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SINGAPORE: The Dolls in this Dollhouse are no Cabbage Patch or Barbie specimens. They’re like no dolls you’ve ever played with before — and that includes action figures, too.
Dollhouse is a new sci-fi-themed series about a secret enterprise that houses “Dolls”: People who can be programmed with different personas to fit the demands of paying clients. After each job is complete, the Dolls have their memories erased so that they’re blank slates once again.
If that sounds creepier than Child’s Play to you, then the show’s creators will have achieved their goal.
The series is the brainchild of Joss Whedon, acclaimed creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Collaborating with him again is Eliza Dushku, who played the character Faith in both Buffy and Angel. Here, the 28-year-old actress takes on the role of Echo, a Doll who is slowly becoming aware of the sinister goings-on.
As the story goes, Dollhouse was born over a four-hour lunch the two shared. “We were talking about what kind of show would suit me right now in my career and in my life,” Dushku explained. Joss and I have had a 10-plus-year friendship. He knows how hard it is for me to sit still for five minutes, not to mention for an entire episode, so the premise of the show was sort of based on my own life, and on keeping things moving.”
The show’s premise means that neither Dushku nor the viewer will ever get bored. She plays a different colourful character each week as Echo gets implanted with different personalities, ranging from a hostage negotiator to a blind cultess.
Whedon warns you not to expect a carbon copy of Buffy, though. “There is a lot of fun and a lot of humour in Dollhouse, but what it doesn’t have is an inherent silliness that both Buffy and Firefly had, and even Angel, where part of the fun was deconstructing the genre we were in. This has to be a little bit more grounded in order for it to play, or it would become campy. With vampires and spaceships and horses, we had more leeway to be a little less realistic in how we plotted things.”
“Part of the mandate of the show is to make people nervous,” the Dollhouse producer added. “It’s to make them identify with people they don’t like and get into situations that they don’t approve of.”
Dushku, who is also the show’s executive producer, agreed. “It’s provocative. It’s disturbing in some ways. It’s controversial. We’re dealing with altering and programming people. But it’s relevant and exciting because it has to do with evolving and questioning. That’s what interesting storytelling is to me: Asking questions and taking a closer look at desires and fantasies and taboos and sexuality.
“At the same time ... a story that puts those parts together tightly and cleverly, with drama and humour and pain and joy.” Transcript courtesy of SingTel mio TV - TODAY/sh
Dollhouse is available on demand on SingTel mio TV Ch 550 through SingTel mio TV’s Season Pass.
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