Whedonesque : Comments on 14654 : Spike Joining "Buffy 2"?

I think the T.V. Guide headline is misleading since after watching the video,this seems to be just Aussillo's wishful casting/thinking.

As pointed out in the video and one of Joss's print interviews about Dollhouse,he's not very inclined to use his past actors in this since he's already reuniting with Eliza although Eliza says there is always the possibility of past Buffyverse actors being used in guest star roles.

[ edited by Buffyfantic on 2007-11-07 04:46 ]

Buffyfantic | November 07, 04:45 CET

Sounds like Ausiello's wish list. In thinking about who Joss would really like to work with, Marsters wouldn't top the list. More likely Head or Acker, where there is more evidence for lurve. Although he has demonstrated interest in recycling the Firefly cast in the past, his quote here and elsewhere suggests he is more interested in fresh blood on this one.

baxter | November 07, 04:51 CET

He did recycle the Firefly cast because he felt bad about them losing their jobs, though :-)

crossoverman | November 07, 04:59 CET

I'm honestly half tempted to delete this since its got the appearance of being complete fluff thats designed to draw in ad hits. Plus I'll pre-warn you now, lets have no more JM-based arguing, yeah? Plus calling it Buffy2 makes me squeamish.

zeitgeist | November 07, 05:03 CET

If any of the "old gang" deserves a great role it's Alexis.
Wesley, from the pompous wimp of BtVS S3 to Marlboro Man of Ats was a fantastic performance from AD.

zz9 | November 07, 05:03 CET

The one thing that interested me in this vid is Ausiello's claim that he has some actual casting news for Dollhouse that he'll be dribbling out soon.

karosurly | November 07, 05:27 CET

Hmmm, since there are no scripts written, what are they casting from?

crossoverman | November 07, 05:40 CET

Yeah, that "Buffy 2" label is oh-so-annoying. Personally, I'd rather not see, aside from Eliza, any past Whedonverse actors on Dollhouse. At least, not till the show's up on its feet and has firmly established itself as its own entity.

rbt | November 07, 05:50 CET

my sentiments exactly rbt.

dulce_serenidad | November 07, 06:29 CET

There's some actual real Dollhouse info in the Ask Ausiello column so I've added that link to the entry.

Simon | November 07, 08:29 CET

Obviously someone's wistful thinking. As a huge JM fan I can't blame the guy, but gods is he irritating. OK, so Eliza & James had some wicked chemistry in Dirty Girls. But these are two actors who could generate chemistry with a brick wall.

Shey | November 07, 08:55 CET

I'm a massive JM fan, but I really don't want him anywhere near this.

JuliaL | November 07, 12:15 CET

"Buffy 2"?

gossi | November 07, 12:25 CET

Yeah, "Emphatically NOT Buffy 2" seems more accurate.

And I reckon Joss should keep JM in his back-pocket for the later, decadent seasons when ideas maybe aren't flowing quite so fast ;).

(hasn't occurred to me before, BTW, but I assume 'Dollhouse' is set in the future ? Do we know how far i.e. how sci-fi it's going to be ?)

Saje | November 07, 12:36 CET

I was assuming it's set in the present, Saje. The fact it's a secret project type thing and is being investigated by the FBI, to me, suggests right-here-right-now.

gossi | November 07, 12:45 CET

OK, so in "our world" but just with one (huge) secret technological advance ? Fair enough (guess it's not much more of a stretch than e.g. "Bionic Woman").

That actually makes it a still creepier concept I think, there's not even the comforting distance it being set in the future gives you. And as far as The Message goes, it's making you think more directly about the people around you and how the premise might apply to them. Cool.

Saje | November 07, 12:52 CET

ixnay on buffy2nay

hbojo | November 07, 13:30 CET

I was just going to mention Bionic Woman too, Saje. I don't think the concept of Dollhouse is that much more advanced than anything you see on that show. Maybe even less so.

As i've said in the other recent JM thread, the guy can do no wrong for me. However, making Dollhouse too full of faces that we have seen together on other shows is a mistake. I still have problems watching the last two seasons of Stargate and not seeing Crichton and Aeryn where Cam and Vala should be. Let Dollhouse have it's own fresh cast, at least at the start.

Besides, if Joss wants to use James and Eliza together again then we all know it should be in the Spike/Faith straight-to-DVD movie that he has up his sleeve. ;)

RockManic | November 07, 13:37 CET

Indeed, I'm really hoping Joss and friends don't make Dollhouse as 'Buffy 2'. Meaning, you know, I want to see new people, new characters, new universe, new story.

gossi | November 07, 13:44 CET

Fantasy cast time-I'd love to see Jason Dohring in this...and Moonlight cannot be long for this world.....

I haven't seen anything so far to make me think the Dollhouse setting would be futuristic, and I agree with Saje that it's creepier, and probably better, set in the present.

toast | November 07, 13:45 CET

Give me some fresh, new talent any day, and save the oldies for sweeps.

See, I don't WANT Buffy-Mark 2.
Her story was well told on screen and continues to be told in comic form.

I want a new verse to ponder on and dissect. Oh, and some new hottie eye candy would be great, too!

missb | November 07, 13:46 CET

I don't think the concept of Dollhouse is that much more advanced than anything you see on that show. Maybe even less so.

Dunno about "less so" RokkRage, we can at least envision nano-technology and bionic limbs, in fact, depending on investment that'd probably be doable in say 20-30 years (i'm talking cancer research/space race levels of investment though i.e. not gonna happen).

Imprinting an entire consciousness onto a brain though ? If that's even possible in principle (which I personally doubt) then it's a long time away and would need a quantum leap in knowledge/tech rather than the incremental one required for bionics.

They're both useful metaphors though, as well as being cool ideas.

(and yep to the new faces - imagine in 5 years an entirely new set of people that we love as much as the Buffy/Angel/Firefly casts, better idea than fitting known verse folks into the roles IMO)

Saje | November 07, 13:51 CET

Dear Dollhouse people,

Cast whoever you want in your show as us die hard internet fans will only make up a tiny % of your viewing audience and if you listened to us all the time you would go stark staring mad.

Yours,

Simon

p.s. Though saying that, Emma Thompson is a really good actress.

Simon | November 07, 13:55 CET

"Imprinting an entire consciousness onto a brain though ? If that's even possible in principle (which I personally doubt) then it's a long time away and would need a quantum leap in knowledge/tech rather than the incremental one required for bionics."

I'm not so sure. Who know's what kind of funky brainwashing type technology the governments of the world have in place that we simply know nothing about? I mean, have you seen Eureka?

Whaddya mean, that's also fictional? ;)

RockManic | November 07, 14:01 CET

I *heart* Simon. :-)

Also, I am very interested in hearing Matt Roush's take on Dollhouse. He's a huge Whedon fan but, unlike his colleage Ausiello, he doesn't resort to headline-grabbing and fan-baiting.

Part of me wonders if this show will even happen; how will the strike affect shows not yet created??!

OzLady | November 07, 14:02 CET

Hey Simon! I think you should change your username colour to bright Gold!

The word I keep coming with/across with Dollhouse is 'twisted'. I guess that is why Tim is consulting.

OzLady - FOX is commited to the show. As in, production commited. But since Joss is now on strike, nothing is happening with it.

[ edited by gossi on 2007-11-07 14:05 ]

gossi | November 07, 14:04 CET

Anything that would bring James to my screen every week in a good show would make me very happy, but I don't see this happening in a million years.
Fillion is much more likely.
Still, I love Ausiello for bringing it up.

Xane | November 07, 15:53 CET

"A new true love every week"?

Man, this show keeps sounding weirder and weirder.

Excellent.

Resolute | November 07, 16:37 CET

Toast, I second the Jason Dohring idea. Actually I had it concurrently but you posted first. He was so great with the snark in VM, I would love to see what he'd do with Whedon words.

Saje, have you seen "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? If not, I highly recommend. It posits a technology that allows the removal of selective memories (my favorite exchange when the hero contemplating having this procedure done asks if there is any possibility of brain damage, and is told "Technically this is brain damage"), set within the present, and the concept works just fine.

(Of course they also do this in Harry Potter, much more efficiently with just a wand.)

barboo | November 07, 16:37 CET

Yeah barboo, seen it and loved it, I like non-chronological narratives when done well ("Out of Gas", "Memento", looking at both of you). Also, under 'joy' in the dictionary it just has "'Light and Day' by The Polyphonic Spree" ;).

And yep, i've no problem with it as a device - it's fiction after all, doesn't have to be real, just has to be true.

(that said though, both ESotSM and Potter deal with "mere" memories. From what Joss has said, Echo doesn't just inherit the memories, she actually is that person, has all their skills, attitudes etc., is in short, indistinguishable from a "real" version of that person - that's a different, much harder, proposition. I can see us "reading" memories before too long i.e. 50 years or so but "writing" them, and more imprinting an entire consciousness is much more complicated - not to mention stuff like kinesthetic memory which would also need to be transferred if she's gonna "be" e.g. an athlete or an assassin or even, probably, a sex worker)

Saje | November 07, 16:55 CET

I don't find people with the ability to write and erase memories any more difficult to accept than people who can grow fangs and not appear in mirrors.
As with Buffy, it a metaphor. A device used to tell the real story.

zz9 | November 07, 17:20 CET

Who added the "Dollhouse" tag, it is completely redundant since it is already in the Dollhouse category. And who removed the quotes, now it looks as if I am calling it Buffy 2. Sigh...

*spank*

Storyteller | November 07, 17:56 CET

OK everyone, cancel the angry mob with torches and pitchforks, it wasn't Storyteller.

Saje | November 07, 18:10 CET

I was surprised that Eliza was cast. I vaguely remember Joss saying at a Q&A that he hated "stunt casting," the whole "Joss reunites with Willow" type of thing, which is why he wouldn't have had BtVS/AtS stars show up on Firefly. The reason he didn't apply that rule the other way around was that Firefly was on for such a short time that they weren't well-known, at least as far as being associated with Joss. Or something like that.

But now he's got the whole "Joss reunites with Faith" thing going, so does this mean that all bets are off? On one hand, you already have pundits calling this "Buffy 2," so any further "recycled" actors would only add to that, but on the other hand, he has a large stable of actors from all three shows (and previous Joss projects) that he knows are dependable, talented and versatile, and he already knows their strengths and weaknesses, rather than having to hope that an actor who tests well will actually be good on the set week after week. So I think it could go either way whether or not we'll see other familiar faces.

That being said, I definitely wouldn't mind seeing James guesting on an episode, but I doubt he or any of the other leading actors from the other Joss shows will be part of the permanent cast, although the lesser-known supporting cast members might be possible.

deanna b | November 07, 18:12 CET

Clem for male lead! ;)

RockManic | November 07, 18:19 CET

I was surprised that Eliza was cast. I vaguely remember Joss saying at a Q&A that he hated "stunt casting," the whole "Joss reunites with Willow" type of thing, which is why he wouldn't have had BtVS/AtS stars show up on Firefly.

Deanna, Eliza was cast because it was her project. Fox asked her to come up with a show for her to star in, she called Joss, they talked stuff, he came up with the idea and she went back to Fox and said "I've got an idea, and a showrunner"
She also gets a producer credit.

zz9 | November 07, 18:28 CET

Yep total wishful thinking here. I suspected as much when I saw the headline. It just seems so totally unlikely that Joss would choose Marsters to be involved in any real capacity, especially since they don't seem to be on the best of terms these days.

AthenaMuze | November 07, 18:37 CET

As much as I adore and am grateful to the casts of Buffy, Angel and Firefly, I'm hoping that not too many of them show up too soon on Dollhouse. That said, Alexis Denisof is horribly underused right now in TV & Film and he *needs* to call me, er, Joss. (Uncontrolled channelings of lines from Welcome to the Hellmouth are a hazard of being a crazy fan.)

Crazy fannishness aside, I have to ultimately agree with Simon on this one. I can't wait to see who Joss casts for the Dollverse, whether familiar faces or new ones. It's up to him and his compadres and that's muy fine by me.

phlebotinin | November 07, 18:45 CET

I mentioned Ben Browder earlier on in the thread (kinda, sorta) and i've always thought he had a Whedonesque style to his acting. Farscape was a show that I always believed had a very Joss like quality and a large part of that was how Ben played John Crichton. I'd love to see him in a regular Dollhouse role, maybe even the lead male character. I can totally imagine a chemistry between Eliza and Ben.

RockManic | November 07, 19:41 CET

Saje, agreed that from what we've heard so far, what goes on with the "dolls" is much more improbable than deleting memories, and I add the hope that it never does become feasible. I've just been reading the utterly horrifying book "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate" which chronicles psychological experiments conducted or financed by the U.S. government in manipulating people's personalities to turn them into government agents. They found that while they could drive people into psychosis, creating new personalities in someone just wasn't possible (and yes, that was the express goal of some of these experiments).

Some of the techniques and lines of research that were used, had come from Nazi experiments, and from the German scientists who had conducted them who then came over to the U.S., and I have to admit when I read that part my mind went to the Angel episode "Why We Fight", with the revelation that the Initiative's roots came out of Nazi experiments, and wondered if the writers knew about this research and were in fact alluding to it.

(Of course, it was much more well-known that weapons research in the U.S. was going on with German scientists, so that could have been the model).

barboo | November 07, 19:49 CET

Who added the "Dollhouse" tag, it is completely redundant since it is already in the Dollhouse category. And who removed the quotes, now it looks as if I am calling it Buffy 2. Sigh...

Not actually true. Regardless of the category it should have all relevant tags as well. Some people drill down through categories, some use the Archive search, and some use the Google search. Also I don't know who pulled your quotes, but I've put them back in.

zeitgeist | November 07, 19:51 CET

I'd love to see him launch some new faces, but the role of "evil Doll / Echo's nemesis" has "Amy Acker" written all over it.

Not that such a role will exist. I'm just sayin'...

daevid | November 07, 20:15 CET

This is tough. While I would like to see James more often, I think the more I see previous cast members alongside Eliza, the harder it will be to forget she is Faith and embrace her as Echo. I vote for fresh blood.

Oh, and can we please not call this "Buffy 2"? Yikes! I would hate to turn off any misguided potential new Whedon fans with this silly moniker.

cheesefan | November 07, 20:59 CET

Enough with the James Marsters talk. Luv ya, James. I really do. But I want to see Nick Brendon and/or Jensen Ackles on this show.

kerfuffle | November 07, 21:52 CET

Jensen Ackles? Kerfuffle, bite your lip. ;)

The only way that would happen is if Supernatural, my current favourite television series, didn't survive for another season and that would be an absolute crime considering how the current season is shaping up to be the best yet. I'm not too worried, considering it's still the second highest rated non-reality show on the CW, not to mention that the only show beating it (Smallville) is quickly running out of steam, but lets not be tempting fate by offering one of the stars of the show up for other work. :)

RockManic | November 07, 23:36 CET

"he has a large stable of actors from all three shows"

This sentence brings hilarious images to my mind.

Anyway, I'm excited to see some brand new Whedon actors.

RaisedByMongrels | November 08, 01:46 CET

Many of us, including Ausiello, remain really disappointed that we never got any more Spike.

It's a dream we have, a nice one, but a dream.

I'm pretty sure that having James on Dollhouse would be fabulous, but it still wouldn't be Spike.

[ edited by Xane on 2007-11-08 02:42 ]

Xane | November 08, 02:42 CET

Well, I'm disappointed that we never got any more Willow or Xander or Buffy or Giles, or a Tales of the Slayers anthology, or...

Rowan Hawthorn | November 08, 03:08 CET

Acknowledged, but the link is about Spike.

Xane | November 08, 03:10 CET

Acknowledged, but the link is about Spike.

Actually, the link is about James Marsters. Not sure what Spike has to do with anything since Dollhouse will be, you know, an entirely different fictional universe and all.

rbt | November 08, 03:23 CET

Well, undoubtedly it will be a lot about what Eliza wants. After all, this is her property (from Fox) and she brought Joss in. Likely the best decision is to go with a Tabula Rasa (and where have we heard that?) for a fresh feel. And James deserves something of his own - since he is in my estimation the strongest actor/talent in the Whedonverse - that helps him grow and attract new fans.

baxter | November 08, 03:39 CET

Much as I would have loved to have had a Faith spin off the fact that this is Eliza's show, not taking over an existing property, will mean so much more to her and give us a whole new world, new characters, new questions, everything.
I can't wait. Sooner the studios give the writers a decent deal the sooner Joss can get writing!

zz9 | November 08, 03:48 CET

"Not sure what Spike has to do with anything..."

Blasphemy! ;)

RockManic | November 08, 15:06 CET

November 07 2007