User:Electra91/Dollplay

Dollplay was an interactive web-based promotional alternate reality game (ARG) that takes place within the world of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse (TV series). It served as both a prequel to the series as well as a viral marketing scheme to promote the show. Alternately titled "Dollplay" or "Save Hazel!", players watched the struggles of a trapped girl named Hazel trying to free herself from the mysterious R. Prime Lab trap she's found herself in, as well as to find answers about her mother.

User interaction had a direct impact on the progress of the game, as users had to upload their own videos to make suggestions to Hazel to move along the plot and help her escape, and she responded to certain videos or suggestions. The game was not licensed, created or developed by Whedon's Mutant Enemy production studio but instead by an internet gaming site called The Company P.

Plot

A young girl named Hazel Rose enters a shipping crate to search for information regarding her biological mother, Dr. Alexandra Rose. As she begins to explore the crate, however, the door shuts, locking itself and trapping her inside. She screams for help and pounds on the door and the walls, trying to either escape or attract attention, but recieves no response. After a time the crate rocks and sways and she guesses that she is now on a ship at sea.

Hazel explores her new prison and finds a computer with satellite internet access, some ripped files, drugs, crackers, a safe, and machinery that is later revealed to be personality imprinting equipment that is a rudimentary predecessor of the high-tech designs used by the Dollhouse. The walls are riddled with bullet holes and there's blood on the walls, the bullet holes, and the floor.

After she accesses the internet, Hazel calls for help, which begins the ARG aspects of Dollplay. Hazel interacts with the various users and berates them for their game-like codenames and suggestions, forcing them to recognize her as a real person rather than as a controllable character in a video game. After some brief back-and-forth, Hazel begins to follow players' suggestions and explores the crate around her further.

After uploading files from the disks and scanning images of the torn up files into the computer, both she and the players can peruse through the various files: scientific data, information on the imprinting technology, and an unfinished psychological study titled "The Past Recaptured," which was written by Hazel's biological mother Dr. Alexandra Rose. The imprinting files contain three personality "wedges:" Dr. Rose, Topher Brink, and an unknown man named Mr. Bertucci.

Following the suggestions of the players, Hazel learns how to work the imprinting technology and imprints herself with the three personalities, one by one. The memories and her actions while imprinted as the three separate personalities reveals answers about her own past and about the development of the technology now employed by Dollhouses worldwide:

Hazel Rose was the child known as subject "Foxtrot" in "The Past Recaptured." Foxtrot had severe behavioral problems that had the potential to escalate into dangerous behavior over time. Alexandra Rose first developed the mind-altering technology of the imprinting process in order to "wipe away" Foxtrot's "bad side" and allow her "good side" to further develop. Topher Brink furthered this research by permanently imprinting Hazel with portions of Mr. Bertucci's dead daughter, Celia, along with some of Alexandra's brain power and scientific abilities. Mr. Bertucci had volunteered his dying daughter as a test subject in the hopes of keeping some portion of her soul with him, albeit in a different body.

Finally, Hazel re-imprints herself with her own "bad side," and with it she finds the memories of the violent ending in the crate: Mr. Bertucci came to the shipping crate searching for Hazel/Celia in order to take her with him. After he was imprinted with Hazel's "bad side," he turned violent and shot Alexandra, killing her. An R. Corporation security guard shot and killed Mr. Bertucci, but didn't have the heart to kill Hazel.

Hazel, now fully re-integrated with herself and having regained her memories, remembers the code to release her from the crate. She uploads one last video of herself, offering a brief speech on her mother's actions. She excuses her mother's original intent as it was a radical and succesful way of helping her, but said that Topher Brink and Mr. Bertucci took it too far by stealing another human being's personality. She condemns the Dollhouse's use of the technology, and then she escapes, ending the game.

Continuity

Although "Dollplay" is never expressly referred to within "Dollhouse," it is the only prequel viewers were ever offered and it never actually strays from cannon. The R. Corporation is the Rossum Corporation, which does actually create the imprinting personality in the show. The ways in which "Dollplay" stayed true to "Dollhouse" mythology are actually numerous:

• The Rossum Corporation and it's R. Prime Lab are still kept as the creators of the imprinting technology.
• Topher Brink is revealed in Epitaph One to have been brough to the LA Dollhouse with a working knowledge of imprinting technology and greatly improved the process.
• Hazel is referred to as "Foxtrot," echoing the practice of the LA Dollhouse in naming its Actives after the NATO phonetic alphabet.
• When Foxtrot is in her wiped state, she has significant memory loss as well as a tendency to speak in "one-rule" terms, much like the Actives in the Dollhouses.
• In "Dollhouse," personality programs are referred to as "wedges."
• Rossum Corporation security are trained to kill.

While it is never explicitly mentioned in "Dollhouse," many fans consider "Dollplay" to be a cannonical prequel to "Dollhouse."

External Links

• Dollplay at the Dollhouse Wikia
• The Past Recaptured at the Dollhouse Wikia