Daughter of the Ring of Fire » Blog Archive

Mar

2009

Dollhouse: Gray Hour

Posted on 22:44, March 6th, 2009 by EKSwitaj

Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

Early in this episode, when Echo, Sierra, and Victor eat together, Topher sees it as the herd instinct. His faith in the technology he runs limits the interpretive possibilities he can consider, but those of us who saw last week’s episode can see more. We remember the brief headshake and change in direction shared by Echo and Sierra, how things they discussed in the “tabula rasa” state came back when they were supposed to be implanted with some other personality.

That Topher doesn’t know quite as much as he claims about how the personality wiping and implanting works is further confirmed by the major complication of the episode: the remote wipe performed on Echo, which Topher believed couldn’t be done. That this is most likely performed by Alpha, an escaped Active who had a “composite event” only deepens the mystery of what distinguished Alpha and what he wants to achieve.

Other events during Echo’s safecracking mission add intriguing thematic layers. To get into the security office by which her team is to access the building with the vault, Echo-Taffy pretends that the men on her team were attacking her, trying to rape and otherwise assault her; were she actually Taffy, it would all be pretend, but since she is a woman in a situation that renders her incapable of consent, any sexual contact is a sort of assault.

The item the team is to steal, one of the Elgin Marbles, adds to the theme of Echo-as-art. Topher has previously referred to personality implantation as an art rather than a science. Here though the stolen art that the team is trying to steal parallels the stolen people who perhaps will have to steal themselves back. Indeed, one of Taffy’s fellow-thieves speculated that they had been hired by the government of Greece to take back the marble. Moreover, after Echo is remote-wiped of her Taffy character, she observes that a figure in one of the vault’s paintings is broken; the chatter of the male thieves confirms a parallel with her—one that goes deeper than they can know. The parallel is continued when Echo, back in the dollhouse, sketches a face in the steam on the mirror then wipes that sketch away to see her own image.

When Echo is wiped of her Taffy personality, the reactions of her teammates show different ways to respond to a person who is totally vulnerable. One responds with anger and violence then tries to teach her to be violent; the other is softened and talks about art with her. This is simplistic, but these differing reactions are developed at greater length in the staff and management of the dollhouse throughout the episodes we’ve seen thus far.

ETA: Lauredhel of Hoyden about Town has pointed out that the scene in which Echo is programmed to serve as a midwife gets it terribly wrong. Having never so much as witnessed a birth myself and having no plans to give birth myself, I hadn’t realized this. What I had realized is that the scene was largely superfluous; it may have been intended to contrast with Echo-as-master-thief (caring vs. stealing) or maybe she will be required to retain some midwifery skills for some unspecified later situation, but even still it seemed out-of-place.