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After we asked whether Sarah Connor's good luck was Joss Whedon's bad, Dollhouse star Amy Acker appeared to tell us that everything was coming along exactly on schedule. So why does the show have such a bad rap? And will we see the first episode on schedule at the start of next year?
Talking to SciFi Wire, Acker was keen to play down any idea that the show's second production hiatus was a big deal:
You know, we did take a little break, [a]nd I feel like it's coming back, and everyone is just excited to be there... I think we just kind of had that time, because it doesn't air until January... Instead of rushing to make episodes, they thought, 'Well, we've already made four, and they're all going to be done before the first one airs. So we have the luxury to take the time and make them the way they want them.
The idea that the production team have, instead of the rumored network interference, just been allowed the time to get it right is one that's also being given by Fox Co-Chairman Dana Walden:
The midseason opportunity is a blessing and curse. It’s a blessing because you have more time. And it’s a curse because you have more time. There’s a greater level of scrutiny. There is a greater level of intrusion from executives. The bar just keeps being raised because there’s no urgency to put the show on the air, so at no point do you just let go of it and say, “You know what, now it’s time for this country to decide whether this is something that’s going to tap into the Zeitgeist and become culturally phenomenal or successful in general, or not.” Being stuck in that limbo with a lot of well-intentioned executives is very difficult for a creator like Joss.
With... “Angel,” we shut that down at the very beginning of the process. There was a creative retooling. We went back up after a little over a month and the show just found the place where the stories were the most interesting and the characters just popped. And that’s where we’ve come to with “Dollhouse.” There’s a very complicated mythology that Joss is trying to crack in a way that’s satisfying to a broad audience but will also satisfy his core fan base who will watch anything that Joss does. This is a big task.
So was all the concern just the result of fans who still bear the scars of Firefly? Possibly - although the full season order for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles last week does raise the question over when, exactly, the show is going to air. Originally planned for Mondays in January, that slot would seem to be taken by the extended run of Sarah Connor - so does that mean a new timeslot for Dollhouse? We hope so, and would suggest Wednesdays - especially now that NBC have rebranded their Wednesday line-up as "crime night; with Project Runway off-air and Top Design nearing the end of its run, we'll have some time free on that night, even if no-one else does.
Acker On Dollhouse Interruption [SciFi Wire]
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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