In both Firefly and Dollhouse, series creator Joss Whedon has introduced the concept of a character dealing with significant brain trauma. In Firefly, the condition is confined to River Tam, the young ingenue who turns out to be programmed with killer technique (literally); in Dollhouse, however, the concept is taken one step further with the examination of an institution (the eponymous doll house) whose purpose is to "reprogram" brains to suit the vastly imaginative needs and fantasies of an elite, super-rich clientele.

I didn't watch Joss Whedon's Western/Sci Fi TV series Firefly when it first aired. I caught a portion of one of the episodes one evening (ironically, it turned out to be my least favorite of the bunch when I finally did become mesmerized by them all last year). I didn't like the Country 'n' Western-flavor theme music. I didn't like the plot (it was "Jaynestown," if you're wondering). I wasn't really paying much attention, actually.

If you haven't watched the series but want to, don't read on -- as this hub is a complete spoiler. The civilian crew of a spaceship (Serenity) is captained by a rebel fighter from a past "civil" interstellar war against the vast Alliance of big corporation, big business, colonization of seed planets in different solar systems across the galaxy. They pick up, as a paying passenger, a young doctor transporting a large crate which turns out to contain the unconscious body of his little sister, whom he has just rescued from an Alliance "school." She is disoriented, and seems to be mentally unstable, missing some chunks of her memory, and in need of some care. It turns out that the school has been performing major invasive surgery on her brain, and now she has to live with the consequences, unaware of exactly what has been done to her, but uncovering disturbing indications of the extent of the abuse and its dark purpose.

The character of River Tam intrigued audiences. The beautiful Summer Glau (currently to be seen kicking ass in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) was cast by Whedon reportedly after he saw her in an episode of Angel (a spin-off from Whedon's vastly popular and wickedly funny series Buffy the Vampire Slayer). She is as athletic as a Eastern European gymnast and as graceful as a ballerina, does 98% of her own fight sequences and stunts (I think they stop her from doing some of them for her own protection), and looks fabulous. So her character had something for everyone -- the guys could drool, the girls could empathize, the middle-aged women like me could ponder the significance of her brain "damage" at the hands of the Alliance. Plus Joss Whedon's scripts are extremely witty, an indication of his intelligent grasp of the seriousness of good comedy. The TV audience is never insulted by his characters' dialogue development (which we cannot say about Stargate Atlantis, home to some truely dreadful examples of bad exposition).

So after the series was cancelled, Whedon developed a treatment for a follow-up movie to complete the story-arc for his characters, tie up some loose ends (and people), and supply much-needed answers for what was by now a loyal fan base of dedicated viewers. Serenity appeared in 2005. It concerns the discovery of a vast Alliance "civilian cleansing" involving a drug which is supposed to render whole planets passive, producing peaceful citizens content with their sunny lot in life. Unfortunately, like giving a sedative to an ADHD child, a portion of the recipients of this debilitating drug suffered an adverse reaction and turned cannibal (the "Reavers"), literally eating their prey and kinda messing up the whole Alliance plan in the process. Incidentally, one of the most haunting moments of the movie is a brief late-addition appearance by the excellent Sarah Paulson as Dr. Caron, who has left a recording of her last moments before being eaten alive by the Reavers. I can still hear that scream.

During the movie, River Tam's "programming" is revealed, and her role as killer is outed in a wonderful barfight that starts as a dust-up but ends with many dead. Her imprinting is triggered by a delightfully daft tv commercial ("Fruity Oaty Bars"), an insidiously evil method of finding the rescued Tam and bringing her in (an Operative -- called, helpfully, in Medieval Morality style, Operative -- has been sent to capture her, because she knows the truth, albeit that it is not at the surface of her consciousness).

The implications are intriguing. If any of you, say, have ever undergone ECT treatments (electro-convulsive therapy) -- and I sincerely hope you haven't -- you will be made to feel uncomfortably familiar with River Tam's primary disorientation and memory loss at the beginning of the TV series, and her ensuing story arc to knowledge of the brain trauma and extreme neurological abuse she has suffered at the hands of the Alliance. In fact, on a personal note, I owe Joss Whedon a debt of gratitude for writing this character with such grace. He can have no idea how much her story helped me come to terms with my own returning memory and feelings of violation at the hands of the doctor who passed electricity through my brain. The slow months of recovery were painful, but somehow River Tam's character helped comfort me. Thank you, Mr. Whedon, for that.

In contrast, the characters in Whedon's latest TV series, Dollhouse, are not abused in quite the same manner as River Tam. Echo, Sierra, Victor, Alpha -- names all derived from police or NATO acrophones (phonetic acronyms), so I'm wondering when we get to meet Tango, Hotel, and Foxtrot -- have all had their personalities and memories "wiped" by computer technology capable of processing, translating, and digitizing the human mind and then storing it in handy little flash drives for future use. The concept is not new, but this iteration of it is innovative as we see the nerdy little tech guy "mix and match" portions of stored personality traits to form composite personalities with complete memories and assumptions of their own created identities. It is presented as a surprisingly simple and benign process -- blinky-light halos around the "doll's" head -- that is then capable of being wiped completely from the recipient's mind as easily as it was introduced. Yes, the blinky-light process is a little reminiscent of ECT treatments, and the dolls, when wiped "clean" again, enter a docile, child-like state that is -- while radically abusive in terms of removing individuality and the whole "essence" of personality itself -- certainly more peaceful than the confusion and disorientation ECT patients often feel after their treatments.

The implications of both these TV programs is that we are fascinated with what makes us who we are.  They also imply, in the prophetic manner of science fiction, that it is possible, or will be possible in the near future, to tamper with who we are.  We have already seen instances of it, of course, in the accidental byproduct of injury-- most famously in the all-too-real case of Phineas Gage, the mild-mannered railroad worker turned angry young man.  Trepanation, the most violent and invasive form of brain "intervention," was known to pre-historic peoples, evidenced by skulls that have been found to contain holes drilled over the sites of fracture lines.  More benign methods, though, are just as devastating.  Psychopharmacology and ECT, for instance, show documented cases of personality change; whether it is actually permanent or temporary seems to me to be beside the point.  Here's hoping that the doctors will either get it right or abandon ECT as a method of treating depression.

For full references to works and concepts cited here, please click on the blue high-lighted words for each.