What Whedon did next

Joss Whedon can't seem to get a break. He is a master auteur of the television medium, especially in cult dramas with a comic twist. Buffy was a televisual masterpiece. A perfect example of a kick-arse female protagonist, who is successfully juggling identity, puberty, relationships and the responsibility of being a superhero. Fight scenes, monster make-up, morality tales of sex-before marriage, with some killer one liners and brilliant concept episodes. Like "Hush", which had hardly any dialogue in it at all. And "Once More With Feeling", the musical episode. Now while I don't really understand how US television networks operate, this show was dumped by one network and picked up by another. It ran 7 seasons in total, and pretty much finished up when star Sarah Michelle Gellar didn't sign up for an 8th season.

Angel is the darker, ever-so-slightly inferior spin off. I never thought it had the same depth as Buffy but it was pretty addictive television nevertheless. It was cancelled by the network at the end of the 5th season despite high ratings, allegedly because Joss pushed the execs for a renewal, and they canned the show instead.

Firefly was a hybrid sci-fi western with witty dialogue and characters to fall in love with. It was so popular in DVDs and less-than-legal downloads that the feature film Serenity was released in cinemas. Despite Whedon's plans for the show to run for 7 years, the network cancelled the show about mid-way through the first season.

And next? Dollhouse. Starring Eliza Dushku, the premise of this show sounds a little naff. It is based around a corporation that hires out humans to the uber-rich at highly inflated prices for whatever the client desires. The bodies are filled with the memories and skills from the library of minds. And while I am a hardcore Whedon fan, I found it a little tricky to emerse myself into this one early on, I was eventually won over. I think the reason I had difficulty is because the characters don't ever have the same personality from episode to episode, except in flashbacks. I mustn't have been the only one that thought that, because as Season 1 went on, the characteristics of the protagonists began to shine through.

Central to Dollhouse, as with the other 3 shows, are the ideas of mind control and the ultimate power of corporations, and of feminism and feminine strength. The presence of Big Brother (1984 George Orwell style, not reality television social experiment style) is constant and sinister.

Unfortunately, during its 2nd season in the States, this show has been canned too.