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Echo (Dollhouse)
Encyclopedia
Echo is a fictional character
portrayed by Eliza Dushku
in the Fox
science fiction
series Dollhouse
, created by Joss Whedon
. Within the series' narrative, Echo is an "Active" or a "doll", one of a group of men and women who can be programmed with memories and skills to engage in particular assignments; in their default state, Actives are innocent, childlike and suggestible. Before having her memories wiped, Echo's name was Caroline Farrell. The central character of Dollhouse, the series focuses on Echo as she begins to develop self-awareness.
university which hosted a research lab for the Rossum Corporation. Feeling called to expose the likely animal abuses carried on in the highly secretive laboratory, she and her boyfriend Leo snuck into the lab with cameras through underground piping and discovered not only encaged animals but also evidence of tampering with infants and the human brain. She and Leo were caught in the act, and Leo was apparently fatally wounded. Knowing Caroline knew too much about the Corporation (whose research created the Dollhouse), and knowing that she was heartbroken over the death of Leo, Adelle DeWitt was contacted to recruit Caroline, but she disappears before the offer could be made.
Caroline became determined to take Rossum down, going so far as to sneak into Adelle's offices at the Los Angeles Dollhouse and steal confidential files on herself and Bennett Halverson. She then sought out Bennett at Arizona Technical Institute to use for access to Rossum's facilities, and the two became friends. Bennett later discovered Caroline's ruse, and offered her assistance in destroying the Rossum facility. Caroline and Bennett sneaked into the lab, and rigged explosives in the building; however, Caroline discovered that there were human test subjects in a secret room and tried to abort the plan to save their lives. It was too late, however; the explosives went off, and a pylon fell on Bennett, crushing her arm and pinning her to the floor. Caroline discovered that Adelle, Dominic, and several guards had entered the building, and that there was no time to get Bennett and herself safely out. She told Bennett to lie about her complicity in the bombing to keep from being punished by Rossum, and fled. Adelle and Dominic caught her in the corridor, and sent her alone to meet the head of Rossum, revealed to be Boyd Langton.
An undisclosed amount of time later, in the first scene of the first episode, a haggard-looking Caroline is seen in Adelle's office, begrudgingly agreeing to the terms of her sentence as an Active.
, in a state referred to in the series as both "being wiped" and "tabula rasa
". When imprinted with a personality, she has been noted for her display of confidence, initiative, and problem-solving skills that transcend the parameters of her imprint. Notably, in "Stage Fright
" she reacts to the unexpected revelation that the celebrity she is programmed to protect is suicidal (and thus in reality the primary threat to herself), by eventually kidnapping said celebrity and threatening to allow her to die, managing to scare the singer into having a will to live
in the process; the latter is explicitly interpreted to be the obvious intent of Echo's actions by DeWitt. However, this same initiative and tendency to go outside of the set parameters of her programming is also questioned by Dominic in the same episode, and the actual reasoning behind Echo's actions during the incident is left somewhat ambiguous; when she states she feels the need to "save her" [sic], she is simultaneously shown glancing at a picture of fellow active Sierra, whose imprinted self has been placed into the very same hostage situation that Echo later drags her intended protectee into, and whom she actively claims to be trying to "exchange" the singer for at one point prior to the resolution of the incident.
An unknown operative within the Dollhouse has used Echo as a means of communicating with Agent Ballard. Ballard himself has long fantasized about rescuing her from the Dollhouse, sometimes with the thought of a romantic relationship. When Adelle DeWitt intentionally partially returns several actives' former personalities temporarily to help them gain closure in "Needs", Echo breaks into Dollhouse files, discovers Agent Ballard's phone number, and leaves him a message stating that the Dolls are trapped underground in Los Angeles somewhere, and requesting his help.
Echo is one of the most highly requested Dolls in the Dollhouse, both for her beauty and her unusual skill while imprinted. While she performs a variety of jobs, one of her most frequent is to give willing and adoring sex to customers. A widower, for example, has Echo imprinted with his dead wife's memories, to spend the anniversary of her death by living out the moment she would have learned that they were finally financially successful, had she not been killed in a car accident on her way home.
While DeWitt shows pleasure and perhaps even pride in Echo's abilities as an active, former Dollhouse Head of Security Laurence Dominic frequently expressed concerns about Echo's behavior (see above, ref. "Stage Fright") and has repeatedly suggested "sending her to the attic" (which is later revealed in "Spy in the House of Love" to be a form of mental torture: "like having a word on the tip of your tongue, only for every single thought").
It is revealed in the episode "Omega" that once Echo joined the Dollhouse, the Active Alpha became immediately attracted to her, going as far as to attack fellow Active Whiskey while pruning a bonsai tree, apparently so that Echo may become the most requested Doll, stating, "Why don't you let Echo be number one?" In "Briar Rose", Alpha finally reenters the Dollhouse and imprints Echo with a personality previously imprinted within Whiskey. He takes all of Echo's "wedges" (computer hard drives each containing a personality imprint), including her original personality, and destroying the lone back-up of the latter. In "Omega", Alpha attempts to recreate the same composite event that he experienced, imprinting Echo simultaneously with every single personality she has ever experienced except for Caroline- whom he separately imprints into a waitress whom he has kidnapped, with the intention of allowing the newly-composited Echo to kill her. Instead of destroying her original personality, however, Echo attacks Alpha, saying that even with all of her personalities, not one of them is the one that truly belongs inside of her body, and that she is nothing more than an empty shell. She mentions at that time, all of her personalities totals up to thirty-eight. She later chooses to save her original "wedge" so that one day Caroline can be imprinted back within her body.
In the un-aired thirteenth episode ("Epitaph One"), Paul Ballard is possibly now her handler and they now seem to be tasked to an assignment rather than an engagement. Topher imprints Echo as a Russian girl coming to America with a dream and specifically states that she has no English skills. However, Caroline is shown to have evolved to the point where she is able to control both her own persona as well as the one she has imprinted as she speaks to Paul in perfect English and states that the imprint is intact. However it seems as though she is now becoming immune towards the imprints as she is now suffering headaches as a result. It should also be noted that in a confrontation between Dominic and Adelle DeWitt, Adelle DeWitt states that Caroline has a block to the imprinting. In the flashbacks pertaining to Caroline's memory, she and Ballard has found safe haven from the madness and chaos plaguing above ground and is about to bring the remaining Dollhouse staff and the Actives there.
In the year 2019, Caroline's last updated personality is uploaded in a little girl's body, Iris, by the Actuals, and together they begin their journey to track down her original self and the location of the safe haven.
Along with gravitating towards her fellow actives Sierra and Victor, Echo has been shown becoming increasingly self-aware while in her tabula rasa state, and has occasionally shown recollection of previous incidents when the memories of which should have been wiped away entirely; such incidents include having visual flashes of previous engagements or her original personality's memories when exposed to mind-altering drugs in "The Target
" and "Echoes"; using a hand gesture in "The Target
" during her tabula rasa state that her imprinted persona had previously learned; in "Gray Hour" drawing a Picasso-esque face in a steamed mirror after having viewed and extensively discussed a Picasso painting despite having been since "wiped" again; and restating the line "I am not broken" from "Gray Hour" in "Spy in the House of Love". The series has not shown any explicit indication that anyone else has taken notice of these particular incidents, though she is sometimes referred to as "evolving" by some Dollhouse staff members, including Dominic and in "Spy in House of Love", by Topher Brink as well; Topher was given a particular example of Echo's self-awareness when she actually volunteered to be imprinted with a personality that could help him in his efforts to find a spy in the Dollhouse, telling him that she knew he could change people and offering to be changed so that she could help.
. Inspired by Dushku's life as an actress, Whedon came up with the premise of people who were hired out to be everybody's fantasy. Whedon and Dushku had long been friends since working together on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Dushku portrayed Faith, and he would occasionally intervene in her life to offer career advice. At one time, the two had considered producing a Faith spin-off project together. Whedon commented that he got "frustrated with all these crappy horror movies she was making. Like Wrong Turn
and Soul Survivor
and whatnot" which he says "broke my heart." Over lunch, Whedon told Dushku that he feels she possesses "something that no other actor I've worked with has" and from there, the concept of Dollhouse and Echo began to develop. Whedon propositioned Dushku, "I know the perfect show to write for you. ... I've known you for 10 years, and I have no idea who [or] what you are, so ... let's just video it." Echo's story was very much inspired by Dushku's own career; Dushku had in Whedon's words, spent her whole life "trying to take control of her career" and feeling, in Dushku's words "like everyone wants you to be a different person". Consequently, Dushku believes there is something of herself in Echo, in Caroline, and in every engagement identity Echo assumes. Whedon has described Echo as being "absolutely the essence of strength boiled down" and commenting "She's at her strongest when she's at her least powerful. She has an extraordinary tenacity." Dushku has described the character as "fierce" "hot", but also "so complex" and "tripped out" due to being "in a world where there are people who can click a button and succeed in making you be what they want you to be".
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
portrayed by Eliza Dushku
Eliza Dushku
Eliza Patricia Dushku is an American actress known for her television roles, including recurring appearances as Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series Angel. She starred in two Fox series, Tru Calling and Dollhouse...
in the Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
series Dollhouse
Dollhouse (TV series)
Dollhouse is an American science fiction television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon under Mutant Enemy Productions. It premiered on February 13, 2009, on the Fox network and was officially cancelled on November 11, 2009. The final episode aired on January 29, 2010...
, created by Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
. Within the series' narrative, Echo is an "Active" or a "doll", one of a group of men and women who can be programmed with memories and skills to engage in particular assignments; in their default state, Actives are innocent, childlike and suggestible. Before having her memories wiped, Echo's name was Caroline Farrell. The central character of Dollhouse, the series focuses on Echo as she begins to develop self-awareness.
Before the Dollhouse
Caroline Farrell is revealed to have been a student at a Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
university which hosted a research lab for the Rossum Corporation. Feeling called to expose the likely animal abuses carried on in the highly secretive laboratory, she and her boyfriend Leo snuck into the lab with cameras through underground piping and discovered not only encaged animals but also evidence of tampering with infants and the human brain. She and Leo were caught in the act, and Leo was apparently fatally wounded. Knowing Caroline knew too much about the Corporation (whose research created the Dollhouse), and knowing that she was heartbroken over the death of Leo, Adelle DeWitt was contacted to recruit Caroline, but she disappears before the offer could be made.
Caroline became determined to take Rossum down, going so far as to sneak into Adelle's offices at the Los Angeles Dollhouse and steal confidential files on herself and Bennett Halverson. She then sought out Bennett at Arizona Technical Institute to use for access to Rossum's facilities, and the two became friends. Bennett later discovered Caroline's ruse, and offered her assistance in destroying the Rossum facility. Caroline and Bennett sneaked into the lab, and rigged explosives in the building; however, Caroline discovered that there were human test subjects in a secret room and tried to abort the plan to save their lives. It was too late, however; the explosives went off, and a pylon fell on Bennett, crushing her arm and pinning her to the floor. Caroline discovered that Adelle, Dominic, and several guards had entered the building, and that there was no time to get Bennett and herself safely out. She told Bennett to lie about her complicity in the bombing to keep from being punished by Rossum, and fled. Adelle and Dominic caught her in the corridor, and sent her alone to meet the head of Rossum, revealed to be Boyd Langton.
An undisclosed amount of time later, in the first scene of the first episode, a haggard-looking Caroline is seen in Adelle's office, begrudgingly agreeing to the terms of her sentence as an Active.
In the Dollhouse
Within the Dollhouse, Echo has been wiped of all traces of her former life. While not on active duty, she (like all Dolls) leads a simple, unquestioning life, intentionally stripped (ostensibly) of original thought or free willFree will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, in a state referred to in the series as both "being wiped" and "tabula rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects...
". When imprinted with a personality, she has been noted for her display of confidence, initiative, and problem-solving skills that transcend the parameters of her imprint. Notably, in "Stage Fright
Stage fright
Stage fright or performance anxiety is the anxiety, fear, or persistent phobia which may be aroused in an individual by the requirement to perform in front of an audience, whether actually or potentially . In the context of public speaking, this fear is termed glossophobia, one of the most common...
" she reacts to the unexpected revelation that the celebrity she is programmed to protect is suicidal (and thus in reality the primary threat to herself), by eventually kidnapping said celebrity and threatening to allow her to die, managing to scare the singer into having a will to live
Will to live
The will to live is a psychological force to fight for survival, particularly when one's life is threatened by an injury or disease such as cancer. Some physicians believe that it plays an important role in one's chances of survival. There are significant correlations between the will to live and...
in the process; the latter is explicitly interpreted to be the obvious intent of Echo's actions by DeWitt. However, this same initiative and tendency to go outside of the set parameters of her programming is also questioned by Dominic in the same episode, and the actual reasoning behind Echo's actions during the incident is left somewhat ambiguous; when she states she feels the need to "save her" [sic], she is simultaneously shown glancing at a picture of fellow active Sierra, whose imprinted self has been placed into the very same hostage situation that Echo later drags her intended protectee into, and whom she actively claims to be trying to "exchange" the singer for at one point prior to the resolution of the incident.
An unknown operative within the Dollhouse has used Echo as a means of communicating with Agent Ballard. Ballard himself has long fantasized about rescuing her from the Dollhouse, sometimes with the thought of a romantic relationship. When Adelle DeWitt intentionally partially returns several actives' former personalities temporarily to help them gain closure in "Needs", Echo breaks into Dollhouse files, discovers Agent Ballard's phone number, and leaves him a message stating that the Dolls are trapped underground in Los Angeles somewhere, and requesting his help.
Echo is one of the most highly requested Dolls in the Dollhouse, both for her beauty and her unusual skill while imprinted. While she performs a variety of jobs, one of her most frequent is to give willing and adoring sex to customers. A widower, for example, has Echo imprinted with his dead wife's memories, to spend the anniversary of her death by living out the moment she would have learned that they were finally financially successful, had she not been killed in a car accident on her way home.
While DeWitt shows pleasure and perhaps even pride in Echo's abilities as an active, former Dollhouse Head of Security Laurence Dominic frequently expressed concerns about Echo's behavior (see above, ref. "Stage Fright") and has repeatedly suggested "sending her to the attic" (which is later revealed in "Spy in the House of Love" to be a form of mental torture: "like having a word on the tip of your tongue, only for every single thought").
It is revealed in the episode "Omega" that once Echo joined the Dollhouse, the Active Alpha became immediately attracted to her, going as far as to attack fellow Active Whiskey while pruning a bonsai tree, apparently so that Echo may become the most requested Doll, stating, "Why don't you let Echo be number one?" In "Briar Rose", Alpha finally reenters the Dollhouse and imprints Echo with a personality previously imprinted within Whiskey. He takes all of Echo's "wedges" (computer hard drives each containing a personality imprint), including her original personality, and destroying the lone back-up of the latter. In "Omega", Alpha attempts to recreate the same composite event that he experienced, imprinting Echo simultaneously with every single personality she has ever experienced except for Caroline- whom he separately imprints into a waitress whom he has kidnapped, with the intention of allowing the newly-composited Echo to kill her. Instead of destroying her original personality, however, Echo attacks Alpha, saying that even with all of her personalities, not one of them is the one that truly belongs inside of her body, and that she is nothing more than an empty shell. She mentions at that time, all of her personalities totals up to thirty-eight. She later chooses to save her original "wedge" so that one day Caroline can be imprinted back within her body.
In the un-aired thirteenth episode ("Epitaph One"), Paul Ballard is possibly now her handler and they now seem to be tasked to an assignment rather than an engagement. Topher imprints Echo as a Russian girl coming to America with a dream and specifically states that she has no English skills. However, Caroline is shown to have evolved to the point where she is able to control both her own persona as well as the one she has imprinted as she speaks to Paul in perfect English and states that the imprint is intact. However it seems as though she is now becoming immune towards the imprints as she is now suffering headaches as a result. It should also be noted that in a confrontation between Dominic and Adelle DeWitt, Adelle DeWitt states that Caroline has a block to the imprinting. In the flashbacks pertaining to Caroline's memory, she and Ballard has found safe haven from the madness and chaos plaguing above ground and is about to bring the remaining Dollhouse staff and the Actives there.
In the year 2019, Caroline's last updated personality is uploaded in a little girl's body, Iris, by the Actuals, and together they begin their journey to track down her original self and the location of the safe haven.
Along with gravitating towards her fellow actives Sierra and Victor, Echo has been shown becoming increasingly self-aware while in her tabula rasa state, and has occasionally shown recollection of previous incidents when the memories of which should have been wiped away entirely; such incidents include having visual flashes of previous engagements or her original personality's memories when exposed to mind-altering drugs in "The Target
The Target
-Personnel:* Douglas Robb - vocals* Dan Estrin - guitars* Markku Lappalainen - bass* Chris Hesse - drums...
" and "Echoes"; using a hand gesture in "The Target
The Target
-Personnel:* Douglas Robb - vocals* Dan Estrin - guitars* Markku Lappalainen - bass* Chris Hesse - drums...
" during her tabula rasa state that her imprinted persona had previously learned; in "Gray Hour" drawing a Picasso-esque face in a steamed mirror after having viewed and extensively discussed a Picasso painting despite having been since "wiped" again; and restating the line "I am not broken" from "Gray Hour" in "Spy in the House of Love". The series has not shown any explicit indication that anyone else has taken notice of these particular incidents, though she is sometimes referred to as "evolving" by some Dollhouse staff members, including Dominic and in "Spy in House of Love", by Topher Brink as well; Topher was given a particular example of Echo's self-awareness when she actually volunteered to be imprinted with a personality that could help him in his efforts to find a spy in the Dollhouse, telling him that she knew he could change people and offering to be changed so that she could help.
Conception
Dollhouse was created during a lunch between Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku where they discussed her career and her recent development deal with FoxFox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
. Inspired by Dushku's life as an actress, Whedon came up with the premise of people who were hired out to be everybody's fantasy. Whedon and Dushku had long been friends since working together on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Dushku portrayed Faith, and he would occasionally intervene in her life to offer career advice. At one time, the two had considered producing a Faith spin-off project together. Whedon commented that he got "frustrated with all these crappy horror movies she was making. Like Wrong Turn
Wrong Turn
Wrong Turn is a 2003 American slasher horror film, directed by Rob Schmidt, and written by Alan B. McElroy. The film was shot in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and stars Desmond Harrington and Eliza Dushku...
and Soul Survivor
Soul Survivors
Soul Survivors is a 2001 psychological thriller film starring Melissa Sagemiller as a college student named Cassie, whose boyfriend Sean died in a car accident that resulted from her driving after a night of partying...
and whatnot" which he says "broke my heart." Over lunch, Whedon told Dushku that he feels she possesses "something that no other actor I've worked with has" and from there, the concept of Dollhouse and Echo began to develop. Whedon propositioned Dushku, "I know the perfect show to write for you. ... I've known you for 10 years, and I have no idea who [or] what you are, so ... let's just video it." Echo's story was very much inspired by Dushku's own career; Dushku had in Whedon's words, spent her whole life "trying to take control of her career" and feeling, in Dushku's words "like everyone wants you to be a different person". Consequently, Dushku believes there is something of herself in Echo, in Caroline, and in every engagement identity Echo assumes. Whedon has described Echo as being "absolutely the essence of strength boiled down" and commenting "She's at her strongest when she's at her least powerful. She has an extraordinary tenacity." Dushku has described the character as "fierce" "hot", but also "so complex" and "tripped out" due to being "in a world where there are people who can click a button and succeed in making you be what they want you to be".