Here’s a video on how Alpha hacked into the Dollhouse.
But the Actives were in the middle of their sleep cycle during the whole scene. There was no reason to be messing around with their environment to keep them sleeping. Alpha only opened November’s crypt to distract Ballard, I think.
I do not know what Alpha’s motivation was for killing the previous group of Actives in the shower, nor his reasons for (possibly) trying to kill or damage the current cop of Actives. I suspect we’ll find out eventually. In the meantime, I like Offkenter’s theory.
:smack:Good point, he doesn’t seem to like any other actives save Echo.
It’s been theorized that Dr. Saunders is/was an active but is no longer fit for duty due to Alpha’s “gifts.” If that’s the case, why would they imprint her with the memory of Alpha slashing her? Early in the season it seemed as though Adelle and Co. were trying to suppress any discussion of Alpha. Why not just imprint your newly minted doctor with an unfortunate weed-whacker incident?
I’m not all that interested in Ballard but isn’t he in a bit of a pickle? Adelle and Boyd were discussing whether or not they should put him in the chair - they might have been bluffing but it didn’t sound like letting him leave was a viable option. Will Ballard help them rescue Echo? Will they poke him in the attic?
Can the season finale possibly answer all my questions!?
I think Ballard must be a doll that’s been set up by Alpha. It’s the most plausible explanation for his infatuation with Echo (seeing as Alpha obviously has a thing for her). But it could be that he’s an incomplete doll–like Alpha was able to modify him adding emotions and ideas, but not fully clean and overwrite him with a new personality.
Yeah, I wasn’t too impressed with Victor’s English accent, but he did this scene perfectly. Either that or they used Dominic’s voice? I couldn’t tell.
Didn’t Adelle say that Ballard and the FBI didn’t have “clearance” to know about the Dollhouse? That would make it seem likely that the organization is at least partly a government agency.
I think we can be reasonably sure they’re not dolls because of their reaction to the weird serum/fear drug from the earlier episode.
(a) Someone (Alpha? Dollhouse?) has compromised Ballard’s FBI-ex-co-worker’s computer, or the databases she taps into.
(b) Someone (Alpha) has compromised Mellie and is feeding Ballard information on the sly, which is making him not trust her.
(c) Someone (Alpha again) has figured out how to remote-wipe an active, and presumably how to remote-reprogram them as well.
It’s a complex ballet, but makes more sense if you put it in this order: Alpha, who is in L.A., is following/watching Ballard. He follows Ballard, who follows Mellie’s handler, who takes Mellie to the Dollhouse. With Ballard aware of the Dollhouse’s location, he will eventually stumble on the name of the environmental specialist guy. Alpha kills the specialist and takes over his life only when he knows that Ballard has looked the guy up in a compromised database; he plants the evidence pointing to Tucson in order to draw Dollhouse resources offsite.
I don’t really get why he needs to go through all that feinting and zig-zagging to bring Ballard inside with him, though, unless his plan was to use Ballard to create a little extra chaos.
Super Wacky Theory re: "Goals"
The weird environmental screed that Alpha-as-environmental-pothead rambles through actually makes quite a bit of sense as a Big Evil Plan: imagine a series of giant Dollhouses that are environmentally neutral. You’ve got one for rocket scientists, one for cancer researchers, a few hundred for heavy laborers, a few hundred for food production, one or two for soldiers, and so on. Each facility is staffed by Whiskey-bots, who are themselves Dolls but believe themselves to be in charge. Then, on top of that pyramid, a final layer of real humans who move their personality from body to body and live as Emperors-for-Eternal-Life of Earth. Outside the Dollhouses, the company could release a drug to paralyze humanity with fear, or cause them to all die, or-or-or. Once the Dollhouses are secure, 90% (99%?) of humanity is expendable - you can choose the population level you like. If you think about Boyd’s reaction to the eternal life engagement, it makes a lot of sense - he said “it’s the end of humanity” or something similar.
Horrible! Ghastly! Has a lot in common with the Matrix and the Pax! Could Caroline and Alpha (who both seem to have known each other before) have cooked up a plan to make themselves un-wipe-able? Their goal would probably be to bring down the Dollhouse on (roughly) the same grounds that Mal &co. go after the people behind the Pax. It meshes with her adamant stance against animal testing – because it is sort of the ultimate animal testing.
Anyway, everyone keeps saying “that’s what they do, but it’s not their goal.” I think that I’ve figured out the goal. Any comments? Am I insane?
No clue - but I appreciate your write-up and reasoning as a way to clarify how this all might’ve played out. And while I have no clue about your Goal Hypothesis, it certainly fits the “some sort of vast, power-grabbing, humanity-controlling conspiracy” angle quite well - and yeah, I am assuming that The Joss™ is swinging for that kind of Big Fence…
Nicely done.
The big one for me is that Adele asks Doc S. about her work habits, and notes that she sleeps at the Dollhouse, lives at the Dollhouse, takes all her meals there, etc. Doc S. dismisses this as not-really-unusual. It is presented (at the time) as a symptom of her workaholic nature, or possibly a symptom of PTSD from her encounter w/ Alpha.
Doc Saunders, who is ordinarily pretty astute, believes firmly that Alpha was killed. Not wiped, not taken to the Attic, but killed/executed. Boyd questions this (pretty obvious!) lie as soon as he hears it, but Doc Saunders seems to believe it.
Her notable absence during the drugs-as-litmus-test episode was an “absence of evidence” clue.
And of course, Alpha let her live. He knows how to kill, and kill quickly, so he didn’t let her live because he’s a compassionate guy… he let her live just like he let Echo live. We just don’t know why yet. But her status as a survivor of the Alpha rampage is important and marks her for suspicion.
I always got the impression that the L.A. Dollhouse is the “original” dollhouse and Topher was one of the main inventors of the process. Evidenced by the fact that the architect guy (ignoring the fact that he was impersonated by Alpha - his backstory still seems to be accurate) seems to have designed the L.A. dollhouse.
But didn’t the murder in Tucson happen before Ballard followed Mellie to the Flower Street building? That’s how I remember it from last week.
Of course, Alpha could have anticipated that one way or another Ballard would eventually connect the Dollhouse to the architect, and set up house in the apartment to await the inevitable.
Ehhh… I think the Ultimate Goal ™ will turn out to be somewhat more morally ambiguous. Keep in mind that DeWitt has repeatedly said she believes in whatever this purpose is. Yet she’s not completely heartless – sure she doesn’t let anyone see that she has feelings, but in the privacy of her own bedroom she did have a sobbing breakdown after commanding that Dominick be consigned to the Attic. Given that, I have a hard time seeing her being “on board” with something that is so clearly horrible and power-mongering on such a huge scale; I think that she believes the Ultimate Goal to be humanitarian, even if the means to get there are somewhat morally grey. And I don’t think anyone with a brain could conceive of a “strong ruling over the weak” scenario as humanitarian.
Hrm. I see your point, but could go either way on these. I recall that Topher was also thoroughly convinced that Alpha was dead, until DeWitt upped his security clearance to tell him. Some are just less prone to question things or rock the boat. (Plus questioning the Alpha stuff would necessarily mean having to think about Alpha, which is probably something she’d prefer to avoid.)
I think this is an excellent point, and putting it with the whole “Whiskey!” thing is what’s most convincing to me.
Which of course only came about after seeing that scene.
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And turned out to becorrect.
We’ve been primed.