Last night the mystery project was revealedto be a new web series called Dragon Age: Redemption. That’s right, EA/Bioware have asked her to do to Dragon Age what she’s unofficially done to World of War craft. Make it cool and bring it to a different kind of audience. Details are a little thin on the ground but USA Today had the scoop and also did a nice little Gamer Profile on Day.

She has also blogged a little about the project, but no doubt the best place to get more info as it happens is to follow @FeliciaDay on twitter. She tweets a lot.

So info dump aside, what do I think? I think this is super cool. I’m not a huge Guild fan, but think that it’s pretty impressive that it’s been going for 4 whole seasons, and was bank rolled for the first season by fan donations. Day also then managed to keep total creative control when she signed a distribution deal with Microsoft. Also Felicia Day is a real gamer, she plays games, loves games and understands why the rest of us do. A quick quote from the USA Today article:

A life-long game player, Day is fully aware they have a poor track record when it comes to adaptation. “I am an organic gamer and I love games, and I particularly love this franchise,” she says. “I put every single effort into making this something that gamers will be proud of. Even though we were constrained a lot as a Web series, none of the people who were involved took that as a constraint. They took that as a challenge.”

So yeah, I look forward to seeing this when it comes out. I doubt it will be at the same time as Dragon Age 2, but hopefully not too long after.

I haven’t blogged much about Dollhouse’s cancellation, mostly due to a lot of other people already what I had to say. As a series it was deeply flawed and didn’t always get it right, but the thing it always had underpinning it was that it was just so different. That difference in approach to a theme is classic Whedon, as much as the layered characters and pithy dialogue. It wasn’t Buffy or Angel and it certainly wasn’t Firefly. It was it’s own beast, with it’s own issues.

Did the US network, Fox, step in and mess it up? Maybe. Did the show tiptoe around it’s loaded subject matter? Of course it did. It was about human slavery, prostitution and a person’s hunt for self when they’re stuck in that world. It’s heavy stuff, too heavy no doubt than a lot of everyday TV watchers.

The fans watched though. Us rapid fan boys and girls who lap up anything “The Whedon” does and then sit around for months and years afterwards talking about how good it was. How it was canned too soon. Despite the fact that we fans meant the almost guaranteed success of the internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog we are not enough to keep a major US TV network happy.

So what next? There is that episode of Glee that is coming up, but that won’t be a Whedon show. It will be an episode of Glee directed by Joss Whedon, not written. Then of course there is the much rumored follow up to Dr. Horrible. They’d be mad not to really. Will Joss Whedon go back to TV? I’ve heard it said that he’s not interested, at least not in it’s traditional format.

I’ve talked about this with a few people and I reckon there are two formats that would suit a Whedon style story down to the ground:

• Mini-series format – Torchwood did it for their Season 3 and it was amazing. I reckon Joss Whedon could really blast this format. 5 x 1.5 hour episodes, back to back and really concentrating on the story. Though he’s have to work on that slow build up thing of his that seems to happen in every series , bar Firefly.

• Online streaming – This is the other format that has been mentioned a lot. A regular show, with proper production values which is shown only on the internet. Anyone who wants to watch it pays a subscription, and then at the end of the season the DVDs are released as normal. No networks exerting control or pulling the strings. The technology is there and the fan base as well, pretty much all of whom are very internet savvy.

So those are my vague thoughts on the matter. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next, whether it be ‘net based, TV or another movie.

Sorry for last week’s lack of links and apologies in advance for the lack of links next week!

• Mark Charan Newton thinks sci-fi books are dying. I tend to agree.
• Why fandom owes even more to H.P. Lovecraft than we realised.
• A man has ‘beaten’ WoW. Sort of (via Boing Boing)
• Dollhouse battles were about sex. So says Whedon – Fox will never tell.
• Real life vampire killing kits!
• Using Microsoft’s Surface to play D&D – more footage.

I haven’t watched any of season 2 yet, but still this is a shame. It was an interesting show.

• Apparently Dollhouse has been put on a brief hiatus due to the upcoming sweeps week. Hopefully the fact that its DVR ratings have been huge means that it will finish up the season – at least.
• An Iain M. Banks story has been picked up to be made into a film! Bank’s short story ‘A gift from the Culture’ from the collection The State of The Art is apparently going to be made into a film. More here and here (tip from A Dribble of Ink). No word on timing or anything else. I’ve read the story but can’t remember a thing about it and I think the book is on my parents shelf half a world away. Anyone else remember much?

Amazingly Dollhouse returns next week for it’s 13 episode second season. Despite all the evidence it was renewed at the last minute and from all reports the show is going to be building on the still of the last half of the first season. I finally got to watch the now slightly mythical “lost” 13th episode, Epitaph One, the other day and if it continues down that track it’s going to be great. Looking forward to see what they come up with.

Not so amazingly Fringe, from sci fi golden boy J J Abrams, started it’s second season on Thursday and will no doubt provide more mind bending, reality twisting, horrific plots. I was a tad disappointed by the season finisher last year, though I think that might be because the big shocker finish just doesn’t resonate as much with me as it would with American viewers. However I can’t wait to see more of Walter’s hijinks and am looking forward to seing how they play out the twist in his relationship with Peter.

Of the new crop of shows I’m looking forward to Flash Forward and the re-boot of V. So watch this space to see whether they’re worth watching, or in my case buying the DVDs for.

The show didn’t really start with too much of a bang. Joss Whedon shows always have a season wide arc, a theme that gives continuity while allowing the freedom to duck off that path from time to time. The first half of Dollhouse was extremely episodic. Which when you’re talking about an organisation that programs people means that you have a lot of potential episodes. They were mostly pretty fun, and certainly entertaining but where was the punch? Where were the big questions about personhood?

Those questions arrived in grand style with the “game changing” 6th episode, Man on the Street. Suddenly were weren’t just talking about the adventures of one plucky active, we were looking at the Dollhouse as a whole. It’s really a shame that the show had to wait till the half way point to really start telling the stories that the creators had obviously been wanting to tell. I’m not going to wade into the conversation around whether Fox did or did not hijack Dollhouse in the first half of it’s season, but those more formulaic first episodes really didn’t do the concept justice.

There is so much discussion about the concept, a highly illicit and underground organisation who programs people at the whim of the extremely wealthy which uses the proceeds of this high end slavery ring to finance scientific research for an even shadier parent company, that I don’t have a whole lot more to add. To get caught up though check out io9.com who have some very insightful commentary.

However what I will say is that Dolhouse showed through it’s first (and maybe only) season that TV can be a medium to ask some tough questions on the nature of a person and whether the ends truly justify the means. While technology was at the heart of the Dollhouse I don’t really see the show as saying that use of technology will make us less human, but more that technology is an amazing tool that has no sense of morals or ethics. That is up to the people who use it.

The cast of people in the Dollhouse are an impressive array of conflicted, complicated characters. They are aware of the morally grey area they inhabit and yet constantly convince themselves that what they’re doing is a good thing. It’s rather strange to root for a character who you find so morally reprehensible. Topher (the programmer) is the character that embody this the best I think. He’s a loveable, quirky character in best Whedon form who also rips peoples personalities from their brains and then plugs a new one in. Not quite so loveable any more. By the end of the season we are starting to glimpse a little of the self-loathing that he must struggle with. After all, as one Doll asks, why did he programme her to hate him so much?

At the end of the day Dollhouse turned into a complex show that actually required you to think about things, rather than always getting the answer handed to you. There are more stories to tell and hopefully a second season will be signed off so that everyone involved gets that chance. If not, well I’ll always have the DVDs.

He’s got a huge fan base, a track record that includes both the popular and the critically acclaimed, and is hailed by many as a god of all things pop-cultural. And yet every time he comes up with some- thing new, people (particularly TV critics) can’t wait to call it a failure.

Read the rest of the article if you’re interested.

I for one am enjoying the show as I like that it is shiny and over produced while being creepy and morally hard to get a handle on. I honestly don’t think the acting is that bad and after only 3 episodes (I seem to remember it took Buffy more than 3 episodes to get into it’s groove) I think it’s got a lot of life in it. But then if you were going to like this show, you’ll like it. It isn’t for everyone, nothing is. But it would be sad to see it pulled off air before it had a chance to really do it’s thing, aka Firefly.

Bring on Friday for episode 4!

This last point is particularly important – I understand it’s on purpose but I like the snappy dialogue and quips and without those it’s a substandard sci-fi thriller with a very pretty but slightly crap actress in the lead role.

I trust Joss so I’ll give it a few more weeks, especially given the first line in this week’s Onion A.V. Club episode review where the review says

the line [Dushku] was pushing on the show was that it really kicks into gear starting with the sixth episode, which is written by Joss Whedon.

But after six weeks if I don’t give a crap still, I’m gone until ‘teh interweb’ tells me I’m making a mistake.