blog 23

The year is 2019. A group of "actuals" (non-imprinted humans) are attempting to get underground to avoid technology and "butchers." The Rossum Corporation has let imprinting technology slip from their hands; China has created a way to spread the imprint through phone lines and also blanket areas with a wave, and as a result, many people have been imprinted to kill those who have not been. The group discovers the Dollhouse and the chair. Through a series of memories left on a tablet, they discover how the world came to be as it is.

The first set of memories shows Topher's introduction to the Dollhouse with DeWitt and Dominic, and his creation of a new imprinting system that used a different approach to the technology, leading to the development of the chair found in this episode. The old technology used analog cables, which took two hours to upload into an active. Topher brags that he can do it faster using waves instead, and laughs off Dominic's warnings that such an upgrade could easily go out of control. 

In the scene I am analyzing, the Dollhouse has isolated itself. The actives have all been given their original personalities back. Topher, now mentally unstable, explains to DeWitt that a phone call could be made, and anyone who picked up the phone would be imprinted (similar to the way Echo was wiped in "Gray Hour"). This would create an instant army of people programmed to kill everyone who isn't imprinted. Topher realizes that this is happening because of the technology he made possible: imprinting people with waves rather than the slower, analog method. The guilty realization of the part he has played in causing Armageddon has driven him mad.