'Dollhouse'
- francescagelet
- Apr 3
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 15
Today, everyone and their grandma is on the internet, using AI, and generally plugged in to the rapidly changing tech environment. This is a radically different landscape than the one we knew just 15 years ago. Back then, science fiction was owned by a small subculture of ‘nerds,’ the idea of a metaverse wasn’t socialized, and the furthest online most people went was Facebook and Instagram (which were still two separate companies). Smartphones were brand new. Netflix had only just begun to offer streaming as a service. Basically, it was a different world.
That was the world in which ‘Dollhouse,’ Joss Whedon’s other magnum opus, lived and died, to very little fanfare. However, I think this sleek, impeccably-acted, topsy-turvy tech thriller was ahead of its time, and deserves a place as one of the best sci fi creations of this century, if not ever. Now, it’s not just cool to be a ‘nerd,’ it’s expected, and not just because tech literacy is almost a prerequisite for survival. Movies like ‘Her’ and ‘Bladerunner 2049,’ and shows like ‘Black Mirror’ have dragged sci fi as a genre out of its little subculture and into the mainstream, even into the realm of the artsy fartsy.
People are becoming increasingly fascinated by technological change, both as a kind of savior and as a harbinger of humanity’s demise. This new tranche of sci fi media focuses narrowly, philosophically on the tech itself, inhabiting the worlds of this tech with flat, uninteresting characters with very little agency. I, as somewhat of a sci fi traditionalist, prefer stories that focus on intriguing, dynamic, intensely human characters and allow the technology to be a vessel for exploration of those characters (think ‘The Terminator’ and ‘Never Let Me Go’). I prefer studies in how real humans might engage with a new type of world, rather than stories where characters are a vessel to explore technologies. (think ‘Black Mirror,’ excepting a few episodic gems like ‘San Junipero’ and ‘Hang the DJ’). Humans are just more interesting than technology ever could be.
This is what makes ‘Dollhouse’ so compelling 15 years on. Set in a world (or near future) where an underground organization has developed the technology to wipe people’s brains of their personality and memories, like a hard drive, and upload a new personality and set of memories to that person’s brain, a corporate offshoot of that organization rents people out to the very wealthy in secret. This technology is relatively self-contained to the corporate offshoot (The Dollhouse) and its clientele, with the existence of the tech and the Dollhouse itself being something of an urban legend among laypeople. The show is a veritable layer cake, unravelling the mysterious backstories of the “dolls,” or actives, exploring what would happen if this mind-wiping/imprinting technology went wrong or fell into less-than-altruistic hands, unpacking the substance of love and friendship and curiosity and intelligence and all of those intangibles that make us who we are (in other words, what about us is hardware vs. software).
From an artistic perspective, the actors in the show are really allowed to shine, playing multiple robust characters in a variety of interesting situations. The pace of the show is balanced, driven both by action and dialogue, some of which is at times laugh-out-loud funny. A word of caution, however: the first 3-4 episodes are a little contrived and expository to be considered excellent television, but they are necessary to understand the narrative and once you power through the remaining 2 seasons are absolute gold.
At a time when the four core future technologies (genetics, robotics, information systems, and nanotechnology) are hurtling toward a convergence that belies imminent transhumanism, ‘Dollhouse’ seems now to be particularly prescient, and it is deeply enjoyable to boot.
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