Television Remakes of the Future

Dollhouse did have alot of potential, too bad it was all for nought. Maybe in 10 or 20 years from now if someone gives it another shot and actually does something exciting with the concept it will be more successful. I have a feeling that maybe either two other of Joss Whedon's shows - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Firefly could possibly be remade in the future; they are such big cult phenoms - and great shows - I can see someone down the road wanting to reuse the ideas.

Sam, I was with you until you got to LOST. I'm sure you are right about the remake potential, and I would hope it is 30, 40 years down the road like the Prisoner remake. I don't know...it's still to fresh (and excellent) to think like that right now.

But if I had to think like that, I wouldn't take the route you do, i.e. - new actors and actresses cast as our current castaways. To see the same story again - with different actors - would be a let down. Someone else doing Jackface? A new bald guy begging folks not to tell him what he can't do? Nah. Not for me.

Rather, I would keep only one character - the Island. Maybe two...Alpert would probably be around. Other than that, just have another whole group of folks end up on the Island and have to deal with similarly creepy, yet entirely different phenomena than what is currently on the show. Or even a prequel - a series that is the story of the Black Rock crew could be cool.

Oh yeah, and Vincent would be there too.

Firefly was already a pretty shameless ripoff of Blake's Seven which has been talked about for an official remake for years. I for one hope that never happens, even BSG (the one remake I can think of that isn't total trash) only succeeded because it discarded everything from the original but some names.

I may be getting wrapped up in Semantics here, but BSG was more of a re-imagining than a remake. That's an important distinction because a re-imagining can really be sooooo much better because it really just take a basic concept and then totally changes it around. I do think as far as Remakes go, you have to be very careful and stick more to the original story. It also pays off more if the remake is of something far older. For example, they could do a successful re-imagining (or prequel, or sequel-with different characters, of Lost within the next 10 to 15 years. But a remake of a series like that would need to much further down the road (say 30 to 40 years, in my opinion).

A remake of Lost? What crazy shit have you been drinking and or inhaling from under your sink?

A remake of Lost would be COMPLETELY unnecessary. Why would anyone try to re-do one of the most groundbreaking, out-of-the-box shows ever?

Heroes on the other hand, completely agree. Actually get a smart showrunner and the right writers and it could be amazing. Joss Whedon would be my pick.

How about MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Given the quality of shows like 24 and ALIAS it could be done extremely well.

Except for Mr. Phelps, it could have a revolving cast.

When I think about the excellent ensemble cast of shows like ROME, DEADWOOD, and LOST as show like MI could be awesome.

Dollhouse had a great cast, but a simply terrible writing staff.

1. First you have a pretty disgusting concept, coerced men and women being brainwashed and then repeatedly raped for the entertainment of rich men and women. How many times is Echo sent on romantic assignments? People have control not over her body and but her sexual preferences. If that's not a show to turn people off, then I don't know what is.

2. Second you have an ill-thought concept. How do you make a profit from such a tiny niche market, when your overhead is so high? How do you avoid detection, when your ‘dolls’ are walking around in public, perhaps bumping into people they've met before becoming Actives. Their own families recognising them?

3. How can a FBI agent, even one as dumb as Ballard, not find the place when all these rich people manage it?

4. A few more problems. How do college professors afford an Active? Why would you spend so much money on what accounts to a hooker? Why hire a girl to be your child's mother, why not get a nurse? How would the deceased woman's family and friends not notice this weirdo thinking she was this kid's mother?

The show was not thought through at all.

5. Then you have Caroline. If she's into animal activism, fair enough, she's allowed her opinion and I think it's barbaric to test make-up on them. Going around handing out leaftlets, waving placards, and campaigning with petitions, fine. But breaking into a lab?

In other words, she thinks her political beliefs are more important than the law of a democratic nation? That's pretty close to terrorism. It's hard to feel sympathy.

Another great failure.

6. The show's built on her assignments 'glitching'. Surely it abuses sense of disbelief that she'd glitch so much and they wouldn't send her to the attic?

The show's problems were ALL in the writing staff. Oh and the geezer playing Ballard.

My problem with Dollhouse was Eliza just could not pull off a different character each week, but since the show was made just for her, that problem would be hard to over come. I just never felt any passion for any of the characters other than Amy Acker's and she left the show.

As an average viewer of Dollhouse, let me counterpoint each of your points on Dollhouse.

1: The stuff done in the show was never portrayed as O.K. Remember the F.B.I. agent? His whole purpose was to put the Dollhouse's activities into perspective, showing that it was wrong. The person that raped Sierra got murdered, and Adele admits everyone working in the Dollhouse has little or no morals.

2: If you remember, somebody did run into Echo and remember who she was. (Admittedly, it wasn't properly addressed in the episode, as everyone was too busy tripping out.) I imagine there's a lot set up to avoid this. First of all, they're probably not sent on missions where people would recognize them. Second of all, it's pretty easy to instill doubt in someone, especially if you really, truly don't remember them (even if you did grow up with them.) Thirdly, if they insisted this was the same person, I bet they'd either be bought off or turned into dolls themselves. Also, from what I understand, they only go after people who don't really have families (Madeline's daughter being dead, the boy who was taken into the Dollhouse to pay for his mother's care) Alienated their friends (Caroline) or was supposedly lost in the system (Priya, A.K.A. Sierra). From what I can tell, they have contacts everywhere. These people probably aren't even reported missing.

3:
A: It was revealed he had a published novel or something.
B: It's for the emotion yo uwouldn't get out of a hooker, the connection. As explained in the first episode.
C: As it was explained, the father wanted someone to connect with the child so strongly that she'd protect it from anything.
D: Echo never met any of the friends and family. It was pretty clear she was either kept in the house, or she saw Sierra.

4: We all think Caroline is a whiny brat, but she had reasoning for breaking into that lab. She thought there was more going on, and if you honestly think that people don't get so strung out over this that this happens, you're wrong. It's being realistic.

5: That is explained several times throughout the series. First, Adele won't do it when they first discover because Echo keeps protecting the dollhouse, and therefore poses no threat. Then, Boyd won't turn Echo in because he thinks of Echo as his child. So she wouldn't get sent to the attic, because, as far as they are concerned, Echo poses no threat despite the glitches. When it is getting so bad as it was in the episodes before they were left off for now, you could tell that it was simply because Boyd didn't report that Echo was now holding memories and trying to shake up the Dollhouse that Echo didn't get sent to the attic.

Not to mention, the United States' founders thought their politcal beliefs more important than the king's, meaning, more important than the government.

People try to change laws by breaking them (Dr. Death, for one...)

I agree that only thing that can be done with 'new' Lost is not to do a remake but rather, as Casey said, do everything from scratch with new people on the island. I can't imagine that any remake of Lost would be even close to the original, and I think that any such attempt will fail. There are things that simple don't need a remake.

Dollhouse had 2 seasons, and all the material from both seasons is much better suited for a single movie. The concept was interesting but everything else simply failed. I am not sure that any one would even try remake a series that failed in the first place.

Heroes was amazing during season 1, and than we got 3 seasons of (mostly) crap. It's time that they cancel it and make something new. There is nothing they can do now to revive it until this season ends. So, remake of Heroes would be rather good thing to see as long as they use the original concept of season 1, and not introduce 1000 heroes with abilities no one can't track anymore and plain stupid writing.