The Dollhouse is an underground organization that hires people for five-year contracts to voluntarily have their memories and personalities removed from their bodies in order to go out and do pretty much anything that The Dollhouse's clients want. The series uses the first few episodes to set up the technology and basic idea of the show before delving heavily in the season-long story-arc. In these episodes, we see Echo (the code name assigned to Dushku's body) become a hostage negotiator, a backup singer intent on protecting her idol, a bank robber and even a blind religious girl sent to infiltrate a cult.
The further the show progresses, the more hints we get about a former Active (the term used for these operatives) named Alpha, who apparently sometime before the show started, went crazy and slashed up a lot of Actives and their handlers before escaping. Not only do we learn more and more about what happened when Alpha escaped, but we also get hints that similar events might even be happening to Echo.
Meanwhile, as Echo goes on her daily tasks, FBI Agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett of Battlestar Galactica) investigates the rumor of The Dollhouse and slowly starts digging into the details of this illegal organization. What he doesn't realize, though, is just how closely The Dollhouse is keeping tabs on him and we learn (often times way before him) that not everyone he meets is who they seem to be. But when Ballard gets a photo of Echo and gets a feeling that she is one of these mindless slaves, his desire to get into The Dollhouse increases ten-fold.
But the show isn't carried by Dushku and Penikett alone. Many of the show's supporting characters do a great job to keep the series' momentum building. Other Actives include Victor (Enver Gjokaj) and Sierra (Dichen Lachman), while Echo's handler, Boyd, is played by Harry Lennix and is tasked to make sure she comes out of her operations in one piece. The Dollhouse's staff includes Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker, Fred from Angel), head-of-house Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams), head-of-security Mr. Dominic (Reed Diamond) and the man behind the memory wipes and imprintings, Topher (Fran Kranz).
Even if you watched every episode as it aired religiously, this Blu-ray version of Dollhouse: Season One has a couple more episodes for you to enjoy. One is the unaired pilot that was scrapped before the series' actual release. This episodes offers a different approach to introducing the characters and concept of the series, but I actually liked how the show ended up pacing itself over the events that were given in the unaired pilot. But this episode wasn't a complete waste as many of the scenes found in it are scattered throughout the rest of the show.
The other episode, "Epitaph One," takes place 10 years in the future and shows us a dark Los Angeles and feels like a clip episode as survivors of the current calamity discover The Dollhouse and get an idea of what role The Dollhouse had in the current state of the world. What's odd about this particular clip episode is that we see snippets of events from shows that haven't happened yet. One one hand, we get a rare glimpse into where Whedon plans to take the series; on the other, the scenes filmed in the future are done in video instead of with film, and because of that, it has a much less refined feel to it. According the other special features and commentary, this was done to reduce the cost of this extra episode as well as give the events in the dark future a much dirtier feel. While I liked the idea of this and the thought of getting a sneak peek at where the show will go, the scenes in the future just felt cheap and not really the quality I expected, so ultimately I have mixed feelings about this particular episode.
Other special features in Dollhouse: Season One include a slew of featurettes that go over everything from the origins of the show to how they designed The Dollhouse facility itself. One of the featurettes I particularly enjoyed was "Coming Home" where several members of the cast and crew who previously worked with Whedon talk about what it's like getting back together for a new series. These five featurettes should without a doubt be enjoyable for anyone who is a fan of the series.
While there are the standard visual and audio improvements that come with the high definition version of Dollhouse, there isn't anything extra about this version over the standard DVD one. That being said, the high definition treatment seen here is really good, and much like the special features, fans of the show will probably find the upscaled version well worth the cost.
Dollhouse starts slow, but it ultimately builds up to a solid season of sci-fi goodness. If you've enjoyed any of Whedon's other projects, not to mention his unique brand of humor, then Dollhouse shouldn't be missed. But then again, if you fall into that category, you probably already know that. For the rest of you out there, the show is definitely worth looking into; once the actors get into their characters and the show gets going, it's a lot of fun.
