Except the only person he had to save it from was himself (and Topher, kind of).
Yes, “Once it is invented…it can not be uninvented”, but who was doing the inventing? Boyd. I imagine if the show had been allowed to run for a few more years, we would have got a rival company and then a war with that company over the “right” way to use the tech. Which would have led right into Epitaph One.
Boyd likely would have stayed one of the good guys in that situation.
Or he created the tech because he knew it was inevitable and wanted to save the world from the tech. I’m not saying he’s not an evil mad scientist, I’m just saying that his madness may have had a method.
And if they hadn’t done the inventing would it not have been invented later?
Perhaps. I like the idea of the evil genius working specifically to thwart his own plans. The obsolescence of man is going to be a major issue with technology this century. We’ll see if technology destroys us or not.
reality tho - had he never brought topher to hq - they wouldn’t have been able to fix the tech - the only ‘other’ person that we know of that might have been able to was Bennet - and, well, she’s dead.
If he wanted to avert the end, he couldve destroyed the tech before it ever got started.
Does this mean that Dewitt broke the blueprints? Surely the direction of the diode would’ve been correct in Topher’s originals…
(Clearly Clyde couldn’t fix it, since they needed Topher).
Correct, but on a longer timeline who knows what might have happened?
Then someone else might have built it.
Well Topher hadn’t gotten a practical prototype working.
Right.
I probably shouldn’t say anything - heck shouldn’t even have watched as I gave up on this show early last season. But my wife and kid home from college were watching, so I caught the last 2 eps.
Was really dissappointed at how the Echo vs “Fred” fight was filmed. Made me miss some of the nice fight scenes from Buffy and Angel.
When Echo was running from the fireball, the next cut was to her stolling up to the others in front of the (undamaged) buiding. Weird.
That Topher imitation was INCREDIBLE.
Also, loved Boyd’s ending.
I’ll probably watch in a couple of weeks, but I’m sure I won’t have a clue what is going on! 
To add a point: Once it is invented it can’t be uninvented also applies to the vaccine. If Boyd had created it then eventually Our Heroes could have snuck it into next year’s flu shot (Rossum’s dominance of all things medical having been made clear). Instead they blow of the research, equipment, and scientists who could have done it all in the hopes that Rossum has fewer redundant backups than the average university.
I still think Claire was Claire when she killed Bennet. I can’t see why Clyde would have wanted Bennet dead and Topher damaged. Surely Clyde, Bennet and Topher would have been better evil geniuses together.
Except Dollhouse has always been rather shaky on just where the Dollhouse tech came from. In the earliest episodes, it’s pretty well implied that Topher had a hand in creating it (and that the LA dollhouse was the only dollhouse).
Later that was retconned to Topher didn’t create it, but he made it light years better than it’s original design.
Later still it was retconned to Clyde 1.0 created it in the late 80s when Topher would have been a toddler and that there are dozens of dollhouses around the world.
The fact that the Rossum Company seemingly has no equal in the Dollhouse world makes “someone else might have built it” a pretty shaky assumption as well.
Yea, I was thinking about that too. “Umm…redundancy. There are still 20 active dollhouses.”
I mean 20, 30, 40 years later.
No, you’re thinking of Being John Malkovich.
That was probably a mistake, though a pretty reasonable one. I came close to closing the book on it myself. But it has semi-consistently gotten better since then, to the point to where it is now actually rather decent. You just had to have waded through some drek, or at least some meh, to get there.
I think it would be a passably good waste of time ( that’s a positive recommendation 
) for you to go back and catch up on the rest of the series - it’s still fairly short overall.
It’s not clear that he was trying to save the world so much as save himself and a few others.
Topher is still a loose end, is he not? To be absolutely sure the tech does not reappear, a good operative would also remove the creator (plus his backup wedges). I like the quirky little guy, though, so I am glad they did not liquidate him.
I know everyone is all about the back-up thing- but wasn’t Boyd blowing up the mainframe (attic) that runs all the systems and stores all the information for all the houses?
Even so, none of the scientists working on the gadget had a schematic on his desktop/laptop? None of them have memories? Remember, we saw scads of people being chased out of the building – not all of them have to be on the administrative end of things.
And, from what I’ve read, the biggest leap in an invention is getting the idea. So now they know what is possible, it’s a lot easier to ‘reinvent’ something they know will work.
I don’t understand what Boyd’s deal is in the series now. Can someone try to explain it to me step by step?
He captured Caroline after finding out her physiology may create the anti-wipe vaccine. So why did he enroll her in the dollhouse and have her run typical whoring missions all that time? Why was it needed to create the echo personality? It sounded like her physiology was sufficient to create the vaccine - was having her resist/meld implants a required step in the process?
What exactly is his goal in this situation? I was perplexed that he seemed to think that the future wiping tech was inevitable and would lead to the destruction of mankind, but he was the primary driver in developing it. It seems like he could’ve put a halt to it at any time, but went way out of his way at every step to make sure it happened.
Why did he care what happened to the LA Dollhouse gang? Just sentimental reasons since he’d been working with them all this time?
Caroline was returned to Echo’s body so that she could ID Boyd. Boyd drugged her so that she would not ID him until they got to HQ, at least. There was much speculation among the characters about what would happen when Caroline got her body back. When she sobered up at HQ, except for knowing Boyd was a bad guy, she was no different. That irritated me. In the end, was she Echo or Caroline?
When the actors got imprints they were different. You could even tell the difference between regular Mellie and Assassin Mellie. Even during the flashbacks, I couldn’t tell any difference between Echo and Caroline. Eliza Dushku is hot, but she is a horrible actress.
Something has to be cannon before it can be retconned. Just because we as viewers made assumptions or were misled doesn’t make it a retcon when we find out we were wrong. Unless I’m not remembering correctly none of this new info violated the things we knew for certain beforehand.
This part was canon before Clyde 1.0 showed up…
Topher didn’t create it, but he made it light years better than it’s original design.
While Clyde 1.0 doesn’t invalidate Topher’s contributions to the Dollhouse, it strains credibility to state a computer-based technology didn’t advance at all in 20 years. Someone would have come along before Topher to improve it.
Will they wrap up the Alpha sub plot?