Imagine a world where people are only containers of information. Personalities are recorded, wiped and loaded again for a new assignment: a hostage negotiator on Monday, a perfect lover on Tuesday. That is Dollhouse, and it is the strangest thing Joss Whedon ever put on television.
Whedon is the man behind Buffy, and the screenwriter of Toy Story. His most famous science fiction series is Firefly, which you either love or hate. This one is quieter and meaner: no futuristic sets, no spaceships, almost no action. Each episode works on its own, with a background story that grows underneath.
Why it works
Because the horror is not the technology, it is the consent. The people of the Dollhouse are volunteers, or they were told they were. Every episode asks a version of the same question: if you erase what I am, what is left that can say no?
It was cancelled too soon and it shows: the second season runs to keep up with ideas it earned the right to take slowly.
If you liked Firefly, watch this one next
Dollhouse shares Whedon’s ear for dialogue and his interest in people who are good at their job and bad at their life. It has no budget to hide behind, so it has to be written, and it is. Two seasons, forty-three episodes, and an ending that arrived early but still lands.
Fair warning: the first five episodes look like a procedural. From the sixth, the show starts paying the bill for everything it set up.
Keep reading: the best sci-fi TV shows.
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