Epitaph (pronounced EH-pih-taff) - an inscription on or at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there. Also a brief statement commemorating or epitomizing a deceased person or something past.
The epitaph in the title of the now infamous thirteenth episode of Dollhouse could easily have been for the production itself, and Joss Whedon knew it. For the longest time, there was little to no indication that the show was going to live for a second season. The ratings were dismal. But a lot of Fox executives were quietly keen on the series, and there is much speculation that this very episode helped clinch the final decision to renew it.
The Birth of an Idea
It's said that necessity is the mother of invention, and that's certainly true here. In a case of mixed messages, Fox came to Whedon and said, we love the show, and we need a thirteenth episode to fulfill contracts with foreign markets, but we can't give you the money to make one. Whedon responded with a high-concept idea that could be shot for half the budget, thankfully avoiding the lame clip-show idea that was suggested. And so the mind-bending Epitaph One was born. Since the series was only contracted for twelve episodes in the U.S., it did not see an airing here, but is available for digital download and on the first season's DVD.
Strange spoiler warning: this will be a full discussion of many events in the episode (though not all), which, in turn, could be spoilers for the future of the series!
Synopsis
The year is 2019, ten years into the series' future, in a decimated Los Angeles. Fires and destruction are everywhere, and there is brawling in the streets. We meet a group of "Actuals", or non-imprinted people, fleeing for survival - Mag (Whedon favorite Felicia Day), Griff (Chris William Martin), Lynn (Janina Gavankar), the wiped-of-personality Mr. Miller (Warren Sweeney) and his child, Iris (Adair Tishler). Through their conversations we learn that the personality-imprinting process was at some point made widely available and got out of control. The imprinted have declared war on the un-imprinted, plunging the world into chaos. Technology itself has become the delivery system for invasive personalities, rendering most of it unsafe.
The Actuals head underground to escape the "Butchers" (imprinted marauders, presumably), as well as to be in an area safe from dangerous wireless signals. They discover the abandoned Dollhouse, with the imprinting chair still in working order. They use it to imprint memories into the wiped Mr. Miller to get any possible helpful information.
Thanks For the Memories
These memories, shown as flashbacks with the original cast, are ridiculously illuminating, and continue to seemingly lock down the remainder of the series to a number of plot points:
- The first, from Adelle (Olivia Williams), merely shows a meeting with a Dollhouse client where she outlines the Dollhouse's mission statement: to give people not so much what they want, but what they need.
- The next, from Topher (Fran Kranz), shows his introduction to the facility and demonstrates how his mind works on a completely different level of intelligence. He discusses how to streamline the personality downloading process, so it takes minutes rather than hours. This foreshadows the big-time revelation to come later.
- Then comes a memory from Echo (Eliza Dushku). We see her being imprinted with a Russian girl, and her handler is now Paul Ballard (Tamoh Penikett). While that may not be much of a surprise, we soon learn a greater one - she is capable of maintaining her own personality as Caroline at the same time she's imprinted with another! Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of some increasingly bad headaches. Perhaps this ability is the result of her encounter with Alpha (Alan Tudyk), when he dumped a whole mess of people into her head at once?
- A Whiskey/Dr. Saunders(Amy Acker) memory follows, where we see her saying a hurried goodbye, seemingly for good, to Boyd (Harry Lennix), who is suffering some sort of injury but needs to escape. It seems clear they've been involved in a more-than-professional capacity.
At this point Whiskey emerges from the shadows in the 2019 present day, wiped, yet claiming knowledge of how to get to "Safe Haven", a compound where the remaining Actuals of the world have set up camp.
Part two of this article can be found here.
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