DOLLHOUSE = clearinghouse for FIREFLY ideas? (spoilers inside) by GWEK

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DOLLHOUSE = clearinghouse for FIREFLY ideas? (spoilers inside)

POSTED BY: GWEK
UPDATED: Monday, December 21, 2009 10:16
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Sunday, December 20, 2009 6:35 PM

I've been thinking about this for quite some time, but this week's double-episode helping really crystallized things for me.

I wonder how much of what we've seen in DOLLHOUSE comes from ideas that Joss was kicking around during FIREFLY. Rossum Corporation certainly seems to loom large in the same way that Blue Sun does. Although the process enacted on the actives is different from what River underwent, both are thematically similar (especially in terms of the questions of identity and "What does it mean to be a human being?"). In many ways, the roads to "recovery" for River and Echo/Caroline are similar, and described in similar terms (especially the theme of "waking up").

I'm not talking about character resonance (which I see a fair bit of) so much as ideas, concepts, and themes having a start in FIREFLY but an ending in DOLLHOUSE.

Am I alone in this?

In particular, a few things this past weekend got me thinking.

In the first hour, we have the idea that Rossum is building the perfect army, via brain implants that take away the individuality of willing participant, subsuming their personality and leaving nothing except dedication to the mission.

Doesn't that sound a bit like the Hands of Blue?

Although they don't have many appearances, when they do appear in pair, they don't really address or even acknowledge one another (which one notable exception), yet their movements are eerily in synch and their dialogue is a single, consistent narrative, with one picking up where the other had left off... almost as if they shared a single mind...

In the second hour, we're treated to the truth about the attic, and about Rossum's biological mainframe, which relies on human minds in a constant state of anxiety to give it processing power. Although the bio-mainframe is an interesting idea, wouldn't it be considerably more efficient if the minds involved were psychic and had been experimented so they could not shut off their ability to feel? In "Ariel" and "War Stories," when Simon wonders WHY someone would do what was done to his sister; it seems that the most recent episode of DOLLHOUSE may offer a plausible answer.

Could a psychic bio-computer--possibly designed to control the population as Pax could not, possibly designed to help link their Blue Hand agents all across the 'Verse into a single menta unit--have been part of Blue Sun's end game?

Could these be ideas that Joss has been kicking around since 2002 or before?

Maybe I'm heading in a totally wrong direction, but as we get closer to the end of DOLLHOUSE, I see more and more hints of what we could have seen had FIREFLY not been cancelled.

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

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Monday, December 21, 2009 9:13 AM

BYTEMITE

I've definitely seen some ideas that I can tell were originally thought up for Firefly, so no, your theory doesn't seem outlandish to me.

There's some people who think that when River flips out on the Blue Sun cans in Shindig, that her crazy talk may have something to do with nanotechnology. "Some people" being myself and the only other person I've heard it from. Cortex Nanotech Mindcontrol? Could be, and your psychic idea is another interesting element.

Quote:
Although the bio-mainframe is an interesting idea, wouldn't it be considerably more efficient if the minds involved were psychic and had been experimented so they could not shut off their ability to feel?

The people trapped in the attic are stuck in an adrenalin-charged nightmare state. They also can't not feel. I think the amygdala is involved quite a bit with regulating the adrenal system? Also could be.

Although, to be honest, when I saw that episode, about all I could think of was this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoweredByAForsakenChild

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Monday, December 21, 2009 9:30 AM

PLATONIST

I think Joss has been kicking around these ideas since he first saw the Borg appear, when he was in college, because resistance is futile;)

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Monday, December 21, 2009 10:16 AM

FEARTHEBUNNYMAN

That's been pretty much my thought since the first season, and it makes me sad b/c I can see where he would have used these ideas in FF (and esp. with BlueSun, the Tam family/Core people, the "underground movement" etc) and now I feel like we'll never get to see it in the FF universe so Joss was just getting it out of his system in Dollhouse. It gives one ideas for "what could have been" wonderings, though.

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