Introductions for books of this sort often discuss why the show in question elicits so much devotion and accommodates so much analysis. But I’m starting to feel that a good enough answer is just “It’s a Joss Whedon show.”

Whedon shows are challenging, full of compelling characters, plot twists, and moral puzzles. Most crucially, they don’t baby the viewer by leading him or her to a single simple point of view. Complexity is the mother of wanting to write an essay.

And just as with Firefly before it, Dollhouse was frustratingly short-lived. The viewer has the sense of stories untold, of lines of sight that are forever obstructed. It’s tantalizing to speculate about the lost seasons of Dollhouse that exist in some alternate universe where things are a bit less cancelly.

Given all that, I knew that Dollhouse would engender some really interesting analyses, just as Firefly had done. But there was a crucial difference between this book and the two Firefly volumes (Finding Serenity, Serenity Found) that preceded it. The essays in the Firefly volumes were specifically solicited from established writers. The essays for this book, however, were submitted as entries in a contest open to anyone who wanted to give it a shot. The submissions in fact did include some from accomplished writers, although I read them unlabeled, with no clue to authorship.

My job was to select a winner and three other finalists, and ultimately to choose the eighteen entries that comprise this book. I was very curious to see what would come  …