 2 of Dollhouse premieres this Friday at 9:00 PM on Fox. Thanks to everyone who supported this show in its first season and followed along with TV World. We look forward to jumping back into Dollhouse with all the rest of the fans.