Fox is reportedly developing an "epic Western with a sci-fi twist." Sounds like great television; why hasn't this been done before?

Interesting news from the Whedonverse: ...Whedon is shopping a digital studio proposal around Hollywood, including to the major studios, looking to raise investment in the $5 million range, according to sources. The unnamed Whedon studio will apparently look to produce four original web series a year, two of which will be directed by Whedon himself. One of those two will be the above mentioned Dr. Horrible sequel. Keeping my fingers crossed for Capt. Reynolds's Shoot-Along Facebook Feed.

The DVD has only been out a week, so no real spoilers, but I have a few thoughts about the two unaired episodes of Dollhouse.

* "Epitaph One" is as ambitious and as amazing as promised—definitely my favorite episode of Dollhouse and one of the top Whedonverse episodes of all time. It is, in every sense, just great, laying out a blueprint for the future of the series that is so compelling I'm not sure we need to actually see any of intervening episodes. (As far as I'm concerned they'd just be killing time before we get to "Epitaph Two," which is what I really want to see.) Joss and his co-writers have been pretty open with the fact that the episode came out of the assumption that there wouldn't be any more; people reference "Objects in Space," but the comparison to the season one finale of Sledge Hammer! seems much more apt. Have they written themselves into a corner? It'll be interesting to see if Joss & Co. can make the second season work when the real story now seems to be happening in 2019. Will people really sit still for john-of-the-week episodes with the stakes raised so much higher? Or will season two be more like Lost seasons four and five, with flashbacks and flashforwards that meet somewhere in the middle? Honestly I think I'd be most happy if they stuck with the "Epitaph" frame for good and did 2009-2018 just in flashback. It's not like we're getting a third season; don't leave anything on the road.

* Speaking of 2019: Was that a Dark Angel shout-out? The episode definitely had a post-Pulse vibe, and Joss and Dark Angel have something of a checkered past: widely understood as a Buffy rip-off, Dark Angel was unceremoniously canceled in favor of Firefly, which was later (you may have heard) unceremoniously canceled...

* The unaired pilot is, I think, probably a little worse as a pilot than the actually aired pilot—a rare case of network interference not being all bad—but it's pretty clear that Joss bitterly prefers it. (I haven't listened to the commentary yet, but apparently he has a lot of thoughts along these lines there as well.) Not only did he make oblique references to the original pilot throughout the season and in Epitaph One *and* bring back the astoundingly unimpressive Chrissy Seaver for "Omega," but he ended the (aired) season on the same audiovisual image—a whispered "Caroline"—that the original pilot ended on. The implication seems to be that the whole of the first season gets us to the same place the pilot did in just one hour.

* The most interesting thing about the unaired pilot, I think, is the discovery that Eliza Dushku is actually pretty good at doing a series of drastically different characters when it happens in rapid-fire, three-minute bursts. It's only over the course of a full episode that she really struggles as an actress. The hints toward Future Caroline in "Epitaph One" look like the latest attempt to explain away the one-note-acting; we'll see how this plays out.

Fan-made trailers for movies that don't exist: Green Lantern and Thundercats. Via MeFi.

Call it the soft bigotry of low expectations or heretofore unexpected reserves of good will for the franchise—or maybe J.J. just nailed it—but I found Star Trek surprisingly good. And "good" is an amazing accomplishment given the self-contradictions inherent to the project:

1) innovate and revitalize a franchise that, let's face it, is built almost entirely on the bedrock of nostalgic repetition;
2) do so while further hamstrung by the excruciating prequel format.

But Abrams strikes a more or less successful balance, aside from a few hamhanded "R2-D2, meet C-3PO" moments and a little too much handholding and lampshade-hanging.

As is probably to be expected, the prequelization provides both the worst parts of the movie and its primary source of narrative pleasure. As a certified member of the Nitpicker's Guild I confess I was a bit annoyed to see how little effort was made to stick with the original continuity, even granting the timeline shift. Many of the gadgets had different behaviors and limitations than in the original show; no one knew Romulans were related to Vulcans until part of the way through the original series; Chekhov didn't join the ship until later; Pike wasn't the first captain of the Enterprise; etc, etc, etc. (You can fanwank most or all of these away with "The USS Kelvin Changed Everything," but that's not very satisfying. Clear lines of cause-and-effect matter, especially in time travel stories.)

That this cherished original continuity is essentially bulldozed permanently by the film is pretty unfortunate and will, I think, permanently damage the franchise in the eyes of its loyal and notoriously defensive fanbase, especially as fifty years of strict adherence to Roddenberry's particular Utopian vision has not prepared them well for our heroes to lose a planet, much less the entire timeline.

But at the same time it is quite fun to see these characters meet each other, and Abrams does an amazing job of capturing the feel of the original series (all the way from aesthetics right down to the level of contrivance and occasionally nonsensical plot points). That the actors playing McCoy and (especially) Spock are very good mimics of the original actors helps things along a lot as well.

It's also astounding how apolitical the film tries to be; I went in with the idea of writing a post about neoliberalism and Star Trek and it just didn't give me much to work with. Now, this is a neoliberal, United Nations fantasy of the future, to be sure, in which difference only exists to be flattened out—but that's really true of almost all Trek, DS9 and some other choice episodes excepted. (There's also a making explicit of the longstanding metaphorical connection between Vulcans and Jews, with a Vulcan Holocaust followed by a choice between diaspora, assimilation, and resettlement in a "new colony," but I don't know what to do with that yet.)

Star Trek (2009) is no better or worse, politically speaking, than what Star Trek's always been: a fantasy of what the world would be like if consumer capitalism had no labor or environmental costs and American military-cultural hegemony was pure, stable, and uncomplicatedly good. It remains our defining ideological fantasy, in other words, the thing that blinds us still to the sort of world we're really living in and the sort of future we're actually creating.

So it's no surprise that at this point my thoughts turn to the mediocre, to the unchosen, to the radicals and the subaltern and the dissidents. What becomes of difference in this future? We see these people only sometimes, in the background: Sisko's dad, Picard's brother. Usually they exist only to be made Star Fleet officers or good Federation citizens by the end of the episode, and we see no one like this in this movie at all. The lack of flexibility in this narrative template has grown, I think, exhausting, and it's for this reason that over the years I find myself much more drawn to presentist and mundane SF, or apocalyptic futurity, or to anti-Trek futures like Firefly, the first few seasons of BSG, or Samuel Delany's Triton.

But all the same every so often it's nice to come home again.

Just one request: no more product placement, please; there's no money in the future, much less corporations...

A few quick Dollhouse reflections in light of tonight's "season" finale. Spoilers below, naturally.

* All in all the Alpha plotline was fairly disappointing, my appreciation for Alan Tudyk aside. It reduced a little too neatly to a run-of-the-mill serial-killer plotline when there seemed to be much, much more potential there. I'm not calling network interference, necessarily, but things seemed rushed and a little undercooked. Joss fumbled this one.

(UPDATE: To be more precise, he fumbled the plotline in almost exactly the same way he fumbled the Adam and First Evil storylines on Buffy. The composite event—which shouldn't have been caused by a mechanical malfunction—should have made Alpha actually Godlike. Alpha's portrayal in this episode ruins almost everything about what was interesting about the character to begin with. It's also somewhat inconsistent with the way the event had been portrayed in earlier episodes, especially with regard to Topher and Adele's puzzlement over how it happened—which is not to suggest Dollhouse has a particularly good record on the consistency front in any case.)

* Called the Fred situation last week, though I was hoping she'd known she was a Doll all along. I think the character had significantly more potential that way—though it's interesting to think that she was just set up to be the hero of the second season, the Dollhouse's only self-aware victim and the audience's new clearest focal point for narrative identification.

* Which also makes her a pretty good candidate for season two's Big Bad.

* Neil and I spent a lot of time last week talking about Dr. Saunders and whether or not her Dollness suggests that the Dollhouse is able to do direct editing/programming of memories ("imprint code"), as opposed to a fuzzier, less exact approach ("imprint soup"). (I'd always assumed imprint code, and that most of the characters would turn out to have been modified in some way or another; Neil was more skeptical.) At first glance, this episode suggests they can edit directly—but the more I think about it it seems more likely that every Dr. Saunders is a Doll.

UPDATE: Though the fact that Fred/Saunders remembers a version of the Alpha attack that explains her scars may shift the balance back towards direct editing / imprint coding again.

* Is Victor really gone? He was one of the best actors on the show, that's just not possible.

* It will would be interesting to see whether Mellie is really released. I'm also curious what deal Ballard signed; "I'm nobody" suggests he agreed to do the rest of her service as a Doll, whereas I think most people were expecting he'd be hired as a handler.

* Since the Dollhouse's contracts aren't legal, of course, there's no reason not to have your cake and eat it too. Once Ballard is enslaved, bring Madeline back in for a treatment.

* It also remains the case that you'd want every employee to be a Doll, all things being equal; see Dr. Saunders above. Why would they even let Dominics, Boyds, and Tophers in the door, when they can cook up compliant and perfectly loyal substitutes in-house? One possible answer to this might have to do with the exact nature of the Doll programs; if they're imprint-soups as opposed to imprint-codes, maybe there are structural limits to how long they can be used before the personality imprint goes bad or breaks down.

* Echo/ED remains, by far, the least interesting thing about this show. I was really hoping they'd kill off the Caroline wedge so at least something interesting would happen there.

* Well, that's a little unfair; apropos of the Great Transporter Debate this episode makes it a little hard to see how the process of being "wiped" isn't itself necessarily death. If we accept that continuity of consciousness is required for metaphysical identity—and we wave our hands at things like sleep for just a moment—then it would seem to be the case that "Caroline" can be hypothetically restored after her five years are up and she's hypothetically released from her contract. But it's equally clear that the person who wakes up in Chrissy Seaver's body is not metaphysically identical to the original Caroline. So how can the one revival result in a "real" resurrection and the other in a "false" one? What's the difference between "copy" and "restore"? It could only be Ballard's "soul," which, like Topher, I scoff at. So it seems to me that when you're switched off, that's it, you're dead, which has some pretty serious implications for comas, head injury, amnesia, insanity, aging, sleep, and just about everything else having to do with what we naively believe consciousness is.

*Hope you noticed and enjoyed the brief Firefly shout-out as much as I did. Take that, Fox. (UPDATE: Missed at first the Angel bit about souls in jars—it was a double shoutout to both his unjustly canceled shows...)

Sadly, despite the hopes of all good nerds, that's probably it for Dollhouse. But "Epitaph One" comes out with the DVD this July, and there's even rumors today that Joss might spin-off that into a new show. Because spin-offs of failed one-season flops are so very common.

Fun: 137 uncomfortable plot summaries. Some highlights:

ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.
BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: Teenage serial killer destroys town in fit of semi-religious fervor.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.
SERENITY: Men fight for possession of scantily clad mentally ill teenage girl.
GROUNDHOG DAY: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.
HARRY POTTER: Celebrity Jock thinks rules don’t apply to him, is right.
JFK: Family man wastes life for nothing in crusade against homosexuals.
JUNO: Teen fails to get abortion, ruins lives.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
KILL BILL: Irresponsible mother wants custody of her child.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
RAMBO III: The United States provides arms, equipment and training to the terrorists behind 9/11.
RED DAWN: Despite shock-and-awe tactics, a superior occupying force is no match for a tenacious sect of terrorist insurgents.
STAR TREK: Over-sexed officer routinely places crew in danger.
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE - Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
SUPERMAN RETURNS: Illegal immigrant is deadbeat dad.
TERMINATOR: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.

Via MeFi.

Just a few links.

* I'm only going to say this once, media bloodsuckers: Leave Bruce alone.

* Pink Tentacle has your vintage alien landscapes from Kazuaki Saito.

* The Dollhouse situation and what Joss Whedon should do next.

I would like to see what kind of wonderfully dense, risk-taking project Whedon would come up with when he is not hampered by the current conservative climate at the networks, which these days want most story lines to wrap up by the end of the hour. Can you imagine what a Whedon show on HBO, Showtime, FX or AMC would look like?

...

My point is this: Whedon needs to make his next show on cable. End of story.

Ironically, this is also what Joss should have done this time, and the time before this one.

* Florida Power & Light and a real estate developer have announced that they will build the first solar-powered city in the U.S., a community of 19,500 homes, offices, retail shops, and light industry whose electricity will come from the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant. The new city will be called Utopia Prime Future One Alpha City Babcock Ranch.

Believe the impossible: hope for Dollhouse? Airlock Alpha says Fox is "leaning" towards renewal. Are they really so desperate to erase our bad memories of Firefly?

It won't work.

Remember, tonight's Dollhouse is supposed to be the good one. The show may already be doomed, but the quality of tonight's episode will at least tell us whether this will be a Firefly-style cultural tragedy or a mercy killing.

More on this and other important topics later tonight.

One episode into Dollhouse and Joss Whedon is declaring he's done with TV forever.

When AICN's notorious Whedon fanboy Hercules calls Dollhouse "a big disappointment," you know we're in trouble. Upside: like many reviewers (especially the pro-Joss ones) he says the second episode—which was originally intended to be the premiere, and which Fox monkeyed with less—is better.

In any event, we should enjoy ourselves. We still have thirteen weeks till cancellation.

io9 has more on the inevitable failure of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, going so far as to wonder whether the creative difficulties the show seems to be having justify Fox's handing it the Friday Night Death Slot.

Joss Whedon is learning again, the hard way, not to work with Fox.

Links!

* A metrical analysis of the presidential campaigns reveals Barack Obama will win, as his name is a trochee. (via Bookslut)

* I don't mean to brag, but I beat Al Giordano to this conclusion about the John Edwards adultery kerfuffle of 2008 by over two weeks.

* Researchers at DefCon in Vegas have demonstrated that they can make "high security" Medeco key-blanks out of the plastic used in credit-cards, and then whittle them into working keys by referring to low-resolution photos of original keys. Easily the best key-related story since the great Bic/bike lock story of Aught Four.

* Also at Boing Boing: 1984 and Brave New World as pulp novels.

* When Lois was too curvy and Superman too gay. Via io9.

* "Serenity: The Other Half." A Firefly comic.

* And The Big Picture blog has big pictures of yesterday's Olympic opening ceremony.

Sci-Fi has a trailer up for the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica, while Joss Whedon is frantically running around trying to reassure everyone that the shooting of a new Dollhouse pilot doesn't mean that Dollhouse is the new Firefly.

Also in Joss Whedon News, there's been some pushback on Dr. Horrible over the fact that he's once again killed over a female love interest in order to provide character development for male characters. I guess not even the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer can escape the siren song of a woman in a refrigerator.

Joss Whedon says this time won't be like last time.

"These are different people," Whedon said in an interview in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 14, part of the Television Critics Association summer press tour. "They didn't do to me what was done to Firefly."

We'll see. Via io9.

By the way, Part 2 of Dr. Horrible is up today. If Part 1 left me a bit skeptical, Part 2 made me a believer.

The first part of the Joss Whedon strike project Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is today up at Hulu. The server problems have apparently been fixed, too—I just watched the whole thing without a hitch.

Am I the only one who hears a shout-out to Ze Frank's League of Awesomeness in Dr. Horrible's Evil League of Evil?

It's Friday, and I've been saving some special links to mark the occasion.

* A 3-D exploration of Picasso's Guernica. Via MeFi.

* 7 reasons why sci-fi book series outstay their welcome.

* The top twenty-five Batman stories of all time. That Dark Knight Returns only clocked in at #25 may surprise you, but once you know that it's no real shock that Alan Moore takes the #1 slot for The Killing Joke, the story that saw Batgirl shot in the back by the Joker and confined to a wheelchair for life.

* The L.A. Times has an interview with Joss Whedon about Dollhouse. There's been a lot of hype about this show lately—the news that it's been given the post-24 timeslot, the news that there will only be five minutes of commercials per hour, a teaser clip at io9.com—so much hype, in fact, that I almost believe Fox isn't planning to air the episodes out of order and then cancel it after 7 episodes. Almost.

* The physics of anime.

#12 - Law of Phlogistatic Emission

Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.

#18 - Law of Hemoglobin Capacity

The human body contains over 12 gallons of blood, sometimes more, under high pressure.

#41 - Law of Xylolaceration

Wooden or bamboo swords are just as sharp as metal swords, if not sharper.

* Here's part of the reason Americans have gotten and are getting so much fatter: portion sizes keep increasing and unit bias induces us to eat everything we're given.

* Of course, the obesity epidemic affects more than just a single person's quality of life.

* And via Matt Yglesias, David Brooks explores our Buddhist future. And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development. Matt makes the smart point the increased concentration of capital (economic, cultural, and otherwise) in China and India will likely accelerate this process greatly.

Serenity 2? Dare to dream, Alan Tudyk, dare to dream.