Gestern hätte ja eigentlich "Epitaph One"-Tag sein sollen. Schließlich wurde foxstore.com unter dem Ansturm an Dollhouse-Fans (wie zu erwarten war) lahmgelegt, weil der pre-order für die limitierte Comic Con-Variante der DVD/Blu-Ray abgehalten wurde. Kunden wurde bei Bestellung ein Sneak Peek auf "Epitaph One" versprochen.

Nach stundenlangem Nichtfunktionieren der ganzen Chose scheint aber es aber doch ein kleiner Clip dann mittels eines Handy-Services in die Welt geschafft zu haben. Nur hochgeladen hat ihn noch niemand. Aber unser Warten wird verkürzt durch die gute Mo Ryan von der Chicago Tribune, die uns 13 lustige Fakten über "Epitaph One" bringt, von denen die ersten sechs cool spoiler-free sind. (Aber sie markiert im Text eh klar und deutlich, wo ihr zum Lesen aufhören sollt, wenn ihr nicht verspoilt werden wollt.)

So what do Comic-Con attendees -- or DVD buyers -- have to look forward to? Well, "Epitaph One" did what the best episodes of "Dollhouse" do: It made me think, it had some great performances and it contained some "holy [expletive]" moments. To say more would invite a kneecapping from Fox, so I'll keep my yap shut when it comes to the "OMG" moments of "Epitaph One."

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Dollhouses Kostümdesignerin, die uns netterweise auch via Twitter regelmäßig am laufend hält über die Produktion, gibt hier ein wirklich nettes Interview, wo sie auch (nicht) über Dollhouse und The Cabin in the Woods spricht.

You’ve recently wrapped up work on The Cabin in the Woods. Is there anything you can say about the costumes work you did for that movie?

Cabin in the Woods - crickets chirping. I can’t say a word. Picture a cabin - hear the crickets chirping - that’s all I got for ya. ;)

Have you by chance done any preliminary sketch work for Goners, perhaps something for development purposes that we can peek at?

I haven’t seen anything from Goners - I know nothing of the story.

And you’ve started back up with Dollhouse? What can you tell us about the costume work you’ve done on the show?

I just started back on Dollhouse yesterday have not even seen an outline of a script But past stories - we custom made the sword fighting costumes. I drew a picture on a napkin and ran it to Joss - he approved it and my amazing seamstress built it - we also made a few of Dr. Saunder’s things a few of Adelle’s and the last dress of Mille. I ran whole bolts of fabric into Tim Minear’s office where Joss, Elizabeth and Sarah were all talking - I had to get approval right away, we were running out of time to custom make it! The first three did not fly, but I ran in one other and they loved it - I ran a lot. :)

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Haley wer? Davina Crestejo höchstpersönlich, das gekidnappte Mädchen aus "Ghost". Und wenn das mal nicht eines der tollsten Interviews, die ich je zum Thema Dollhouse gelesen habe, ist.

What was the first scene you shot for the episode?
The first scene was when
I’m in the dark, crying, and talking on the phone to my TV dad. Afterwards, Joss told me that he got tears in his eyes during that scene.

Of course, everyone makes mistakes! What were some goofy mistakes that were made when behind the camera?

Um, I can’t really remember any mistakes. Everyone was always so professional on the set and fun to hangout with between takes.

May you share us a little bit of inside information on the set?

Well, I can tell you that Joss is funny and brilliant all at the same time. He was always playful between takes. I can also tell you that in the scene where Eliza rescues me from the kidnappers, we’re not really in a broken down house in the desert, we’re on a sound stage that they built to look like the inside of a house. And I never spent more than about 20 seconds inside that refrigerator, most of the time I was in video village watching Joss direct the crew or chit chatting with Eliza.

Do you remember any favorite moments while filming?

Definitely! Joking around with Joss. One time, I was clapping my hands together and pointing with a sour look on my face. Joss asked what I was doing and I explained that I was pretending to be the Cymbal Monkey from the Simpsons Movie, the part where the Monkey is clapping his cymbals together and pointing at Marge, trying to get Homer to listen to her. Then Joss sat down across from me and he started to pretend that he was the cymbal monkey too! The rest of the crew just stared at us like we were crazy. It was so much fun!

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Nachdem gerade die ersten Promo-Kopien herumfliegen, tauchen auch die ersten Rezensionen auf. Keine Angst, 20th Century Fox hat die vierte Disc nicht mit ausgeschickt, damit "Epitaph One" nicht leaken kann. Was heißt: Keine Spoiler in den Reviews, aber eben auch keine Besprechung von "Echo" und den vielen Extras der vierten Disc. Dafür gibt es nun aber Erwähnungen der Kommentare zu "Ghost" und "Man on the Street", und die klingen ja super:

“They are clearly into each other,” he said. “And he wants her to help him, and she believes him. This is a huge thing. What it is, of course, is me saying ‘I’m going to kill her now.’”

And he talked about the moral aspect, the most troubling and interesting aspects of this show. Fans have been discussing the competing issues of the Dollhouse and its employees, clients, and enemies, and while he doesn’t provide any answers, he does address the questions head on. Is it right to sell people if they’ve previously agreed to be sold? Once a person has agreed to let their body be used, does it make a difference who’s using it? If you don’t remember what happened to you, did it really happen? What makes a person want to rent another human being? What person would consent to be rented, and why? And when you take away a person’s memories, is there anything left?

“Man on the Street” was the first episode to tackle these questions head on. Interstitial clips of a news feature on the “urban legend” of the Dollhouse tell us what the public thinks of the idea, and we see a schlubby Internet mogul (played beautifully by Patton Oswalt) with a very good reason to hire an active. The episode mixes political correctness and layers of moral entanglement and the fact that they can do that is, according to Joss, “what scares me about the show and is absolutely what makes it worth making.”

Vor allem diese letzte Zeile.

Und zwar das "Epitaph One"-Screening und die Limited Edition DVD, beides in diesem wirklich zuckersüßen, lustigen kleinen Video, das uns Dollverse zur Verfügung stellt.

Was für ein süßer Sklave.

Eliza bestätigt, was wir eh alle ahnten, dass die Produktion an Staffel 2 am 22. Juli losgeht, und dass besagte Staffel dirty wird:

On July 22, Dushku returns to the set of “Dollhouse” to begin shooting the second season of the Fox drama. Dushku is delighted the show, from executive producer Joss Whedon, was renewed. She was returning from a trip to Uganda when she got the word.

“When I landed in Boston, I turned on my phone. The first message that popped up was from Joss and it said, ‘We’re back, kid.’ It was really kind of sweet to touch down and get the news.”

“Dollhouse” struggled in its Friday night time slot but did well in DVR and online viewing.

“It’s alive because of the fans and because people found the show. This show is back because it’s a new era. It’s not just a Nielsen world any more. We really feel like the show was starting to find itself. If we hadn’t gone back, it would have been such a mean little tease. We found our rhythm, and we know what worked, we know what didn’t work and now we get to really get dirty.”

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Nicht nur werden die Engländer Staffel 2 erhalten, nein, am 11. August werden sie auch noch "Epitaph One" zu sehen bekommen. Ich werd einfach "Neid" zu meinem zweiten Vornamen erklären lassen.

Jetzt gibt es einen Countdown und ein FAQ. Für die von euch, die zur Comic Con fahren.

Ernshaft... fährt wer, der mir so ein Ding mitbringen kann?

SyFy hat bei Fox21, dem Indie-Arm von 20th Century Fox Television, einen Reboot des Alien Nation-Franchises ('88 Kinofilm, '89-'90 TV-Serie, '94-'97 fünf TV-Movies) geordert, und Tim Minear wird es machen:

The new "Alien Nation" would include a mythology that evolves over time and will also touch on some of the issues of the day, such as the immigrant experience and how society integrates an incoming culture.

Minear said he's looking forward to incorporating a mix of all the different kinds of series he's written in the past.

"It's genre mixed with procedural mixed with funny and mixed with big, giant scary," Minear said. "I love serialized stuff, but this is also a cop franchise. That 'Starsky and Hutch'/'Lethal Weapon' buddy cop comedy is absent from TV right now."

Minear is currently busy outlining the "Alien Nation" script and mapping out the project's mythology. The new "Alien Nation" will likely take place in the Pacific Northwest, and will take place about 20 years after the first ship of aliens - who have been banished as slaves - crash lands into Earth.

By the time the show begins, some time in the 2020s, the alien population has multiplied from a few thousand to 3.5 million. And much of the "newcomers" live their own segregated existence, in what Minear compares to the North African ghettos in France.

"You can take (the original 'Alien Nation') a step forward and really do a show that encompasses the clash of civilizations, and the idea of a ghettoized minority," he said. "You can touch on racism, terrorism, assimilation, immigration. And there's room for satire."

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Wann genau Produktion losgeht und was das für seine Dollhouse-Mitarbeit bedeutet, ist noch unklar.

Ein Interview über die spannenderen Aspekte des Schauspiels und den Fansupport:

“They love the way we (Australians) speak, they can't get enough of it'' she said.

“They're just really happy to have that versatility with the character as well, to be able to switch around accents.''

But the biggest challenge of the role wasn't trying to master a different accent, but trying to portray someone who is a blank slate most of the time.

”The doll state is difficult because you're sort of hovering on this fine line, that there's something going on deep in the core of that person but really most of it's gone,'' she said.

“The doll state's probably one of the more challenging roles. But then it gets challenging playing the active state, out there in the world doing your tasks. And those characters are similar to other characters you've played.

“Like, the spy character I played is not that dissimilar to the girl who comes in shooting guns. And even though they're supposed to be completely different people, they're in a similar sort of world, and to create those differences can be challenging as well, but that's what's fun about it. They're both challenging in different ways, I guess.''

There was some concern about whether Dollhouse, whose first season has finished airing in the US, would get a second season.

It, along with a lot of other shows in the fantasy genre, faced the axe.

This prompted an overwhelming show of support from fans who crashed the Fox network's phone lines with calls begging for the show be saved.

To everyone's surprise, it was. Along with the rest of the cast, Lachman was overwhelmed by the support for Dollhouse.

“It was amazing!'' she says.

”I was so grateful to everyone who tweeted with Fox and called them. It was remarkable and just really proved that the fans of Joss don't just like his shows, they love them.''

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Sehr nettes Interview mit unserem geschätzten Mr. Tanaka:

IGN: Well, sure. Seeing as how you're trying to stop people from breaking the law. You also work for a Law Enforcement agency on Dollhouse. You just don't have that great a personality.

Sheppard: I'm also dressed way too well for an FBI guy. I got to wear some nice clothes there. I've gotta be a bad guy. Somehow. I'm way too odd as Agent Tanaka.

IGN: Will your character be returning for Dollhouse's second season?

Sheppard: You never know. I mean, they still haven't explained my name. Tanaka. Why would they not bring me back? It's a fun role. I really like working with Joss. It's always fun to try to work out what he's trying to do. I always enjoy the ride with him. It's always something really interesting. I'm so glad he's a part of this new change – in the way that we view demographics and figures on television. That's probably more important than anything else right now. You know, to get a show renewed with numbers that appear to be that low, and interest that appears to be that low, it's great. We have the resources now to gather and garner numbers from new sources, and it's a scary thing. You can't have a multi-billion dollar industry suddenly overnight changing the way they work out how ad revenue is done. It's not a smart move in anybody's book to go "this would be more accurate" or "this would be more useful." You've gotta be really careful otherwise it could change then entire basis for what we're doing. I mean it makes sense to me. Knowing what everybody's watching at all times. But it could be a very scary proposition for some people. I mean you could find out that people aren't really watching what everyone thinks they're watching.

IGN: It could be very scary if they find out that the "popular" shows' numbers don't really add up in a new system.

Sheppard: I mean, why is it that I can't walk down the street without someone recognizing me from Battlestar? I mean, if there's only 1.6 million viewers. Why, if I'm on a show like Leverage, when I go to the airport in Dallas, there's a guy reading my passport who tells me, "By the way, I love your character Mr. Sterling." He actually called me Mr. Sterling. I had to take another look at my passport to make sure it wasn't written there. But you know, we have a penetration into markets that we never had before.

And I love the fact that "the powers that be," who are not dumb people – let's not pretend that my bosses at SyFy and Universal don't know what they're doing. Of course they know what they're doing. They want to be successful. They want to have great shows. And, you know, they're trying to get the numbers to catch up. And they're trying to get the number systems to catch up with what they know is good. It's hard to sell a show that "on paper" can't make it.

It's interesting that Joss has taken a show that, as far as FOX's position in the past, might not have been a show that would have gotten picked up. But they're with us. They're so smart and they look at Joss' DVD sales and the TiVo numbers, which are incredible. The TiVo numbers for Dollhouse are amazing. I remember when people were talking about a 7% bump in TiVo numbers being a big deal. You know a 7% bump in ratings is a big deal. Dollhouse was near the 40% mark. I don't need to know how it all works, but you can look at it and see that the market's changing and they're trying to figure out how to keep these passion projects and these great shows on the air. Nobody truly wants to throw away a television show. There's too much effort and love gone into it.

IGN: And then the more you throw them away, the less people want to invest themselves in a new show. It's a vicious cycle.

Sheppard: I agree. I've seen a really jaundiced outlook from people, who will only start to watch things based on the performance of the first twelve episodes.

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Eine der beiden neuen Mitschreiberlinge meldet sich erstmal zu Wort:

Michele Fazekas, the Williamsville native who co-created “Reaper,” joined the staff of Fox’s “Dollhouse” with writing partner Tara Butters after the cancellation of her CW series. In an e-mail, Fazekas wrote that she and Butters signed a new overall deal with 20th Century Fox Studios and are consulting producers on “Dollhouse” while they develop new projects.

“Things are going great. We are humongous Joss Whedon fans so it’s very cool to be working with him,” she said.

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