Last week, Too Much Free Time participated in a Dollhouse call with Joss Whedon. We’ve put together a recap of the high points for your reading pleasure.

Spoiler alert: If you’ve been waiting for a Buffy movie? Keep waiting. Not gonna happen.

On dealing with the notorious rewrites:

I think this show definitely went through a tougher process, tough in a different way than the other shows. Probably most similar to Angel, in the sense of what we had in our minds about what Angel was ultimately different than what the network did. Our version was a little darker, and in this instance, it wasn’t so much a question of reworking what the show was, as it was a question of reworking how we get into it. There were definitely some differences of opinion about what was going on and what we were going to stress in the show, but mostly it was about how do we bring the audience in. It was my idea to do a new pilot — it seemed like a no-brainer to give them something they could get behind more.

On making people nervous:

There was some real questioning about what exactly we wanted to get at in terms of the humanity and what they do and why people hire them — and there’s a sexual aspect to it that makes some people nervous. Part of the mandate of the show is to make people nervous. It’s to make them identify with people they don’t like and get into situations that they don’t approve of, and also look at some of the heroic side of things and wonder if maybe they were wrong about what motivated those as well. So we’re out to make people uncomfortable, but not maybe so much our bosses.

On the “SAVE DOLLHOUSE” panic:

Usually, words of calm in these situations lead to panic. If you say there’s nothing to panic about, somebody says, “He said the word ‘panic’!” Basically, we found the show. My concern isn’t whether the show gets saved. It’s whether these fans who are panicking about it love it. They may get over their panic. They may see it and go, “You know, actually, we’re okay.” The network should do what they think is right. Ultimately, the support is very sweet, and the fact that people care and they want to see the show get a chance. That’s important to me too, because it really is a show that finds itself as it goes along, but, at the end of the day, my biggest concern is that I give them something worth panicking over.

On Dollhouse and comedy:

There is a lot of fun and a lot of humor in it. What it doesn’t have is an inherent silliness that both Buffy and Firefly had, and even Angel, that was we could just take one step back that part of the fun was of deconstructing the genre we were in. This has to be a little bit more grounded in order for it to play, or it would become campy — and with vampires and spaceships and horses, we had more leeway to be a little less realistic in how we plotted things.

But humor is a part of the show all over the place, because we have really funny actors, and these situations do become absurd, and besides, we would get really bored if we didn’t.

On Eliza:

She’s overcome her homely shyness over these years. Eliza has — apart from being, in my opinion, as great a star as I have ever known — a genuinely powerful electric and luminous quality that I’ve rarely seen. She’s also a really solid person. She’s a good friend. She’s a feminist. She’s an activist. She’s interested in the people around her. She has a lot of different things going on, and I’ve watched her over the years, as a friend, try to take control of her career, and try to get the roles that weren’t available to her, and protect the ethos and the message of what it was that she was doing, and I respect that enormously.

On the Friday night timeslot:

I really do see the opportunity there because the deal with the Friday night time slot was you don’t come out, bang, opening weekend, and it’s all decided. It’s about growing a fan base, both for Dollhouse and Terminator. I think Terminator is a remarkably good show, and the kind of show that makes sense to be paired with Dollhouse, so I feel great about that, plus I get to see all these posters with Summer and Eliza together and that’s just too cool.

Most of my shows people have come to after they stopped airing, but I would like to buck that trend. At the same time, it is part of how I work — that you stay with it and it grows on you and it becomes family, and the Friday night is a much better place for that to actually happen.

On Faith versus Echo:

Faith would win, unless of course Echo had been imprinted with Faith’s personality, which is — I’m going to call it a tie.

On sexuality, nude promo photos and morality:

The premise of the show involves these men and women being hired and obviously, some of that has to do with sex. This is something that was in the premise from the start. It came from my conversation with Eliza. We wanted to talk about sexuality in whatever show she was doing, not just by virtue of her being all hot, but by really examining human sexuality and how it drives us and why it’s important to us.

The idea of objectification versus identification, these are all things that I’ve been working on. It brings up what is ultimately the touchiest issue of this show — Are we actually making a comment about the way people use each other that is useful and interesting and textured? Or are we just putting [Eliza] in a series of hot outfits and paying lip service to the idea of asking the questions?

And I think there are going to be things that people react to differently. I think some things will offend some people, some things will not. There are things in it that I’m not positive I support, and some of the things that bother me, don’t bother any of the other writers. Part of the point is to look at these gray areas and to see what of this is unique in us, what is it we need from each other, how much do we objectify each other, how much do we use each other, both men and women, and what is actually virtuous.

We are absolutely saying Eliza is a sexual creature, and people desire her for that reason.

The idea is to get the audience to look at their own desire, and to figure out what of it is acceptable, and what of it is kind of creepy. In order to do that, we go to a creepy place sometimes, and I will be very interested to see if people find it empowering or the other things. I may have crossed the line. Let’s find out.

Dollhouse premieres on Friday, February 13th, 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Pacific Time.

Tune back in later this week for an interview with Echo herself, Eliza Dushku.