Dollhouse #10:Haunted/Season 1/2009

[Truth Seeker]

Haunted

Echo is programmed with the memories of a dead woman in the hopes that she can help solve the woman's murder. Topher secretly prepares Sierra for an engagement, and Ballard looks into Mellie's past.
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[Richards]

This one was kind of slow-paced. The highlight for me this week was the teaser for next week's episode, which looks like it's going to be great!

But as for this week, has it ever been established how long a doll can be programmed? Could Adele's dead friend, for example, have lived another entire lifetime inside Echo's body? (I know that Adele wouldn't have allowed it, but if the technology allows it, eventually it's going to be possible.) I remember them making a point about how multiple downloads of the same personality into the same doll on a regular basis is a bad thing, but I can't remember if they've established an "upper limit," time-wise, for how long a doll can "run" on a given program.

And I kind of felt sorry for Topher, having to program himself a friend that he only gets to see once a year. Poor guy.

Johnathan

 

[coyote6]

I was thinking the same thing, that eventually Echo would start coming out.

I'm wondering if Topher's programmed "friend" is a construct, or an actual person that he gets to decant into a Doll once a year (with tweaks so she doesn't ask a lot of questions).

 

[fba827]

But as for this week, has it ever been established how long a doll can be programmed? Could Adele's dead friend, for example, have lived another entire lifetime inside Echo's body? (I know that Adele wouldn't have allowed it, but if the technology allows it, eventually it's going to be possible.) I remember them making a point about how multiple downloads of the same personality into the same doll on a regular basis is a bad thing, but I can't remember if they've established an "upper limit," time-wise, for how long a doll can "run" on a given program.

I don't believe an upper limit has been established, thus, I agree, the dead friend could have (based on what we know) have been in Echo indefinitely - at least until Echos own personality started to seem in as we've seen before.

I'm wondering if Topher's programmed "friend" is a construct, or an actual person that he gets to decant into a Doll once a year (with tweaks so she doesn't ask a lot of questions).

I (personally) believe it is a wholly made construct - pulling parts that he wants in the personality. And then he just loads up that personality every year. I say this because he had no way of knowing if he'd get a guy or a girl doll. And I would imagine if he was trying to recreate a certain friend he might want it to be some what close to the original (gender being the obvious easy thing he could account for, physically, but he made no such gender request when talking to Boyd).

 

[RangerWickett]

I loved this episode. It's weird that, even though the character of the woman who died is wholly new, I really cared for her. I wonder if part of that has to do with it being Echo's face, which we've come to perceive as the protagonist.

I at first thought Topher's buddy was going to be himself downloaded in a different body.

 

[Remus Lupin]

It's interesting to note that we've now got two employees of the Dollhouse abusing its services. And now Ballard has "found" a dollhouse client -- himself.

Oh! The moral ambiguity of it all!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I loved this episode. It's weird that, even though the character of the woman who died is wholly new, I really cared for her. I wonder if part of that has to do with it being Echo's face, which we've come to perceive as the protagonist.

I at first thought Topher's buddy was going to be himself downloaded in a different body.

I loved it, too.

The character and the scenario worked. The resolution wasn't really that important, the most interesting thing was seen the "deceased" figuring out the differences between her perceptions of herself and others, and her families perception of herself.

The scene where she finally understood that her daughter is taking her photogrpahy serious. She really hasn't gotten it until that point.



The situation was Ballard was played well, feeling really awkward.


Tophers friend was fun. I wondered if it was also a deceased friend of him. But the character did jump immediately into the scene and had no questions about the place, so I suspect the personality was a construct. (I wonder how many parts of it might have been Topher himself?)

 

[LightPhoenix]

I liked this episode a lot, probably more than any other so far (I know I've said that in the past - things change!).

I think the overt theme of this episode was love, but more in the background was the undercurrent of a single question: what defines a soul?

The Ballard/November scene was tremendously awkward to watch, and Helo Penikett sold it really well. Does Mellie being fake make her any less real, or her ability to take Ballard's pain any less able? After all, taking away someone's pain is an act of empathy, which implies there's some sort of soul there. Even if Mellie is simply a recurring program, she still loves Ballard.

I got the impression that Topher's friend was another recurring construct, but one he only gets to see once a year. She's aware of the "sleepies" and she seems to know what they did before (based on when Sierra woke up). Friendship is another act of the soul. Furthermore, if someone is alone, do they really have a soul? Topher seemed more with it and together than he has the whole series, simply because he seemed whole.

Finally, we get Adele's friend. This was the biggest thing for me in this episode. They basically took the friend and put her in a new body - the transferrence of soul, so to speak. It raises an interesting question - are the logical mind and emotional soul separate, or are they the same? Everlasting life - at the sacrifice of the physical body. The body is how we take in input; if you detach too much from it, are you really alive? I think perhaps that is what Adele's friend realized. She could have a new life, another forty-sixty years... but is that really living? It's the fear of death that makes life what it is.