Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

I logged into Hulu today and saw that Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog was avalible. I hadn’t watched it before though I knew I would enjoy it because Joss makes things I enjoy when he’s being hassled by Fox executives, and it dosn’t hurt that I like all the actors.

The one person I didn’t know was in the show was Moist. I’ve been watching Big Bang Theory for a couple years and so it was fun to see Simon Helberg in a different role, even if it wasn’t all that different.

I largely already knew the story, but when you have people as good as the actors in this knowing the plot only takes you halfway, and of course Joss is able to surprise me even when I think I know what to expect.

I don’t know how long this has been available on Hulu, but it’s one of the best things I’ve seen in quite some time and well worth watching.

Serenity: Those Left Behind– Comic book review

It’s been years and Firefly is still great. There isn’t a single wasted episode and it seems like every minute means something. Each character has an important part to play and it had its own style that was not only Joss Whedon but added in the flavor of the actors as well, something few shows can do so quickly and many are never able to do at all.

Having gotten a movie from a TV series that lasted such a short time is impressive and it was one of the best science fiction movies of all time. If it had one flaw it was that it jumped past a fair amount of story. There were characters who were no longer on the ship, and other side characters, especially villains, that the movie just didn’t have time to deal with. “Serenity: Those Left Behind” bridges the gap between the movies and the TV series perfectly. It answers nearly all, if not all the questions one would have after watching everything that has been put to video.

The first thing that you will see when picking up “Serenity: Those Left Behind” is the art. As is typical with comic books based on live action properties the art is quite realistic. The characters in general look exactly like the actors playing them. Only Mal ever looks off but even then only a little.

The story feels very much like an episode of Firefly. It even starts with the same story of how earth was used up that preceded every episode, though I truly missed the theme song and was tempted to find a copy and play it before I began to read. From there you find that they are on yet another planet robbing them, this time having Sheppard Book give a sermon as a distraction for the robbery, but there is another crew trying to steal the same money and they get the drop on Mal, Zoe and Jane.

Mal is willing to give up the money, but when the robbers ask for his gun the fight begins. This is not only fun but it sets up a good reason why Mal wouldn’t want Jane to bring any grenades with him on a mission as he nearly gets them all killed. It also sets up one of the many great quotable lines in this book. “This gun got me through the war, it’s one of only two things I can recall that did, and stuck with me afterwords” putting the second half over Zoe’s face just in case you don’t know.

From the introduction from Nathan Fillion at the beginning to the back cover art there is no doubt that this comic book is a work of love, but more than anything else what it really does is make me want them to make more Firefly.

Dollhouse: Man on the Street

Until now one of the major things that I felt that Dollhouse was missing was paranoia. The basic premise of Dollhouse is one which is filled with room for paranoia. How can we know that anyone on this show is really who they say, or even who they believe themselves to be?

If this technology really works then why use real people inside the dollhouse? How do we know that the doctor, or the scientists or even the woman who runs the dollhouse hasn’t been created with this technology to be exactly what they need. A person with the skills and moral ambiguity that they need to be the perfect dollhouse employee.

This of course might add a bit more instability to the dollhouses since it appears the technology isn’t perfect but it also appears that if you leave them in personality longer that there would be less glitches. This is why would have a few “actives” who you changed regularly and kept in a safe docile state the rest of the time surrounded by other “inactives’ who had their changed only once, perhaps with a single personality rather than the mix of personalities that they use on the actives, basically cloning a single person’s mind.

This episode goes even farther than simply distrusting the people inside the dollhouse though. With the ability to make people into anything you can have sleeper agents. Perhaps they can even kidnap someone, copy their mind, make a few quick adjustments and then replace the same person except with a few adjustments.

So now you can’t trust the people in the Dollhouse, you can’t trust people outside the Dollhouse, but there is one final person who you can’t trust. Yourself. if you were an active you would, by definition, believe you were who you were. In some ways you would even be that person except controlled by others. What are you beyond your personality and memories?

In addition to all of that we also find out that this isn’t the only dollhouse, and more importantly that the fulfillment of dreams isn’t their goal, only their business. That means that they exist for some other, probably more nefarious reason.

We were told that this was going to be a “game changing” show and for me it certainly was. For the first time since Dollhouse has been on the air I really want to see what happens next week. I guess that means it’s time for Fox to cancel it.

Dolhouse: The Target

With low premier ratings and Joss Whedon talking about how he’s going to focus on the Internet the future doesn’t look great for dollhouse but this episode was good. There were a couple old friends on the show for fans of Joss.
Amy Acker from Angel is playing the a doctor on dollhouse. I missed the first fifteen minutes of last weeks episode so i don’t know if she was on then but seeing her was a treat. Mark Sheppard for Firefly was also on the show, a little less sleazy than in other roles you may have seen him on.
That leads me to a question, have Mark Sheppard and Tahmoh Penikett had lines together before?
I know that this episode is supposed to be an improvement over last weeks but I can’t say I really agree. There were good parts and I’m interested in Alpha, but I didn’t really like the psychopath hunting people angle. Perhaps I’ve simply seen to much science fiction but it felt old. I’m still assuming that these early shows are setting up the feel of the show and they can start being more different later but for now it doesn’t feel all that solid.