After hours of sitting outside the ArcLight’s Cinerama Dome, plenty of fans filled the seats and waited for the panel to begin.  As seven o’clock rolled around, the introductory clip presented was from The Twilight Zone, specifically their episode “Dollhouse”.  Sadly, I couldn’t focus on the theme of the dollhouse because I was too distracted by the thought of Robert Duvall looking around the small toy house, either thinking about Kilgore or his role in the The Godfather.

Following that, Matt Roush came to introduce Joss himself, who then introduced the episode “Needs”, one of the original ideas he wrote when the show was greenlit.

As the episode ended, the panelists were introduced and the fun began.  Having been at the panel the night before for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, this panel was far funnier—Joss was in the mood to quip about just about anything. 

Questions were raised about the mythic thirteenth episode that was made, but as it stands, won’t be airing.  It seems that the episode was designed more for the international DVD releases (and I assume the American ones, too), but as the original pilot was scraped, the thirteen episode order was already fulfilled by the network.  This lead into a question about the “birthing process” of the show (which to this girl, sounded funny from both Roush’s and Whedon’s mouths.)

A few of the other questions posed by Roush seemed to make me zone out, but Miracle Laurie, who plays Mellie/November, loves the pods that they sleep in.  It also turns out that Enver Gjokaj is claustrophobic, discovered after once leaving him in a pod after a scene was finished filming.

Laurie also loved the twist of her character and reading how it played out.  She did a gleeful reenactment of her reading the script when she discovered not only that her character was sleeping with Paul Ballard, but also that she killed a man.

By the end, it was suggested that Topher is a bit like Joss himself, because Topher’s job is to create all of the dolls and then leave them alone without worrying about cleaning up most of their actions.

The questions from the audience came, with another reminder from Joss not to ask about the panel’s iPods, delving into the question of the naming convention of the dolls to one about the show being produced solely for the web. 

All in all, it was a fun panel, filled with good quips and plenty of interaction between the cast members present.