The Hollow Men by Schism

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

And you saw the ending of the episode when? It's in a commercial break right now with about twenty minutes to go.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 2:11 AM

LITTLEBIRD

The preview for the next episode looks interesting.
Takes place in 2020.

Check out this site on the Rossum Corporation. Someone is sure having fun with this.

www.rossumcorporation.com/

Debra

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 5:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Schism:
two seconds later cut to an intact building with nary a bit of smoke.

To be fair, that's probably fairly accurate to what an explosion (from a few pounds of plastique and a grenade) in a fortified underground laboratory would look like from outside. This wasn't a pocket nuke --hell, none of the characters brought in explosives from outside, so they probably just raided the nearest weapons locker and improvised.

I'm still waiting to see how Alpha factors back in. He can build his own Chair, and he may be brilliant enough to reconstruct a remote-imprint system. His Joker-esque style of anarchy would also lend itself to using the phone lines as a vector (as we learned in Epitaph One) --who else would want to create an entire nation of psychotic kill-bots with no clear target or mission parametres?

I can easily see Adelle's group becoming an anti-Rossum, dedicated to locating, suppressing, and/or destroying the tech wherever it appears. And I'm sure Topher could use Echo's biochemistry to synthesize a vaccine --basically Boyd's plan, but now intended to save everyone. Make any kind of wipe/imprinting impossible, and destroy the Dollhouses for good.

All Ballard and the others have to do is delay the inevitable apocalypse (with Alpha as the mission-critical Big Bad) long enough for Topher to save the world.

Basically Terminator, but with dolls instead of metal.

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 5:49 AM

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Topher can design a cyborg that looks like Bennett and send her back in time to kill Clyde Randolph before he invents imprinting technology.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 6:41 AM

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Schism did call the shots correctly on the episode, but I'm still curious how he (she?) saw it before it finished broadcasting. Did it air in Canada or elsewhere before it did here?

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 6:47 AM

It airs at 8:00 on Global in Canada (as opposed to apparently 9:00 everywhere else).

(Medium also airs at 9, so I too try to catch the early show.)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 7:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Schism did call the shots correctly on the episode, but I'm still curious how he (she?) saw it before it finished broadcasting. Did it air in Canada or elsewhere before it did here?

*ahem*

I'm a HE.
:p

And a Canadian HE at that!

Sure the bomb didn't have to destroy the whole building, but that scene came off as poor.
The horribly cliche 'running down the all from the explosion' scene, and half a second later she's outside, like she just rounded the corner from certain death and then everything's rosy.

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Saturday, January 16, 2010 8:23 AM

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Quote:
Originally posted by Schism:
Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Schism did call the shots correctly on the episode, but I'm still curious how he (she?) saw it before it finished broadcasting. Did it air in Canada or elsewhere before it did here?

*ahem*

I'm a HE.
:p

And a Canadian HE at that!

Sure the bomb didn't have to destroy the whole building, but that scene came off as poor.
The horribly cliche 'running down the all from the explosion' scene, and half a second later she's outside, like she just rounded the corner from certain death and then everything's rosy.

I agree that the final scene was a bit "all's well" after the explosion, but I also agree that we wouldn't necessarily have seen the effects from the underground explosion. It seems likely there was an intervening scene deleted.

As for not knowing if you are a he or a she, it's hard to tell without some evidence of man-parts.

I've suggested several times that everyone needs to add some information to their profile page to help others know to whom they are conversing.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 4:48 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Quote:
Originally posted by Schism:
Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
Schism did call the shots correctly on the episode, but I'm still curious how he (she?) saw it before it finished broadcasting. Did it air in Canada or elsewhere before it did here?

*ahem*

I'm a HE.
:p

And a Canadian HE at that!

Sure the bomb didn't have to destroy the whole building, but that scene came off as poor.
The horribly cliche 'running down the all from the explosion' scene, and half a second later she's outside, like she just rounded the corner from certain death and then everything's rosy.

I agree that the final scene was a bit "all's well" after the explosion, but I also agree that we wouldn't necessarily have seen the effects from the underground explosion. It seems likely there was an intervening scene deleted.

As for not knowing if you are a he or a she, it's hard to tell without some evidence of man-parts.

I've suggested several times that everyone needs to add some information to their profile page to help others know to whom they are conversing.

How's this?

=======================

I'm a boy!

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 5:44 AM

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

Quote:
Originally posted by Schism:
How's this?

=======================

I'm a boy!

I'm not talking about your signature line, I meant your profile page. Go back to the homepage and look for the "My Firefly" link just below the rotating quote box. It should be third from the right, between "Marketplace" and "Research." Click on that, then on "Edit Profile" in the Member Options box. You can click on anyone's username in one of the threads to read their profile.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 3:19 PM

But my solution was much more direct and simple.
:p

EDIT -> I'm an Analyst. I can't help it.

=======================

I'm a boy!

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 3:35 PM

BYTEMITE

I like that Alpha idea, although even though I was wrong about Boyd being THE Big Bad, it still seems odd to me that he would personally go and oversee Echo's growth. Plus all his fighting skills and infiltration ability make him seem like he was augmented. I think there's another Boyd/Head of Rossum out there.

I think the double whammy of a remote wipe everyone war between Alpha and Rossum could be catastrophic, though.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 4:17 PM

FEARTHEBUNNYMAN

I just want to pop in to say: I am officially in love with Amy Ackers. I haven't seen Angel (yet) but goddamn she's incredible. I actually like Hollow Men - I've been pretty lukewarm on DH but the whole series is just picking up speed, picking up speed...and "Whiskey's" continuously blowing me away. I did see the Boyd thing coming, though, from the first time he appeared. he was just *too* sincere...nice to see Eliza back in her element too. Her as a doll was grating.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:50 PM

RAHLMACLAREN

"Damn yokels, can't even tell a transport ship ain't got no guns on it." - Jayne Cobb

Quote:
Originally posted by Schism:
SPOILERS

Once I got over the shock of Boyd as the big bad, the more hollow and empty it felt.

Hence the title, I guess.

I doubt his true identity was planned from the start...

Anyway, great ep, but what a low budget ending.

Cliche running away from the explosion shot, two seconds later cut to an intact building with nary a bit of smoke.

Shame about Mellie though. But that's what I love about Joss and his chosen writers - they take everything that you know won't happen in typical network shows and do it until it hurts.

*big sigh*

Sadly, I can't disagree with any particular point.

The Boyd thing feels a lot like Buffy S6. Take a beloved character (Spike, funny evil; Boyd, conscience of the show) and turn them into an a$$hole.

So, was "Clyde's partner" an ex-cop? Twice IIRC law enforcement personal pegged Boyd as a cop, first the ATF agent in "True Beliver" and Ballard in "Omega". Or maybe "Boyd" was imprinted with cop skills. And if that was possible, could there also be both a good and bad Boyd.

I could understand if Boyd (and Claire) was captured in "Getting Closer". (He did kill Clive Ambrose after all) They could've tracked Boyd (or just waited outside the DH), and imprinted him with "Clyde's partner", but no. They had to put him in a flashback and fux everything up.

My head's starting to hurt, I'm so gorram confused now.

Now, after they FUBAR'ed Boyd, I'm left with few characters to actually simpathize with.

"We are left hollow."
(Crap, I can't remember who said that.)

*(Whoa, 'Clive' AND 'Clyde'? Yeah...somebody went through the name dictionary.)

ETA: Silver linings - Victor was, once again, damn funny as Topher. Also, the chick fight between Echo and Whiskey(?) was cool, although I would have chosen a larger venue than a tiny corridor.

--------------------------------------------------
Find here the Serenity you seek. -Tara Maclay

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:58 PM

LOONEYLAD

The more I think about Boyd's betrayal, the less I like it as a storyline. It served as one shocking twist and then it was just kind of cliched after that.

I liked Boyd as a good guy. I really, really did. But the "Big Bad" twist had the potential to be awesome, but it kind of missed. Probably because they most likely made the twist up when they were writing The Attic episode. If there was even the subtlest of clues that Boyd was evil, then this could have been awesome. If they showed some sort of flash back and fleshed out the depth of his plot. Instead, he was just pretty much insane the whole time...

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 6:58 PM

LOONEYLAD

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Monday, January 18, 2010 10:38 AM

I agree with LooneyLad.

Both times.

=======================

I'm a boy!

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Monday, January 18, 2010 11:57 AM

GWEK

I'm not really opposed to the Boyd-as-Big Bad twist (although he seemed increasingly unhinged through the episode). I imagine that if DOLLHOUSE had continued for another season (or a full season?), we would either have had a different spin or else more clue to get us there. I feel like the past few episodes have been pretty good, but often very rushed.

One thing that I haven't been too happy with this season is how they de-clawed many of the Dollhouse staff to make them more sympathetic (DeWitt and Topher especially).

Mellie's death: So not a surprise. As soon as she and Paul are "together" again, you know one of them's not making it out of the building. This is a Whedon production, after all...

As for the building standing after the explosion, perhaps that's symbolic of how despite the defeat of Boyd and his master plan, Rossum Corporation still stands. "Evil" cannot be so easily defeated (echoes of ANGEL).

I'm looking forward to the finale. It'll be interesting to see how much of the previous season's "Future Past" episode they stick with. For example, based on what we heard before, the "Doll Wars" are started by China, right? So the fact that Boyd's endmage was stoppoed but the Brain-pocalyse still happened is no real surprise.

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

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Monday, January 18, 2010 12:03 PM

GILLIANROSE

Is anyone else a teeny bit suspicious that Boyd didn't blow up at all? He knew about Carolyn's magical spinal fluid, he could have inoculated himself long ago.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:32 AM

CLJOHNSTON108

Quote:
Originally posted by LooneyLad:
The more I think about Boyd's betrayal, the less I like it as a storyline. It served as one shocking twist and then it was just kind of cliched after that.

I liked Boyd as a good guy. I really, really did. But the "Big Bad" twist had the potential to be awesome, but it kind of missed. Probably because they most likely made the twist up when they were writing The Attic episode. If there was even the subtlest of clues that Boyd was evil, then this could have been awesome. If they showed some sort of flash back and fleshed out the depth of his plot. Instead, he was just pretty much insane the whole time...

Yeah, I now start to twitch every time I think back to all those great Boyd moments, when I felt we were so lucky to have him.

It's like getting to the last episode of dueSOUTH, and finding out Fraser was really a serial killer that whole time.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 6:26 AM

I thought the episode was sorta flat too. Boyd seemed like such a bad actor during this episode. When we're supposed to believe that before the reveal he was a flawless actor.

I don't even entirely understand his master plan. If Echo's body is all they cared about then why the whole show? Couldn't they have taken her to a lab somewhere and gotten the spinal fluid out of her? Did they need her to end up in a composite state to really get the spinal juices flowing? It just seems like an incredibly extensive ruse for that. Especially when he could have had the entire Dollhouse set up with 100% dolls from the get go and just pulled a Truman show type thing on Echo. There's no need for all the other people with their silly free will.

I also thought team Echo was pretty stupid. Blowing up that one little building was never going to stop Rossum. There were "20 other houses". You have to assume that they have the blueprints for Topher's imprint device. You also should assume that enitre place was under surveillance. So, most likely Topher's explanation about how to fix the device was recorded and broadcast to another Rossum facility.

I guess the whole point is that team Echo was too short sighted though.

Oh and I called the flowers in a vase thing the second I saw the Millie imprint. Though I though they were going to use her against Rossum on against Ballard.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:00 AM

STORYMARK

When Boyd was first revealed as the founder or Rossum, I thought it was cool. I thought that maybe he had realized what a dark path his company was travelling down, maybe even at odds with the other "hims", and that he was developing Echo as a way to bring down his own house of cards. This, I liked.

Then it turned out he was just crazy.... and it got a lot less interesting.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:19 AM

I really couldn't tell exactly what his plan was. It seemed like he wanted to take over the world and just have a select few who were immune to being programmed. Though I could also twist his words to mean that once he realized what the technology was capable of that he was working to find a way to stop it. That he knew if the tech was possible that eventually someone would use it. So, he could still have been somewhat of a good guy who was working from the inside to stop the out of control company.

No one really took the time to listen to him after they realized that he was a liar. They just reacted with hatred.

I would have liked to see them take the time to hear him out before they jumped to conclusions that he was evil. Though I still think there's a significant chance he was just evil.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:55 AM

Boyd's assumption (and a not-entirely-groundless one, given how scientific advancement tends to work) was that the outcome of this tech (i.e., the apocalypse) was inevitable. All Topher could have done was enable it to happen a few years/decades ahead of schedule. According to Boyd, there was no way to stop it.

It's kinda like Judgement Day in the Terminator universe: you cannot avoid it. All you can do is delay it (as in T1) and prepare for it (as in T2/TSCC).

(Or, alternately, like Third Impact in Evangelion. NERV can kill Angels 'till the cows come home, and then they can kill the cows, but eventually, someone will trigger Lilith and end the world. Gendo wasn't trying to avoid it, he was trying to alter the outcome by using Rei to deliberately trigger Third Impact.)

So, that was Boyd's plan. He wasn't Evil(tm), he was trying to play Messiah for his chosen people. And since he's a Darwinist, his "family" has to prove themselves --Adelle has to become the General, Topher had to develop a conscience, Echo had to become a hero. The whole show thus far was Boyd testing them, being the voice of their conscience until they learned to hear it for themselves.

Those who couldn't, whom he didn't deem worthy of "saving," well, it's the duty of a Messiah to say who gets saved and who doesn't. He did what he had to do.

Discovering Echo's mutation must have been like a sign; something that can allow a small handful to survive what's coming. As for keeping Echo active, consider that she didn't start glitching until season 2 --she wasn't "ripe" yet. I'm guessing that whatever chemicals Rossum needed from her spinal fluid needed time to build up.

(It's therefore possible that other Actives could have developed the same mutation [perhaps that's what Victor and Sierra were doing], but they didn't have Boyd cleaning up their messes --any Actives who started glitching would've been sent to the attic or separated from whatever was causing the glitch.)

By using Topher to deliberately bring about the apocalypse, Boyd can orchestrate it on his terms (rather than waiting decades for someone to master the tech on their own), and he can assemble a small group of survivors. Of course, he has no "Skynet" to fight after the apocalypse (this isn't a centralized attack, it's anarchy), so he's not putting together a rebel group, he's pulling together a family.

I'm honestly curious as to his endgame, though. It's possible that he was surrounding himself with the people he expected to die with, but maybe he was expecting the apocalypse to burn itself out --for the survivors we see in "Epitaph One" to unravel the mystery and shut down Rossum "once and for all," leaving Boyd and his happy few to take control of the rebuilding (and of a world full of blank slates, ready for imprinting as "proper" members of society).

If Topher was his Rei Ayanami then maybe Adelle was his John Connor --someone with the willpower, leadership ability, and (thanks to him) the compassion to become the future's new leader. . .

(I don't necessarily agree with him, of course. I tend to think this particular apocalypse can be averted. Now that they know about Echo's biochemistry, Topher can find a way to synthesize what they need. All Adelle and her group needs to do is delay Rossum.)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:39 AM

They knew about Caroline's body chemistry up front. That's why he chose her. From the bone graft test that he had on file. So, he still didn't need to put her through the Dollhouse to get her to glitch. He could have faked it. Instead he put her in harms way again and again. Seems really risky if she's the only girl in all the world with the immunity.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:30 PM

Well, he knew about her potential (and I'm admittedly just guessing that Rossum became aware of Caroline after they found out about the impending apocalypse) --S1 Echo certainly wasn't shrugging off imprints like she has been lately.

He likely needed an excuse to have her continually wiped and re-imprinted before she was ready to "harvest."

And putting her (and eventually himself) in Adelle's Dollhouse made her a catalyst: Echo, Topher, and Dewitt were critical players in his game, and even Ballard, November, Victor, Sierra, and Whiskey/Saunders (we honestly don't know which one he first started manipulating) all became important in his machinations. Without Echo to pull everything together, they never would've gotten to this point.

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 12:51 PM

That's the problem. Without knowing his end game they really didn't seem all that important. They seemed like they grew on him and he wanted them to survive the apocalypse. That's about it. I think that episode needed to play out over 2 hours at the very least.

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Thursday, January 21, 2010 7:27 AM

RUGBUG

Quote:
Originally posted by Zeek:
They knew about Caroline's body chemistry up front. That's why he chose her. From the bone graft test that he had on file. So, he still didn't need to put her through the Dollhouse to get her to glitch. He could have faked it. Instead he put her in harms way again and again. Seems really risky if she's the only girl in all the world with the immunity.

They didn't know she had "immunity"...they only knew that she was different. She had to be put through the imprinting process to see what that difference meant to the wiping/imprinting process. She was an experiment under close observation...that yielded the results they probably hoped for.

I'm having a hard time digesting everything because I feel like I may be fanwanking a lot. I think that happens when a show that has a potentially seasons long arc gets rushed to closure. Would Boyd have been the big bad if the show had continued for 5 seasons? I had an unsettled feeling about him when he became head of security and for quite some time did not like him, but was that really suppose to foreshadow the revelation of him as the big bad? I keep second guessing everything and can't really get down to one cohesive idea about this episode.

I do have to agree with Boyd, however, that the remote wiping/imprinting tech would've probably come out anyway...with or without Topher's help. What really makes Boyd the bad guy is that he can foresee the end result of the tech, but instead of doing whatever he can to delay that, he is going to do whatever he can to profit from it while protecting/insulating himself from it. He's selling the A-bomb to the highest bidder all the while knowing that his bombproof shelter is going to save him and his "family" from the effects.

***************
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Thursday, January 21, 2010 7:44 AM