Update: the video originally linked in this article was evidently not from the source, so it was taken down. However, there is a link below to a legit video.
Joss Whedon is, simply put, a genius. While I never got into "Buffy" or "Angel", "Firefly" is far and away one of the best TV shows ever made, in science fiction or any other genre. In just a few short episodes he wove an entire universe together with characters I really cared about.
He has a new show coming out in January called "Dollhouse", about people who have volunteered to have their personalities rewritten over and over. It’s disturbing and odd, but it looks cool. And they just released a trailer for it. I found it on YouTube, but who knows if it’ll be taken down or not. I couldn’t find an original source for it, though io9 has it too. The SciFi blog io9 has a copy of it you can watch.
Warning: possibly marginally NSFW stuff, including a creepy and unsettling scene between an older guy (well, my ageish or thereabouts) and a young woman programmed to, um, well, fall in love with him.
I don’t know what to make of all this, but it’s Joss Whedon, so I know it’ll be good.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
mmm vid doesn’t work for me
May 15th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
“We’re sorry, this video is no longer available”
May 15th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
The io9 link still has it.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
OK,
#1 I need to respectfully disagree with you about Buffy and Angel; I got hooked on those shows.
#2 I totally agree with you about Firefly.
#3 I am in love with Eliza Dushku and have been ever since she first appeared on Buffy!
There!
May 15th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Shiny!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 15th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Loss of Firefly = biggest shame in TV history for my money.
Just one season long, and not even a full season, and it is to this day my all time favorite show (and movie, of course).
So just imagine my horror when I walk in to the living room where my wife is watching “Desperate Housewives”, only to find Nathan Fillion disgracing himself amongst that gutter tripe.
I wept a little, and then wretched into my Jayne’s Hat.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
And let’s not forget, Mal Reynolds was an atheist!
Buffy was brilliant; my hypothesis for why it struck such a chord was because it was brillliantly attuned to the American zeitgeist, dealing as it did with teenage sex, peer pressure, and school shootings. Look at how Tara died; here was a white witch who had faced vampires, demons, and even a deranged goddess, and in the end an angry nerd shot her by mistake. Tragic, but brilliant.
All hail to Phil… but you really should get into Buffy.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Come to think of it, if Jennifer Ouelette reads this, I’m in trouble.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Fox? Joss Whedon is letting Fox get their hands on another show of his?????
May 15th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
And you know now she will.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Oh, and I will, of course, be watching. I loved Buffy, Angel, and Firefly.
“Can you pick out the one word you shouldn’t have said?”
May 15th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
The person/memory changing sounds like an element from “Dark City” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/
May 15th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I never thought I’d ever have been a Buffy fan, movie was worth a laugh if for no other reason than Paul Rubens character. Gave the show a watch and was hooked. Angel heh, last couple seasons pretty good. Firefly, never saw till it was on Scifi, didn’t even know it was on, dislike Fox! Pretty good show.
This has possibilities, like both Dushku and Pennikett (fav character on BSG). Will probably try to watch when it releases and if I like it it will die a painful death, if I don’t 5-6 year run at least. You have been warned.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Firefly? Farscape all the way, baby!
May 15th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Yeah, Farscape was easily the best sci-fi that SciFi channel ever had (and one of the best sci-fis out there, period), but this is a Whedon lovefest, so no go.
I loved Buffy when it first came out (actually, just the promos were enough to hook me). I honestly feel it struck a chord with folks because, like Xena, it portrayed a strong woman as the lead character. Unlike Xena, it existed in the modern day, and took itself (a bit) more seriously. I think that’s why it won over so many folks (girls got a role model, and guys got to watch beautiful women kick butt). Of course, in the end, it was Joss Whedon’s writing that really sold the series. The man has a distinctive flair to him, that has yet to be matched.
Angel was an awesome offshoot that wound up going in a completely different direction from Buffy. Yet like its sire, it also retained the great writing and amazing character evolution that fans had grown to love.
Firefly was short, but it burned oh so bright. Along with the great writing, it was the first (and as far as I can tell, only) series to try and portray space realistically. No sound, just a music overlay. That was just brilliant. It’s unfortunate that the character evolution wasn’t as deep as Joss’s previous outings, but that was solely the fault of Fox.
Of course the series did show that with good writing and great acting, actors don’t have to worry about getting typecast. Buffy fans should remember where we first saw Nathan Fillion. It was quite the far cry from atheistic, “tough guy with a heart of gold” Mal.
I’m a little worried that Joss has returned to Fox, but as Alex Albrecht of The Totally Rad Show had mentioned, the only way Whedon would go to Fox would be if they gave him some guarantee that they won’t F— with his stuff this time.
Either way, I’m sure Dollhouse will rock.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I only have one word:
SQUEE!!
May 16th, 2008 at 3:33 am
So far nobody has mentioned one major reason Buffy was so great. Within the Buffyverse he created Joss Whedon could go into almost any direction - and he did: soap opera, teenage high school stories, horror, sci-fi, mystery, witchcraft, serious(!) drama (need I mention the show in which Buffy’s Mom died?) , crime, love stories, vampires (almost forgot about them), love stories with vampires, comedy, etc. etc, and last not least a f…… brilliant MUSICAL!
BA, you need to have a second look at this show
Firefly indeed was one of the best if not the best US TV show in many years (next to Buffy, of course). Cancelling this one was the single biggest mistake in recorded TV history, only en par with cancelling season 2 of “UFO” in Britain and “Raumpatrouille” (aka “Raumschiff Orion”) in Germany.
One thing that concerns me is how long can Joss Whedon pull it off? If I look at Stanley Kubrick he had a brilliant string on movies starting (at the latest) with Paths of Glory, he peaked with Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, and (yes) Barry Lyndon, made an OK movie with The Shining and then went down-hill through Full Metal Jacket to the abysmal Eyes wide shut.
When will Joss start to go down?
May 16th, 2008 at 4:54 am
The plot sounds a lot like a grown up version of Joe90
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062573/
I may be a pessimist but I can’t see the networks liking Dollhouse for long, “you mean it’s the same body, but a different personality? How will the audience follow that?”
May 16th, 2008 at 4:57 am
I didn’t get into “Buffy” or “Angel” until after “Firefly”. “Firefly” was so amazing I checked out the others and really enjoyed them, too. “Dollhouse” looks like it could be interesting.
May 16th, 2008 at 6:00 am
BA, take a look at ‘Hush’, the tenth episode of the fourth season of ‘Buffy’. That’s the one that gets almost everyone hooked. Without a doubt the most gripping 43-odd minutes of television ever produced. It definitely deserved an Emmy (it got a nomination). BTW, due to some discussion from the chat two weekends ago, I picked up Eccleston’s ‘Doctor Who’, and I’m loving it.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Phil wrote:
“Warning: possibly marginally NSFW stuff, including a creepy and unsettling scene between an older guy (well, my ageish or thereabouts) and a young woman programmed to, um, well, fall in love with him.”
So it’s a documentary about the FLDS?
May 16th, 2008 at 8:44 am
It’s just a shame that Fox will probably air the episodes out of order, and then cancel it half-way through the first season.
TBH, I’m shocked Mr. Whedon is still willing to work with those idiots…
Oh, and to all those Farscape and Babylon 5 fanboys out there… some of us would prefer that the actors actually be able to act, and that the characters and dialog aren’t laughably ridiculous.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I know this is a fangirl lovefest, but I wonder how many cliches Whedon is going to push into this movie? Any bets that at least one character dies and comes back from the dead? Hires people (like that Summer woman - I’d say her best (ie most plastic) acting was in Sci Fi’s Mammoth) who can’t act unless playing a psychotic cliche (the amnesiac programmed assassin, now that is new).
Feh.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Brett, I try to be a reasonable human being and accept that people have different tastes and don’t always like the same things…but you are just so completely and utterly wrong about Farscape that I can’t even comment coherently on your wrongness.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:44 am
@OtherRob
Oh. Well. Touche, then.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I loved Buffy and Angel, but Firefly didn’t work for me. In fact, I couldn’t stand it. I loved the dialogue, of course; Joss Whedon’s writing is fantastic. The acting was good, and I had no problems with the directing, either.
What I had a problem with was one of the core premises of the show — namely, that it’s a freakin’ outer space western! That’s just beyond ridiculous unless it’s being deliberately played for laughs, and the show certainly didn’t strike me as being a comedy.
I’m glad you folks like it. I hope you get to enjoy more of it if it gets made. But I’m afraid I really cannot share your enthusiasm for it.
~David D.G.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
@ Geoff Lane:
Maybe you’ve got a point. Quantum Leap used a very similar plot device, and there’s certainly no fan base for that.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Failure to inverse telecine FTL.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
@ David D.G.
Calling Firefly a western is a dead giveaway that the person so calling it never saw more than two episodes - probably giving up on it after the first ep that FOX aired (out of sequence). What about “Out of Gas”? “Ariel”? “War Stories”? “Objects in Space”? “Trash”? “The Message”?
Hello?
May 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Can’t find the trailer, alas, but it sounds very similiar in theme to Charlie Stross’ “Glasshouse” (http://www.amazon.com/Glasshouse-Charles-Stross/dp/0441015085/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210982752&sr=8-1).
I highly recommend CS, he’s one of the best new authors of the last decade.
May 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
“What I had a problem with was one of the core premises of the show — namely, that it’s a freakin’ outer space western!”
Quite a few people have this reaction, and I never understand it. Seriously, what’s wrong with an outer space western? They’re on frontier worlds after a civil war, doing dirty jobs with an honour-among-thieves moral code and staying one step ahead of the law. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Fair enough if you just don’t like it, but people seem to object to the very idea, not the execution. Nobody makes the same complaint about Star Wars, which is basically a space western with a bit of Kurosawa thrown in (and let’s not forget, Yojimbo was remade as an out-and-out western).
May 16th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Ginger Yellow asked:
Seriously, what’s wrong with an outer space western?
Because not only is there no “up” or “down” in space, but no “east” or “west” either?
(Okay . . . I’m going now . . . )
May 17th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Actually, I remember waking up on the couch with some strange late night movie playing on the TV that turned out to be Yojimbo set on a distant planet. I vaguely recall one of the Caradines…