Dollhouse

Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as "Actives" or "Dolls". The Dolls are people whose personalities and existence in the outside world have been wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments (referred to as engagements). The new persona is an amalgam of several real people, and the end result necessarily incorporates both strengths and flaws from the template personalities. The Actives are then hired out for particular jobs – crimes, fantasies, and the occasional good deed. On engagements, Actives are monitored internally (and remotely) by Handlers. In between engagements they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed "The Dollhouse". The Dollhouse is located somewhere in Los Angeles and is a subsidiary of a mysterious research group known as the Rossum Corporation.

The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

The show also focuses on the employees of the mysterious "Dollhouse" and two other "Dolls", Sierra and Victor (played by Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj), who are friendly with Echo. The names of Actives are simply letters in the phonetic alphabet. Although the Actives are ostensibly volunteers who work for a period of five years, the operation is highly illegal and under constant threat on one end from Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett), a determined federal agent who has heard a rumor about the Dolls, and an insane rogue Active, "Alpha", on the other.


The Dollhouse cast. L to R: Agent Ballard, Victor, Echo, Sierra, Topher Brink, Adelle DeWitt, Boyd Langton