TV SERIES · 2009– · USA
Dollhouse
25 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (25)
- #001
Dollhouse was part of a FOX campaign called "Remote-Free-TV," which also included fellow FOX show Fringe (2008). Both programs were expected to significantly reduce their commercial breaks and thereby increase the time viewers stayed tuned in.
- #002
Joss Whedon had a five-year plan for the series and had already worked out how the characters would develop over time, but the show lasted only two seasons. With that in mind, you can see how the plot of season 2 was distributed across four seasons' worth of story.
- #003
In the second-season episode The Attic (2009), Enver Gjokaj's identical twin brother, Demir Gjokaj, plays an alternate version of Enver's character fighting "himself" while trapped in a dream. This was actually the second time in Joss Whedon's showrunning career that he cast the non-actor identical twin of one of a series' regulars as the normal character's supernatural twin or doppelgänger; the first was during "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," when Nicholas Brendon's twin Kelly played a part of Xander's personality mystically split from the original Xander.
- #004
Eliza Dushku and Joss Whedon came up with the idea for the series while having lunch and talking about career options.
- #005
As of 2009, it was the lowest-rated television series in the past 20 years to receive a renewal for a new season from a major American television network.
- #006
Casting Alan Tudyk as Alpha marked the fourth time Joss Whedon used members of the core cast of Firefly (2002) as villains in his other shows. He had previously done the same with Nathan Fillion in the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), with Gina Torres in the fourth season of Angel (1999), and with Adam Baldwin in the fifth season of Angel (1999).
- #007
Although the first season was 13 episodes long, only 12 episodes actually aired. This was because the original pilot was scrapped (with the other episodes changed accordingly) and 12 of them were broadcast on TV. However, the series had already been sold to foreign markets as 13 episodes. To accommodate this, an extra episode was shot on half the budget: "Epitaph One," set in the After The End script, starring Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008) and The Guild (2007). Epitaph One and the original unaired pilot "Echo" were included on the first-season DVD.
- #008
The company behind the Dollhouses in the series is Rossum. As confirmed in episode 2.11, this is a reference to Karel Čapek's play R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). The play is about artificial people programmed to do work who eventually turn on their masters. The play also gave the word "robot" to English.
- #009
All the names of the Actives used in Dollhouse are taken from the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Echo, Sierra, November, Victor and Whiskey).
- #010
This was Joss Whedon's fourth collaboration with Summer Glau.
- #011
The series initially focused more on the characters' sexuality, but Fox was worried that the Dollhouse theme and its clients would resemble prostitution, so it pushed Joss Whedon to make the show more thriller-oriented.
- #012
Dr. Bennet (Summer Glau) mentions the study of the amygdala several times. In Firefly, Summer Glau played River Tam, whose amygdala was removed, causing her to lose all control and go insane.
- #013
W ("Whiskey") is used in international maritime signal flags to indicate "I require medical assistance."
- #014
The premise of this series bears a striking resemblance to Joe Haldeman's 1977 novel "All My Sins Remembered."
- #015
In season 1, episode 10, "Haunted," the horse trainer wears an outfit that clearly resembles Malcolm Reynolds's in "Firefly." Both this series and that one were created by Joss Whedon.
- #016
Eliza Dushku was the first choice for the role of Max Guevera in James Cameron's series Dark Angel (2000). The series was about a genetically modified woman created and trained by the US government as a soldier and assassin. She escapes from a laboratory and survives on the run as a courier in a post-apocalyptic world while also searching for other genetically engineered men and women who escaped the lab. The role ultimately went to Jessica Alba.
- #017
The series features several Battlestar Galactica (2004) actors: Jamie Bamber, Mark A. Shepard and Tamoh Penniket.
- #018
The series had a similar premise to the earlier show Joe 90 (1968). In that series, a teenage secret agent named Joe McClaine had skills loaded into his mind that allowed him to become anyone.
- #019
It was cancelled after 2 seasons and 27 episodes, but it ended deliberately because the writers sensed the cancellation coming.
- #020
Patton Oswalt's guest character plays a widower who uses one of the "dolls" as his deceased wife. In a sad coincidence, his wife Michelle McNamara died in 2016 at the age of 46.
- #021
Summer Glau joined the series after Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008), based on The Terminator (1984) films, was cancelled. Eliza Dushku appeared in Terminator creator James Cameron's True Lies (1994).
- #022
Season 2 was initially intended to show the existing story and the Epitaph story across episodes, but after seeing the first episode the network told Joss Whedon to abandon that idea and use pre-filmed scenes for the final episode.
- #023
Fran Kranz shot The Cabin in the Woods (2012), which Joss Whedon co-wrote, between the series' seasons.
- #024
Fifteen years earlier, in the 1994 film "True Lies," Eliza Dushku's character Dana Tasker is the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger's secret agent character Harry Tasker. Echo (Eliza Dushku) is a secret agent.
- #025
Olivia Williams would later play the role of Rachel in Hanna (2011). The film follows a girl (Saoirse Ronan) trained as an assassin by a former CIA agent (Eric Bana) who discovers she was created in a genetic experiment to create super-soldiers.
Continue through the archive
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work