Comic Con: Dollhouse

The big attraction on Friday was Joss Whedon. The whole day had been structured around getting into the Dollhouse and Joss Whedon panel; from deciding which of the morning’s panels to attend, to eating times, to getting into line 3 hours before Joss was even due on stage.

We were going to see Joss no matter what.

And we did, hurray! It meant sitting in at the Bones panel (see below), but we were able to move a bit forward before Dollhouse started and had a great view of the stage and the man. He came out with no ceremony, just walked out to the crashing cheers of the 3000 people gathered in Ballroom 20. He looked good, maybe lost some weight? Anyway, after a quick introduction, we were treated to the “missing” episode of Dollhouse, Epitaph One.

The episode was set a few years in the future, and the Dollhouse technology has leaked out to terrorist use, and any exposure to radio waves could mean the wiping of your personality (it had a very post-apocalyptic Terminator feel actually).

Look, it’s no secret that I am not a huge Dollhouse fan, but after watching Epitaph One all I could think was, “can I watch that show?” That one hour episode we saw was more interesting and well-acted than the entire rest of the series had been. Of course, Eliza Dushku was only in it for like 5 minutes, which might have been the reason for the improvement in my mind, but it was just so much meatier than anything else we had seen so far.

After the episode screening, Joss and Eliza came out and did a solid hour of question and answer with the crowd. The questions were great and hit on things I had been wondering. For example: Joss decided to cast Alan Tudyk as Alpha based on his reading of Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra during one of Joss’ famous Shakespeare nights.

Some scoop for season 2 was also provided; Alexis Denisof would be appearing as a guest star (this news was met with great whoops from the audience) and the show would have a new director of photography. Joss promised that they would stretch the parameters of what was possible in the world he had created and characters from Epitaph One (yay Felicia Day!) would make an appearance, even though the episode had never aired.

Overall, seeing Joss and listening to him speak was just as fun and amazing an experience as I had hoped. He’s the kind of guy that makes you think, “he should get to know me, we would get along really well.” He’s such a geek himself, that you can’t help but be drawn to him. And it left me more excited for Dollhouse’s return, which after all, was kind of the point.