EtE (Echo the Episode)

[deird_lj]

I've just seen the original pilot episode of Dollhouse.


I have to say, I'm not sure why everyone thinks it would have worked so much better than the episodes that aired.
(Unless everyone's just going "original pilot"="Joss's vision"="obviously brilliant", "new episodes"="Fox meddling"="clearly going to be crap"...)


It starts off better, sure.
The way they introduce the Dollhouse, and what it does, is much more interestingly done, IMO.

But...

Topher is evil, Adelle is incompetent, Boyd is filled with self-loathing, Claire is ominous and lurky, Mellie is non-existent, Echo is weird, Paul is ridiculously over-the-top, and the whole thing just has this incredibly creepy vibe to it.

What they ended up with is way better.


Why does everyone like this episode, again?

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I just watched for the first time yesterday. I'd have to rewatch with your particular concerns. But off the top of my head:

1. Topher is supposed to be evil. His arc is to learn that trying to control things through technology is bad. I agree that's a fairly simple and unoriginal story line. But judging from Epitaph One, that's been one of the main arc lines planned by Joss, et.al.

2. The other points might be right -- but it takes you mentioning them for me to notice. It is worth saying that we can't watch this episode as though we'd not seen the season -- and it might be that I don't notice this stuff because I think I already know who the characters are.

3. What we don't know is how the series would have developed had it started here. People who say they prefer the pilot and just love season one are being a bit contradictory. A LOT of the story line would have been quite different, had we started here. I haven't thought about it hard, but I think Paul's story would have ended up better. We had several episodes of him operating on a separate track from the rest of the show, and if we'd started with this pilot, he'd have been in the main story line from the get go. Since I think Caroline/Echo is the weakest part of the show, I think it can only have been better to have started with her showing signs of self-awareness. One would hope that might have led to a better landing point. It's clear that Claire/creepiness is because Joss already knows she's a doll. I think that all works fine. Some of Adele's dialogue suggests that they already know she's using Victor. I've never had a good fix on Boyd and that's true in both the show and the pilot.

4. The strength is that it goes straight at where the hard issues really are. I love the idea of starting with the "altruistic" missions, to muddy up the waters, just a bit. The strongest anti-technology screed would start with the fact that most abuses of technology are rooted in good intentions, and the show as aired really doesn't do that, which means were just stuck with the obvious message that the technology is bad, bad, bad.

5. The weakness is that the pilot is preachy and obvious about where the issues really are.

I'm not sure how I come down on all of this. I've spent the last few weeks trying to digest my disappointment about Epitaph One -- which is also an uncommon opinion. In light of my unhappiness with that, the pilot seemed better. But I want to keep pondering it all.

[deird1]

Topher is supposed to be evil. His arc is to learn that trying to control things through technology is bad. I agree that's a fairly simple and unoriginal story line.

I'd disagree.
Um... not about his arc, exactly. But I'd disagree that he's supposed to be flat-out evil.


People who say they prefer the pilot and just love season one are being a bit contradictory. A LOT of the story line would have been quite different, had we started here.

Agreed.

I actually rather liked Paul's storyline the way it ended up, though. It became quite complex, by the end of the season.


The weakness is that the pilot is preachy and obvious about where the issues really are.

Again - agreed.
:)


I've spent the last few weeks trying to digest my disappointment about Epitaph One -- which is also an uncommon opinion.

Ooh... Once you're done digesting, post about it! That would be fascinating.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I think we're just seeing the first layer of Topher, which is what we see in the pilot, but also (so far as I can tell) in the opening episodes. For me, Topher first got layered in his reaction shot to Victor-as-Dominic. Not that it wasn't always there -- just that we're supposed to see the repulsive Topher before learning that there's more to him than that.

I liked where Paul ended up; the problem was the long lag in getting his story meaningfully integrated. All of the plundered scenes involving him made more sense in the context of the pilot than in the way they originally aired. It'd be interesting to know where Paul would have ended up if he started here.

I'll have another watch of the pilot and post about it, perhaps. It's nice to have a place to talk about those two episodes in a way that's more than just squee. I thought both episodes were something of a mixed bag -- in a way that exactly matches my own ambivalence about the series as a whole.

[deird1]

just that we're supposed to see the repulsive Topher before learning that there's more to him than that.

See, that's the thing. I never saw Topher as "repulsive", in any way, shape or form.

I found it quite strange reading lots of episode reviews with people talking about Topher as "repellent" and "someone we're supposed to dislike". Because I really couldn't see where they were coming from.

In the end, I wrote a post at dollhouse_tv asking if it was just me, or if anyone else liked Topher too. It turned out to be a fifty-fifty split...

[next_to_normal]

Huh, see, I did find Topher repulsive, but I got the sense that I wasn't supposed to - that he was, in essence, the Joss stand-in character, and Joss thought he was brilliantly hilarious, if a little weird.

[deird1]

Huh. Really?

Interesting...

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I never disliked Topher. But I always saw him pretty much the way he came across in Echoes -- as a guy who's absorbed in his work, who has justified it to himself, and who really isn't bothered by it. Given that, I wasn't surprised that a lot of people reacted negatively to him. I expected we'd get an arc where he gradually wakes up to what he's doing, and we got the first step of that in Briar Rose when he sees Victor in the chair as Dominic. Epitaph One screams that, indeed, this coming aware of what he's doing is to be his big arc. I also expected that we'd gradually be invited to see his more appealing side, and that development began mid-season. But let me grant you that he somehow appears worse in Echoes -- I'm still quite sure we'd have gotten the same arc, and that the Toper at the end of the season that would have spun out from the pilot would have been the same Topher we saw in Omega. Because that story, anyway, seemed to me to be primed to play out exactly as it did play out.

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen it yet, but I'll pop back in with an opinion once I do. ;)

[deird1]

Can't wait. :)

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Topher is evil,

I don't think Topher is evil in the unaired pilot. I think he's the dark (-ish) Joss alter ego. His little soliloquy about everybody being programmed is the heart of the show.

Does that tie keep you warm?
No, it's just what grown-up men do
in our culture.
They put a piece of cloth around
their necks so they can assert their status
and recognize each other
as non-threatening kindred.
You wear the tie
because it never occurred to you not to.
You eat eggs every morning
but never at night.
You feel excitement and companionship
when rich men you've never met
put a ball through a net.
You feel guilty, maybe a little suspicious,
every time you see
that Salvation Army Santa.
You look down for at least half a second
if a woman leans forward.
And your stomach rumbles every time
you drive by a big golden arch
even if you weren't hungry before.
Everybody's programmed, Boyd.

It's just the methods of programming that change. Notice that dolls do what they think they want to do. "Should I go now?" -- "If you like".

[deird1]

I love that soliloquy.

But mostly I was talking about the fact that Topher says he doesn't care about what he's doing, and clearly doesn't care, and is much more dismissive of Echo and the other dolls, and much nastier to the world in general, and completely unconcerned about what's going on. A man with no cares in the world.

Whereas, in the show, even when he's caring about stuff for selfish reasons - like Echo being remote-wiped - he cares about it. He actually pays attention to the world and thinks some things actually matter.
It's much nicer.



...I think that's what I mean.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree, in the unaired pilot Topher is just a "walking idea" without nuances. But, OTOH, Boyd mentions that Topher might be trying to justify his actions - so he's more agressive and extreme.

You know what's funny? To me, the unaired pilot was my first experiance of Dollhouse. I've read the script last summer, soon after watching the promos, and I "saw" the pilot mentally, because I already knew the settings, I knew how the characters look, how they talk and could project the bits in the promo onto the scenes I was reading. So I think that unaired pilot was my first real impression of the show - and the first impression usually is the strongest. I was a bit disappointed by the first episodes that had been aired. But was was blown away by the second part of the season.

[next_to_normal]

I haven't seen the pilot (is it on the DVD or something?) but I did read the script a while back. I'd already seen several episodes at that point, so it was hard to divorce it from what I already knew, but I kind of felt like it would have been really confusing to start at that point. I was left thinking that, as badly as the first five episodes turned out, scrapping the pilot was the right thing to do, and the idea to explain things over a few more episodes was better, even if it didn't turn out that way in execution.

[deird1]

Yeah, it's on the DVD as a special feature.
(It's actually slightly different from the script, which is a bit bizarre. I was just expecting Script Opening Scene, and got something else instead...)

And I think you might be right. :)

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Okay, just watched this, and holy shit it sucks balls. Um. Joss, WTF was going through your head here?

I mean, seriously, if we go with this, everyone's storylines and personalities are completely different. Basically no one is subtle or three-dimensional at all.

...Phantom? Seriously? And just how they have all these scenes that work in other episodes but don't work now at all cause we still don't know who these people are, which maybe I just think cause we've seen the fragments other places, but...ugh. This ep took all my fave characters and fucked them up.


I personally didn't really like how they introduced the concept - I'm into show-not-tell. But it's not a terrible way to introduce it, it's the rest of the ep that sucks. Fox did good with this.

Although I did enjoy seeing the first appearance of Wendy from Omega.

[deird1]

Exaaaaactly.

So very glad they changed it.