Joss Whedon is launching a new show called Dollhouse. It’s about people who have their minds wiped, and then have new personalities and skill sets imprinted on them for various activities.
This sounds strikingly similar to William Gibson‘s take on prostitution in the Sprawl Trilogy1. The character Molly Millions once worked as a prostitute, but brothels temporarily imprint a new consciousness on working girls and wipe the memories when it’s over. This very neatly allows all parties to go about guiltless, unless you wake up in the middle of a bad session like Molly does. Then things are not so good.
Ok, that’s just speculation on my part, but tons of people have borrowed from William Gibson. I mean, he coined the terms matrix and cyberspace – the man is a legend.
In Dollhouse, the people (victims?) are given a child-like personality in between gigs. That sounds a lot like Michael Bay’s The Island. Let’s hope Dollhouse is a lot more like the works of William Gibson and less like those of Michael Bay.
Either way, I’m happy it will star the lovely Eliza Dushku.
- Which comprises Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is preceded by the short story collection Burning Chrome. My memory is a little fuzzy, so it may be from Buring Chrome, which includes Johnny Mnemonic. [↩]