Dollhouse - Dollhouse Season One Survivor: Round 7

crash landing · 07-11-2009, 05:45 AM

1x01 Ghost Elimated Round Three

Echo is introduced as one of the "Actives" in the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse scientist Topher Brink wipes her mind and reprograms her as a ruthlessly efficient kidnapping negotiator. Echo's new personality incorporates memories from another woman who was molested as a child, and it turns out the molester is one of the kidnappers she must now negotiate with. She crumbles in fear during the ransom exchange, nearly getting their client killed. But she is allowed to confront the kidnappers, turning them against each other and rescuing the kidnapped girl. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Paul Ballard struggles with his assignment to uncover information on the Dollhouse, which has destroyed his marriage and is wrecking his career

Eliminated Round Six

Echo's latest imprint has her as the perfect date for Richard, an outdoorsman, who takes her on a romantic wilderness adventure. The experience takes a turn for the worse when Richard indicates he will conclude the "date" by hunting her for sport. Although Echo is imprinted with absolute trust in Boyd, he is unable to do more than deliver a weapon to her, and she must kill Richard on her own. Afterward the Dollhouse team discovers the handiwork of Alpha, a rogue doll, on the corpse of an unknown assassin. It was Alpha who had maimed Dr. Saunders and butchered the handler Boyd was hired to replace. Agent Ballard receives an anonymous package concerning Echo's previous identity as a woman named Caroline, and continues his search

Episode 1x03 Stage Fright Eliminated Round Four

Echo goes undercover as a backup singer to protect volatile pop star Rayna Russell from an obsessed fan. Fellow Active, Sierra, also goes undercover as a fan who wins a contest and gets to spend an evening with Rayna. Getting closer to Rayna, Echo discovers that Rayna is in collusion with her stalker and welcomes death. Sierra is kidnapped when Echo thwarts a shooting and Echo must save Sierra from the stalker and Rayna from herself. Meanwhile, Lubov is revealed to be an Active ("Victor") and Agent Paul Ballard is led to an abandoned basement where he is attacked by three Russian agents

Eliminated Round Eight

Echo is sent on a high-tech heist to recover stolen art for the Greek government, but the job goes bad when one of her accomplices double crosses them. It gets worse when, during a phone conversation with Boyd, she is remotely "wiped" by an unknown party and returns to her child-like state without any of the skills she had been imprinted with. With help from Sierra and Boyd, Echo barely manages to escape. Topher suspects only Alpha could have managed the remote wipe, and finally DeWitt confides to him that her security had indeed failed to kill Alpha

1x05: True Believer Elimated Round One

Imprinted as a visually impaired woman, Echo must infiltrate a heavily guarded cult in order to rescue someone being held against their will. Echo's eyes transmit what they see to government agents watching the compound, though she herself is blind. Echo's imprint is not someone trying to get into the cult to help agents, she fully believes she has been brought there in a vision by the cult's leader, a former felon. Paul Ballard continues his search for Caroline, using facial recognition software. Dominic begins to reveal how much he dislikes Echo. Topher and Dr. Saunders observe a surprising (and supposedly impossible) reaction between two of the actives in their doll states: evidently, Victor finds Sierra attractive

One of Echo's engagements is disrupted by Agent Ballard. Ballard's interrogation of the client (guest star Patton Oswalt) first makes Paul aware that his interest in disrupting the Dollhouse is becoming obsessive. Paul defies this by beginning a relationship with Mellie, but is further shaken when Echo is sent to assassinate him—only to go catatonic and recite a message from a spy inside the Dollhouse. Meanwhile, Sierra begins to show signs of trauma, and Victor is implicated as her assailant. However, Boyd stages a sting operation and discovers that Sierra's handler, Hearn, has been raping her. DeWitt sends Hearn to kill Mellie, only to reveal that she is a "sleeper Active" by activating her latent combat training, which she uses to eliminate Hearn with ease. Finally, acts are bookended by clips of a TV reporter preparing an exposé on the Dollhouse

Eliminated Round Seven

A psychotropic drug is accidentally released in a college research lab owned by the Rossum Corporation, causing the afflicted to behave drunkenly and relive their worst memories. Rossum, which owns the Dollhouse, mobilizes all of DeWitt's Actives, who should be immune to the drug because they have no memories. This turns out to be false, as Sierra relives her rape experiences and Victor remembers a traumatic experience he underwent as a soldier (whether this is his real life or a previous engagement is unclear). Echo, on an unrelated assignment, sees news of the outbreak on TV and goes "off-mission" to "help him", despite having no idea who "he" is (or indeed who she is). Her flashbacks reveal her past as Caroline Farrell and chronicle the events leading directly to her employment at the Dollhouse. The corporate spy who started the outbreak is seen facing DeWitt in a similar manner as the episode closes

Echo, Sierra, Victor and November awake with most of their original personalities intact, and Echo attempts to escape from the Dollhouse with her fellow Actives, reclaiming bits and pieces of their past as they do so. Sierra discovers that she was forced to become a Doll after turning down sexual advances from a well-connected man; Victor is finally able to act on his attraction to her; November grieves over her dead infant daughter, Katie; and Echo, after guaranteeing the other three have escaped, re-enters to the Dollhouse and forces DeWitt, at gunpoint, to release all remaining Actives. Thereafter all four "escapees" fall asleep due to subliminal programming; the entire process is revealed to have been masterminded by DeWitt and Dr. Saunders, allowing their Actives to achieve closure on their personal issues before putting them back to work

While DeWitt is away on business, Topher discovers evidence a spy is in the Dollhouse, and four Actives are dispatched to deal with the problem. "Mellie" is sent to pacify Paul Ballard, but goes temporarily catatonic to deliver another warning from inside the Dollhouse. Sierra goes undercover at the National Security Agency, attempting to raid their databases for the spy's identity. Victor is dispatched on another "Lonely Hearts" gig; the recipient is revealed to be DeWitt. Finally, Echo volunteers to undergo imprinting to help with the investigation; after Topher turns her into a counter-intelligence agent, she helps Lawrence Dominic, the head of security, interview employees. She discovers the mole is Dominic himself, planted by the NSA to keep the Dollhouse (and its dangerous technology) from becoming common knowledge, particularly by staving off Paul Ballard. Dominic's personality is downloaded into Topher's database, and his body sent to "The Attic," to be employed whenever the NSA needs pacifying

1x10 Haunted Eliminated Round Two

A wealthy woman named Margaret has been uploading her personality to the Dollhouse every month in case she is murdered. When she actually is murdered, DeWitt, who has since befriended her, imprints her onto Echo as part of her will; Margaret, posing as a pen-pal named Julia, decides to solve the case during her second chance. Margaret's prized horses turn out to be the key; with a little help from Boyd, who imprints Victor as a racehorse-owner, she solves the case and helps her family achieve some closure. Meanwhile, Topher signs Sierra out for an intensive "benchmark" imprint, which turns out to be that of a fellow gamer, nerd and friend. Finally, Ballard brings November's prints into the FBI; when he attempts to ascertain her identity, their computer spews out a multitude of names and then goes blank in the presence of another agent

Echo helps a young girl deal with her traumatic past, using the fairy tale of Briar Rose as a vehicle; a corpse apparently slain by Alpha turns up in Tucson, Arizona, with Sierra imprinted as an FBI forensics expert to investigate; and a thumb drive arrives for Dominic, who is imprinted onto Victor's body for questioning. Ballard's investigation leads him to the Dollhouse's agoraphobic, pothead architect, Stephen Kepler (guest star Alan Tudyk), and with his forced assistance manages to sneak into the Dollhouse. Though Ballard finds Caroline, Boyd manages to detain him; he takes Ballard to DeWitt for questioning, where they learn from Sierra that the Tuscon corpse is that of the real Stephen Kepler. Ballard's helper is actually Alpha, who reveals himself by attacking Victor and Dr. Saunders. Alpha imprints Echo with a memory that makes her recognize him; with Sleeping Beauty now awakened, the lovers escape the Dollhouse together

1x12 "Omega" Eliminated Round Five

Alpha, with Echo's help, kidnaps a girl named Wendy and takes both of them back to his evil lab; meanwhile, Dr. Saunders tends to Victor, Ballard assists the Dollhouse staff in tracking down Alpha, and a series of flashbacks depict Alpha's time at the Dollhouse, revealing that he has a long-standing crush on Echo and that Dr. Saunders is herself an Active, codenamed Whiskey, who was imprinted with the "Dr. Saunders" personality after Alpha killed the original one during his escape; she (or at least the imprint on her) becomes aware of this during the episode. Alpha imprints Wendy with Echo's original personality, Caroline Farrell; he then initiates a composite event on Echo, creating a new personality he calls "Omega". He expects Omega to kill Wendy/Caroline as part of her ascension to Übermensch, but instead she turns on Alpha himself. Alpha escapes by killing Wendy and then putting the "wedge" containing the Caroline imprint at risk, but DeWitt remains confident that they can catch him—especially with the help of their new security consultant, Paul Ballard. Amongst Ballard's hiring conditions are that November, AKA Madeline Costley, be released from her contract as though she had fulfilled it

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Vote for your least favourite episode.
When an episode reaches 5 votes, it will be eliminated.
If no episode has 5 votes after 5 days, the episode with the most votes will be out.

a new hope · 07-11-2009, 05:03 PM

I don't know if I'll be the only one voting for this one, buuut:

1x12 - 1 vote

crash landing · 07-11-2009, 05:06 PM

I'm torn between two episodes and am leaning towards one, so might vote tomorrow

Logan · 07-11-2009, 06:17 PM

1X5 True Believer

I must say Sarah, this is the first time i have seen episode survivor usually it is Characters .

Thanx for this A lot of work went into this

crash landing · 07-11-2009, 06:19 PM

Mel was the one that did the art

I just sent the thread up

We may do a character one afterwards but wanted to do episode first

1x05 - 1
1x12 - 1

smoothaise · 07-11-2009, 06:40 PM

1x05 - 2
1x12 - 1

I voted for True Believer. Great concept, poorly executed IMO. The acting also err... wasn't that convincing to me.

crash landing · 07-11-2009, 06:41 PM

Yeah, going to go with 1x05 too cause I was leaning towards it

Only good thing was the Man Reaction but the rest was kinda of

1x05 - 3
1x12 - 1

smoothaise · 07-11-2009, 06:45 PM

Man Reaction was the BEST

But the episode (as a whole) didn't do it for me.

crash landing · 07-11-2009, 06:46 PM

Exactly

I looked at the episode as a whole and it didn't do anything for me. A scene or two of awesome doesn't mean anything

naturellebella · 07-11-2009, 07:04 PM

I'll go for 1x05 too, just wasn't as interesting as the rest.

1x05 - 4
1x12 - 1

~*Echo*~ · 07-11-2009, 07:12 PM

Yeah, I'll go 1x05 too, it moved kind of slowly and the whole cult thing was fairly predictable.

Hot Rod · 07-11-2009, 08:12 PM

1x05 as well.

change my luck · 07-12-2009, 02:22 AM

So 1x05 is out!

2nd Round

fetch · 07-12-2009, 05:32 AM

I have two episodes to go before I can join in!

crash landing · 07-12-2009, 05:44 AM

1x10

The episode was alright

I only really liked the Topher storyline related to him having Sierra as his friend. The main storyline regarding Echo being imprinted with that dead woman to solve her own mystery was meh


Fan Forum > Archived Television Shows > Dollhouse > Dollhouse Season One Survivor: Round 7