I am – Hercules!!

Fox ordered seven episodes of Joss Whedon’s new sci-fi series “Dollhouse” back just before the writers’ strike; the plan as I now understand it is to shoot the first episode -- and only the first episode -- in May, just prior to the following month's Screen Actors Guild contract deadline.

What happens next depends on how quickly SAG and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers hammer out a contract.

The series depicts a group of blank-slate secret agents who get different personalities, abilities and memories installed in her brains for each mission; all these attributes are also wiped away at mission’s end. The focus of “Dollhouse” is an operative named “Echo” (Eliza Dushku), whose memories somehow don’t get wiped away quite as thoroughly as those of her colleagues.

TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello now has descriptions of some of the “Dollhouse” supporting characters (though I’m not entirely certain if the language is his or that of a casting exec):

ADELLE DEWITT
The fortyish iceberg who runs the Dollhouse where the human Etch-a-Sketches reside

PAUL BALLARD
The thirtysomething G-man who is slated to become an offbeat love interest for Dushku's "impressionable" Echo

BOYD LANGTON
Echo's handler and father figure

TOPHER BRINK
The technogeek who enjoys his job as a Doll programmer maybe a little too much

SIERRA
The knockout Doll who is as close to a friend as Echo has

VICTOR
The distractingly handsome Doll who is called upon to play everyone from Errol Flynn to Robert DeNiro

NOVEMBER
The Tracy Turnblad of the Dolls

DR. CLAIRE SANDERS
The beautiful older woman with whom Topher is smitten

Note that all the blank-slate operatives have Whiskey Tango Foxtrot international radiotelephony spelling alphabet kinda names. (Can't wait to see who they cast for agents Zulu and Hotel!)

All of Ausiello’s piece, in which he offers casting suggestions for each role, can be found here.

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