Behold the latest episode of The Dr. Steel Show, about an evil doctor bent on taking over the world. Sound familiar? Apparently it’s been ripped off by the new Joss Whedon project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which Karina commented on yesterday. And as early as Adam’s praise last week when Whedon’s series launched, SpoutBlog has been receiving comments from followers (known as the Army of Toy Soldiers) of the allegedly real-life Dr. Steel. Every other online acknowledgment of Whedon’s project also seems to be getting hit with similar allegations that Dr. Horrible is a copycat.
Personally, I can’t figure out the deal with Dr. Steel or his faithful subjects. It’s one of the many viral things on the web that confuse me and make me glad that I actually spend much of my non-blogging time away from a computer. Funny enough, in the past I’ve had the same issue with Browncoats (followers of Whedon’s series Firefly), who seem to be forever monitoring the internet for reasons to defend their beloved franchise. So far, I’ve only watched a few clips of Dr. Steel-related stuff and only some musical clips from Dr. Horrible. Just to be fair, I think I’ll avoid both, though I have to admit that I’m far more interested in a singing Doogie Howser.
Anyway, I await the flames from fans on both sides. I won’t mind the attacks if someone at least clues me into the stuff so I don’t have to spend my evening playing catch up.
Having missed the launch whilst on vacation, I finally sat down last night and watched all three episodes of Joss Whedon’s musical web miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog back-to-back-to-back. I had two major notes:
1. When did Joss Whedon and Michael Mann become the same guy? Dr. Horrible is a lone wolf anti-hero whose single-minded devotion to his professional obligation to save a small corner of the world (in this case, by way of organized evil) makes the very concept of romance inconvenient. Soundfamiliar?
“Why did she talk to me now?” Billy/Dr. Horrible laments, after prospective love interest Penny makes contact right as he’s about to jump start an evil mission. This segues directly into a song with the refrain, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” What Whedon does is the self-mocking, defeatist, loveable loser version of what Mann does, in terms of love as a blight on the record of men who should be above it.
This leads me to my second though, regarding Dr. Horrible’s controversial ending:
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Having missed the launch whilst on vacation, I finally sat down last night and watched all three episodes of Joss Whedon’s musical web miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog back-to-back-to-back. I had two major notes:
