I'll be one of the first to admit that I don't exactly fit into the typical audience focus-group that American TV networks base their decisions around. Having seen (and, to be fair, adored) Firefly but not seen much of any of his other work (most notably Buffy or Dr Horrible), I am not enough of a Whedon fanboy to have seen all the buzz about it. Although since the buzz has been piling up for a good few months if not well over a year, I did notice one or two hints in the blogs I read.

So, with my laptop open in front of me I was engaged in what appears to be the traditional American pastime of not paying huge amounts of attention to the television when I noticed Eliza Dushku sprawled across the screen. Needless to say, that got my attention enough to notice that the much-talked-about season premiere of Dollhouse was coming up. For those of you who aren't completely up-to-date with Whedon's work, Dollhouse is about a secret facility housing a number of "Dolls", people whose personalities have been wiped out so that they can be imprinted with fresh ones to handle the missions that the Dollhouse hires them out to do – these missions, then, can be pretty much anything from seduction to assassination, and I have no doubt they will be the ostensible focus of each weekly episode. The ongoing story follows one Doll in particular, Dushku's character Echo (one of her fellow Dolls is called Sierra; clearly they have disposable alphabetical identifiers to go with the disposable people), who begins to become self-aware.

I won't spoil the actual plot of the pilot or sketch out more of the characters for you, although Wikipedia is happy to do so. What I will say is that the premise is handled very well, with lots of out-and-out cool technology (mixing and matching personality traits to construct the perfect composite for a mission; recording memories onto disk for later playback; making someone appear nearsighted by altering her brain's perception of her optical signals) and suitable amounts of on-mission action and adventure. There's also the rather more interesting matter of Echo herself, who seems to be breaking out of the personality wipe (Dushku plays this pretty well, being fairly convincing in each of her mission-specific roles and her reactions to her personal flashbacks), and a couple of hints as to who she was before becoming a Doll; some continuity and quite a few options for sub-plots in the Dollhouse staff (including doctor, geeky tech-guy, mission handler, etc); and for those who are into it, high-level political machinations involving the Dollhouse's CEO and the corporate world in which she moves.

There's a tantalizing possibility, in other words, that there might be something for nearly everyone in there. Online reactions have been mixed, some liking it and some doubtful. I think it's too early to tell, but seeing as the writing and direction will include Whedon himself and Tim Minear, both of whom I have seen do amazing work on Firefly, I'm cautiously optimistic.