“He attacked me. He tripped. Landed against the table edge. I fell on top of him. Oh my god, what happened to your face!”
He could put two and two together, but it’s just as likely (and believable) that he won’t.
That’s my reason for believing DeWitt is the mole. She seems very protective of the Dolls. Maybe she is having second thoughts about the Dollhouse in general, or thinks that what the secret organisation is doing with the Dollhouses right now is not what they were created for (=do good).
Yes. But…
That suggests there was a time in the not-too-distant past where Echo was a Doll, and the “default” imprint for Dolls was one that would require heavy and varied physical fight training.
So why can’t we adopt, as a working hypothesis, that Echo HAS the requisite fast twitch muscle fibers from her previous physical conditioning, and the adrenaline responses and neural pathways from her assassin imprint?
I hadn’t thought of that. They give them the physical training which gives the right muscle reflexes and responses and wipe them. In their innocent state, they don’t know they have the skills and wouldn’t know to use them.
About DeWitt…it’s entirely possible that most of her career she’s been trying to destroy the Dollhouse from the inside. She figures the best way to destroy it is from the top where she’ll have access to the sensitive information and the means to cover her tracks.
Didn’t one of the news reports shown during the episode say that the rumors of Dollhouse started in the '80s? Suggesting that there have been several generations of actives.
The physical training isn’t just exercise either. I seem to recall that when Echo first saw Sierra, they had Sierra in the imprint chair, and Sierra had a large number of needles in her. She was twitching and moaning, obviously in pain. I think that was meant to suggest that they were using electrostimulation of her muscles to train her. If they can control brains to the extent that they evidently can, it is possible that they also have similarly advanced methods for enhancing muscular strength. I just did some poking around, and there have been studies around electrotherapy assisting wound healing. In real life, it looks as though it may not be that useful, but in science fiction it may be why the Dolls never appear bruised in the Dollhouse.
On a second viewing, I’m coming around to the idea that DeWitt is the mole. In addition to the den-mother thing, and not sending Echo to the Attic even though she’s clearly running off-program, and the fact that the back door was ajar when Topher returned to his computer terminal and she is one of only a few people who would have enough technical knowledge of imprinting to sneak that program in, this was what really did it for me:
Hearn: This business is about using people!
DeWitt: You have no idea what this business is really about.
Put that together with Echo’s later statement that the business of the Dollhouse is completely different from it’s ultimate purpose…
I don’t think she’s a heart-of-gold saint, though. If she’s the mole, there’s no reason for her to set up the elaborate elimination of Hearn, short of 1> protecting her cover, as the others in Dollhouse management would expect her to “handle” Ballard, and 2> she’s still manipulating and using Ballard. She wants him to investigate under the radar (“let them think they’ve won so they’ll back off”), but she didn’t clue him into the fact that Mellie being attacked was a cover story (and in fact basically told him, via Echo, that it was a real danger). So DeWitt still wants him to believe that Mellie was legitimately in danger.
She’s playing both sides against each other, and has her own purposes here, at least one of which is to protect herself – needing an “exit strategy” if things go really wrong. She also knows that something else is going on in the “business” of the place, but it’s not a stretch to think that even as high-up in the organization as she is, there’s a bunch of information that her bosses don’t give her access to. So she’s using Ballard to find out.
That’s my guess.
Just occurred to me too… Echo was in fact rather insistent on this point. Whoever created the “mole program” apparently wanted very much for him to “get it” that Mellie was really in danger. Echo said it twice, to make sure the full implications dawned on him.
A mole who knew that Heard was being sent to attack Mellie would also know that she’s an active and not in any real danger. Telling him that it’s happening, and that it’s real, indicates that they’re not completely on the same side.
I think this foreshadows that the Dollhouse’s main purpose is morally ambiguous, or one of those “for the greater good” type experiments. Where many people die but it’s acceptable because it justifies the end game.
DeWitt’s mother den attitude might just be her way of making the Dollhouse as moral as possible. She requires consent from the Dolls before she wipes them. She doesn’t like it when they get raped. It’s her way of setting boundaries, which means she has moral boundaries.
She can be trying to take down the Dollhouses, but she can also be trying to tolerate them as much as she can in order to carry out her higher purpose.
A consensus seems to building that DeWitt is the mole. Therefore, I believe she will not turn out to be the mole as it would be too obvious.
I think it’s a bit more straightforward with DeWitt: from all indications, she has no real problem with the concept of the Dollhouse or the masters (whover they are) she is working for; she just has enough of a conscience to not want to see her dolls suffer unnecessarily.
My problem with DeWitt being the mole is that programming the dolls with their various personalities apparently requires quite a bit of technical expertise that she does not appear to have. In other words, someone in Topher’s department would actually have had to be the one to insert the information into Echo that she passed on to Ballard. if that’s the case, then there are effectively two moles working together, but the scripts so far seem to have made it clear there is only one.
This starts to be the metaphorical equivalent of Russian nesting dolls, but more likely than Amy Acker’s character or Topher’s assistant, I think the mole is the original or ‘real’ personality of Echo herself: given what we’ve seen so far, who’s to say that the ‘Caroline’ who volunteered herself to the Dollhouse was not a fake identity planted by Alpha? Given that the last scene of pretty much every episode has been a clear indication that there is a meta-personality in Echo that is somehow protected from mind-wiping, that’s where I’ll put my money.
Of course, by this point one has to wonder whether there is any way of knowing whether ANY of the main characters are their own, ‘real’ personalities?
Yep. There’s a reason the the trope is named after Joss Whedon.
Here’s the thing killing credibility with me. You are a well-trained professional FBI agent (that’s Special Agent to you). So what do you do? Tell your neighbor all about your investigation. Share all the details of the missing person you can’t identify and doesn’t appear to exist, the fact you’re getting secret messages from someone, and generally all sorts of details of what you are doing. Right. I just can’t buy it, even after he fell for her. No.
So, that started me thinking, what if Ballard was an Active? Think about it, you’re in charge of the Dollhouse, you want to keep any official investigation derailed, how better than to plant somebody you control as the agent in charge of the investigation? Then the neighbor is his handler, who he is conditioned to trust implicitly. Bingo! The only problem is, he is too good. He is getting more information than he should, and if you wanted to control the investigation, wouldn’t you make the personality a little less successful? And wouldn’t you have implanted some control or have the handler take a little more active misdirection? Or something?
But then it turns out the neighbor is an active planted to monitor his actions. Okay. Crap, there goes my good theory. Or maybe not, maybe Joss can find a way to make it work.
As far as the mole, the first easy guess is Boyd - he’s an ex-cop, he has come to care about Echo and see how they are treated. But he was talking to Topher when the plant happened, he doesn’t have the tech skills, and he’s too obvious.
Second guess, the assistant to Topher. She was just in the room prior to his exit to talk to Boyd. Again, obvious, and she may not have the requisite skill set, since she’s supposedly learning.
Third guess, Amy Acker’s doctor character. She is an enigma that is being kept mysterious. She has shown concern over what is going on. But her expertise appears to be different.
I think we have to concede that whoever the mole is, he/she is going to surprise us with the ability to do the programming. Maybe they have some training they don’t share, or something. Hmmm.
DeWitt is apparently the next high likelihood character, because she is apparently in charge so it seems unlikely. But that just makes her more likely, because she answers to people in higher authority, and all the reasons already stated. But I’m not convinced, and I suspect if Joss does have someone in mind, he’s willing to change his mind if the fans catch on too early.
This is the best idea yet. We know Echo is supposed to be compiling experiences, not quite what they expect. She is somehow special. So I’m willing to consider the Echo imprint that is not really a completely blank slate is a candidate. We’ll see.
How about:
Topher has an imprint of his own mind somewhere in the imprint vault. Mole knows just enough to imprint an active with an extant imprint, then asks Echo-Topher to design a special imprint. That done, mole erases Echo-Topher.
OR – the mole is an active with a dormant feature, like Millie. The proper code phrase activates their ability to become a skilled psyche-designer, implant the message in Echo, then go back to their previous personality. Which means it could be anyone. Even Topher himself.
I believe the entire first season is in the can already. There’s only 13 episodes, right? If he’s already written and shot it, I doubt he’ll change it because people “caught on” – too expensive to rework everything and reshoot at this point. (I sort of get the impression that Joss likes it when people can puzzle out his twists, anyway. Not everyone will.)
I wasn’t too happy with Ballard spilling details of his investigation with a civvie (really unprofessional)… but at the same time, every other agent he’s come across says he’s a loose cannon, and well, I can’t say I think dislocating the arm of another agent right in the middle of the office was too professional either. They’ve made a point that Ballard has had a largely unsuccessful career as an FBI agent. I seem to recall that he was assigned to the Dollhouse in the first place because no one took him seriously. His tendency to do really unprofessional things is probably a big reason why.
I really, really hope the mole is not Topher, because right now he is shaping up to be one of my favorite villains ever–he’s so quirky and cheerful and charming and boyish that it’s easy to overlook that’s he’s the most callous of the lot–he doesn’t give the slightest damn about any of the actives, it’s all just a science project to him.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Ballard is a sibling to Caroline (which makes her last name Ballard). He requested the Dollhouse assignment to further his agenda of finding his missing sister.
Mn. I don’t believe that the FBI would assign an agent to a case which involves a close relative.
Of course, that’s the REAL FBI. Who knows what a JW FBI agency might do.
Didn’t Ballard say he didn’t know who Caroline was, though?
Plus, if he immediately steps up the ahem neighborliness of things with Mellie, right after being accused by Internet Mogul of wanting to bang Caroline/Rachel/whoever – you know, as if he needs to prove Internet Mogul wrong – well, that’s kinda creepy. And all that talk about he shouldn’t be thinking of Caroline while banging Mellie (“I was thinking about Caroline…” “I wasn’t!!”). Eeeewww! 
It’s Luke and Leia all over again!