Good news for Joss Whedon fans: he’s finally coming back to television, with a show titled Dollhouse, about
a young woman who is literally everybody’s fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language – even muscle memory – for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments – or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo’s burgeoning self-awareness ….
(More info here. Conical hat tip to William Gillis.)
Hmm, this plot sounds a lot like the “Lila” story in the first issue of Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps:
Now that’s a disturbing image.
Lila was a robot – one of a series – who was sold purportedly as a sex toy but who was actually programmed to assassinate the buyer. She seemed to be developing the beginnings of an independent personality when OMAC, who had been romantically interested in her, found out she was a robot, freaked out, and destroyed her along with all the other robots. At least that’s how I remember it – haven’t read that comic in years.
Like many other categories of scifi and fantasy, anime has already done something like that for tv (“Gunslinger Girls”).