Brand New Day: The Evolution of the Doctor Horrible Fandom

Priscilla Spencer is a character designer, 3D modeler, and texture artist at Launch, a New York firm that creates animated pre-visualizations for television commercials. She designed and illustrated the map for Jim Butcher’s bestselling Codex Alera series, beta reads Butcher’s other work and serves as a thematic consultant/continuity monitor for The Dresden Files’ Hugo-nominated graphic novel series. She is the founder of Books for Boobs, which raises money for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer while promoting noteworthy authors. She also enjoys photography, costuming and bursting into Broadway show tunes at the slightest provocation.

I came at the Whedonverse backwards.

I discovered Firefly in that awkward, torrent-tastic span between cancellation and the release of the DVDs. I watched the episodes in the order in which... in which my good friend who recorded the show as it aired lent me her completely legal tapes, let’s say. “Serenity”-the-episode was among the last I received, and “Ariel” was among the first, which put me only slightly higher on the confusion scale as those who experienced it live.

I watched the first episode of Buffy the night the last episode of Angel aired. Unfortunately, I’d watched the musical episode in my high school’s Sci-Fi Club a few years prior, and I had all the lyrics memorized by the time I watched anything else, which gave me frustratingly spoilericious insight into Dawn’s existence, Willow’s fondness for the ladies, Xander and Anya’s approaching nuptials and Buffy’s imminent fling with Captain Peroxide, for a start. Not to mention all the spoilers I osmotically absorbed through casual conversation with Buffy fans who’d assumed I’d never watch the show. While the majority of the show was fresh and new and wonderful to me, I couldn’t help resenting those spoiled moments that should have been surprises.

When Serenity came, I had the opposite experience. In the months leading up to the film’s release, I approached the movie in an awkward dance, trying to learn everything I could about it without actually spoiling myself. I was lucky enough to score tickets to the advance preview screenings in June and July, months before the film’s September release, but when I left the theatre in a state of shock, I had precious few people I could discuss the film with. I felt stifled by my knowledge, and I was afraid to discuss the movie online for fear of inadvertently spoiling someone.

For Doctor Horrible, however, I had the opportunity to catch each episode the moment it was online, just as everyone else did. Finally, a Joss production I could both theorize about with my friends and analyze immediately afterward! I wouldn’t be scrambling to catch up to everyone else, too late to speculate on where Joss might take us next, and worse, too late to avoid spoilers for which the fandom had long since stopped warning. Nor would I be teetering beneath a burden of knowledge I could only share with a limited subset of the fandom – this chronically un-punctual Whedon fan could finally engage with the fans on equal footing. I would have a nice, normal fandom experience, or whatever passed for normal when fandom is involved.

“Normal.” Heh. The gods of fandom love straight lines like that.

Not only were the show and fandom borne of the bizarre circumstances and unyielding solidarity of the Writers Guild strike, but the brothers and fiancée Whedon motivated the fans to take on a role that was anything but conventional. The strike instilled in fans a political fervor to support independent productions, and the absence of studio involvement freed the creators to invite fans to participate in that world.

Let’s rewind to the winter of 2007-2008.

When negotiations broke down over the rate of residuals on DVDs and new media, television and film writers united by the Writers Guild of America called a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Production of scripted shows trickled to a halt, finally shutting down entirely as key actors refused to cross picket lines or when shows ran out of scripts. The writers took to the streets, demonstrating outside major studios and media centers, and steeled themselves for a long battle.

Over the duration of the strike, I watched the Whedonesque blog in awe and admiration as fans organized in California to show their support. They fused with literally dozens of other TV fanbases into a great fen Voltron called Fans4Writers, which conspired to channel fans’ support of the writers as effectively and visibly as possible. They brought pizza to the picket lines, organized letter-writing campaigns to networks and advertisers, held auctions and raffles to raise money to support non-WGA professionals left unemployed by the strike, and otherwise demonstrated their commitment and gratitude to the writers’ sacrifice.

I wasn’t aware of any equivalent fan mobilization action on the East Coast, and my 9-7 job rarely gave me permission to leave work during lunch, but twice over the course of the strike, I brought pizza to frozen writers picketing at Columbus Circle and Rockefeller Center. I added my voice to the cheering crowds as Tim Robbins, Danny Glover, Kal Penn, and other Hollywood notables called New Yorkers to arms at a rally in Washington Square Park, organized by then-Presidential-hopeful, now-late-night-punch-line John Edwards.

I felt some ironic amusement as small teams of writers created short films on the web to bring attention to the fact that they weren’t being paid for creating short films on the web, but their actions only served to underscore the vital importance of the web short as an advertising and communication tool. As the videos made their rounds on the net, their humor, eloquence, and stark enumeration of the writers’ grievances triggered a more forceful, more immediately galvanizing reaction among those they reached than any press release could. However, perhaps the bleakest message came from the studios themselves. Back in 2001, The Daily Show ran a segment called “Pitch,” which parodied the then-nascent Reality TV phenomenon, proposing shows like “Super Chore Island” and “Sexy Hill Teens Go Up A Hill To Fetch A Pail Of Sexy Adventure! In Space!”[5] As I read a real-life list of game shows that would take the place of scripted shows during the strike, including Fox’s Moment of Truth, “where contestants are strapped to lie detectors and asked personal questions in a quest for cash,”[6] I couldn’t help feeling that every one of The Daily Show’s nightmare scenario ideas had more intellectual rigor than what was playing out in reality. Truth was stranger than fiction. And it was fiction I wanted back.

Finally, the strike came to a close, with more whimper than bang. The precious residuals the writers fought for were a mere shade of what they’d hoped to secure. Newspapers cheered the end of the strike and Hollywood ramped up their great studio machines once more, but fans and the dissenting WGAers looked on in blank incredulity – all that sacrifice, for chump change?

Enter Doctor Horrible.

Between sessions on the picket lines, the Whedons had begun work on a new project to fill their time, communicating with WGA leadership to make certain that they weren’t violating any strike protocols or undermining the WGA’s position. A few short weeks after the strike ended, production began, and details began to trickle out to the public: the title, the cast, and oh, the fact that it was about a low-rent super villain with a blog. And it was a musical.

I rejoiced in giddy excitement. Something positive had emerged from the strike after all! In the wake of disappointment, empathizing with the writers’ losses of funds and morale and dreading the grim prospect of months without new material, we needed something to celebrate, and Joss Whedon had provided it. Joss repeatedly assured interviewers that he wasn’t doing this as a flip of the bird to studio execs, but the narrative in my mind was far more satisfying – not to mention somewhat rather more consistent with the scathing tone of Joss’s strike blogs.

Now, Team Joss had given us fans the chance to support and celebrate the creative spirit the AMPTP had tried to devalue. The studios had spent months creating game shows and reality TV that didn’t require writers[7], so it seemed justified that a group of writers should create a production that circumvented the studios. It wouldn’t help downtrodden writers recoup their losses, but distorted through my hopelessly hopeful eyes and tinted with the colorful language of politics, Joss’ creation became linked with a hypothetical future avenue for writers in the motion picture industry. I decided that in the wake of the strike’s failure, the writers and their supporters needed an independent production like Doctor Horrible to succeed on so monumental a level that it could not be ignored, to show there was life outside the corporate machine, and the monopoly was not absolute.

It was, in essence, a high-profile test case: what kind of fiscal success could a man with Joss’s résumé, name recognition, industry contacts, and financial resources yield? Not to mention his reputation for creating vivid new worlds and lovable, memorable characters. Would a big-name creator be able to add legitimacy to a medium that hadn’t garnered much respect?

Perhaps in a not-so-distant future, this crack in the corporate hegemony might grant writers a little more leverage to bargain. In this way, the Doctor Horrible fandom came pre-packaged with a sense of solidarity and belonging.

Of course, as trailers and posters and interviews poured onto the web, the project went from hazy concept to full-blooded reality, and fan enthusiasm for the project soon took on its own momentum, powered by more than nebulous ideals and leftover enthusiasm from the strike. These tantalizing teasers served as compelling reasons for fans to want the project to succeed – reasons completely unrelated to the circumstances of its inception.

I watched the first episode with two of my oldest online friends, one from Alaska and one from Sweden. Through great and fluffy divine intervention, we managed to hit the site before heavy traffic crashed Hulu’s server[8], and we scrunched together on my futon so we could all see my laptop. The Doctor Horrible theme pounded through my speakers, Neil Patrick Harris’s awkwardly cackling visage filled the screen, and you couldn’t wipe away our manic grins with an acetylene torch.

I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. The three of us managed to score student tickets to Spring Awakening on Broadway that night, but throughout the next week, it was Doctor Horrible whose tunes I incessantly hummed. In the absence of an official CD release, I ripped the audio myself and divided the song tracks so that I could listen at work (And on my way to work. And at home). I sang my own rendition in the shower. I shared the audio tracks with my friends, with the rigid caveat that as soon as an official release was available, they would buy it to support Team Horrible.

Thus bound by a Girl Scout pinky-promise to be un-lame and give back to the creators whenever possible, we rejoiced in the delightfully catchy music. I did the same for part two, whose music I loved even more than the first batch, and finally for part three as it aired. As I connected with other fans eager to discuss the music, we laughed at the variety of folks’ invented names for the songs. We looked forward to the Whedons handing down something official.

Between each episode, speculation abounded as to where the Whedon crew would take us next. Parts 1 and 2 had surpassed my wildest hopes, and I couldn’t wait to see how it ended. It being a Joss production, many of us anticipated a major game-changer in the third act; I set my sights on Penny and wondered what Joss had in store for her. I had difficulty reconciling the meek-natured love interest with Joss’s gallery of powerful women – particularly in a world populated by superheroes – and I wondered if Felicia Day had been cast for her performance as Vi on Buffy, transitioning seamlessly between shy, nervous Potential and formidable Slayer. I wrote in my blog, “It’s by JOSS WHEDON. The sun rises in the east, fangirls squee at UST-y[9] subtext, and Joss writes kick-ass female characters.”

As musical tragedy struck and the Doctor gained and lost “everything he ever,” I was livid. While I quickly came to love where the story left Doctor Horrible and Captain Hammer, I remained furious that Penny never got a chance to shine[10]. I hated that her character was exactly as she appeared on the surface – she had no layers of personality to peel away, pie-like or otherwise. And as someone who kept returning to the soundtrack, I resented that she’d been given such short, humorless solo numbers. Moreover, I saw yet another spontaneous character death from Joss’s pen as being uninspired – was he capable of writing a single show where he didn’t kill off a main character? Some of my LiveJournal friends grimly pointed fingers at the “Women in Refrigerators” trope, in which a woman is brutally killed solely to advance the male protagonist’s storyline, and I puzzled over how a writer with such strong feminist credentials and awareness of genre tropes would do such a thing.

I rewatched Act III a fraction of the number of times I rewatched the first two parts. In huffy annoyance, I spun out elaborate zombie revivification schemes with one friend and egged on another as she dabbled in crossover fan fiction with Pushing Daisies, shoving the story back into a place where the world could regain the prior acts’ dark-tinged whimsy and be fun to play in again. But there was no satisfaction in denial. I began to recognize the arrogance in the idea I knew better than Joss, and that Joss had ended it wrong. Not to suggest that Joss is infallible, certainly, but my frustration wasn’t leading to anything productive – it was only getting in the way of my enjoyment of the work.

So I shifted my focus from “why didn’t Joss do (blank)?” to “why may have Joss decided to do what he did?” Rather than joining in the lambaste for what many perceived to be problematic gender issues, I chose to scrutinize what was effective in Joss’s storytelling, so that I might be in a more receptive frame of mind to guess why he made the choices I objected to, or at least make my peace with them. I couldn’t read Joss’s thoughts, and my conclusions were only as valid as the next fan’s, but framing my analysis in more positive terms was far more appealing to me.

My gaze fell upon Penny once more. And during my next watch, I found myself appreciating her much more. She’s the only genuinely good character in the series, I realized. She is defined by her selflessness, wanting to change the world not for herself, but for others. Sure, she’s meek and soft-spoken, but it’s dangerously hypocritical for those of us who identify as feminists to cheer creators for giving us kick-ass women, and then criticize them when they give us women whose value rests elsewhere on the emotional spectrum. Penny has less self-confidence, and her strength isn’t as immediately apparent, but shouldn’t characters like her be just as valid?

Rather than emphasizing female empowerment as Buffy does, or featuring strong-willed women in a future culture where their competence is unquestioned as Firefly does, Doctor Horrible illuminates the dangers of unchecked masculine ego in a dark inverse to the Hero’s Journey, tracing the path from ordinary man to supervillain. Doctor Horrible is motivated by a desire to impress Penny, but he allows himself to be sidetracked by his idea of what is expected of him as a man. In Act I, she approaches him for his signature, and they converse briefly, but he’s so wrapped up in his Wonderflonium heist and raging insecurity that he barely notices when she leaves. When he realizes this, he pauses, and his decision dictates his trajectory for the story – rather than take this opportunity to pursue Penny directly, he tells himself “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” and he goes forward with the heist. He is so consumed by his notions of masculinity that he discards his most direct route to the attention he craves.

Soon after, Captain Hammer arrives on the scene. He is a charismatic, womanizing bully who makes no secret of the fact that his dalliances with Penny are nothing more than a new means of torturing Doctor Horrible (though he admits the prospect of The Weird Stuff has its appeal). Doctor Horrible drifts further and further from his original goal of winning Penny’s admiration, driving himself deeper into his villainous work. The two men reduce Penny to a mere prize to be won, denying her humanity – and, as a result, all three are destroyed. Doctor Horrible claims to love her, but he knows nothing about her other than her laundry schedule. Each time they converse, he can’t be honest with her; he pretends to believe in whatever stance he thinks she’ll approve of, be it a fondness for laundry or taking inspiration from Gandhi over Bad Horse. Intoxicated by visions of destroying his nemesis, he imagines her horror over his true identity being cured by the gift of “a shiny new Australia.” It becomes clear his infatuation has nothing to do with who Penny actually is. Worse, Doctor Horrible blames Penny for breaking his heart when he’d never given her any indication that he was interested in her romantically, muttering that “The dark is everywhere, and Penny doesn’t seem to care that soon the dark in me is all that will remain.” It’s easy to miss or laugh off the darkness in Doctor Horrible’s words in “My Eyes,” paired as they are with hilarious visuals, but the Doctor is taking himself seriously. The academically brilliant yet socially stunted misfit we readily empathized with in Act I evolves into something frightening before we know it.

In time, I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb Joss dropped on us in the third act. Some of the aspects I’d initially taken for oversights began to feel deliberately planned. Penny and the two competing men become foils for each other – her groundedness makes Captain Hammer and Doctor Horrible’s attitudes seem all the more cartoonish and overblown, and their rigidly Manichean definitions of good and evil underscore the uniqueness of Penny’s ability to see shades of grey. “Even in the darkness every color can be found, and every day of rain brings water flowing to things growing in the ground,” she sings. Our heroine wasn’t the girl we were expecting, but Joss is known for gleefully subverting our expectations.

The next phase in my fandom experience came a few months later, when the Whedons engaged the fans yet again. Over the various stages of the product’s completion, they’d called upon us to help advertise through word of mouth, and they’d communicated with us directly through Twitter, which was a relatively untapped commercial resource at the time. They’d been able to learn about fans’ unexpected needs, like international viewing rights on Hulu (which is traditionally limited to Americans), and fans were put directly in touch with those able to produce the Groupie t-shirts and other swag they coveted. The Whedons were able to deliver, no rights to negotiate, and no pesky studio middlemen involved. This next challenge, however, was beyond swag. At the Doctor Horrible panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the creative team announced a contest for the DVD release. Joss and his team invited fans to create their own application video for the Evil League of Evil. The lack of studio control meant that the usual network paranoia about the erosion of intellectual property rights via fan creations – be they fanfic, fan art, fan vids, filk, or more – was tossed out the window, and treatment of derivative works was instead left to the Whedons’ discretion.

I’d fooled around amateurishly with musical theatre songwriting in high school, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled at the contest’s direction. A character began to form in my mind, a young woman who traffics in petty cruelties with the goal of bringing out worst in the personalities of the people whose lives she touches, and whose hunger to prove herself as a credible villain is whipped into a frenzy when her partner in crime ditches her in favor of a second-rate superhero wannabe.

Creating her was an absolute joy. I spent the bus rides to work brainstorming for her song, gleefully fabricating tiny acts of wretchedness, calculated to chip away at someone’s faith in humanity[11]. I watched and rewatched Doctor Horrible, looking for ways to tie her story to the original source and bring new meaning to throwaway jokes. As I wrote, I kept in mind the show’s blend of wordplay, visual gags and slightly sinister camp, in hopes that my project might recapture it. I reveled in the space creators of all fannish works delight in exploring, where imitation and innovation converge.

Unfortunately, despite the early warning, the official announcement of the contest caught me by surprise, and the deadline was far sooner than I expected. The combination of an unfinished script, dire warnings of a preponderance of weekend overtime at work, and a garden-variety fear of asking anyone to collaborate with me conspired to thwart my plans before I even attempted liftoff. But as entries poured in from around the world, I was awestruck at how many people Doctor Horrible had inspired to pick up a camera and create something.

Team Whedon’s favorites can be seen on the DVD, but that represents only a tiny fraction of participants. Producer Michael Boretz claims that there were over 650 submissions in all[12], which fans happily waded through in search of the best of the bunch. Countless fan blog entries were dedicated to Top Ten lists, and their comment fields abounded with exchanges of links and opinions. Fans cheered on these creators, celebrating the spark of inspiration that had passed from one group of minds to another. In the two years since, who knows how many people saw the fans’ creativity on parade and the outpouring of support it generated and became inspired to create something of their own? Team Whedon’s gambit to raise the public profile of the web short seems to have succeeded.

Looking back, I realize something that should have been obvious to me from day one: fandom experience has little to do with when you join it, early or late. It’s about what you bring to the table, what you create, and what you take away from it. There is no “equal footing.” So get a pic, do a blog. Find something that inspires you. Heroes are far from over with.

[5]Stewart, Jon et al. “October 11, 2001: Pitch.” The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. October 11, 2001. Web. Accessed May 30, 2010. www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-11-2001/pitch

[6]Kinke, Nikki. “Network Coming Attractions: Game Shows.” Deadline Hollywood. November 13, 2007. Web. Accessed May 30, 2010. www.deadline.com/2007/11/network-coming-attractions-game-shows/

[7]HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[8]Which brought back fond memories of crashing Fandango with my fellow Browncoats as we continuously hit “reload” on the page for an unlabeled sneak preview screening we hoped was Serenity, waiting for tickets to go on sale. In Dallas, it sold out in four minutes, and I was among the triumphant. Booyeah.

[9]Unresolved Sexual Tension

[10]Ouch. Sorry about that, folks.

[11]A fun discovery: “I’d serve a ham at seder” rhymes with “change your vote to Nader.”

[12]Doctor Horrible Fan Site. “Exclusive Interview: Producer, Michael Boretz.” Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Official Fan Site. Oct 18, 2008. Web. Accessed August 22, 2010. doctorhorrible.net/exclusive-interview-producer-michael-boretz/438/