Dollhouse "Stage Fright"
Mar. 2nd, 2009 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janetlinThough we're still in the early episodes which are, by all reports, _intended_ to be sort of self-contained, I am already liking Dollhouse more and more with each episode. I've read a review or two of this third episode that seemed to feel it had dropped the ball, but I think it's continuing the trend of getting better and better which we noticed last week.
I was very happy to see another Active out on the job, and of course jubilant to discover that my suspicion about Victor/Lubov was right on the money. Not that it was a very tough thing to call, but still. I loved the moments between Rayna and "Jordan" that raised thoughts about who's the real Doll, and the interpersonal stuff between various members of the Dollhouse staff. I still hate the head of security, whose name I obviously haven't even bothered to remember.
So much to squee about this week! Yay for the little intimation of a romantic triangle between Boyd and the doctor and Topher. I'd read that the latter two were sort of slated for a Thing, so the addition of Boyd was a pleasant surprise.
Also regarding Dr. Saunders, it made me wonder when she and Boyd were talking about Echo being special and "the best" and she made the comment that sometimes it's better to just be "good enough" - I wonder if the doctor herself is "the best" and "special" somehow and that's why she wasn't killed by Alpha in his rampage, and so she's speaking from personal experience.
The Dollhouse is totally playing Paul! I gotta say, I didn't _quite_ see that one coming. Also it's interesting to note that Victor came back to the Dollhouse and was wiped and then resumed the persona of Lubov - these personas therefore aren't necessarily just one-time things, they can be reused. But in this particular case I don't understand why they would have pulled him from the middle of whatever they had him doing (I'm sure he's with the Borodins for another reason, and fucking with Paul just happened to coincide). Maybe to give him a little bit more fine-tuning, some extra stuff to deal with the new and unexpected development with Paul? Maybe the persona imprint only lasts for a certain amount of time, like a battery losing charge, so they need to come back, get wiped, and have some downtime before being loaded up and sent out again.
Now this thing with Victor raises some questions. Presumably he's with the Borodins because someone hired him. But messing with Paul? That seems more like the Dollhouse using one of its own to protect its interests. So Actives aren't necessarily always hired? If the Dollhouse can turn Actives into anybody, and send them out to do whatever for their own purposes, that's actually kind of scary. They could stick an Active into some major public office (talk about a puppet), send one out as an assassin for some policymaker who's making trouble for them. Maybe that's where the time limit comes in? So that they can't, like, set an Active up to be President or something. Because they'd always have to be disappearing to return to the Dollhouse for downtime. Okay, well the President idea obviously wouldn't really fly, and also even a major public figure wouldn't be a good call, because then they'd be recognizable. So maybe that's its own system of checks and balances. Hmm.
Yarg, once again we have a staff member mouthing off to Echo. Way to break the fourth wall, dudes. You'd think that Miss DeWitt and/or the Powers That Be would try to stress upon the staff DO NOT POKE THE DOLLS, whether active or resting, _especially_ one as special as Echo who might already be prone to "compositing" like Alpha.
Oh, and the names reminded me - Boyd mentioned "the last Sierra" while he was talking to the other handler. So it would seem that they reuse the names, which means Alpha might not have been the very first Doll; he could have that name simply because he was the next person to come in when the name "Alpha" was available. So how long has the Dollhouse been around, then? How many generations of Dolls? It seems hard to believe it can have been around for a long time and they only just now started having problems with the Dolls a la Alpha and Echo.
I was very happy to see another Active out on the job, and of course jubilant to discover that my suspicion about Victor/Lubov was right on the money. Not that it was a very tough thing to call, but still. I loved the moments between Rayna and "Jordan" that raised thoughts about who's the real Doll, and the interpersonal stuff between various members of the Dollhouse staff. I still hate the head of security, whose name I obviously haven't even bothered to remember.
So much to squee about this week! Yay for the little intimation of a romantic triangle between Boyd and the doctor and Topher. I'd read that the latter two were sort of slated for a Thing, so the addition of Boyd was a pleasant surprise.
Also regarding Dr. Saunders, it made me wonder when she and Boyd were talking about Echo being special and "the best" and she made the comment that sometimes it's better to just be "good enough" - I wonder if the doctor herself is "the best" and "special" somehow and that's why she wasn't killed by Alpha in his rampage, and so she's speaking from personal experience.
The Dollhouse is totally playing Paul! I gotta say, I didn't _quite_ see that one coming. Also it's interesting to note that Victor came back to the Dollhouse and was wiped and then resumed the persona of Lubov - these personas therefore aren't necessarily just one-time things, they can be reused. But in this particular case I don't understand why they would have pulled him from the middle of whatever they had him doing (I'm sure he's with the Borodins for another reason, and fucking with Paul just happened to coincide). Maybe to give him a little bit more fine-tuning, some extra stuff to deal with the new and unexpected development with Paul? Maybe the persona imprint only lasts for a certain amount of time, like a battery losing charge, so they need to come back, get wiped, and have some downtime before being loaded up and sent out again.
Now this thing with Victor raises some questions. Presumably he's with the Borodins because someone hired him. But messing with Paul? That seems more like the Dollhouse using one of its own to protect its interests. So Actives aren't necessarily always hired? If the Dollhouse can turn Actives into anybody, and send them out to do whatever for their own purposes, that's actually kind of scary. They could stick an Active into some major public office (talk about a puppet), send one out as an assassin for some policymaker who's making trouble for them. Maybe that's where the time limit comes in? So that they can't, like, set an Active up to be President or something. Because they'd always have to be disappearing to return to the Dollhouse for downtime. Okay, well the President idea obviously wouldn't really fly, and also even a major public figure wouldn't be a good call, because then they'd be recognizable. So maybe that's its own system of checks and balances. Hmm.
Yarg, once again we have a staff member mouthing off to Echo. Way to break the fourth wall, dudes. You'd think that Miss DeWitt and/or the Powers That Be would try to stress upon the staff DO NOT POKE THE DOLLS, whether active or resting, _especially_ one as special as Echo who might already be prone to "compositing" like Alpha.
Oh, and the names reminded me - Boyd mentioned "the last Sierra" while he was talking to the other handler. So it would seem that they reuse the names, which means Alpha might not have been the very first Doll; he could have that name simply because he was the next person to come in when the name "Alpha" was available. So how long has the Dollhouse been around, then? How many generations of Dolls? It seems hard to believe it can have been around for a long time and they only just now started having problems with the Dolls a la Alpha and Echo.
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Great points
Date: 2009-03-06 12:00 am (UTC)Ciao!